Jimi Hendrix was already an international superstar when he performed the first of six sold-out shows over a three-night run at San Franciscos Winterland Ballroom beginning Oct. 10, 1968.

His fame, however, was still well short of its apex. Before the month was out, hed release his third and final studio recording, the creative tour de force known as Electric Ladyland, and the following year hed make his fabled appearance at Woodstock. In August 1970, just weeks before he died in London at the age of 27, hed perform before some 600,000 people at the Isle of Wight Festival.

Hendrix, unquestionably a master of the studio, was equally adept on the stage, and its the live aspect of his artistry thats featured on a series of new releases from Experience Hendrix and Legacy Recordings: Winterland, a four-CD set that chronicles the San Francisco performances of 1968; Hendrix in the West, previously out of print in the United States since 1974; and two DVDs, Blue Wild Angel: Jimi Hendrix Live at the Isle of Wight and Jimi Hendrix: The Dick Cavett Show.

Contextually, whats interesting about Jimi is that his music isnt dated, explains John McDermott, the catalog director for Experience Hendrix, the family business that has controlled the guitarists legacy since 1995. You listen to Winterland, and it really could be at any time because hes so ahead of the curve. But I think that when you look at the man himself in 1968, youre two years removed from him having nothing. Youre two and a half years removed from him starving in Greenwich Village with no prospects for success, essentially seen as an oddball, itinerant touring sideman.

Indeed, Hendrix spent the early and mid-1960s backing artists like Little Richard and the Isley Brothers on the Chitlin Circuit, a collection of venues friendly to black artists during the days of racial segregation. He later made New York his base of operations, but in 1966 was convinced by Animals bassist Chas Chandler to head to England, where the Jimi Hendrix Experience — consisting of Hendrix, bassist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell — was formed.

By the summer of 1967, on the heels of a debut release called Are You Experienced and an iconic, show-stopping performance at the Monterey Pop Festival, where Hendrix famously set his guitar on fire, he was a major star. It was a sudden, meteoric rise, one the artist had prepared for, according to McDermott.

When Chas Chandler gave him that gift of opportunity, he went at it at unbelievable speed, says McDermott, the author of Ultimate Hendrix: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Live Concerts and Sessions and three other Hendrix-related books. He was recording as often as he could and playing all these gigs … Its funny. This is a guy who didnt own a Graceland. He had a two-bedroom apartment in (Greenwich Village). When he made real money, he bought a Corvette and he bought a recording studio. I think he thought that this could never happen when it happened, so he grabbed it with both hands.

Hendrixs legendary guitar work takes center stage on Winterland, the artist delivering scorching versions of classics like Manic Depression and Little Wing alongside covers of Creams Sunshine of Your Love, Howlin Wolfs Killing Floor and Bob Dylans Like a Rolling Stone.

Considering the relative brevity of Hendrixs recording career — his debut album was released in England in May 1967 and he died in September 1970 — music historians chart the evolution of his work by months and even weeks, not years.

A live performance for Jimi Hendrix in 1967, theres no relation to the same thing in 1970, says the 48-year-old McDermott, a Massachusetts native. The guy who was onstage at Monterey in June of 1967, how you could think that this same guy would be creating The Star-Spangled Banner at Woodstock two years later, its hard to fathom.

Hendrix in the West, a longtime fan favorite, primarily consists of recordings from 1969 and 1970. It finds Hendrix letting loose onstage — a searing take on Red House and a high-octane reading of Chuck Berrys Johnny B. Goode are among the highlights — and making music with different bass players. Noel Redding appears on the 1969 recordings; the 1970 tunes feature Billy Cox.

The DVDs provide intriguing historical snapshots of Hendrixs artistry, if not vintage performances.

On the reissued and expanded Blue Wild Angel, shot by Academy Award-winning documentarian Murray Lerner, Hendrix plays with less energy and focus — by his standards, at least — before a massive audience of 600,000 people some three weeks before his death.

Hendrix famously faced a series of challenges at this show, including a performance that went off in the wee hours, technical difficulties and an audience hidden in darkness.

