Duke of Data Blog: 09/16/2007

Saturday, September 22, 2007

A Conversation With Derek Webb

Derek Webb's new CD, The Ringing Bell, takes on the concept of peace. Derek talks to us about the title and the concept.

Derek Webb has written some great music, first with Caedmon's Call and then on his own. I had the pleasure of chatting with Derek about his latest album, songwriting and old friends.

In this first part of the interview, Derek talks about title of his new album and the concept of the album.

Suite: The title of your new CD, The Ringing Bell, is from lyrics in the song “The End”, but is there some meaning beyond that context?

Derek: The, title really, for me, goes a handful of different directions. It’s interesting, but with every one of my records, except this one, I’ve had a really obvious title. Most of my records I’ve known what the title was going to be before I even wrote the first song, it’s really weird. I’ll conceptualize something I’ll have a really strong idea about, a sound or a concept, something I want to go after and the title comes just really naturally, really early.

And with this record we were down to the absolute wire. There was no obvious title anywhere on this record. I didn’t really know what to call it and The Ringing Bell kind of came at me from a few different directions. And for that reason it doesn’t really mean one thing to me. In that context of the lyric it references to Pavlov and the way that people have typical responses with the things they’ve seen before. It doesn’t exactly mean that.

There’s also an urgency for me to the concept of a record like this, mostly about the idea of peace, if you can live peaceably with people. Just the urgency of that idea. And “the ringing bell” just carries the urgency of that idea. There’s a handful of different images that can attain that meaning and for me that made the concept stick.

Suite: When you were putting this together did you have a concept for the album or was it a pool of songs that you pulled from?

Derek: No it definitely was a pretty strong idea from the beginning of what I felt like I wanted to do. I’ve got a lot of my friends that are artists in the way that they write all the time. They’re always writing so that they have a lot of songs to choose from when they make records. And they’ll have some that they don’t record and they’ll record for other things where they always have songs laying around.

I’m not like that at all. I literally write 11, 12 songs a year and I record every one of them. I never have one spare and I have to use every single one and it’s always been that way. Even back in the Caedmon’s days it was like that. When it came time to make the record, I had exactly the songs I needed. Not 1 more not 1 less.

This record was no different. The songs started to come, and they came really late in the game, it was just maybe a couple of months before I was scheduled to start recording the record that the songs really started to show up.

I did have a strong idea I knew that I wanted to write a bit on the peace tradition of the church and otherwise and I was really concerned more on that particular issue because I touched on it on Mockingbird a little bit. It felt like there was more discussion to be had, maybe some further views to get into in terms of that idea and another record's worth of songs just to focus on that. So I did know I was going to go in that direction. I was meditating in that direction.

Derek Webb Interview Part Two: Derek talks about peace and pacifism.

Derek Webb Interview Part Three: Derek expands on pacifism and tells us about his graphic novel.

Derek Webb Interview Part Four: Derek talks about using different mediums to communicate a concept.

Derek Webb Interview Part Five: Derek talks about his courtship and having fun.

Derek Webb Interview Part Six: Derek talks about reuniting with his friends in Caedmon's Call

Michigan 14, #10 PSU 9

Michigan has won nine straight and 10 of 12 since the Nittany Lions joined the Big Ten in 1993.

Penn State head coach Joe Paterno adjusts his hair while waiting for an official review on a play during the first half of a college football game against Michigan, Saturday, Sept. 22, 2007, in Ann Arbor, Mich. (AP Photo/Tony Ding)

Columbia Pike makeover under way with complex

http://cll.bizjournals.com/story_image/97434-400-0.jpg?rev=2

Out of the way: With the demolition of the Safeway on Columbia Pike, Woodfields’ Greg Bonifield, at left, Todd Jacobus and Margaret Ford can build Siena Park, a mixed-use project.

