Monday, April 29, 2013

The Business May 1st, 2013: The “G” is Silent, but Your Laughs Won’t Be!!!! Edition



We have such a wonderful batch of guests this week we are just beside ourselves.  Come be beside us too!

David Gborie comes to party. He’s been telling jokes all over the country for a couple of years now and he is, in his words, “Pretty legit at it”. He currently lives in San Francisco where he is a member of Sylvan Productions and can be seen around town lurking at one of their many shows or at Crissy fields with his trusty crab pot. As a perfomer he’s appeared at The Bridgetown Comedy Festival, SF Indie Fest, and Denver’s Too Much Funstival, as well as the SF Punchline, The Denver Comedy Works, and other impressive venues.





Also, up from LA we have Amber Kenny, a founding member of the sketch teams Little Kevin Buttersmith and Dumb Babies and Grant Pardee,  a literally perfect boy.


And watch out for Aaron Weaver!  All the way out from Chicago, he “sneaks up on you with an unorthodox style, then snaps your neck with a comedic Kung Fu chop to the spine. “

Plus all your regulars will be there as well.   Sean Keane,  Bucky Sinister, Nato Green and Caitlin Gill, all reporting for doody.  

All this for JUST $5!!!  Get there early, we sell out.  

BYOBurrito full of magical fruit. 

I don't want to win a lottery

What is man's greatest weakness. No, its not sex. No, its not even gambling.  It is his uncanny ability to fall for every "get rich quick" scheme.

Take the case of the collapse of the Saradha  (and probably numerous other such schemes) in West Bengal. This was a classic Ponzi scheme. Investors were attracted by fantastic returns (15-50% !!!). The early investors were paid off with money collected from subsequent idiots. Bingo. An avalanche started. Two years on, it has collapsed leading to much hand wringing and vociferous shouts of indignation.

What attracted my attention was not the scheme per se. They are dime a dozen. Remember the Emu farm scheme a little while ago in Tamil Nadu. Emu farming I believe - never mind that not one soul who put money into it had seen an emu in his life. But what has really got my attention is the response to the affair after it broke news.

There has been much clamour for regulation of such funds and criticism of governments for not regulating them well enough. Ramamritham must be rubbing his hands in glee at this new opportunity that has fallen into his lap. They want the death penalty for the owner of Saradha. A few people who have lost money have committed suicide. The loud lady who holds sway in the part of the country where this mess happened has announced a Rs 500 cr package to reimburse those who lost out . Never mind that the state is plain broke - there isn't money to pay salaries of government employees. The economically challenged lady, plumbed record depths by saying that she is going to  fund this by raising taxes on cigarettes and then exhorted her fellow citizens to smoke more !!!!! I kid you not.

The ancient fossils who are in opposition to the shrill lady, obviously oppose this, but their alternative is that those who lost must be reimbursed by auctioning the property of the owners of the chit funds. No wonder that this state has little hope of any advancement, if it is blessed with such wonderfully economically literate leaders.

Not one word has been said against the  lot who invested in such schemes. Pray ; why reimburse the clowns who lost money in this. They are no saints. They were simply attracted because somebody promised incredibly high returns. Any human with an ounce of intelligence must pause and think whether such returns are possible. Where will they come from. There is no return without risk and the correlation is direct. So if you let greed rule you, then don't cry when you lose your shirt. You deserve to be fried. 

One of the great rules of life is that winning a lottery is actually a curse. Getting rich quick is the surest way to misery. There is plenty of research to show that the majority of lottery winners do not find happiness.

The way to a better life is to get rich, of course. But slowly. Through hard work. Through initiative, through endeavour, through education, through innovation and through blood, sweat and tears. That is what brings true wealth. And happiness.

By the way, talking of Ponzi schemes - the biggest Ponzi scheme of all is property.  The only difference is that it operates on a time scale so large that an entire generation can become rich before it starts to unfold.  Pause and think about it. Every one of us gloats about the land/flat/house we bought some time ago and how its value now has an added zero to it. If you really think about it, its just another Ponzi scheme - some sucker will be left holding the curse sometime into the future. 

Grant me Lord, the ability to do a hard day's work, to make money by ethical and honest means, the strength not to be carried away by temptation, the courage not to want to get rich quick and some compassion for those who weakened and got burned. Compassion yes, but bailout, NO.