The Dick Cavett Show, meanwhile, collects all of Hendrixs appearances on the program, including his US network-television debut. Interviews, which cover topics like Hendrixs stint as a US Army paratrooper, are supplemented with complete live performances of Izabella, Machine Gun and Hear My Train A Comin.

For McDermott, Hendrixs enduring appeal is rooted in the remarkable quality of his work. Four decades after the guitarists death, hes still finding new fans. In 2010, more than 1 million Jimi Hendrix albums were sold.

Its hard for a lot of folks to believe, but Jimi has a multigenerational audience, McDermott says. Were talking about 14-year-old kids who are hearing Jimi Hendrix for the first time, and theyre doing what others were doing 30 or 40 years ago: Theyre coming into it and exploring it … Youve gotta tip your hat to the guy. He was really ahead of his time, way ahead of anything else that was happening out there.

(Reach Sean McDevitt, features editor of the Evansville Courier amp; Press in Indiana, at mcdevitts(at)courierpress.com.)

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com)

Tags : Artistry

By Kunal Shah
Commodity prices have crashed during the last week mainly after the FOMC meeting. We have witnessed capitulation especially in the base metals complex and in commodities such as Silver where prices have corrected by more than 15-20%. In the FOMC meeting, the Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke did not dole out a direct stimulus package. He launched a twist operation which is basically to tell the world that interest rates in the US will remain low in the coming years. Post that, what we have seen, would be described as a lsquo;bloodbath in the commodity space.

More than fundamentals, I believe the commodities boom was liquidity driven. The quantitative easing was one of the major reasons for commodity prices to move up. I tried understanding the demand supply parameters among commodities as to how Crude Oil would test $130/barrel which was the target given by large financial institutions, when huge inventories exist in the US and there is also the negative revision to the GDP estimates in the US. There were lots of forecasts that Copper prices may test $10000-$11000/tonne levels and there was there hype about a deficit of 300000 to 400000 tonnes which is nothing compared to production of around 17 million tonnes. Despite the massive inventories of Zinc and the surplus of more than 200000 tonnes, zinc prices were moving up.

I think prices of most commodities, except Gold and few agricultural commodities have picked up post the end of the quantitative easing (QE2). So now we have a scenario where there is credit crunch in Europe coupled with a sovereign crisis, cost of borrowing dollars has surged rapidly, unwinding of the dollar carry trade and no more quantitative easing programmes have been announced.

Commodity prices have not fallen just because of risk aversion. In fact, I feel they are falling on their own weight. One must understand that the level of commodity prices which have been witnessed was mainly because of massive liquidity that was chasing commodities and not because of the fact that fundamentals were very bullish.

After a huge correction, there can be a bounce back in prices of silver, gold, base metals and Crude Oil but I do not see any major up move and rallies should be sold at. We have a serious risk aversion at hand, until we have any clarity on how the credit crunch and sovereign crisis in Europe will be solved. It will be very interesting to see how policy makers in the US and Europe will deal with this crisis.

My view on the complex remains bearish. I feel by next week crude oil prices can test $75/barrel and Brent crude oil can touch levels of $97/barrel by next weekend. In agricultural commodities the edible oil complex will remain under pressure. Soy oil can test levels of Rs 532 by next week on account of this wave of risk aversion we are currently witnessing.

(The author is Head Commodities Research, Nirmal Bang Commodities Pvt Ltd)

Tags : Commodity

The impact of commodity price volatility was the focus of a discussion on issues facing low-income countries at the 2011 IMF-World Bank Annual Meetings.

At a one-day conference that opened the public agenda for the meetings, participants heard an in-depth debate on commodity prices and inclusive growthwith the spotlight on the devastating effect of price rises on the Horn of Africa which is suffering from food shortages caused by severe droughts.

Addressing vulnerability is do-able, said the head of the United Nations World Food Program (WFP), Josette Sheeran, who recently returned from visiting Somalia and Kenya, two of the countries hardest hit by the regions worst famine in half a century. We have to combat the cynicism that interventions dont work, she added.