One of Columbia Pike's relics will finally meet the wrecking ball to make way for an $88 million development along the Arlington corridor.
Woodfield Investments has started demolition on an old Safeway supermarket and in its place will build Siena Park, a 188 -unit apartment complex with ground-floor retail and about 12,000 square feet of office space on the second floor.
Several redevelopment projects are taking place on an approximately three-mile stretch of Columbia Pike, and Woodfield officials wanted to join the activity, said Margaret Ford, a partner with Woodfield's office in Chevy Chase.
"It's only a mile from the Pentagon. It's right Just west of Woodfield's site, final designs are being drafted for Penrose Square. The redevelopment of a Giant Food -anchored shopping complex will include a new Giant, 300 apartments and 30,000 square feet of new retail and restaurants. Representatives of Carbon Thompson Development, the project's backer, could not be reached for comment, but demolition at the site could start in early 2008, according to the Columbia Pike Revitalization Organization.
Carbon Thompson officials have told Giant they will allow the current supermarket to stay open
through the holiday season, said Jim Whittaker, executive director of the Columbia Pike
Revitalization Organization. Giant and Carbon Thompson representatives are still putting together interior designs for the new supermarket, but the project's overall footprint has not changed, he said. Arlington County officials already have approved Penrose Square's plan.
"They will need to have all the designs finished before they apply for permits," Whittaker said. "We have heard that demolition probably won't get started until February."
In 2003, Arlington County adopted a form -based code for Columbia Pike that gives developers an expedited approval process if their plans follow certain guidelines. Form -based projects, like
Woodfield's, must be no more than six stories high and include retail or office space on the ground floors and residential or office space on the upper floors.

Form -based proposals also are eligible for a county reinvestment of up to 85 percent of the tax
revenue from the project for infrastructure costs typically borne by the developer.
Other projects along Columbia Pike include a 235-unit apartment complex by Fairfield Residential at Columbia Pike's juncture with South Greenbrier Street and a 269 -unit apartment building with 42,350 square feet of retail space at the intersection of Columbia Pike and South Walter Reed Drive.
The Safeway building at Woodfield's site opened in 1952 and closed in March 2005. Woodfield
bought the property in December 2006 for $12 million.
Woodfield's Siena Park will have 32,000 square feet of retail space with six or seven tenants, Ford said. Restaurants and neighborhood -serving stores will be in the mix at the site, which will include an underground parking garage with 408 spaces. The project could deliver near the end of 2009.
"Over the next couple of years, Columbia Pike will be transformed," Ford said. "There will be a
critical mass of new residential and retail."

Friday, September 21, 2007

Israel, U.S. Shared Data On Suspected Nuclear Site

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Ken Burns Returns to War: His 14 1/2-hour documentary debuts on PBS next week.

The film makes clear that World War II was a "necessary war" in which the U.S. was unquestionably on the right side, but one that nonetheless came at a steep price. And that price, as in every bloody military conflict, was paid in two ways. Families at home suffered from the loss of their loved ones. And those on the front lines witnessed--even meted out--brutality they never would have imagined before the war. For example, one U.S. Marine--to the horror of his comrades--robbed a wounded Japanese soldier, using a knife to pry loose his gold teeth.

HillaryCare's New Clothes: Different means but the same political destination.

This is her strategy now. HillaryCare II is designed to cause minimal disruptions to current private insurance coverage in the short run, while dressing up the old agenda with slightly different mechanisms and rhetoric. Rather than fight small business, this time she is trying to seduce it with tax credits for small companies that provide insurance. Only later when costs rise will the credits shrink or other taxes rise. To court large manufacturers, like the auto and steel industries, she'll offer another, "temporary" tax credit to subsidize their health-care liabilities. Her plan, in short, is HillaryCare I in better clothes--a transitional platform to shift people to the default option, which is government insurance.

What's striking about all this is how little new thinking there is. Like the other Democratic proposals, HillaryCare II would mark another major government intrusion into health care. It would keep all of the system's current problems, most of them created by government policies, and entrench and expand them. The creativity is all in the political repackaging.