Saturday, April 27, 2013

European private TV has matured, but needs new strategies for development

The European television industry is one of the most balanced in the world, with public service broadcasters, advertising-supported broadcasters, and pay television operators reasonably dividing television revenues among themselves. For the 27 countries of the EU, pay TV accounts for about 38% of total revenue, public funded broadcasters for about 34%, and advertiser supported television for about 28%.
 
Unlike the US where private television dominates, most Europe private television began after liberalization broke the monopolies held by public service and state television in most countries. It has taken decades for private television to establish a mature place in the market.
 
When looking specific countries, however, total spending on TV (advertising, subscriptions, public funding) is not evenly spread. Adjusted for population, it ranges between €5 and €30 per person among nations, with an average of €15. There a notable differences between southern, central, and eastern European nations and nations in the north and west of Europe, where public service and pay TV are strong players.
 
Some markets are skewed with unusually strong TV subsectors. In Germany and Sweden publicly-funded TV is unusually dominant; there is unusually poor performance of advertising-funded TV in Bulgaria, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Montenegro and Romania.
 
Today, pay television is the most positive sector in European television, with subscriptions for basic services and payments for video-on-demand services growing and the sector benefiting from the growth of video viewing on smartphones and tablets, particularly for its original programming.
 
Advertising-supported television is being squeezed between the more stable funding of public service broadcasters and pay TV providers and being hurt because advertisers in some countries remain reluctant to accept catch-up viewing in audience measurements for program broadcasts. It is not benefiting as much from video-on demand services as public service and pay TV broadcasters because much programming on advertising-supported TV is not original production owned by the broadcasters.
 
In order to survive in the new television environment, advertising-support TV in Europe has developed a diversified revenue, combining income from advertising, paid programming (home shopping, religious programming, etc.), product placement, sponsored events such as concerts and fairs, telecommunication promotions and services related to programming, income producing contests and lotteries, and renting studio space and providing video production services for advertising and corporate use.
 
Despite find their niches, both advertising supported and pay TV operators are now mounting efforts to obtain public funding to improve domestic program offering. In a number of countries they are asking policymakers to create contestable public funding to produce quality domestic content. They have asked cultural ministries to set aside funds for the purpose or asked regulators to divert portions of public service license-fee payments for the purpose.
 
In the contemporary environment, the business model of European advertising-supported TV needs significant addition, primarily because traditional TV advertising has low value for both viewers and advertisers today and there is a need to seek news ways to connect the two commercially. The extent to which they will rise to the occasion remains to be seen.

Business Jazz – 26th April 2013 – The Cat Herder and the Leaning Shed of Near Vancouver


TOPICS THIS WEEK: Shipping imperfection; Being unique and marketing that; Working from Sheds

Perfection is key to success in business, right? Your product needs to be perfect to survive in the marketplace. If it isn't, your clients won't like it. Your competitors will steamroller over you.

Really?

Maybe not. Just how perfect should perfection be? There is a point at which perfection is a killer. You keep delaying shipping. Remember that a project that is 95% done, but hasn't shipped, is as good as 0% complete from the perspective of the marketplace. And a 0% product or services isn't attractive at all.

This week we look at perfection in business and how you don't always need to deliver perfection. In fact, have a listen to this episode of Chris Brogan's podcast in which he interviews Paul: The Human Business Way, Episode 10.

The conversation about perfection or imperfection turns to office space. Jane has moved into a shed. Sounds odd? Turns out working from sheds isn't uncommon. In fact, it's quite popular: Shed Working.

Jane at work in the Leaning Shed of Near Vancouver (herded cat in attendance)

We also look at how you market the mundane compared with marketing the new and unique. You'd think the latter would be easier. It isn't necessarily. After all, you have to overcome people's unfamiliarity with the product and service. How can they buy what they don't know or understand, especially if it pushes the envelop?

That also impacts you. If you're doing something new, how do you describe yourself?

Links to people and things we mention


Chris Brogan
Documentally
Peter Cox
Shed Working
Phil Sorrell
Joel Buckland

New rallying point


You are a big part of the story of this podcast. We'd like you to be an even bigger part of it. To help with that, and to help us have discussions about being genuinely attractive in business, we've established a LinkedIn group. Please knock on the door and we'll let you in.

Listening to the podcast


You can listen to this week's podcast using the player at the top of the post or download it directly here: Business Jazz – 26th April, 2013.

We're also in iTunes. We'd love it if you subscribed or left some feedback.


