“Bollywood Jam,” by the Alex Skolnick Trio:
If you are not familiar with Alex Skolnick’s music, you are missing out. In the 1990s, he was lead guitarist in Testament, one of the big thrash metal bands along with Metallica, Megadeth, Anthrax, and Slayer. When he left Testament, Skolnick decided to study jazz at the New School in New York City.
As a teenager, I really liked his lead work on Testament’s Practice What You Preach and The Ritual albums. When I was in grad school, I was very happy to discover that he had recorded two albums of experimental music with Primus drummer Tim “Herb” Alexander and bass wiz Michael Manring under the name Attention Deficit–both their albums are excellent music to work to. I am very happy he is now playing jazz with his trio, turning hard rock and metal classics into jazz standards.
Corporate Social Responsibility: Marketing By Any Other Name…
Signals transmitted
Message received
Reaction making impact
Invisibly
— Rush, “Chemistry,” Signals (1982).
[This post is part of the Aid Blog Forum launched this week by J., who blogs over at Tales from the Hood. For more on the Aid Blog Forum, click here.]
J. writes:
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is the new sexy thing in the philanthropy and humanitarian fundraising worlds. “Doing well while doing good” is the buzz phrase, and I admit — it’s got a nice, maybe even sensible ring to it. On the other hand, like many humanitarian practitioners I know, I come to the CSR conversation with a healthy dose of cynicism and skepticism. I’ve seen it be really lame a lot of the time, and I’ve seen it go really bad a few times. But the ship has also very obviously sailed. Corporate social responsibility is here to stay. It’s part of the global humanitarian context, for better and/or for worse. As humanitarian relief and development professionals we have to deal with CSR. Here’s where you come in. What do you think?