White Boy Gets the Blues

Everybody knew “What’d I Say,” an early crossover hit, a basic 12-bar riff that I practiced on my guitar since I was 13 years old, but this was a live album, “Ray Charles in Person,” recorded in Atlanta in May 1959. On it are some fabulous live recordings: an extended version of “Night Time,” with Miss Margie Hendricks helping out on vocals, that leads into “What’d I Say.” These are seminal versions, with a shouting Ray Charles wrenching up soulful, guttural exhortations “to be with the one you love,” and the Raylettes answering back, “… night and day. Night and day.” The backup singers sound like another horn section, they are so together.

Ray does “Tell the Truth” on this album, and for me it’s maybe the greatest live cut ever captured on tape – even more remarkable when you realize they got it all that rainy day in Georgia with a single microphone and portable tape recorder. Hendricks and the Raylettes actually take the lead on “Tell the Truth,” an indication of Ray’s confidence and swagger, and he answers back like maybe only some pimp could. And then coming out of David “Fathead” Newman’s sax solo a sound erupts from way down inside Charles, a scream that’s somewhere between the Devil himself and Jesus. It’s way too short. It leaves you begging for more every time. This is my final call; it is a sound from another world all together; when I hear it I am hooked on the drug that is and forever will be, the blues. The rhythm that is the blues.

I am a white boy that has got himself the blues. I’m 14 years old, and it’s 1961.

                         

                                         Night Train Blues Band

                                Mondo Cane, the Village, NYC, 1990

“How ‘bout that?! How ‘bout that! Ray Charles! The great Ray Charles. The high priest! Ray Charles himself. What a show! What a show...” And the ecstatic stage announcer that day is dead right. From then on I had to learn this stuff, and learn it good enough, and electric enough, to play it live my ownself, in a band!

My earliest memory of anything close to a clue was this kid back in the fourth grade back in San Antonio. He brings a 45rpm of Carl Perkins’ “Blue Suede Shoes” to school for music class; he’s actually wearing blue suede shoes!, and he gets out on the floor and dances to the record.

I like it. A lot. And it sure beats the hell out of the “Ballad of Davey Crockett,” the other popular tune from that year.

Then we move up to St. Louis and by now rock and roll is all over the place. Back then there was two or three rock stations in St. Louis – WIL, KXOK and, for a while, KWK. And then in one of the dumbest moves in the history of the world, KWK goes on the air one day in 1959 to claim “rock and roll has got to go,” and proceeds to break every rock record they play so they can go back to an easy listening format. Before KWK disappeared into thin off-the-air somebody filmed this event, and you’ll see it today in rock history documentaries along with racist, southern rednecks protesting Elvis’ “nigger bop” music - examples of gross ignorance - and extreme prejudice - in the face of an unstoppable cultural phenomenon.

For me it was here to stay, especially that “bop” stuff.

Way down at the end of the St. Louis radio dial, “just to the left of your glove box,” was KATZ, a “Negro” station. And they played the shit. They played kick-ass roadhouse juke, blues. Electric Chicago rhythm and blues. And a lot of soul music. At the time I didn’t even know what to call it; it was kind of like rock and roll, only more raw, even more dangerous. While Elvis Presley was scaring the hell out of our parents, pissing them off with his sideburns and his sneer, he was pulling me into a whole new world with his versions of what we’d learn later was ethnic, Black, music, the kind of stuff KATZ and later, KXLW, was playing all the time around St. Louis.

For Elvis this genuine edge would last about 18 months, then he went white, way white, and then got fat making bad movies. But the blues, they came from way back and for me, last to this day.

Both of the Black radio stations played a lot of Ike and Tina Turner, a local St. Louis act really coming on with recordings they were making at Technisonic Studios out on Brentwood Boulevard, in St. Louis county. And Albert King and Solomon Burke, all of it somehow related to rock and roll, but about like a wolf is related to a dog. Four-legged and furry, but meaner, with longer teeth, and nowhere near domesticated.

KXLW played “Midnight Hour,” by Wilson Pickett (co-written with Steve Cropper, guitar magician and another white guy, down at Stax Records, in Memphis), a full year before any white station played it. Black music didn’t really cross over to a white audience until years later.

So most people had to wait for it. But not me.

Around this time I picked up a ukulele. Lot of guys I knew played ukes or acoustic guitars, so I taught myself some chords on a borrowed 4-stringed ukulele. We used to spend weekends out at a log cabin in Hawk Point, Missouri, drinking beers and gin and Pepsi or something, and somehow the tunes we’d crank out would get better and better the later at night it got. It was also out in Hawk Point that we could get the radio to pick up Wolf Man Jack from all the way down in Del Rio, Texas, eons before he was anybody anywhere else. XERF, a 50,000 watt clear channel station. We’d find him deep in the night when he would spin a lot of soul music and stompin’ southern rock.

“Rock and roll baaaaaaaayaaaabay!,” he’d howl.

Other times we’d get WLAC from Nashville, brought directly up to us by Randy’s Record Shop, and White Rose Pomade and White Star Petroleum jelly. Damned straight.

My life finally changed for good the first time I heard “Great Balls of Fire.” Jerry Lee Lewis. Nothing like it before or since. Or him. He wouldn’t so much play the piano as punish it, pounding notes from it that responded in yelps of pain. Three seconds into a song he was on his feet, kneading the breath and life out of the keys, scorching the air with his countrified threat of a voice.

“Great Balls of Fire” left me no way back. Didn’t want a way back. Even better, and unlike most of the other stuff I listened to, it became a big hit. Except for Little Richard - every bit as outrageous as Lewis, and also producing big sellers - it seemed like most everybody else who made it big was in another category - just rock and roll. Maybe Lewis wasn’t Black, but his early music was every bit as visceral.

And the fact that he absolutely horrified our parents made it that much better. He even made Elvis seem OK. A genuine certified juvenile delinquent with flying blonde hair and a country leer that dared parents everywhere to trust their daughters with him, just one time, for Jerry Lee. None would, so he married his 13 year-old cousin and disappeared in scandal for the next 20 years.