Business Jazz Players


This podcast is a collaboration of people dotted around the world. Most of us have never met each other. It's quite a story and it's still evolving. 
If you'd like to read what's happened so far, you'll find it here: Our Story.

Friday, April 26, 2013

Alibaba and the Fourteen Years

Which is the biggest ecommerce company in the world ? Take a guess. Amazon ? E Bay ? You would be wrong if you guessed either of them. The biggest e commerce company in the world is Alibaba. Its portals handled a sales volume of some $ 170 bn. That is more than the volumes handled by Amazon and E Bay combined.

No, this is not some elaborate hoax dreamed up from 1001 Nights. Alibaba is indeed the largest e commerce company in the world. The reason you may have never heard about it is that it operates almost exclusively in China. It started life as simply Alibaba.com , a business to business portal. It then added Taobao - a consumer to consumer portal, whose similarity to E Bay is, of course, entirely coincidental. Now it has started Tmall, a business to consumer portal, which again, bears a completely coincidental similarity to Amazon. All this in just fourteen years. The last two, if you click on the link, you will see are entirely in Chinese. And therein lies the issue. Can Alibaba really be a global major, while being largely only in China.

One of the trends you may have not noticed is that China has overtaken the US as the largest ecommerce market in the world. Chinese love to shop. And they are merrily shopping online. There is terrific internet penetration in China. And Alibaba, thanks to its visionary founder, Jack Ma, is reaping the rewards.

But then, can it be really the dominant player in the world ? I can't see shoppers of virtually any other country migrating to Taobao or TMall, even if it is in English.  "Open Sesame" worked for the fictional Alibaba, but its hard to see the doors opening that easily for the real Alibaba. There is a huge brand image problem to be overcome, not just of Alibaba, but even of China. As Huawei and a clutch of Chinese companies have discovered, it is not easy going global.

Even in the home market, Alibaba's position will surely be under threat from competition. However big the Chinese market may grow into, its hard to see any company being the world's dominant major, being exclusively in China. As Britain discovered a century ago and the US is discovering now, the sun does set on everybody who thinks he alone can dominate the world.

What of the supposedly more tech savvy India. India does not even have a pipsqueak of an ecommerce company. Why ? The blame for that is squarely on Ramamritham. He has made internet connectivity one of the most difficult things in India to obtain. He has virtually made impossible an Internet Cafe industry. He does not allow easy payment systems to emerge. He goes after those who try, like Flipkart,  and brings his full attention on them by lodging all sorts of cases. And he does not allow the global majors to come in.

And therein also lies the risk for Alibaba. Thus far, the Chinese equivalent of Ramamritham , Li Xiao has left them alone. But then Li Xiao is not a bureaucrat. Li Xiao is from the Party. Ramamritham is completely predictable - he will create every obstacle possible, but do nothing else. Li Xiao is entirely unpredictable. If Alibaba attracts political attention, then its fate is sealed.That's probably why the wily Jack Ma is stepping down as CEO. And he is planning an IPO. An IPO that might even best the Facebook IPO.

Thursday, April 25, 2013

Elevator Up or Down...and Teachers' kids

 I never was a "teacher's kid," so I can't help but wonder how that feels sometimes to my own children.  The "other kids" think it's awesome.  My own children have been informed on many occasions, "You get to stay after school with your mom??"  "That's so cool!"  Although my children would assure them it wasn't all that great, I'm not so positive they were believed.  Just recently my daughter, who was helping me carry a load to my office, and  got on the elevator with me (the cool, but creepy elevator that the teachers get to ride, but not students), a young child commented on how privileged my daughter was for getting to ride that elevator!!  When the doors closed, my daughter said, "Ummm...does she know this elevator only goes up ONE floor, it gets stuck all the time, and it's S-L-O-W-E-R than Christmas?"   :-)  
I guess not! 
This led to my next dinner conversation with my kiddos:  I asked them to share all the PROS and CONS of being a teacher's kid.  I challenge you to have this conversation with your kids if you have any.  It's quite enlightening!  WHO KNEW?  Sharing some of my favorite responses:

PROS:  1.) You have to torture yourself and get up early with us. (*This was positive???)
2.)  When I'm not feeling well, it's nice that you're so close. (Awwww)  3.)  You have the same schedule as us.  4.) If I don't understand something at school, you're pretty good at re-teaching it to me. (*This was ONLY relevant for the child NOT in high school!)   5.) You love snow days as much as we do!  (GUILTY!)  

