HeadCount Blog

“When John and I were sort of talking about world peace and love and all that kind of thing, bed-ins, etc, you know people were just laughing at us,” Yoko Ono told Reuters recently. No one’s laughing anymore, fortunately. Ono is teaming up with Hard Rock International for an Imagine There’s No Hunger campaign, which kicked off November 4. The initiative will be funded with help from SERVE3, a compilation consisting of:

Bruce Springsteen “Remember When The Music”
Joss Stone “Love Has Made You Beautiful”
My Morning Jacket “Look At You”
Avril Lavigne “When You’re Gone”
Robert Randolph & The Family Band “Diane” (Live from Bonnaroo 2006)
The Charlatans “Complete Control”
Ryan Shaw “People Get Ready”
Marc Broussard “Keep Coming Back”
Starsailor “Military Madness”
Micki Free “Mother Earth”
DMC “I Be Rockin’ It”
The Chapin Sisters “I Know It’s Over”
John Lennon “Give Peace A Chance”

Hard Rock locations will also sell Imagine There’s No Hunger merchandise, including a limited-edition bracelet, pin, and holiday ornament. And here is the video.

Folk music, politically inclined or not, tends to bring people together even if the words are describing something that’s tearing people apart. And even though the Monsters of Folk — Jim James (taking a break from longtime cohorts My Morning Jacket), M. Ward, Conor Oberst, and Mike Mogis — employ the F-word with just a smidgen of irony, there’s no denying the deep personal connections that emerge through on their terrific debut album. Written collaboratively and performed with an deep and abiding regard for the power of male harmony, Folk’s songs range from intimate observations of everyday life to gentle social satire and sincere religious rumination. You can revel in the quartet’s luminous excellence during their current tour.

We recently sent some questions about music, politics, and the place they come together to Jim James. Here’s what he had to say:

Does politics belong in music?

Jim James: People should put whatever they want to put in their music. I don’t ever want to come off as preachy, ‘cause believe me, I’m faaaaaar from perfect. But I do feel like I enjoy bringing attention to causes that are important to me. I like thinking that someone who enjoys my music might get turned on to a new way to help their community through some organization we might work with, or perhaps come to our show and register to vote. I feel blessed to be able to play music for a living, so I want to try to give back as much as I can to organizations and causes that need assistance right now.

What social issues are most important to you? What causes do you actively support?

James: You know the big one right now: health care. It’s a crime that we’re letting people go without health care in this country. I went without health care for years, and many of my friends and family members still cannot afford health care and that has got to be changed. We also enjoy supporting community arts and education, since the arts are so underfunded these days.

Do you have any thoughts on the state of health care as it affects working musicians?

James: It is a shame. A real shame. Everyone should have access to good health care and not be afraid of losing their entire livelihood if they get sick.

How is the Obama administration living up to its potential or promises thus far, in your opinion?

James: Obama is a good man and a brilliant leader. It’s so refreshing to see a real person in office who knows what it’s really like for people. This country needs him so much and I’m glad we have him. His words about health care are very inspiring and I really hope he can bring people around and make things better for so many people out there that need help. I believe in him

With all their cool little touches, high fan energy, and powerful music, there’s really nothing quite like a Phish festival. But I’d say my favorite Phish event is Halloween. I’m very grateful to have been at every single musical costume dating back to Glens Fall in 1994. I always walked away with a new appreciation for an album that in most cases I already owned and loved.

So a Phish Halloween festival was just about the most splendid experience I could imagine. A desert oasis was the perfect setting. Not a cloud in the sky. Mountains in the distance. A great festival site. And just enough people (guess: 30,000-35,000) to bring the energy without the chaos.

Phish totally nailed the Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main Street. Like all the albums that came before it, they brought it to life and added another dimension. I hope “Shine a Light” becomes a Phish standard.

Festival 8 also turned out to be one of the best festivals of the year for HeadCount. More than 900 people stopped by our booth to fill out our What’s Your Issue? survey or play our Reality Check game show.

Congratulations to the winner: Pat McNulty of New York City. He walked away with an original piece of Jim Pollock artwork for knowing such factoids as the first Phish song Tom Marshall wrote a lyric for. Runner up Tess Hall made it to the finals and won the PhanArt book by knowing that Ban Ki-moon is Secretary General of the United Nations. She would have won the whole thing had she remembered the name of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. C’mon, Tess!

Reality Check runner-up Tess Hall (left) and winner Pat McNulty

Special shoutouts to Beth Montuori Rowles and Matt Beck from Waterwheel, and Ben & Jerry’s (all the nonprofits gave away coupons for free scoops of Ben & Jerry’s Phish Food). But biggest kudos of all to a great team of HeadCount volunteers: Dan Conroe, Ethan Robbins, Laura Scalet, Sam Calvert, Eric Bauer and Garrett Santora.

Like so many before it, Festival 8 will go down as a great moment in Phishtory. Here’s hoping there’s a 9 in the same spot.

