National Broadcast?
Last month, local modern-rock band 2nd Day Broadcast was informed that it survived the initial cut in the competition for the Coca-Cola New Music Award, a prize given to whatever undiscovered act is deemed the nation’s best through a rigorous and multilayered submission and judging process.
Prior to this year, no unsigned band had played the nationally televised American Music Awards in its 29-year history. In 2001, however, Coca-Cola, Dick Clark and college radio reporting/marketing leviathan CMJ successfully lobbied for the addition of the New Music Award.
2nd Day Broadcast was one of the choices of CMJ writers and editors, who culled 50 official competitors from literally thousands of submissions.
“We got a call from a representative of CMJ,” says drummer Pete Joseph. “He said “congratulations, you made the Top 50,’ and we didn’t know what he was talking about. We’d submitted so long ago, we’d forgotten what it was.”
Though the band has been around only for a little over a year, Joseph, bassist Derek Fair, guitarists Richard Anello and Dan Barton, and vocalist John Swope are all experienced players in the Bay area’s original music scene and ply a fairly mainstream-ready amalgam of melody, hooks and dynamic guitar riffs.
Pop music icon Clark and CMJ founder and CEO Bobby Haber recently finished whittling the 50 entrants down to 10 semi-finalists, and 2nd Day Broadcast again endured.
“It was awesome. We were just happy to make the Top 50 but finding out we’d made the Top 10 was the icing on the cake,” says Joseph.
They’re the only Florida band to be making the trip to New York City for a live-performance playoff at the storied Bowery Ballroom on Nov. 1 in front of “a blue ribbon panel” of yet-to-be-named judges. If the band makes that cut, they’ll head to L.A. with two other acts for the finals. The winner performs live on ABC’s Jan. 13th airing of the American Music Awards shindig.
Anyone wishing to see what all the buzz is about, or offer the gents some good luck on their trip north, can catch 2nd Day Broadcast Friday, Oct. 25, at Greenback’s Cafe in Clearwater.
Last year’s winner, Carbon Leaf, saw its fourth self-produced CD, Echo Echo, crack Amazon.com’s Top 30 sales chart — an amazing feat for an unsigned act — shortly after its televised performance.— Scott Harrell Huge Hughes Days Ahead
Nov. 5 could be one sweet 24 hours for Ralph Hughes, a Tampa concrete supplier with more than a passing interest in Hillsborough County government.
Hughes has three horses — Brian Blair, Jim Norman and Thomas Scott — running in the county commission election derby, with a filly, Ronda Storms, already in the winner’s circle after an earlier primary heat.
If Blair can upset Pat Frank, anybody looking for something from the seven-member commission during the next two years will want to see Hughes first.
But Hughes could be even happier on Nov. 5, should voters pass a little-noted amendment to the county charter.
At the very end of the Hillsborough ballot, voters will be asked whether they favor requiring county commissioners to create an office of internal performance auditor.
Hughes has been in love with auditors for almost as long as he has hated the development impact fees that he says hurt his industry.
The irrepressible Hughes browbeat the commissioners into hiring outside accounting firms to do performance audits during the 1990s. That was after the commissioners refused his request to do what the voters are now being asked to do in 2002.
But, bureaucrats being bureaucrats, county staffers soon let it be known through winks and nods that accounting firms that went easy on them might be better positioned for more auditing contracts down the road.
And this was before Enron and Arthur Andersen set the standard for such mutual back scratching.
Anyway, Hughes got to work on the county’s charter review board in 2000 and — voila! — a charter amendment is before voters this year.
Hughes told Weekly Planet that performance auditors have saved millions of dollars for taxpayers in Broward and Palm Beach counties over decades of those governments employing them.
“I’m absolutely, positively, 100 percent in favor of it,” Hughes said of the proposed charter change.
Why weren’t we surprised?
— Francis X. Gilpin
Baker Pact
St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Baker on Oct. 18 unveiled his great compromise: a plan that reduces Albert Whitted Municipal Airport from two runways to one. “Everybody wins,” said Baker.