CONS:  1.) There is NO hiding...grades, homework, behavior...You know TOO much. (*I thought this should go on the PROS list, but this was THEIR list!)  2.) You sometimes think we are your teaching assistants..."Want to help me cut this out?"  "Want to help me grade papers?" (loving their impressions of me doing this)  3.) There are no shortcuts when it comes to school projects...you won't let us out the door unless it looks like it could hang on a bulletin board.  (I told them they'd thank me one day for this!)  4.) How many times have we had to stay after school in your classroom until you got finished working?  (Ouch!)  

The list went on and on, and we had some great laughs about it all as they recalled specific incidents, events, and embarrassing moments.  Despite the CONS list, I did get them to admit it wasn't SO TERRIBLE being a teacher's kid, and the creepy, ever so 
S-L-O-W elevator WAS kind of fun (and SCARY)!

In honor of the creepy, old elevator, I have created some games that are great for review, centers, or paired practice.  Kids will enjoy working through the skill cards, and climbing up and down the unpredictable elevator until they get to the top floor for a win.  So far, I have an elevator game for each of the following topics:  math facts to 20, multiplication, money, rounding, simplifying fractions, shapes, time, and place value.  There are MORE TO COME soon!  I'd LOVE to hear what YOUR children think the pros and cons are of being a teacher's kid!  If you don't have kids, ask another teacher's kids.  BE ONE OF THE FIRST FIVE TO SHARE YOUR COMMENTS (and email address) and I'll be happy to send you one of the Elevator games for FREE.  Just let me know which one you want! 




Bananas for my honest children and YES, the elevator, which has helped me with BIG LOADS on many occasions.   

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Not interested in the US anymore ?

So says Huawei. Really ?? No, not really. They are very interested in the US. Its just that they have realised that the doors to the US are simply shut for them. There has been a spat going on between the US politicians and Huawei for some time. It looks like the politicians have won.  And it begs the bigger question - can any company in the world be exclusively in one country or region (however big that might be) and hope to be a major player in the world.

Huawei is a telecoms company. They sell networking equipment significantly cheaper than say Cisco. They used to be crappy ( Cisco would snigger at the mention of their name). Not any longer. Same quality, half the price. In an uncomplicated world, companies  should be falling over themselves to buy from them.  But then, the world is not an uncomplicated place.

Huawei is a Chinese company. So what, you might ask ? Huawei's founder and leader was formerly in the Chinese army. Still so what ? Well, the ties with the Chinese government/army/party (same thing) never go away and its quite possible that Huawei will do whatever the Party in China asks it to. Huawei is not a transparent company. It largely refuses requirements that it be so.  And cyber espionage and hacking are weapons that the Chinese government uses against other countries constantly.The world's chief bugger (if you will pardon the bad pun) is China.

So Huawei is a pariah right. Wrong ? The US, and possibly every other major country does the same thing. Except that Obama cannot order Cisco to spy on his behalf while Xi Jinping can so order Huwaei. But then there is enough regulation and oversight in the US to prevent that from happening, or at least knowing that it is happening. And its not at all certain that Huawei would do anything major in the spying arena - its a $35 bn company. If its shown that it is doing something underhand, overnight, it would be expelled from the entire wold. But pompous Senators have repeatedly blocked Huawei from winning major deals in the US. Huawei has tried hard, but has won nothing. In frustration, they have simply given up. The beacon for capitalism and freedom, of course, does not think of the US consumers' interests (of getting things cheaper) and, of course, Cisco and other US competitors have been scrupulously fair , have never lobbied to stall Huwaei and surely windbag Senators have only the national defence of the US at heart.

Begs a question - why is only the US so paranoid. Every country in Europe has no problems dealing with Huawei . Even India, normally a completely paranoid country has plenty of Huawei here. The Chinese brass of Huawei in India go around with names like Ashok Li and Sundar Zhang. By the way, I have to recommend that Ramamritham Liu and Rajalakshmi Wang would also be worthy additions to their team. The only offense they have done to India is to start a Chinese canteen of their own on the grounds that what goes for Chinese food in India is unrecognisable by them and surely Gobi Manchurian is an abomination !

So what will happen to Huawei. They have admitted that they will have to revise their growth plans downwards. Without being truly global, no company can aspire to the big league. 

Or is that really true ? Could a company that's almost exclusively in one country be the largest in the world in its field ? We'll examine that in the next post.