                                            Montana Studios, NYC, 1992

If you go back and really immerse yourself in early rock and roll - not Danny and the Juniors or Chubby Checker, but Gene Vincent, James Brown, Eddie Cochran, Bo Diddley (the first record album I ever bought), Little Richard, Ronnie Hawkins, Link Wray, Jackie Brenston (the designated artist on Ike Turner’s seminal recording, “Rocket 88”), and many, many more even lesser knowns and one-hit wonders - these guys were making music that was dangerous. Its roots are pure Black. Gospel. And hot rod six-pack country. This music was a threat to life as our parents viewed it, and their values, and the way they thought “youngsters” should look, and act.

It was scary.

It was great.

My first real guitar was a Harmony acoustic, basic crap - but with six strings a lot better than a ukulele. I started off playing “Tom Dooley,” stuff like that. But soon as I could play the opening riffs to “What’d I Say” I had to have an electric. My mother took me out to McMurray Music on Page Boulevard and we bought a used, cherry-red Les Paul Jr. Gibson guitar, single pick-up, for $90. It was beautiful and would have sounded fantastic except I had to play it through a cheap, Barney Kessel Kay amplifier with an 8-inch speaker that I blew out in about ten minutes - thereby having a very early “fuzz tone” sound. It was all we could afford.

But I had my electric guitar and I started practicing to records soon as I figured out the three basic rock and blues chords. Trouble was the only record player we had at home was some weird thing where the turntable played through the TV set - some kind of archaic, late-fifties technology - which meant I had to practice downstairs in the living room where

everybody else was. One night my dad’s passed out in his easy chair and I’m inching up the volume, bit by bit - which means through the 3-inch TV speaker it’s about as loud as the ballgame on his radio - picking along with a Jimmy Reed album - and finally my old man wakes up.

He’d had enough: “It’s not that I don’t like that kind of music (shit, he hated it),” he lied. “It’s just that it all sounds alike.” He was almost right about Jimmy Reed, but for all the wrong reasons.

I went back upstairs.

                                                          The Benders

                                                   Casa Loma Ballroom

                                                         St. Louis 1985

Not too long ago I saw a vintage Les Paul Jr. for sale just like the one I had: $3100.

In those days in St. Louis most real blues joints were over in East St. Louis, or way down Delmar Boulevard inside the St. Louis city limits, and nobody went to those places until a few years later when you could first make yourself a lot smarter and braver after getting some old dude to buy you a couple of six packs of Falstaff beer.

But Sunset, in South St. Louis, was an anomaly. Primarily a municipal swimming pool, they had an adjacent clubhouse, no booze, and kids from all over used to go there. I can remember pressing in on a chain link fence to hear Ike and Tina playing outside one night when I was about 13 years old.

Sunset imported fabulous bands from the east side, bands with horn sections that played rockin’ bar blues to driving shuffle kicks. Benny Sharpe was one of the best. From the east side, pomaded hair, slick and cool. I’m sure half his band had done time. His sax player would always have a lit cigarette stuck in one of his horn’s keys while he played, and Benny stuck his filter first on the sharp end of a string from his Fender Strat, one just like Ike Turner’s. He’d get a raw, piercing sound that drove the whole band, and when he played he just stood there, and the notes would come up from his soul and out through his amp and right down into my gonads. “Take it or leave it motherfuckers, but I know you can’t just stand there,” he seemed to say. And he was right. It was primal.

One time Benny Sharpe steered his boat-long, tail-finned red Cadillac right into MidWest Laundry, just inside the St. Louis city limits, where I worked Saturdays during high school; we had curb service and he was picking up some dry cleaning. I couldn’t believe it. He didn’t even park in a space, just pulls up long ways, defying anybody to suggest otherwise, and hands me his ticket. Cool. His processed hair shined like neon lights on a beer glass, and there’s a gorgeous blonde white woman wedged up next to him in the front seat.

I went and got his cleaned-and-pressed sharkskin suit for him. Three-dollar tip for a $2.75 cleaning bill. He was probably on his way over to a gig at Sam Spaulding’s Wonder Bar, on the east side.

This was the blues for sure.

But Ike Turner was the one for us back then; we bought Fender guitars like he played, and Fender P Bass guitars like his bass player. And we learned his music, not just the hits he had, but the songs he played even before Tina, tunes like St. Louisan Billy Gayle’s “Tore Up,” “Rocket 88,” and “Prancin’,” a cut on the B-side of Ike’s first album, “Ike Turner’s Kings of Rhythm,” an all-instrumental album that has Ike and Tina’s photo on the cover even though Tina didn’t sing on Ike’s records until later. She was strictly doing club gigs with him then.

Lot of historians say “Rocket 88,” written by Ike Turner, was the very first example of rock and roll. He plays piano on it, not guitar.

“Prancin’” was formative: the sound Turner gets on his Strat is unique for its day, more common today. Clear, prominent, assertive, with enough bottom on it to round it out, the pick-up switch jammed between the top and middle positions to give it a kind of a reverb bite. (Today Fender manufactures their Strats with five pick-up positions, to allow for this; back then you had to know how to rig it). When the horns take over in “Prancin’,” Ike starts raking his strings with his pick, easing off his left hand each time just a bit, for more of a pop scratch, so he drives the whole thing like a drummer. Meanwhile he’s got his bass player playing the four and five notes on open strings on a Fender Precision electric bass when some guys are actually still playing old acoustic uprights.

Not bad for a guy whose main instrument was the piano. They were way out there, and they’re from St. Louis. And so am I.

Something else was going on back then: The kids at my high school really loved Motown music, including me; I know it was popular a lot of places, but we absolutely loved it. Not just Marvin Gaye’s “Pride and Joy,” but “Can I get a Witness,” too, a driving gospel roof raiser, and “Stubborn kind’a Fella;” not only Mary Wells’ “My Guy,” but “Bye Bye Baby,” a screaming, throaty tent shaker.

If you listened to this stuff, you just had to dance to it, too; being a great dancer was a source of pride for guys and girls. And, seriously - as many guys as girls worked on steps, moves, rhythms. American Bandstand was a great place to get ideas, and we did. In fact, the teenagers on Bandstand, kids from Philadelphia and fabulous dancers, even looked different than us. We were white bread white boys with Princeton haircuts. They were sharp fine dressers with slicked back ducktails. And the show was integrated.

