On 'Songs for Singing', Beck's partner is 28 year old Lee Barbour, a versatile guitarist from Charleston, S.C who alternately plays in a gypsy jazz group and a modern, postbop quartet called Gradual Lean. Together, they offer intriguing twists on jazz standards and familiar tunes by the Beatles, Thelonious Monk, and Ornette coleman. Beck's role in this duet setting is different from his free-flowing interactions with Abercrombie. Primarily utilizing his patented alto guitar, Beck expertly comps befind Barbour's melodic lines and flee-fingered solos while simultaneously playing deep-toned walking basslines, as on "Can't get Started," Coleman's "Turnaround" and Barbour's own "Q's Blues." The two engage in delicate interplay on two Beatles themes, "Norwegian Wood" and "Michelle," as well as on a sublime version of "Monk's Dream." Barbour brings some subversive energy to bear with his edgy fretless guitar work on top of Beck's arpeggiated accompaniment to "Bye Bye Blackbird." And on a particularly audacious interpretation of "When I Fall in Love," he plays his fretless ax with distortion pedal set on stun, sounding like a crazed Sonny Landreth on the warpath. Though they may be two generations apart (Beck is 62), these two plectorists demonstrate a winning chemistry on 'Songs for Singing'.

the system could not perpetuate itself if we were able to see it clearly, or even if we allowed ourselves to think about it clearly. if we did, we would not perpetuate it. we could not. but instead our attention must be constantly diverted from real problems to those that parasitize, trivialize, and make diffuse the outrage we would otherwise feel. if these parasitic problems are made to resemble the real problems, they keep people from ever looking at the system itself. all of this is true for dysfunctional families as it is for dysfunctional cultures.

a classic device of power-and this is true whether we're talking about emperors or perpetrators of domestic violence-is to present their victims with a series of false choices whereby no matter which the victims choose, the perpetrators win and the victims are further victimized. nazis, for example, sometimes gave jews the choice of different colored identity papers. many jews then focused, reasonably enough, on trying to figure out which of these colors would more likely save their lives. of course the color of the identity papers made no material difference: the primary purpose of the choice was to divert victims' attention from the task of unmaking the whole system that was killing them. in addition, this false choice co-opted victims into believing they were making meaningful choices. in other words, it got them on some level to take responsibility for what was being done with them: if i am killed it is my own fault because i chose the wrong color.
   now, would you rather vote republican or democrat? for which major corporation would you like to work? do you want privacy or security? which shopping mall has the best deals this weekend?

-derrick jensen, 'welcome to the machine'

"The first abuse of human rights implicit in mass coercive schooling is detention without having broken the law. In a democracy, it is an abuse of human rights to do this. Yet children are detained for 15,000 hours of their young lives in a day detention centre called school. Their only offence appears to be that they are young." -Roland Meighan

"Almost every child, on the first day he sets foot in a school building, is smarter, more curious, less afraid of what he doesn't know, better at finding and figuring things out, more confident, resourceful, persistent,, and independent, than he will ever again be in his schooling, or, unless he is very unusual and lucky, for the rest of his life." -John Holt

"All the time you are in school, you learn through experience how to live in a dictatorship. In school you shut your notebook when the bell rings. You do not speak unless granted permission. You are guilty until proven innocent, and who will prove you innocent? You are told what to do, think, and say for six hours a day. If your teacher says sit up and pay attention, you had better stiffen your spine and try to get Bobby or Sally or the idea of Spring or the play you're writing off your mind. The most constant and thorough thing students in school experience- and learn- is the antithesis of democracy." -Grace Llewellyn

"Learning is like breathing. It is a natural, human activity: it is part of being alive... Our ability to learn, like our ability to breathe, does not need to be improved or tampered with. It is utter nonsense, not to mention deeply insulting, to say that people need to be taught how to learn or how to think. We are born knowing these things. All that is needed is an interesting, accessible, intelligible world, and a chance to play a meaningful part in it." -Aaron Falbel

"It is a fact nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom; without this it goes to wrack and ruin without fail." -Albert Einstein

"The idea of shipping our children off to a warehouse where they are educated by strangers from a curriculum designed by politicians and academics theorists is so strange and disconnected from the reality of a child that we have to wonder how this could come to be the fact in our society. Why would we want our children treated like this?" -Steven Harrison

"The aim of totalitarian education has never been to instill conviction but to destroy the capacity to form any." -Hannah Arendt

"By stars and red checks, smiles and frowns, prizes, honors, and disgraces, I teach kids to surrender their will to the predestined chain of command. Rights may be granted or withheld by any authority without appeal, because rights do not exist inside a school-- not even the right of free speech... As a schoolteacher, I intervene in many personal decisions, issuing a pass for those I deem legitimate and initiating a disciplinary confrontation for behavior that threatens my control. Individuality is constantly trying to assert itself among children and teenagers, so my judgments come thick and fast... rights in such matters cannot be recognized by schoolteachers, only privileges that can be withdrawn...." -John Taylor Gatto

"A society that is free cannot educate its children in anything less than freedom. Is is unclear why our society, educated by force now for more than a century, accepts more and more limitations on its own freedom and expression?" -Steven Harrison

"All living creatures are always motivated by the basic needs of their species. But every living creature, including students, is not necessarily motivated to do what you, I, or anyone else thinks they ought to do. There is certainly no basic need to do schoolwork." -William Glasser

"Imagine a fairy tale country that has a government based on freedom, democracy and basic human rights for all. Now, imagine that to prepare that country's children for the rights and responsibilities of living in and contributing to the free, democratic society, the government institutes a strange practice: Beginning at the age of five, children in the country are confined for 13 years as hostages to a totalitarian institution run as a dictatorship. In that institution, children's movement and bodily functions are controlled and regimented... Children have no right to question the validity of the curriculum, no right to critical thinking in deviance to the teacher's agenda, no right to dispute or influence procedures for maintaining order and guidance... Children are taught that the democracy exists, but are not allowed to take part in it. At the age of 18, children in that country are released. They are expected to be ready to function in society, advanced education and careers as self-motivating, free-thinking, innovative and assertive individuals. Now imagine that this fairy tale is not a fairy tale, but the very real state of the American Educational Institution for the past hundred years." -Laurie A. Couture

"We should question whether homework may not represent an intrusion by the state into our private lives. We would hardly stand for a government mandate that we spend an hour each night on citizenship training; the very though evokes Big Brother. But in essence, that is exactly what the homework ritual is. The school, as an instrument of the state, has invaded our family time with its agenda." -Etta Kralovec and John Buell

"Ninety-nine [students] out of a hundred are automata, careful to walk in prescribed paths, careful to follow the prescribed custom. This is not an accident but the result of substantial education, which, scientifically defined, is the subsumption of the individual." -William Torrey Harris (U.S. Commissioner of Education 1889-1906)