The Blog

I flew and drove far away to attend a 60th birthday party.

On that trip I injured my back, doing basically nothing.

I went to a memorial for an old friend who died in January. Everybody was drunk, and one of his girlfriends threw another girlfriend into the pool, overturning the buffet table in the process.

On the same day I visited another dear old friend in the hospital, and told him as I was leaving that I’d see him soon. He died two days later.

At the request of his family I created a “memorial website” in his name. It logged 5,000 hits in a week. All I did for 10 days was manage the site, answer email, post pictures that people sent me and forward messages to his family.

When that was done I went to his funeral, a sprawling two-day affair with much laughter, many speeches, and many tears. Frightened, we all promised to be better friends, and stay in closer touch.

All of this felt like Death to me, closing in.

In the 80’s I might have been voted Most Likely to Suffocate in a Pool of My Own Vomit, but somehow I’ve outlived a bunch of the voters, and even though I’m not the last one standing, I see that there are a lot of dark vacant spaces around me.

I’m shell shocked. I haven’t written anything in this space while all this was going on, because nothing seemed important. I’m looking now at my life and wishing I had made more of it. I’m looking at the time I have left — I should say the time I might have left — and wondering what I can make of it.

Oh yeah — my back is better now.

I’m drinking cup after cup of strong coffee and watching Steely Dan videos on the internet.

My job has devolved into marking time and waiting for something to happen. I’m not the guy who makes things happen here. I just clean up the messes, the inevitable chaos that arises from doing business.

The fun-blocking software here at HugeCorp seems to be down. Normally I can’t access YouTube at my office, but today everything is working. I’ve been reading a book about Steely Dan. The book sucks, so I won’t mention the title or the author here, in case the guy googles himself and finds this. I don’t like his book, but I don’t want to hurt his feelings.

Anyway, as a long-time fan of their music, I was pretty sure that the surly, angry complainers depicted in the book were not the guys I’d been hearing on the radio for the past thirty years, so I’ve been taking advantage of this little downturn/downtime in the world economy to research the real Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, and guess what? They are not surly, angry complainers. Oh, they’re not your typical rock stars. They are a bit withdrawn and they may have given some off-the-wall interviews, but the author seems to be a fan and wannabe member of their inner circle, and he has apparently made up personalities for his heroes, and is trying in his writing to emulate a Steely Dan world view that exists only in his imagination.

In the early 1970’s my beautiful teenage girlfriend went by herself to see Steely Dan in concert. I didn’t even know she had a ticket, but the next time I saw her she was still tingling from the experience and she transferred her excitement to me in a long hot afternoon. She gave herself sweetly and completely, and I decided that I was a Steely Dan fan, too.

Soon, though, I betrayed her by going on the road for a few months. I thought of her often, especially when I was singing “My Old School” and “Dirty Work,” and I even sent postcards with pictures of exotic places like the old territorial prison in the Arizona desert. She dumped me while I was gone, for a handsome forest ranger who took her away to Steamboat Springs.

I was shaken, but I got over it in time, and it’s only now that it occurs to me to weep when I think of her.

I don’t care if my neighbor gets government help in paying or renegotiating his mortgage.

I don’t mind if my neighbors are in “too much house,” or if they gambled that rising real estate values would make it possible for them to pay back a loan that was unrealistic for them. I don’t know if they were conniving bastards who put the whole economy at risk with their irresponsible borrowing, or if they were conned by a mortgage broker who was getting a fat commission and passing the risk on to clueless investors down the line.

There seems to be a lot of righteous indignation about the possibility that some people are going to get something for nothing here, and at taxpayer expense, but I’m not indignant. I’m pretty ticked off at the bankers and brokers and hedge fund managers who recklessly plunged us into this economic mess and have now walked away with comfortable fortunes while the rest of us scramble to survive, but individual homeowners? Not so much.

Personally, I don’t think it’s very important to own a house. There are plenty of ways to live that don’t involve marking off a piece of turf and saying it’s “yours,” but if some folks want to do that and feel happy in their lives because of it, I say fine. And because the real estate market and mortgage-backed securities have become such an integral part of the overall world economy, I think we — and by “we” I mean the federal government –Â ought to do what we can to stabilize that market and those securities, and if some people “get away” with something, that’s a small price to pay if it helps get us out of this depression.

Think of it as collateral damage in reverse: When we bomb a neighborhood in Afghanistan, we often kill and maim innocent people who happen to live next door to the terrorist targets we’re trying to get, and we shrug and call it collateral damage, one of the costs of war. On the other hand, when we rescue a neighborhood over here, maybe we’ll accidentally help people who are not deserving, along with the targeted honest homeowners. Let it go, people. It’s just the cost of repairing the economy.