When I was 15 I got my first big-time guitar (it wasn’t until years later that I realized just how great my Les Paul Jr. was; it’s just that back then having an electric guitar with only one pickup was like having a car with no radio) - a Gretsch, semi-hollow body, chrome flake Silver Jet, a 1957 beauty that I bought from a friend in 1962 for $200. Fabulous, with a Bigsby tremolo, and it went with me into my first band.

The guy I bought the Gretsch from would teach me stuff out at his house; it was the first time I ever plugged my guitar through a good amplifier. What a difference! He played his bass through a piggyback Ampeg tube amp (they were all tube amps, back then) that held the sound down on the ground like cement, so you not only heard it but actually felt it come up through your feet and detonate inside your stomach.

Early on in high school somebody introduces me to Lindell Hill, a rough, blue-collar type guy, a few years and many miles older than me, who had gained a bit of a reputation as St. Louis’ “blue-eyed soul brother” for his ability to sing and play kick-ass R&B. Lindell was the real thing; he played a Strat and he played it without a pick, with his thumb and index finger and with a deep feeling for the music fueled by his countrified squint on life and not a little anger, usually aimed at his lusty wife, Choosy. There was a sense of danger in him; he’d been around, even though he was only in his mid-twenties, and he was between gigs.

We practiced together, him on lead and vocals, me on my Gretsch playing rhythm guitar and an even younger guy from school on drums. Sometimes we had a bass player, sometimes a guy on an electric Farfisa keyboard, but mostly it was just the three of us, and we played out for the next four years as “Little Caesar and The Blue Notes.” With Hill’s influence and teaching we learned tunes from Howlin’ Wolf, Billy Gayle, Solomon Burke, Elmore James, Albert King. Barrett Strong’s “Money.” James Brown. Instrumentals like “Last Night,” “Hold It,” “Comin’ Home,” Green Onions.” And of course, “Prancin’.” We even played some Motown - our own way - and things like “Shake a Tail Feather” - not Tina’s version, the real one, by the Five Dutones, who did it first. And much better. I think they were from St. Louis, too.

For a long time we got away with just the three of us. All my practicing at home, with records, pushed me into playing some kind of fuller sound, like I was trying to mimic the whole band or something. Flat wound strings, lots of bottom end from my amp, extra stokes on the 5th and 6th strings all had a way of filling in big around Lindell’s lead, and our drummer had Turner’s shuffle kick down cold.

I was never great, but I could hold my own, and we got pretty good.

We got great gigs back then. Fraternity parties, and St. Louis club dates, even though only Hill was old enough to legally be there. I finally got a great amplifier, a Fender Concert with four ten-inch Jansen speakers, and more than once we had to put not only my guitar through it, but also Lindell’s, plus his mike! Insane. I even played bass through it. I’ve still got the amp.

My early high mark came the first Friday night we played at Wig Wam, my own high school’s teen town, where girls I lusted after, cheerleaders I had unattainable crushes on, showed up along with everybody else and actually danced to our music! This was a long, long way from “Tom Dooley” on my ukulele. There was a school chaperone there who would make us play a slow song every fifth or sixth one, so the kids wouldn’t get over heated and turn into juvenile delinquents right out there on the dance floor. Hell, we only knew one slow song, so we’d play it in a different key each time.

We played one whole summer, four nights a week, down on the DeBaliviere strip inside the St. Louis city limits, next door to the Stardust Club at a place called Apartment A. The Stardust was a famous strip joint where Evelyn West and her $50,000 Treasure Chest (“Insured by Lloyd’s of London,” the ads said) still performed, and every break she’d bring her assets - now worth maybe $50 - next door to our gig and play the pinball machine. By that time she was about 60.

Another summer we played weekends up in Pagedale at a dump appropriately named The Dungeon. The owner would show up late every night and insist we play something Jimmy Reed. I’ve still got a black and white picture from that gig. White shirt, Princeton haircut, vanilla white everything, white bread suburban boy. But there I am with my Gretsch, and we’re playing the real shit.

                                             Little Caesar & The Blue Notes

                                              The Dungeon, St. Louis, 1965

If you’ve seen “Animal House” then you’ve seen Jim’s Rib Station, Columbia, Missouri, “College Town USA,” where I went to school at Missouri University. Only difference is Jim’s is in the middle of town; the club in Belushi’s movie is way outside town. Everything else is the same, except instead of “my man Otis” there was Winston Rose and the Aftones. Every once in a while we’d gather up our courage - get ourselves real tight - and go down in there real late to listen to the music. We’d be the only white guys in there and sit down at all 18 years of age and order ourselves a round of champagne cocktails or Budweisers. Or both.

I actually got myself into the band a couple of times to sit in.

One night at Jim’s one of us said something to some dude he took exception to - something like, “Hello, how are you this e’nin?,” and Jim himself comes over and sits down at our table and says we are going to have to leave. Now. And he walks us up the stairs, out into the parking lot and all the way down the street to our car.

He probably saved our lives, and his liquor license, and I’m sure his priorities did not rank in that order.

And great gigs at Mizzou, where we played for the Sigma Alpha Mu fraternity, the Sammies, most of whom came from University City and Ladue in St. Louis, so I knew them all - which made these gigs even better. They were the best dancers, and they threw outrageous parties. One night we arrived late at the infamous I Club in Columbia to play a Sammy party - late because I literally had to go knocking door-to-door to borrow an amplifier and finally convince some guy’s wife that her husband sent me over to their house to pick it up for him. A complete lie.

But this was a gig, and this was the club where Ike Turner had played, and we had to have the right gear.

By the time we get there the place is going nuts, and they actually give us a standing ovation just for walking in! There’s a genuine high-rise stage and we set up quick as we can, no warm up - just a tune up. They’re already on their feet ready to dance and Lindell and me are still tuning our E strings. The sound from the very first note is unbelievably full, powerful, and there’s only the three of us, no bass. Every person in the house is out on the dance floor from the first song, which was always an instrumental. The acoustics are phenomenal. We sound like a seven-piece band.

This was going to be the best night we ever had - except somebody calls and says the cops are on the way! The owner, an enormous man who’s been around the block many times, with the face mileage to show it, knows he’s got at least 172 underage drinkers in there, and he closes the whole thing down.

We played for all of maybe twenty minutes, but I can remember the fantastic sound we got to this day.

Another time at Mizzou, during my freshman year, Little Caesar and the Blue Notes play for a huge and illegal dorm party outside Columbia. We start late because the band’s car broke down on the way from St. Louis, and they have to catch a bus the rest of the way in.