Sheeran made her comments immediately after the conference was opened by IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde. It was attended by leading names from the world of development including two Nobel Prize winners; finance ministers and central bank governors from around the world; and top economists including Paul Collier, Jeffrey Frankel, and Abhijit Banerjee.

Low-income countries determine their fates

Lagarde told the audience that low-income countries faced a broad and extremely challenging agenda and that it was for them to take the lead in determining their own future.

It is up to the low-income countries themselves to chart the course, and set the priorities. And it is up to usthe donor community and the international organizationsto support them, she said.

In a keynote speech to the audience, which also included top academics and leaders of civil society, Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz drew a direct link between commodity price volatility and increased inequality.

Anyone interested in inequality should be interested in the commodity price volatility we have seen in the last few years, said Stiglitz.

In sub-Saharan Africa, many countries are heavily dependent on commodities, while rising food prices affect the poor in particular as food makes up a larger proportion of their household income, he said. The poor also have less of a buffer against such price increases, he added.

Rising prices, greater poverty

Lagarde warned that the renewed surge in commodity prices this year could plunge an additional 44 million people into poverty, and she proposed three measures for low-income countries to build up their resistance to external shocks.

The first priority she identified was strengthening self-insurance, which involved building policy buffers by reining in deficits and shoring up reserves in good times. This builds a cushion for the bad timesand especially for protecting the most vulnerable, said Lagarde.

She identified two other priorities as strengthening social safety nets, and lastly structural changes to boost longer-term resilience. Economies that are more diversifiedand not overly dependent on a few products and trading partnersare better able to withstand shocks, said Lagarde.

Commodity price volatility impacts poorest countries

Commodity prices have been particularly volatile over the last decade. At their peak, between 20078 commodity prices doubled, before plummeting at the onset of the global recession. This volatility has hit poor countries particularly hard.

Jeffrey Frankel of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University said the tendency for low-income countries to adopt procyclical policies often further destabilized their economies.

Expanding in booms and contracting during recessions exacerbates the magnitude of swings he said, adding that this tendency had been especially strong in commodity-exporting countries.

But in the last decade he identified a shift. Around one-third of developing countries had now changed to countercyclical policies, he said.

The IMFs Hugh Bredenkamp said the impact of higher food and fuel prices had been wideranging.

Low income countries are now less well placed to cope with commodity price shocks than they were prior to the 2008 episode because their fiscal policy buffers have been eroded by the global crisis.

Bredenkamp called for pragmatism in response to future global shocks. While first best responses are difficult, given the absence of broad social safety nets, it is important that policy responses are cost effective and targeted at the most vulnerable.

More oil producers, growing impact of volatility

Resource-rich economies face a political resource curse making it difficult to manage their natural endowments, said Michael Ross of University College of Los Angeles.

Ross identified a worrying pattern in the political systems of many resource-rich countries including a lack of government accountability, a heightened risk of civil war, and less effective government policies.

With increasing numbers of oil-producers among low-income countries this means that the issue of the political economy of resource-rich discoveries is likely to get bigger and more important in the coming decades, he said.

Achieving inclusive growth

In the final seminar of the day, panelists including IMF Deputy Managing Director Min Zhu; Nancy Birdsall of the Center for Global Development; Ray Offenheiser, president of Oxfam America; the Nigerian finance minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala; Tunisian central bank governor, Mustapha Nabli; and the Nobel laureate George Akerlof; discussed how to achieve inclusive growth in low-income countries.

Akerlof said that recent unrest in the Middle East and North Africa would focus greater attention on the issue of inequality by turning everyone into a citizen with rights and responsibilities.

The Arab spring is going to promote this sense of equality and insodoing we will get an economic dividend, he said.

Mustapha Nabli, governor of the Central bank of Tunisia said that although there had been inclusiveif not highgrowth in the region over recent decades, many elements of inclusiveness had been absent including distribution of benefits across different parts of the country and greater opportunities for increasing numbers of graduates. This had been combined with high levels of corruption.