Friday, April 19, 2013

Corporate Strategy? You Shouldn’t Even Try


Most corporations consist of multiple divisions. These divisions, which set their own strategy (what we generally refer to as “business strategy”), more often than not have very little to do with one another. Take Philips Electronics with its lighting, medical equipment, and consumer electronics; ThyssenKrupp with steel, elevators, and engineering services; or smaller companies such as Trinity Mirror with newspapers, printing, and digital services. They may not be like the conglomerates of the 1960s – you can see how their portfolio of somewhat related business came about – but, in reality, the various divisions and business units do operate completely independently from one another.

Yet, corporate top management invariably tries hard to formulate an overarching strategy. It endeavors to stimulate cooperation across divisions (by repeatedly shouting really loudly that this should happen), sets up corporate shared services (which invariably are seen as a mere cost and nuisance by its divisional heads), and have some abstract talk about creating “cross-divisional synergies”.

And I say, don’t even go there; don’t even try.

It’s not worth it; it’s artificial; it won’t work (because it never does); and, most of all, there’s just no need for it. Just forget about it.

“But, what then could possibly be the rationale and justification for these various business to be together in one corporation?!” I hear a cacophony of voices – of analysts, investors, board members, and business school professors – shout. “There must be something; otherwise the corporation should be broken up, because shareholders can do the diversification themselves”. It is firmly rooted in our minds that there must be some sort of a rationale for why these various businesses are grouped together into one firm.

And that’s right; there is a rationale. But seeing it requires a significant change of mindset of what a corporation is and does, and should do.

Once companies grow they often start moving into adjacent business areas. For example, a company may have moved from steel into engineering products because they require steel, then moved into engineering services, and became big in elevators causing them to set up a separate division for that too. These four divisions set their own strategy – e.g. the business strategy for engineering services, the strategy for elevators, etcetera – and have their own management teams and P&L.

Any corporate finance course will then tell you – probably on day one – that somehow these four divisions must create extra value by being grouped together; otherwise they should be split up into four separate companies, because you then save the costs of an expensive corporate head office, and investors themselves can easily do the diversification across different businesses – including these four – better, cheaper, and more customized to their own needs.

And therefore corporate top management teams come up with some contrived idea of a joint strategy to suggest synergies and justify their own existence.

But what the real value of a corporate top management is – or can be – is very different from all these things, but it requires these people to see their task and themselves in a different light: corporations are not there to set strategy, but they simply exist as investment vehicles, with the senior executives as its managers. Overall, I see three related roles for them:

1) First, corporate C-suite executives are portfolio managers. But they differ from fund managers and alike in a significant way; they actually know the business. Fund managers, equity analysts, hedge fund managers, and so on can analyze the numbers perfectly well and listen to the powerpoint presentation of the CEO on its roadshow. But corporate executives, who may have grown up in the business, work on it every day, and have an authoritative relationship with their divisional managers are better able to really grasp the in-depth and tacit aspects of the business’ strategy and competitive advantage. This makes them better portfolio managers, in the sense that they see things that external investors miss. Analysts are easily fooled by nice numbers and charismatic CEOs; the Goldman Sachs analysts who wrote “Enron is still the best of the best. We recently spoke with most of top management; our confidence level is high” a mere six weeks before it filed for bankruptcy still come to mind.

2) From this also follows their second role: they can play the role of a board of directors – but then better informed. In reality, boards are severely limited in terms of their knowledge of the corporation they are governing – not the least because external directors are of course no more than a collection of part-timers and amateurs. It is nearly impossible to really grasp the inner workings of a multinational, diversified corporation for an outsider who spends a couple of days per year on it. The top management of the corporation can really conduct this task; hence, they are probably the company’s real governance mechanism, assuring that shareholders’ money is spent wisely, strategies are genuinely set, and the numbers justified. Moreover, unlike boards, they can staff the divisional management teams with people they actually know and select.

3) Finally, a corporation’s head office can provide funds, much like an in-house bank. This might sound trivial, because lots of parties can provide money, but the advantage is again the superior insider knowledge and accompanying speed of operation. For example, where it is well-known that the majority of public acquisitions destroy value, research by professor Laurence Capron from INSEAD shows that private deals, on average, do create value. Most companies in the world are private but, unlike public firms, there is not a lot of information about them available. Therefore, it requires someone knowledgeable of the business to identify attractive targets, and be able to make the funds swiftly available. The top management of corporations can provide such insight, funds, and speed of allocation. Which gives a business that is part of larger, well-endowed corporation a potential advantage. Hence, a corporation’s top management team is a way to internalize portfolio management, governance, and resource allocation.