The plan calls for the removal of the east-west runway and the lengthening of the north-south runway. Of the airport’s 156 acres, 28 would be made available for development and port expansion, with land-sale proceeds to help pay for improvements to the airport, according to Baker. Seven acres would be used for a waterfront park.
The city’s initial proposal called for turning all of Whitted Airport’s waterfront land over to private developers in order to create a mixed-use urban neighborhood surrounded by parks (see “Airport Insecurity,” www.weeklyplanet.com/2002-05-22/cover.html). The sale of any part of the publicly owned Whitted land would require voter approval.
Even if voters approve the new plan in a 2003 referendum, the Federal Aviation Administration, which issued a 20-year airport grant to the city, may still object.
According to city officials, the proposed one-runway airport would become a greater benefit than the current airport. By lengthening the north-south runway and upgrading airport facilities, according to development administrator Rick Mussett, Whitted Airport would be able to accommodate a greater amount of air traffic.
“We’re actually increasing the viability of the airport,” Mussett said.
The plan would also benefit airport neighbors, including the University of South Florida-St. Petersburg and All Children’s Hospital, which face building-height restrictions. Removing the east-west runway would nullify those restrictions.
But the new plan has created the first noticeable division within the Airport Advisory Committee, the vocal lobbying group for Whitted Airport. Committee member Mike Cheezum split with the group in order to support the plan, which is also endorsed by Bay Air Flying Service owner Ron Methot.
“The plan not only recognizes the vital importance of general aviation and its growth, but also the growth needs of the community,” said Cheezum.
Committee vice chairman Jack W. Tunstill, who opposes the one-runway plan, downplayed the division. “The Airport Advisory Committee is made up of free-thinking individuals who are encouraged to speak their mind,” Tunstill said.
While the new plan has the potential to satisfy both airport supporters and such pro-development forces as the St. Petersburg Times, Baker’s poor handling of the plan gave the appearance that it was concocted in some smoky backroom.
Upon hearing that a one-runway plan existed, the Planet questioned Baker on Oct. 10. He denied the plan’s existence, acknowledging only that he and his staff had kicked around the idea.
Interviewed Oct. 18, Baker denied having lied about the plan’s existence, adding that the city had received the plan the evening of Oct. 17. —Trevor Aaronson
Honorary Black
In American politics, it’s not what a politician does, but how they spin it that makes all the difference.
Former President Bill Clinton has spent much of his career polishing his spin on his relationship with the black community. It paid off earlier this month as he stood before a crowd of nearly 1,100 in Arkansas who came to see him inducted into the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame.
Generally, actually being black is a requirement for the honor, which has been bestowed upon the likes of poet Maya Angelou, and John H. Johnson, the magazine publisher who created Ebony and Jet magazines.
An exception was made for Clinton, whose induction was called “honorary.” Ironically, former Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders is also in the hall of fame for being a Clinton appointee. She was also a Clinton casualty. He fired her.
As president, Clinton’s mode of operation seemed to be to promote progress in some areas while promoting regression in others. His appointment of blacks to high-level positions was historic, but so was his welfare reform bill that perpetuated the cycle of poverty in the black community by cutting off aid without providing adequate childcare or opportunities for education.
Clinton is currently working to raise awareness of the AIDS crisis in Africa, but as president he didn’t intervene in the genocidal carnage that took place in Rwanda. He has always spoken out with sincerity against racial inequality, but as president he signed a crime bill that continued the trend of jailing blacks at more than twice the rate of whites.
So what caused the usually intelligent Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison to temporarily lose her mind and refer to the former leader of the free world as “our first black president”? Morrison cited such concrete evidence as his single-parent upbringing, love of the saxophone and his penchant for junk food.
If that’s what it means to be black, there are a lot of actual black people who don’t qualify.
The cult of personality is what really works in Clinton’s favor. It’s not that he opened an office in predominantly black Harlem after his presidency; it’s that he seems comfortable there.
As Arkansas governor, Clinton invited blacks to the governor’s mansion and sat on the porches of black community members shooting the breeze. When the crowd at the induction ceremony sang the black anthem, “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” Clinton sang along without missing a word.— Rochelle Renford
This article appears in Oct 23-29, 2002.