So we have this combination, and it becomes explosive.and it exploded actually, he said.

Tags : Commodity

As you know, personal branding is all about building credibility, visibility, and establishing yourself as an expert in your field. But there is another element of personal branding which is often overlooked, and that is relationships.

In fact, I would go as far as to say that personal branding that doesn’t create and nurture relationships is almost useless. Creating a relationship with a target customer often turns him or her into a prospect, and nurturing that relationship can turn the prospect into a customer. Strong relationships with referral sources often lead directly to more great prospects. And the relationships you nurture with colleagues can be an invaluable source of knowledge and ideas. So how can you make sure that relationships remain a priority as you run your branding campaign? Below are several suggestions.

1) Add a personal touch your social media presence. If you follow me on Twitter (@NickNanton), you’ll see that in addition to work-related posts, I also share pictures of my family and keep my followers updated on my latest adventures, work-related or not. While you shouldn’t feel pressured to share more than you are comfortable with, showing your personal side on social media allows your audience to feel like they truly know you.

2) Actively seek relationships. Look, I understand the demands on your time. I’m in the same boat–I’m always being pulled in four different directions. And it’s great to be busy–but the danger is that our lack of time can easily cause us to neglect relationships. Take advantage of every opportunity you get to create a new relationship, even if the individual doesn’t provide an obvious benefit to you. You’ll be surprised how often a relationship turns out to be more valuable than you would have expected.

3) Be genuine. As long as you remain true to yourself and your values, and as long as you are committed to creating and nurturing relationships, you won’t have a problem building them! Just remember that a relationship can’t be faked–so be real. You don’t have to force yourself to be smart, funny, or charming…just be you!

Focusing on relationships is a great way to leverage the power your personal branding efforts. Unfortunately, many business owners are so busy running and marketing their business that they fail to take advantage of them. Don’t make that mistake–remember that relationships are the key to growing a strong business!

JW Dicks (@jwdicks) amp; Nick Nanton (@nicknanton) are best-selling authors who consult for small- and medium-sized businesses on how to build their business through Personality Driven Marketing, Personal Brand Positioning, Guaranteed Media, and Mining Hidden Business Assets. They offer free articles, white papers, and case studies at their website. Jack and Nick have been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Newsweek, FastCompany.com, and many more media outlets.

[Image: Flickr user www.courtneycarmody.com]

Tags : Relationships

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By Francesca Freeman

LONDON -(MarketWatch)- The correlation between commodities and other assets should begin to fade, with a stronger relationship developing between commodity prices and emerging market inflation, the managing director of commodities research at Barclays Capital said Thursday.

“Correlations are returning to neutral and we believe that over the long term, commodities will continue to show no consistent correlation with other assets,” Kevin Norrish told the S&P GSCI Commodities Seminar in London.

“The drivers of commodity markets are totally different to other assets,” he added.

Meanwhile, the link between commodity prices and inflation, particularly in emerging markets such as China, is set to increase, Norrish said.

“The intensity of use of many commodities relative to global gross domestic product slowed in the past decade for many commodities, but is rising again for some. 2010 saw a particularly big increase in the global intensity of use for aluminum, copper and coal,” he said, adding the growth in emerging markets is much more commodity intensive.

With global growth still projected at in excess of 3% for 2011 and 2012, “the commodity speed limit is still being broken,” said Norrish.

Tags : Commodity

Lora Condon of Rotterdam, left, and Jayden Hart of Schenectady, both 7, are covered with a bubble by Fan Yang to promote his upcoming Gazillion Bubble Show to take place at Proctors on October 8th, on Wednesday Sept. 21, 2011 in Schenectady, NY. ( Philip Kamrass / Times Union)

Tags : Artistry

Alms of the Blind HorseAn attempt to shoehorn film theory lessons on space and time into a tale of powerless Punjabi villagers overwhelms the initial artistry of Gurvinder Singhs Alms of the Blind Horse.