I often attend yearly conferences of corporations in which they bring together their top 50 or 100 executives to discuss the corporation’s strategy (which invariably is a mixture of amorphous capability statements and financial goals, i.e. not really a strategy), proclaim once more the need for cross-divisional synergies and cooperation, and listen to some keynote speaker (such as yours truly) in an attempt to provoke ideas on how to achieve this. Stop doing this I’d say (including the keynote speaker). There is no need for an overarching corporate strategy. It is invariably contrived, never creates any real value, and is simply not necessary.

Corporations comprising different businesses in separate divisions can exist for good reason. Creating corporate strategy is not needed for such corporations to rightfully exist. It does require a fundamental rethink of what your corporation is for, and what you – as corporate manager – are for. Understanding the real advantage of corporations is paramount to making them work. It usually means getting out of the way of divisional strategy, rather than trying to set it.

Business Jazz – 19th April 2013 – Asking for Help (Continued)



Many good stories share a common storytelling device: an epic challenge that the protagonist must overcome. The story of your business is also about overcoming challenges. You are on a quest – a quest to grow your business, launch your product, reach your targets. The higher you intend to reach, the more epic the quest, the more we are drawn to it. You are the underdog we are cheering on.

We've set some epic challenges for this podcast, and we'd like you to be part of the quest. Join us on the journey and help us build the bright, giving, supportive, valuable community we have in mind.

What are the challenges we've set? You'll have to listen to this week's episode for that. You'll hear how many weekly downloads we'd like to hit by 31st December of this year. You'll also hear of an epic geographic goal as well.

New rallying point


You are a big part of the story of this podcast. We'd like you to be an even bigger part of it. To help with that, and to help us have discussions about being genuinely attractive in business, we've established a LinkedIn group. Please knock on the door and we'll let you in.

Listening to the podcast


You can listen to this week's podcast using the player at the top of the post or download it directly here: Business Jazz – 19th April, 2013.

We're also in iTunes. We'd love it if you subscribed or left some feedback.


Business Jazz Players


This podcast is a collaboration of people dotted around the world. Most of us have never met each other. It's quite a story and it's still evolving. 
If you'd like to read what's happened so far, you'll find it here: Our Story.

Thursday, April 18, 2013

Those black American songbirds



Ravi, who wrote this piece on  various forms of gramophone records is a certifiable music nut. He can wax lyrical (pun intended) on most matters musical. But when he does so about women 100 years old , well ........ you form your own conclusions.


The bloke writes beautifully, writes with passion and his words have magic.  If, at the end, you too fall for big black women who are 100 years old, don't blame me ! Read on.


There is something wonderful about the black American songstress of the days gone by.  They were usually big, with voices to match.  I can always tell a black singer from her voice, because of a certain something, a je ne sais quoi in their voices, in particular, in the voices of the great jazz singers of the 50s and later.   I venture an extreme opinion here when I say that singers of that era invariably were less schooled and less adept in the use of technology than their soul sisters of later decades.  For one – they had to graduate to the recording studio by singing in clubs and speakeasies, in smoky and noisy conditions where they had to make themselves heard. Second, recording technology was not as advanced as it is in these days, so a less than perfect voice could not be digitally tampered with.  As a result their voices sounded more authentic – a naturally lower timbre and the ability to hit high notes with great ease.

Last week I received my long lost consignment of LPs from France and among them was the treasured “At Last” by Etta James.  Etta was born during the Depression to a single mother who had an unsettled life – many jobs, many men, and no money.  No one knows for sure who her father was.  She was brought up in a foster home and discovered singing in a club.   Recording contracts followed. After she was relatively successful with a couple of big hits, the Argo label signed her and released this song and the eponymous LP in 1960.  The song itself was moderately successful initially, but over the years has acquired a sheen. Just listen to the voice here, filled with longing for the loved one who is finally with her.