After the gig we’re putting our stuff away and hanging around generally acting the fool, throwing empty beer bottles up against the wall. I stand up to fire off a 16oz Stag bottle when I take what feels like a solid brick right to the head. Everybody comes rushing up to me wearing these various expressions of horror. Then one guy grabs me by the shoulders and pulls a huge slice of amber glass out of my nose, and another one just next to my right eye where a beer bottle smashed into my face.

They rush me off to the clinic to get stitched up. I’m beyond pain, but not beyond bleeding.

Ain’t nothin’ like the blues.

                                    Rum Boogie Café, Beale Street, Memphis

                                              with Delta Highway 2009

©Tim Arnold

New York

917.748.6058

possible20@aol.com

                                                                ########

Is Luxury Dead? Maybe Not.

As published in Advertising Age (www.adage.com) 6 April 2010 and by The Luxury Society (www.luxurysociety.com) 12 May 2010.

Guess who says the following attributes are most influential in making "important purchases" today: value, price, overall quality, good design and functionality?

A clue: 84% of this group texts from cellphones; 78% use social networking; 66% use the mobile web and 57% use mobile apps. 

It's not who you think it is. In fact, it's a group whose median age is 45, not 19. 

According to "The New Face of Affluence," an in-depth study from Dwell Strategy and Research, San Francisco, these are the attributes that drive purchase decisions of the "New Affluents." Indeed, the median household income of the more than 1,000 survey respondents is nearly $200,000. They're the same people who have the economy and the environment top-of-mind when making these purchase decisions. 

Using 2009 Mendelsohn Affluent Survey psychographic data, and with the help of DJG Marketing, New York, Dwell identified a segment of nearly 9 million Americans who have household incomes of $100,000 or higher. They represent less than half of 1% of U.S. households, spend $303 billion annually on their favorite brands and have a whole new take on what it means to be wealthy. 

According to the survey respondents, "luxury" brands, per se, are no longer important to them, or even relevant; neither is "overall social status," they say. This generation of nouveau riche is shunning "conspicuous consumption" in favor of brands that represent quality, aesthetics and authenticity. These attributes, along with uniqueness, integrity, design and performance, represent today's "prestige" for these high-end consumers. And their emerging values and brand motivations make these consumers a more diverse group than one might assume. 

A brand does not have to be expensive to attract New Affluents. What they're now demanding from brands is a new and different kind of relationship. And, as supported by these findings, the days of controlled, top-down brand marketing are over, especially for this sector. These wealthy and would-be elites are actually looking for brand interaction -- a dialogue -- based on integrity, authenticity and performance. And not only are they equipped for interaction, they're demanding it. 

So what brands do New Affluents find meaningful, authentic and relevant? Apple, Sony, BMW and Ralph Lauren, unsurprisingly. But Crate & Barrel, Ikea, Whole Foods and Levi's, too. Porsche, Lexus, Chanel and Viking. And Target, North Face, Volkswagen and The Gap. Missing from this segment's 75 favorites list are classic luxury brands like Cadillac, Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Armani and Versace. 

 * Top 75 brands as listed by the respondents to the "New Face of Affluence Report conducted by Dwell Strategy + Research.  Type size reflects relative rankings by respondents.

Note:  Toyota appears prominently in this survey - which was conducted in December 2009, before their recall crisis mushroomed.  And despite the fact that their sales have plussed in March 2010, by most accounts these gains are the result of unusually aggressive incentive spending, zero per cent interest deals and lease discounts.  In light of this, and Dwell's research, Toyota is likely to fall significantly in the New Affluents' favorite brand rankings.

These New Affluents are smart (85% graduated from four-year colleges; 52% did post-graduate work) and hard working (50-plus hours per week -- both at home and in the office); their families are their No. 1 priorities (40% have children at home). And, at a median age of 45, they are well-off. But they got there through careers that for them are a means to an end (only 4% rated "career" as a No. 1 priority). Success for them is having the independence to involve themselves in family -- and their well-being. The qualities they most associate with "prestige brands" are aesthetics, innovation, integrity, originality and authenticity. They don't buy anything "to impress others." 

The majority of New Affluents agreed completely that "technology is indispensable to the way I communicate." So, just like the Gen Xers so many marketers seem obsessed with, these New Affluents text, tweet and post on social networks. "They are powered by 21st century technology" -- all of which came of age when they did. It's an integral part of their lives. Google and Dell are among the most frequently cited brands as meaningful to them.

The study's takeaway will be no surprise to successful brand marketers, except perhaps that now it applies to this heretofore stratospheric source of revenue, too: Define an integrated, consistent and positive interaction that reflects your brand's values, and understand that these consumers depend on mobile connections and social networking just like their mass-audience counterparts. 

In other words, cultivate a relationship, don't just sell a product. "Great brands create experiences, not products," say the majority of the study's respondents. 

It may be time for more brands to consider this sector as a source of revenue. If you're authentic, functional and design-centric, and you know how to cultivate a genuine relationship between the brand and these New Affluents, then it may be time to consider some targeted, interactive communication with them. If you can generate a "personal connection" like their other top brands do, and engage them in a meaningful way, 86% are even willing to pay more for a brand they like. They are classic early adopters, and willing to embrace brands that heretofore might be considered unworthy. Some of their emerging top brands have already figured this out and are breaking new ground creatively and are using new media. 

Many of their top brands eschew traditional advertising forums to focus on web outreach. Nordstrom is one of their many favored brands posting banner ads online. For some, targeted catalog distribution is a core marketing vehicle: Design Within Reach and Room & Board both distribute impressive catalogs on a regular basis, in addition to aggressive online marketing.

Other brands have maintained and even enhanced their cachet through a reliance on long-standing brand attributes that are now even more important to this sector: quality, design, functionality and innovation. These brands include BMW, Mercedes, Bosch, Nike, Hans Grohe, Volvo, Bose, Porsche, Rolex, Canon and Viking. 

Even a big-box retailer has earned its way into New Affluent-favored status as one of these "authentic," "meaningful" brands: Target. In part through its bold "Expect More. Pay Less" positioning and advertising, Target has turned a seeming contradiction into a compelling design-driven platform -- one that has direct appeal to New Affluents. Target is once again realizing net earnings growth and increased margins, no doubt in part because they've added incremental appeal to a high-spending sector without losing their base. Target has successfully extended its customer relationships through ancillary programs such as "Dream in Color" and "Democracy of Design," and their many museum and theater partnerships, including the Target National Design Center at the Cooper-Hewitt Museum, New York.