Tags : Artistry

With the end of the television version of long-time serials All My Children and One Life to Live on the heels of the demise of As the World Turns and Guiding Light (the longest running program in the history of television), it is time to look at what these changes signify. While the latest casualties of the soap opera bloodbath are getting a respite thanks to a groundbreaking licensing deal that allows new episodes to be broadcast on the Internet, it is clear the genre is on its last legs.

The fall of daytime soap operas has been attributed to the economic downturn (networks seeking to produce less expensive programming) and the rise of reality TV (as an alternative source of melodrama). However, the overarching reason soaps have lost their appeal is the same reason they held a 50-year grip on daytime television: women.

I am not simply talking about women entering the labor force in greater numbers – VCRs and TIVO can mediate the effect of women at work. The fact is that womens views have changed, particularly when it comes to romantic relationships.

Historically, daytime soaps have been marketed to women of all ages, with mothers and daughters often watching the same shows. But women are changing. The two biggest constants in these programs may no longer appeal to most women: 1. myopic portrayals of female characters, and 2. melodramatic relationships.

Female characters are overwhelmingly one-dimensional. They typically ascribe to the virgin-whore dichotomy (the maternal good-girl versus the evil vixen). The one deviation to these simplistic characterizations is when characters have split personality disorders (a surprisingly common portrayal). They are caricatures.

Female characters are portrayed in the most unflattering and stereotyped ways – as prostitutes, adulteresses, gold-diggers, murderers, liars, sluts, kidnappers, baby-killers and conniving revenge-seekers. They often fake pregnancies, swap partners and confuse their babys paternity. When depicted sympathetically, they are systematically victimized, lied to, exploited, beaten and even raped.

Perhaps the clearest overarching trait is how needy these fictional women are in their relationships. When it comes to lust or love, these women are simply pathetic. Herein lies the overdue demise of the daytime diva.

Soaps typically revolve around convoluted romantic storylines that feature super couples that take on-again-off-again to extremes. When the relationships are in their predictable off periods, the women completely fall apart – becoming hysterical and out of control, making statements like I cant be without you and still be me (Brooke Logan to Ridge Forrester on the Bold and the Beautiful, 7-18-2011).

Today, women are better able to recognize the dynamics of negative relationships. Melodrama is a flashing neon sign of trouble, not love. This puts the mainstay of soaps – the super couple – into perspective.

A true partner helps us become the best version of ourselves – soaps super couples are known for just the opposite. Many viewers are simply sick of rooting for dysfunction. Super couples epitomize the perils of low-fat love – attraction to men who withhold and settling for that which is less than we really want. As fewer women are willing to settle for low-fat love in their own lives, so too, fewer women are willing to accept this as entertainment.

–

Patricia Leavy, PhD, a feminist writer, is the author of the book, Low-Fat Love.

Tags : Relationships

LONDON (Reuters) – Major banks are working to provide more complex commodity investment products that offer diversification after the asset class as a whole has tracked other markets recently, a seminar heard on Thursday.

Many investors have piled into commodities, often buying products linked to broad indices. This has helped balance their portfolios which had been weighted heavily to stocks and bonds.

But since the 2008 financial crisis, this strategy has failed to work as commodities have largely moved in line with other financial markets.

Banks are now offering more active strategies. These include financial instruments based on single commodities instead of a broad index. Other offerings target a specific part of the forward curve, while still others focus on momentum or use volatility, speakers told the Samp;P Commodities Seminar in London.

Definitely correlation is on investors minds, its the ultimate issue that they have, said Andrea Grillo, head of commodity sales at JP Morgan.

Its stimulating investors to become much more active. We are seeing the passive long-only indices… losing some of their appeal.

Last year oil was a favorite single commodity while this year gold is taking center stage, said Michael John Lytle, managing director at Source, a specialist provider of exchange traded products. Next year, agriculture may become the hottest single sector, Grillo said.

Ravi Ramachandran, global head of commodities at Citi, said his institution offered packages of solutions for exposure to commodities.