After releasing his chart-topping I Walk the Line in 1964, Johnny Cash recorded Bitter Tears: Ballads of the American Indian. Cash used to say he was part Cherokee but eventually admitted he wasn’t. Neverthless, Bitter Tears was an early and heartfelt attempt to translate the history and problems of Native Americans into musical form, drums and all. In A Heartbeat and a Guitar: Johnny Cash and the Making of Bitter Tears, writer Antonino D’Ambrosio discusses Cash’s album in the context of the early-sixties social-justice movement, the folk-music and protest-song creators who spread their message, and the ongoing artistic and personal struggles of the Man in Black Himself.

In an interview with Sarah Jaffe, D’Ambrosio (who also wrote Let Fury Have the Hour: The Punk Rock Politics of Joe Strummer ) disusses how Cash’s personal demons may have contributed to Bitter Tears.

I think that he was a person in pain. The agony that he felt in his life never left him. The movie makes it seem like he kicked drugs, which never happened. He had moments that lasted a month or two, but Marshall Grant, the bass player from the Tennessee Two, who told me that he never kicked them. That’s also a disservice.

The fact that he did this while he was dealing with his own personal agony, and that was being reflected back in the work about the tormented Native people–I think you can’t have one without the other. I think that’s an important thing, because the sincerity, the authenticity that Johnny Cash had, in all his music but particularly Bitter Tears, is very important. It separates a great artist from an average musician.

Here’s Cash singing the album’s best-known song, “The Ballad of Ira Hayes”:

Eclectic Method – consisting of London audiovideo remixers Jonny Wilson, Ian Edgar and Geoff Gamlen – have collaged the 99 slaughtered rejects of Phish’s Halloween set into four minutes and twenty seconds of thrilling classic-rock goodness.

Eclectic Method Goes Phish from Eclectic Method on Vimeo.

According to a 2004 study by CIRCLE (The Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement), 22% of 18-to-29-year-olds did not vote that year because they missed the registration deadline, and 10% of this group didn’t even know where or how to register to vote.

But what if registering to vote were as easy as registering for classes?

In the near future, it just might be. The Student Voter Opportunity to Encourage Registration Act (AKA the VOTER Act) is a bipartisan bill that would designate federally funded colleges and universities as voter registration agencies. It would amend the National Voter Registration Act (AKA the Motor-Voter Act), which was passed by Congress in 1994 and requires state and local governments to offer voter registration when citizens obtain a driver’s license. The VOTER Act would let colleges register students to vote when they register for classes.

According to Matt Segal of SAVE (Student Association of Voter Empowerment), “If passed, this would give an unprecedented voice to the youth in our country.” The VOTER Act is headed for markup in the Committee on House Administration in the next few weeks and should move to the House floor shortly thereafter. Let your congressperson know what you think about it.

In an oddly timed Op-Ed piece yesterday, New York Times “Ethicist” Randy Cohen argued that only the civically well-informed should be encouraged to vote.

National efforts like MTV’s Rock the Vote are particularly idiotic….A nonpartisan push is apt to rally Republicans as well as Democrats, liberals as well as conservatives, who will vote in the same proportions as those already inclined to go to the polls. The net result: nothing, save for the warm glow of civic virtue that comes from bullying your neighbors into pulling a lever, any lever.

Sounds like Cohen wants to revert to a time when only a certain type of American was allowed to take part in the political process. Should there be a litmus test for voters, Mr. Cohen? Should every person who goes to the polls first take an exam on the material? Or perhaps only people with PhD’s should be allowed to vote? (In some developed nations, of course, voting is not only encouraged but compulsory.)

Politics can be complicated, but the average citizen isn’t stupid. Organizations such as HeadCount encourage civic participation because we have issues and are informed.

We study the issues, write to our representatives, speak out, and show up on Election Day because everyone deserves to have her voice heard! So thank you for voting.

Barack Obama promised to close Guantanamo within a year of taking office. He has four months to go. Until then, dozens of musicians – including Rage Against the Machine, R.E.M., Trent Reznor, Pearl Jam, the Roots, and Rise Against – are demanding to know whether their music was played at ear-splitting volume in order to torture prisoners in a creepy “no touch” sort of way. It sounds like a joke, but James Hetfield of Metallica wasn’t joking when he said, in a clip played on the The Colbert Report (see below), that he was “proud” his band’s music was powerful enough to be so perversely abused. (Colbert, meanwhile, suggests the Bruce Springsteen’s The River probably brings grown men to tears faster than anything else.)

New Security Action is mounting a strong effort to urge Congress to close Gitmo now. Only three Gitmo detainees have ever been prosecuted, and the place costs as much as $118 million per year to run. Many Republicans, including Congressman Peter King, who visited Gitmo earlier this year, want the facility kept open. According to King, “if there’s any scandal at Guantánamo, it is that the detainees are treated too well.”

New Security Action has been airing a commercial and would appreciate your signing their letter to Congress asking members to stand beside Obama, General Colin Powell, and General David Petraeus in closing the detention facility. (Or, even better, return it to Cuba.)