Target has helped make good design accessible to everyone. 

In fact Target has taken a page out of Russell Wright's mantra, "the importance of the value of good design in everything and for everyone." Wright, who preceded Martha Stewart's retailing to the masses by 50 years, extended modernist design to the masses in furniture, accessories, dishes, glassware and table linens. Now, the study shows, there are a number of collectible, retro brands that are also among the New Affluents' top choices: Herman Miller, Knoll and Eames. 

So, is luxury really dead? 

No. But it has been redefined by those in the category who have clearly rejected "social status" as a contributing factor to purchase decisions. They're buying fewer things of higher quality; they're shying away from disposables when they have a choice. They have replaced older values with contemporary new qualities such as the economy, sustainability, the environment and current cultural trends as top-of-mind issues affecting these decisions. 

They're using new language. Attributes like uniqueness, know-how, design and performance have redefined "prestige." Now it's "self expression," not "status." The New Affluents' brand choices evidence at minimum the demand for a new dialogue with them. Don't sell them a product. Offer them a brand. Better yet, a brand experience -- just like astute marketers have been doing for years. The difference now is it's 24/7. This newly defined segment is up late, surfing the web, taking the time to learn about products and what appeals to them. And once they're in, they'll stay with you -- as long as you maintain the relationship. 

The internet has created a way for people to connect at every level, and the New Affluents are taking advantage of it like everybody else. The brands that are connecting with them know it. And now these well-to-dos are attracted to many of the same brands that other segments are. They're wearing some of the same kinds of clothes, driving some of the same cars and shopping at many of the same retailers. 

Got a brand that has these kinds of values but isn't on their list yet? Ask yourself, why not?

(c) Tim Arnold, 6 Apr 2010

The Missing Link.

The Missing Link.

I know what you’re thinking: how could anybody defile our Statue of Liberty like this? Our very symbol of freedom and democracy, the icon we all rallied around after 9/11? Who would do such a thing?

The Republican Party, that’s who.

I took this photo in the lobby of a sprawling space at 220 12th Ave between 27th and 28th streets in New York City. It was rented on behalf of the Republican Party and converted to host after-hours parties for their delegates and insiders during their convention week. The week before the convention it was cleared for security by the US Capitol Police, whose mission it is to “protect and support the Congress in meeting its Constitutional responsibilities.” This statue – rented and installed there by the Republican conventioneers - is two stories tall and sat right inside the front door and immediately to the right of a large bank of metal detectors. “Give me your revelers,” it says around its base.

Building tenants were warned that it would be active each night from 10pm to 6am – and no wonder: lots of steam to blow off after endless speeches about why it takes George W. and Dick Cheney to protect us from dangers of the world we live in, and admonitions from the likes of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who said, “To those who are so pessimistic about our economy, I say, don’t be economic girlie men!” And rants from Southern Dixiecrat Senator Zell Miller: “our nation is being torn apart and made weaker because of the Democrats' manic obsession to bring down our Commander-in-Chief." (A teaching moment, as President Obama might call it now, except these Republicans didn’t learn a damned thing, did they?).

At the time I questioned the utter hypocrisy of it all. How does the Republican Party come to New York, drape themselves in the American flag and family values, co-opt the Statue of Liberty as their convention symbol, parade 9/11 widows to the stage and shamelessly exploit this act of war in speech after convention speech, all within a heart beat of Ground Zero – and then erect an abomination like this?

I wanted to know how Rudy Giuliani felt about how his Republican Party defiled his city’s and his nation’s most powerful symbol of the very values they continue to lay claim to. Or Mayor Bloomberg? Was this George Pataki’s idea of how to welcome visiting Republicans into “hostile territory,” make them feel more at home? How did any of these guys explain this to their wives (ah, never mind)? And I wanted to know how “good Republicans” like John McCain (well, he used to be one) tolerated such a thing – especially since his party had adopted this very symbol to represent their convention. And by the way, who paid for it all?

And hey - why would these 2^nd Amendment zealots want to set up metal detectors to screen for guns, anyway? It’s our inalienable right to carry the damned things. Ain’t it, or ain’t it not?

Problem was I was taking all this stuff way too seriously.

First of all, think about it: Mark Sanford and John Ensign and Paul Stanley and Mark Duvall could have walked into their 2004 convention party headquarters in New York City, taken one look at this sexy lady and said, “yeah baby! That’s what I’m talkin’ about!”

And then it dawned on me: McCain was thinking ahead, too, and he must have come face with an inspiration:

                                      

Because less than four years later he erects another robust female figure, puts her on her own pedestal and names her “the next Vice-President of the United States of America!“ Let’s face it, Sarah Palin has a lot in common with this other Republican version of what must be their vision of what the real American woman is all about. Damn straight!

Most of America was surprised with McCain’s pick, but that likely did not include the Republican conventioneers at that 2004 convention party – they’d already seen a fully-authorized, pre-qualified, full-figured precursor-icon for an otherwise unknown who would storm America’s next election stage with breathless – and some would say, clueless – cheerleader chutzpah.

Think about the foreshadowing, the links between these two babelicious idols that at the very least must have represented for McCain a phantasmagoric contrast to what he was going home to.

Both assume one of those jaunty, look-at-me ain’t I hot? poses.

And speaking of hot … you betcha! …

 

                    

“Give me your revelers,” is what it said to the Republican partiers at the base of the not-the-Statue of Liberty. And the she went back into storage. Give me a bridge to nowhere, said the Governor. And then she quit.

The not-the-Statue wears a tiara crown; the Statuesque wore one when she won the Miss Wasilla Pageant – but just look at her now, here she comes - still wearing one as if.

Both are stylishly adorned, some would say gratuitously sexy, both wardrobes funded by their enablers.

The not-the-Statue of Liberty has bigger boobs. The not-the-Vice President is a bigger boob.

Each one is air headed: the statue, literally, the wannabe … literally. In other words, they’re both empty suits. They are both political bimbos.