Music reflects the times, and for me, it is very difficult to separate the performance from the context. This brings to mind the incomparable Queen of Soul, the one and only Aretha Franklin.  One of most beautiful songs from the 60s is “I never loved a man (the way I loved you)”.  And here is a story behind it.  Atlantic Records (founded by the Turkish immigrant Ahmet Ertegun) signed Aretha from another label.  She was then flown to Atlanta to meet the backing band.  This was during the 60s, civil rights, black power etc.  The story goes that she met the band – all of whom were white and of course, all enamoured of this young lady who had already shown her talent.  So they sat down, Aretha on the piano, and they banged out this song in two hours flat. It is very hard to not discern the natural desire of a newbie to showcase her talents even if it was to an admiring bunch of musicians who had not an ounce of prejudice. But this was the sixties in the South, and one can almost hear Aretha say – listen to this, boys, you ain’t heard nothing like this.

Love songs are normally about longing and absence – at least that was how they were. Therefore it is quite rare to come across this gem of a song that combines the longing of love with the pure lust of union, no matter how wrong it is or how messy the whole aspect of a man and a woman in love can get in life. Bessie Smith was another great black musician, who lived between 1895 or so until he tragic death in a car accident in 1937. She started life as a busker and lived a hard life.  The story goes that when she was taken to hospital after the accident the hospital refused to admit her because she was black. The original recording by Bessie Smith is here. However – no disrespect to Bessie – I prefer the version by Nina Simone.  Nina was a regal singer with a strong voice. She took Bessie’s original song and lyrics and modified it in 1968.  I prefer it to Bessie’s – probably because the permissive 60s allowed Nina to include the lust in love into the song.  Here it is - it really catches you by the throat.

And how can one not talk of the Queen of Jazz, Ella Fitzgerald.  She lived a long and honored life, culminating in the Congressional Medal of Freedom awarded by Bush 41.  Born in 1917, she had a difficult and unhappy childhood but soon began singing on stage until her first recording contract.  She sang scat and bebop, but really became the darling of the American people when Verve Records (a label created around her!)  got her to record the Cole Porter Songbook.  This became the first of a series of records that focused on a single composer and helped establish them in the pantheon as serious musical works.  She also performed a subtle service to America – here was a black woman singing the songs that were predominantly composed by, sung by and listened to by the white American public.  There are many songs by Ella to choose from but my personal favourite is from the Rodgers and Hart songbook, “Manhattan”.  So evocative of that wonderful city, and so full of the simple joys of love between an ordinary guy and an ordinary girl.  What could be more democratic than that?

Let’s conclude with my personal favourite from Billie Holiday.  Another big black lady, with a voice that was made for wit and play with a beautiful vibrato.  Her childhood was anything but happy.  Born in 1915 to a teenaged single mother, she spent her childhood with a relative for the most part since her mother worked on the railroads.  Billie (born Eleanora Fagan) played truant from school at the age of 10 and was sent to reform school. At the age of 11 her neighbour raped her.  Her mother moved to Harlem, and both mother and daughter became prostitutes.   She was arrested and released at the age of 14.  She then started singing in bars and clubs in Harlem. Talent will out, and she made her first record at the age of 18.  Towards the end of her life (she died in 1959) she made an album for Verve whose title song “Day In Day Out”  showcases her amazing talent.  And when you listen to it you will understand why she is one of the great influences on jazz and pop singers since. 

This cannot be an exhaustive list by any means and neither is this anything but a set of purely subjective opinions.  I love these songbirds, and listening to them gives me hours of joy. It is always poignant to remember how unhappy their lives were, and wrought from these tempestuous beginnings were a musical gift we must treasure. Do explore these singers.  Switch on the music. Take your favorite senor or senorita by the hand to the dance floor.  On commence!

Sunday, April 14, 2013

The Business, April 17, 2013: The Fourth Birthday Celebration Edition

Happy birthday! Feliz cumpleanos! Bon anniversaire! The Business celebrates its fourth birthday with an eclectic lineup of special guests, along with all your Business regulars. We blew out our candles, and wished for a dream lineup of guests - and, as Anne Hathaway would say, it came true! From the dream factory that is Hollywood, we welcome back our good friend and star of stage and screen, Baron Vaughn. From the dream worker-owned-collective that is SF literature, we welcome Rumpus managing editor Isaac Fitzgerald. And from the chocolate factory Dandelion, we welcome chocolatiers Greg and Erica. After all, what would a birthday party be without dessert?

April 15, 2009 was a very different time. The #1 song in the country was "Poker Face." "Hannah Montana: The Movie" was #1 at the box office. Some people actually thought President Obama's birth certificate was a fake! And four SF comics started an experiment: a two-hour show, split four ways, every week at a theater in the Mission. Originally, Bucky Sinister was just going to rent a storefront so he could stand in it and just talk to passerby. When Alex Koll heard this idea, he thought it was crazy, and he decided he wanted a piece of that storefront plan. Eventually, the storefront became a theater and two people ranting for an hour each became four people ranting for half an hour each - much less crazy.