Clients themselves are getting much more intelligent about how they can benefit from an investment in commodities.

In some cases, the packages include algorithmic trading strategies, while others can offer a middle ground between fully active management and totally passive indices.

You can provide the framework that everybody is comfortable with, they know exactly what is driving the rules, said Trent Stout, co-head of global commodity index and products at Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

It gives them the ability to override, to act as a circuit breaker, based on where the world is that day or that week and they can make the changes.

(Reporting by Eric Onstad)

Tags : Commodity

NEW YORK -(Dow Jones)- Copper, oil and palladium led the broad sell-off in commodities as fear grows that a sagging economy will have dire consequences for manufacturing, construction and other key parts of the global economy.

Industrial materials were in the forefront of a broader market rout sparked by disappointment with the Federal Reserves efforts to spur economic growth.

The central bank failed to convince investors it can help prevent a slip back into recession. That coupled with increasing worries about growth overseas sent traders running from anything that will suffer from a decline in business or consumer spending.

Why would you want to own something you make things out of when nobody is going to be there to buy them? said Bill OGrady, chief market strategist at Confluence Investment Management. In a recession, People will still eat, but theyre going to use less oil, less metal, he said.

Copper futures fell by more than 7%, plunging to their lowest levels in a year at $3.48 a pound. Oil settled 6.3% lower at $80.51 a barrel after briefly falling below $80. Platinum and palladium, precious metals closely tied to the auto industry, fell by 4.3% and 6.9%, respectively.

Silver, which has both industrial and investment uses, dropped a staggering 9.6% to $36.538. Meanwhile, gold–usually seen as a safe haven in economic turmoil–fell 3.7% to 1,739.20. Analysts say most of golds decline came from investors cashing out to cover other losses.

In copper, declines began early in the trading day. Separate reports on manufacturing in China and the euro zone–the two largest users of the industrial metal–showed that sector contracted in September.

The preliminary HSBC China Manufacturing Purchasing Managers Index fell to 49.4 in September from a final reading of 49.9 in August; a reading below 50 indicates contraction. The purchasing managers index for euro-zone manufacturers stood at a two-year low of 48.4 in September, down from 49.0 the previous month.

The outsized decline in copper is a worrying signal for many investors who view the metal as a leading indicator of the economys health. Copper is found in a wide range of industrial and consumer applications, from wiring and plumbing to cars, trucks and consumer electronics, making it particularly sensitive to the growth outlook.

Copper is telling you that the odds of a recession are increasing, said Adam Klopfenstein, a senior market strategist with MF Global. Its hard to paint a positive picture for the industrial bellwether with the current slate of worries about the global economy, he said.

The benchmark copper contract has slipped by 17% in September.

Companies in the materials sector were hit particularly hard in the selloff. Shares of mining giants Freeport-McMoRan Copper amp; Gold Inc. (FCX) and Rio Tinto PLC (RIO) both saw near double-digit percentage declines.

The Federal Reserves gloomy economic outlook and underwhelming stimulus failed to support perceived risk-based assets. Global equities sold off sharply along with commodity markets as traders digested the likely impact of the Feds actions.

The Fed has to be the leader, Klopfenstein said. When the Fed comes out and says the economy has more downside risks, that tells me copper is going to go lower.

Goldman Sachs Thursday lifted some of its copper-price forecasts, saying that the supply-and-demand situation should keep the market supported. The investment bank said it would take a global recession or financial crisis to derail its view that higher prices are ahead.

Meanwhile, gridlock in Washington, worries about a Greek default and now concerns that the Fed is expecting further economic deterioration have all battered oil prices. But data on global demand hasnt shown major declines.

In a research note Thursday, Goldman Sachs said the market is trying to reconcile falling global oil inventories with the threat of future demand declines.

Global crude oil markets continue to be torn, said Goldman energy analyst David Greely in a note to clients.

Despite falling expectations of global growth, tightening inventories of both copper and crude oil should support prices, Goldman analysts wrote.

Copyright copy; 2011 Dow Jones Newswires

Tags : Commodity