Truth be known, Palin has much in common with the real Statue of Liberty, too:

“The statue is built top-heavy in order to create a slight forced perspective and appear more correctly proportioned when viewed from its base.”* Which also describes the goal her political handlers would have to adopt in her election bid.

The Statue of Liberty holds a tabula ansata (look it up) in her left hand, representing the Declaration of Independence; the not-the-Statue of Liberty holds no such thing, tantamount to admitting she’s no pretender. The wannabe writes crib sheet notes on her left hand – a declaration of dependence - which is tantamount to admitting she is.               

                               

                                            

“The statue was built to withstand heavy winds, but designed to sway when faced with high wind loads.” * Ring a bell?

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses … the wretched refuse … the homeless … ,” as it’s inscribed at the base of our Statue of Liberty. To which Palin could be expected to respond, “wouldn’t that be one of those dope-y change-y things for us Republicans?”

On the other hand … maybe this cheerleader ain’t so dumb after all:

                                                           “Gimmee an O … !

After all, if, according to the Republican’s last excuse for a president, “… the human being and fish can coexist peacefully,” then anything is possible.

*Wikepedia, The Statue of Liberty, Physical characteristics.

(c) Tim Arnold, Sept 2, 2004: all modified Statue photos.

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© Tim Arnold

The Original Animal House

"For He's a Kappa Sig ... !"

Consider the following – despite what’s described on the “Animal House” website about Chris Miller and his days at Dartmouth. Despite what Miller - one of the film’s writers - “remembers” about his college days, and unrelated stuff he describes and later publishes in his book, “The Real Animal House (2006),” there’s a genuine influence for “Animal House” that must finally be acknowledged. What I’m saying is, during the years I was a member of the Kappa Sigma fraternity at the University of Missouri, a full 10 years before the movie came out (in 1978), we experienced the actual events depicted in “Animal House,” the movie, co-written by Miller and Harold Ramis – who, according to at least one brother who saw him there - actually saw this stuff take place at Mizzou.

Ramis, a co-writer (and later very successful director), graduated Washington University, St. Louis, in 1966. He was a ZBT and had many friends at the very active ZBT house over at Missouri University, in Columbia, less than 2 hours away. (The website claims he based some of the pranks in the movie on his experiences at Wash U; there’s no way this is possible, not really. WU was a suburban St. Louis, white bread school for serious students). As a Kappa Sigma at Mizzou, with many brothers from St. Louis, we had a lot of friends who were Zeebs (and Sammies, the other primary Jewish fraternity), as we used to call them, and would actually party with them on occasion. Great partiers, too, just like us.

I graduated Mizzou in 1968; I was told years later that Ramis would visit the Kappa Sig house back then, and our weekend parties, when he would come to Columbia. And while I can’t personally attest to this, he must have. Here is what he saw, or would have seen – and these are all true, way-back-then events that I can attest to, because I was there, and saw all of them:

Toga Party. 15 years before the movie came out. We held ours at the Mizzou Motel the week before school started every year, where we crammed 25-some actives, and various disposable dates into a single room, all wrapped up in various sheets. Togas. Our “toga/toga/toga” chant traditionally ended with most of the togas on the floor. A couple of honorary pledges were always invited to these Toga Parties, held the weekend before school started. This is how I was introduced to the real Kappa Sig fraternity as a pledge: knock on the Mizzou Motel door, it opens, we walk in. First thing I see, a brother is screwing his date on the only bed in the room (under their togas). Round the corner into the kitchen, and there’s another brother, stirring his drink with his Johnson. Seriously).

“My man Otis.” Ours was Winston Rose (and the Aftones), a black R&B band who played many weekends at a black club in the middle of downtown Columbia, below street level. Jim’s Rib Station. It was actually laid out just like the club in the movie, bar on the right, bandstand on the left, dance floor crammed in the middle, and populated by many large, downtown dudes. And every so often a couple of us white brothers would descend the stairs down into what was then a very alien world. Winston actually stopped in the middle of a song one time, just like in the movie, but only because he recognized me from the last time I sat in with the band. The first night I was ever there was my freshman year, as a dorm rat (I pledged the summer before my sophomore year). We went in there and ordered champagne cocktails or some stuff and started interactin’ with the bro’s, not the brothers, the bro’s. And pretty soon here come’s Jim his ownself, and suggests we leave, now, with emphasis on NOW, and then escorts us all the way down the street to our car, just in case. This night, we took our dates out with us.

D Day’s motorcycle up the stairs. Terry Ranahan, who now practices law in California, wheeled his Ducati bike all the way up the front stairs into the frat house one night, just like D Day did. I was there, I saw it. Terry was chasing our housedog, Heidi, around the backyard; she was a St. Bernard, and she was terrified. She runs into the downstairs dining room to get way – and Ranahan follows her in. The look of absolute terror and surprise on her face was unforgettable. Then he rams his bike up the front stairs and all the way to the presidential suite - where I’m actually studying (I was GM, illegally, nine months after being activated). I dutifully threaten him with a fine, and he guides his Ducati down the back stairs, jumps it off the back steps between two parked cars, and lands it in the gravel parking lot, where he does a couple of doughnuts, spraying gravel around on everyone's cars.

Years later they rip up the old carpeting off the front stairs to replace it, and Terry's tire marks are still there! This is a true story; you cannot make this shit up.

Mazola parties. A major fantasy. But we talked about it all the time: the brothers, a bunch of fun-loving dates, a big plastic sheet spread out on the chapter room floor, and multiple bottles of Mazola Oil. Get naked. Pour! And mix it up. Repeat. Didn’t actually happen in my frat lifetime. But we all dreamed about it. And I was reminded of it in “Animal House” when Otter is shopping with Dean Wormer’s wife in the super market, and the first thing he reaches for … is Mazola Oil! A great tribute.

Pissing off the porch. The Kappa Sig annex was a dump of a rented house outside Columbia; several of the senior brothers rented it for … study hall. It was fronted by a railed porch. It was a zoo, especially on weekends. We honored the tradition of those who came before us by regularly pissing off this heralded platform – just like Belushi’s doing in the movie’s opening scene.

It was also at this annex that Brother Charles (Hoot) Gibson rigged a hole in the bathroom window from out on the porch, at … knee level. Shameless, and you had to stand guard when your own date was in there, if you cared. Amazing shots. At least we didn’t have to climb a ladder, like Bluto did at the Tri Delt house.