Over the years, the show evolved: more guests, more games, different Businessmen, bigger crowds, out-of-town shows, a "Best of SF" nod, and a franchise in Los Angeles. We've done nearly 200 shows, welcomed more than 200 guest performers, from comics to writers to clowns to musicians to burlesque dancers, and eaten roughly 200 pounds of refried beans. It's been a great ride - though that storefront might have REALLY been something. 

Our guests: 

 

Baron Vaughn is a dynamic performer whose standup involves song, dance, impressions, beatboxing, characters, and rock-solid joke writing. He was born in New Mexico, raised in Las Vegas, and came of comedy age in Boston. You have seen Baron as one of the Awkward Kings of Comedy, acting in "Black Dynamite" and "Fairly Legal," at the Bridgetown Comedy Festival, the Aspen Rooftop Festival, doing standup on "Conan," or on his podcast, Deep Shit.


Isaac Fitzgerald is the managing editor of The Rumpus (therumpus.net), the cultural website that's full of reviews, interviews, advice, music, film and poetry. He's also the co-founder of Pen & Ink (http://penandink.tumblr.com/), a Tumblr devoted to tattoos and the stories behind them, which is soon to become a real-life ink-and-paper book. Mr. Fitzgerald also hosted the Rumpus live events at the Make-Out Room, and still emcees Rumpus shows on both coasts.

 

Dandelion Chocolate is a small bean-to-bar chocolate manufacturer in Dogpatch, which recently opened a store on Valencia Street, just a block away from the Dark Room itself. Their chocolatiers will sit down for an interview with the foodiest Businessman of all, Nato Green, though we urge audience members not to share their secrets with Mr. Slugworth.

So this Wednesday, come commemorate four years of Business. BYOBPHAP (Bring Your Own Burritos, Party hats, And Pinatas). Bucky, Nato, Caitlin, and Sean will be there in the flesh; Alex Koll, Chris Garcia, Chris Thayer, and Mike Drucker will be there in spirit. Please no gifts: your presence is your presents, along with five bucks admission.

Saturday, April 13, 2013

"Lala" Infosys

Infosys was , is , and will be a great company. Unarguably. But even great organisations suffer from malaise. Surprisingly, Infosys suffers from the malaise that you would not normally attribute to it - the Lala problem. Yes, I know, I am throwing mud at a great company, but you have to expect it if you lose 20% of your market value in one day.

Wait a minute. Isn't Infosys one of the most professional of companies ? A company that sets the standard for corporate governance. The company that raised the bar on ethical business. The company with the middle class values ? All true. But Infosys suffers from the same problem that family run companies have - the company is handed down from one  "family" man to another.

Only in Infosys' case, the "family" is not blood related, but the group of founders who set up Infosys. The peerless Narayana Murthy established it. The relentless Nandan Nilekani drove it to the status of a world leader. Kris Gopalakrishnan then took up the baton and reaped the boom years. And then , just like in a family,  the company was handed over from brother to brother, to Shibulal, the last of the founders. And as we all know, second and third generation families are never the same as the first generation.

In all this, quite a few senior managers stepped away, knowing they had reached the end of the road - not just that they could never lead the company, but that in the set way of things, they had done all that they could.

Infosys is not known in the market as a great company to work for. This, despite its undoubted brilliance, its strong values, its untarnished reputation and its incredibly strong balance sheet.  It simply does not attract the best quality talent that a leader in the industry should. And it loses talent far faster.

Calling it a "Lala company" is an insult to a great institution. But a staunch admirer of the company, and its founders that I am , I am usurping the right to be unfair.  A classic response of an organisation that is in the situation that Infosys is in now, would be to make an acquisition - especially since there is a mountain of cash burning a hole in its pocket. If its does that, it surely is then a Lala company. For that's what Lalas do.

Infosys will bounce back. It is suffering from the middle age blues - as all of us in our personal lives do too. It has reached middle age perhaps a little earlier than its peers - even in that it is a trail blazer. But its bounce will be faster if the founders leave. Lock their doors and go.

Its time for Infosys Gen 2 to emerge. One where there are no more "Lalas". 

An unfair post this one. For sure.  But you are only unfair to somebody you admire.