Category Archives: Carl’s Take

Welcome to my personal blog. This is the place where you can follow my personal journey, through music&life.
Any views presented here can be very political and have no further reference to the rest of my music site. Let’s agree that we might disagree…

It’s not about racism anymore

When I watched the video below, showing how Eric Garner was choked to death by a policeman, it hit me: this isn’t about racism anymore.
This could be anyone.
On December 3rd, the Grand Jury handling the case said that no crime was committed. That procedures were followed.
This is what can happen when too much power is given to law enforcement.
To me it proves once more that at it’s core, the US has become a police state.
I got to experience some of it myself, even though just one long night.
That experience definitely became one of the key reasons why I decided to move out. Give up the green card that was so hard to get.
I didn’t want my kids grow up in a society that is tolerant to the denial of basic human rights as soon as there is any real or made-up suspicion of criminal behavior. What human rights? Let’s start with a basic level of dignity.

I started this text by writing this could be anyone.
That’s not entirely true. That’s also what the person sitting in the middle of the panel, halfway through this video is referring too:
In the United States of America of 2014, this could be anyone who is poor and uneducated or unprivileged in some other way. Guess what? There’s a lot of colored people in those categories. But also white people.

So no, this isn’t about racism, anymore. This isn’t about skin color. Oh no. This is about class politics. We should ALL be very worried.

Or you should. I moved, remember.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1ka4oKu1jo

San Diego was fun – pictures !

Here are some pictures in a Facebook album from my visit to San Diego in October.

Fun was had playing, relaxing and recording in the fantastic studio of Alan Sanderson in Pacific Beach: Pacific Beat Recording.

In the pictures, you’ll discover one of the (two) songs that were recorded… Vocals are being worked on right now…

Kickstarter ! (no not mine)

Not for me, but a friend of mine in Seattle. Brenda Xu is her name and she’s over 55% funded with her Kickstarter project to launch her new (second) album. I played bass on one of the songs in her previous album and performed with her in over 35 live shows in Southern California (2007-2009), including the world-famous Whisky-a-go-go on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles.  The info is below, just click to check out and help contribute to a successful CD launch. Ends August 7th. 

Show history page added

OK. Got an extra page up on my website. Someone made the remark yesterday that I didn’t have an overview of shows I played. So, here we are: check out the new page right here. Since there are 110+ past shows, I made a summary with “Key Shows” on top. Time to book some more shows in Belgium, that’s my conclusion :). Stay tuned for that…