Food fights. The real deal. Once a year, minimum, in our dining room. And who cared? Pledges had to clean in up. And we could hose off upstairs, in the showers. Once the housemother even got nailed.

Dickenson College. In “Animal House” it’s an all-girls school near Faber. In Columbia, Missouri, it’s Stephens College, a quasi-notorious all-girls school attended by privileged young women from around the country. We called them Stephens’s dollies, and they were. The Kappa Sigs, whose brothers included numerous football varsity jocks, miscellaneous face men and all around dweebs and Blutos, would actually cruise Stephens Friday afternoons for dates, pile them into their cars and take them out to the Kappa Sig annex house, out on West Broadway, and … rock.

Your date’s dead. A classic at the Kappa Sig house. One example: one of the brothers (Gary Hilmer, the Lip) was worried about a blind date he was set up with at Stephens College, one of two all-girls schools in Columbia(!), so he sends over a fellow brother to check her out first, with the instructions to tell her he’s just been in a tragic car wreck if she shows up ugly. She did, and he did. Just like Otter did at Dickinson College – except they reversed the gag in the movie.

Spook trains. As rush chairman, I myself followed a long fraternity tradition by ushering undesireable rushees into a back room, all together, where one of our brothers would engage them in the theory of the slide rule or something. Another time I showed them a room upstairs, where we had a pledge lying face down on the top bunk. On the springs. Butt naked. Face down. Got it? Didn’t see this last bit in the movie. Funny thing, we used to call these rushees “geeks.” Little did we know that one day they would rule the world.

And without fail we would introduce ourselves to incoming rushees as Neil Downaneater, Michael Hunt or Dick Hertz – this last one a name you’ll see written on the blackboard in the student court scene in the movie.

Our Niedermeyer was, well, I won’t name him. But he was already a Vietnam Vet and back in the house, fully armed and dangerous. Once he shot a harpoon gun through his room wall, just missing a pledge’s head in the next room over. He used to fire his semi-automatic off the back fire escape, into the night air, “just to clear his head,” he would say. Then he re-upped, and would send photos of dead Viet Cong back to the house.

Annual Kappa Sig tradition: Keg party in the chapter room, followed by an exodus over to the Pi Phi sorority house, where we raised our beers, sang our “You didn’t win the skit Pi Beta Phi” song at the top of our lungs, and emptied our bladders on their lawn in their honor, en masse.

Two of my pledge brothers were locals, from Columbia. One of them dated an underaged girl from local Hickman High, a Kewpie – just like Tom Hulce’s Clorette. Ours was the daughter of Dan Devine – Mizzou’s head football coach.

This one wasn’t ours – but it happened at the KA house while we were in school. They had a drop dead gorgeous, 40-something housemother. Drove a Corvette convertible. Beautiful. The KA’s had some hunks, including Mizzou’s back-up quarterback. Yep, he did, just like Otter and the Dean’s wife.

Double Secret Probation. The entire three years I was in the house (I pledged my sophomore year), we were either on social or scholastic probation, or both. We called our Dean “Black Jack” for some reason, and had to visit him often. We were under constant threat of being closed down. My first duty as house president was to deliver a check to the SAE house because one of the brothers had thrown a boulder through their front window, drunk, and then sat down to wait for them to come out. The SAE’s were arguably the quintessential privileged white bread anti-frat Omega Theta’s epitomized in the movie. They were the first guys I ever saw that wore Khakis, with razor pressed creases, and Weejuns and no socks. The “OmegaTheta Pi’s,” and their squeaky-clean president, Marmalard – and his girlfriend Mandy – are carbon copies of the SAE’s at Mizzou back then.

The Delta Tau Chi’s in the movie get thrown off campus for 3 reasons: 1 – don’t remember; 2 – serving illegal alcoholic beverages to freshman pledges (Duh, who didn’t?); 3 – providing illicit “diet pills” to brothers (what they didn’t say was why: they kept you awake when you had to cram; our brother David Glenn had a regular business selling prescription Dexatrim pills to all of us during finals week, year in and year out. Dex. They could seriously fuck you up, and did).

Road trips were a long-standing tradition at Mizzou, even for dormies. Why? It was “illegal” to drink in the house (and definitely illegal in the dorm). So, you got some old guy to buy you a case of beer some Sunday afternoon, and off you went, a carload out to Clinkscales Road. The Delts did a road trip, too, and wrecked Flounder’s car in the process.


“I’m a zit.” Did it, seriously. Did it. Said it. In 1966. Mashed potatoes. And ketchup. Just like Belushi’s Bluto did. And I wasn’t the only one.

You cannot make this stuff up. And I’m not.

True, factual stories, every one of them. And every one of them in “Animal House,” one way or the other. Coincidences? I don’t think so. True greatness like this does not come by accident. It has to be earned. And believe me, there are many, many more stories, some of which will remain untold except at Kappa Sig reunions.

You’ll see on the Animal House website that their first choice for filming location was Missouri University, in Columbia, “College Town USA” (ended up shot at the University of Oregon; MU turned them down). No wonder.

Tim Arnold
Grand Master
Kappa Sigma, 1968
University of Missouri

Wake up Dems!

Scott Brown's win in Massachusetts was a stunner to be sure, a victory that caught Democrats completely by surprise in an election that they unfortunately had taken for granted, assuming it "would be a cakewalk," according to the NY Times (Jan 19, 2010, "The Massachusetts Election"). This Democratic debacle proves once again how astute Republicans are politically, if nothing else, and how naive Democrats are. According to many, Martha Coakley ran a lame campaign, even labeling Curt Schilling, a long-time Boston Red Sox pitcher, a Yankees fan; Brown, on the other hand, branded himself "the people's Senator" and came out of nowhere to turn it upside down in the final two weeks.

The Democrats failure in Massachusetts is especially telling since a) Brown opposes national health care reform even though Massachusetts already has near-universal health coverage thanks to a law passed when Republican Mitt Romney – was governor - legislation Brown supported! And b) Brown opposes same-sex marriage – which, yep, Massachusetts legislation has already legalized (NY Times, Jan 20, 2010, “GOP, in an Upset …).

Of course Republican pundits and the conservative media, are braying about how this is once again a repudiation of everything Democrat and White House, and who can blame them? (Of course the liberal media is bemoaning it, to be sure). And despite the latest CNN Poll of Polls (an average of current Fox News, ABC/Washington Post, CBS and Gallup polls) that show a national 51% approval rating for Obama's first year in office. (Recall President Reagan earned a dismal 49% approval rating after his first year in office, and somehow he went on to be considered by many as one of America's great presidents).

The Republicans, especially after their New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial victories, are labeling Brown's victory once and for all a "game changer." I'm not so sure. Or at least I think there are important factors working here that, if the Democrats can get brave and smart about, can be neutralized, if not even turned to their advantage.

Consider the following: Brown's biggest supporters came primarily from ultra-conservative national entities:

• Our Country Deserves Better, who are heavily aligned with The Tea Party Patriots.

• National Republican Trust PAC, who's mission is to "stop Obama's radical agenda," whose choice to picture Obama in sun glasses(!) on their home page says it all, and whose cause is so blatant that contributions to it are not tax deductible.

• Move America Forward - a "pro-war lobby" not-for-profit whose chairman, Melanie Morgan, suggested in 2006 that Bill Keller, NY Times editor, be "killed in a 'gas chamber' for alleged 'treason' after reporting on the US government's "spying on Americans." (www.sourcewatch.org).

• The National Rifle Association - one of Washington's most powerful lobbyist forces, who in 2004 led the defeat of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban renewal and who continue to oppose any gun control whatsoever.

• National Organization for Marriage, whose mission is "to protect marriage and the faith communities that support it." Allegedly founded by the Mormons, NOM has been instrumental in rallying against same-sex marriage legislation in California, Maine and ... Massachusetts.

• Sarah Palin – whose support Brown claims by way of “a group that supported Sarah Palin.” (NY Times, Jan 19, 2010).

Republicans are brilliant in their ability to create doubt, fear and alienation in voters, fueled by groups like these, enabled by disinformation from various sources and driven by Rush Limbaugh’s “hope that Obama fails.” And as long as Democrats are unable or unwilling to confront any of it, aggressively, they are going to continue to lose voters, and elections, to the Republicans.

Wake up, Democrats!

Get this: half (49%) of Massachusetts’ voters are Independents! One-third (35%) are Democrats! And a mere 13% identify themselves as Republicans The Dems failed to win over the Independents. Hell, they failed to win over many of their own. A failure of colossal proportions. Especially knowing that Obama’s approval rating in Massachusetts, throughout 2009, was higher than the national average (67% vs. 57%; all according to Gallup, 2009 yr end survey).

These Republican victories in Massachusetts, New Jersey and Virginia, especially the latter two, may be no more than localized rejections of incumbents and their “failure” to solve all the economic woes they were saddled with – as unrealistic a proposition as expecting President Obama to have them all solved by now.

But for Democrats to assume this is all it is is to jeopardize each and every upcoming election. And they don’t have to. Despite these recent victories, Republicans remain a party in turmoil, confused about who their leadership is (and what the hell he’s talking about half the time) and what has happened to their more balanced core values of a few years ago.

And worse, many Republicans themselves are actually concerned about the influence of some of these ultra-right organizations, and their influence over what it is they think they stand for. They certainly don’t miss Ralph Reed and his kind. And witness New York State District 23rd’s congressional election last November, when Democrat Bill Owens defeated Doug Hoffman, a member of the Conservative Party, despite – or perhaps because of – the heavy-handed support of Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, columnist NY Post Michelle Malkin and others of similar ilk. Even the Republican candidate, Dede Scozzafava, dropped out and supported her Democratic rival. Claiming Glenn Beck was his mentor surely didn’t help Hoffman.

NY’s 23rd District has historically been one of the most Republican districts in the nation; most of the area, including the largest town, Watertown, has not had a Democratic representative since the 19th century (Wikipedia, NY’s 23rd district special election, November, 2009). And yet a Democrat won.

The significance? It’s no coincidence that many of these same ultra-conservative outsiders descended on NY 23rd in November as they did in Massachusetts, including the National Organization for Marriage, the Citizens of the Republic, the Club for Growth, along with Sarah Palin and company, et al – only this time they supported the third-party candidate because they deemed their Republican candidate “too liberal” for their own extremely conservative selves. Hoffman held many of the same views as Brown, like opposing health care reform, cap and trade emission control and same-sex marriage. But there was no third-party candidate for more independent Republicans to run to in Massachusetts, and importantly, no Democratic uprising – no, it was worse than that: they were asleep at the wheel - so Brown won.

Right or wrong, health care reform, and Obama’s determination to pass it in some form, has completely over shadowed other, perhaps even more important issues, especially to voters. It has become Republicans’ clarion call, and it is touching a hot button despite the fact that more Americans favor it than oppose it (49% vs. 46%, Gallup, Jan 12).

Republicans know how to push the right buttons. I think the special election in Massachusetts is analogous to Bush’s re-election, inflaming many of the same emotions, fueling the same opposition to approaching problems differently, and it attracted the same types of voters who put him in office – especially the second time – because they want back what was the status quo, because he was “someone (they) wanted to have a beer with.” It’s no coincidence that Brown also opposes … cap and trade applications to emission control, citizenship for illegal aliens unless they leave the country first, taxes on big banks and restrictions on big bonuses.

But Republicans should be careful about what they ask for these days. Democrats have the opportunity to drive a wedge between centrist and conservative Republicans, like what happened in NY 23rd (it just happened, Democratic leadership had nothing to do with it) but failed to take hold in Massachusetts. Failed, because the Democrats and their candidate got outsmarted by the more cunning Republicans, and because they failed to draw attention to the kind of outside influence that crippled Republicans in NY 23rd.

Of course to regain the momentum, Democrats have to be willing to confront the overbearing and negative influences these ultra-conservative intruders are having on centrist Republicans and Independents.

Since Obama’s inauguration, Democrats on the national and local levels have frittered away an opportunity to carry out their vision, to deliver on campaign promises, to course-correct America after eight years of Republican devastation. And they only have themselves to blame.

It’s not too late. But you’re going to have to get up off your collective butts, get your courage and determination up and carpe diem!

Or you’ll only have yourselves to blame, and your increasingly disillusioned followers to explain your failures to.

Tim Arnold

New York

January 20, 2010

www.possible20.com

possible20@aol.com

917.748.6058

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