The important thing is getting the country back on its feet and helping the deserving and needy people who are in over their heads. If some opportunistic deadbeats get a break, who cares?

I’m sorting laundry in my bedroom.

Sitting on the end of the bed, a pile of dirty stuff on the floor between my feet. I’m picking up items and tossing them into one of three piles a few feet away — darks on the right, lights on the left, whites into the plastic laundry basket in the middle. I’ve done this thousands of times.

After my friend Rick died, when he was 20 and I was 19, and after the funeral and the cursing and the crying, I spent some time with Mel, his mother, whose heart was broken by the loss of her only son, her firstborn. We talked about Rick, the only thing we had in common. Mostly, I listened. She said that after he dropped out of school and returned to get a job and live at home, it took her months of careful sorting and bleaching to return his white washables to white again. Because he hadn’t separated his colors from his whites while he’d been away at school. I knew this was true, because during that first year at San Francisco State we had done our laundry together, stuffing everything we had into pillowcases and dragging the load a block or so down Haight Street to the laundromat, where we had simply and efficiently dumped it all into the minimum number of washing machines, his red sweatshirt commingled with my white socks.

The only sorting we did was when we separated his stuff from mine after we got back to the apartment. Using this technique, we gradually turned all of our clothes the same shade of dingy gray, the color of The City that fall and winter. We didn’t care at the time. We were liberated and studious, drunk on freedom and Red Mountain and there was no reason at all why we weren’t going to change the world, or why we should have really white T-shirts.

But there’s nothing like death to make you think of life, and after my talk with Mel I started to think about how important the little things are in life, and the more I thought about it the more crucial it seemed to do the things that wouldn’t break a mother’s heart, whether it was wearing safety belts on Highway 99, or properly sorting the laundry.

The safety belt thing was too late for Rick.

But I can still hear Mel telling me in a soft voice that it might take another couple of washings to finish her job of whitening Rick’s white clothes, things that he wouldn’t be needing. Since then, I sort, because I wouldn’t want Mel to be disappointed ever again, and because changing the world ain’t no big thing if your underwear is dingy gray.

Department of music industry doom.

Bobby Owsinski, at the aptly titled Bobby Owsinski’s Blog, notes that in the future, corporate sponsors like Coca-Cola or Doritos may replace the function of record companies, funding tours and recordings in exchange for linkage between their brand and their band:

If this prediction comes to pass, it will push music further into the doldrums, since it only makes sense for a major brand to back an established artist. Artist development (which is what the industry really needs most these days) will really be a thing of the past. . . . Madison Avenue is increasingly responsible for dictating musical tastes in America, as evidenced from everything from radio to television to print. Will sponsorship finally drive the mainstream music industry over the brink of relevance?

Read the full post here. Here’s my take on the subject, as I put it in my comment to Bobby:

Well, on the bright side, if this turns out to be the way of the future, we won’t have to worry about our revered favorite artists “selling out,” since they will be owned in advance by the companies they will later be making commercials for.

And as if this isn’t foreboding enough, now comes word that Ticketmaster is merging with Live Nation and getting into the artist management business. So Pepsi or Toyota will dredge up the (presumably) handsome young boys, shape them into palatable “artists,” turn them over to TicketMaster for “development,” and when they are ready TicketMaster/LiveNation will tell them when and where to perform, and set the ticket prices.

Sort of spoils the spontaneity, don’t you think?

But to answer your question, if this model takes hold, it will fracture the music community into those who are sponsored and those who are not. Those who are not will not go away simply because they don’t have sponsors. They will perform where they can (small venues and indie festivals) and make recordings and peddle themselves whatever way they can (think Internet), which I expect will be effective in many cases. The sponsored groups, homogenized and hyped, will mostly be mocked by the true music lover, even though (or maybe because) they are making a lot more money. I’m not saying that you have to be inferior to make it big in the music biz. I’m saying that I’ll take a roomful of inspired musicians, singers and writers any day, even if they have no budget.

As you have pointed out here numerous times, the music industry is changing, even if the big boys either don’t know it or are actively trying to stop it. It won’t be huge like it was in the second half of the last century, but parts of it will always be relevant.

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Back when people used to read my blog, I could put up a short post of, say two sentences, pose a question, and get 28 comments.

I’m not complaining or anything about my status as Completely Anonymous Blogger. I think I’m probably in pretty good company, so I don’t need your damned sympathy. But because my blog emails me whenever someone does leave a comment, I am occasionally haunted by something I wrote in the past.

Today, for example, I received Comment #28 on a post I wrote in January of 2007. First, here’s the post, in its entirety:

Has any singer, anytime, anywhere, ever owned a song the way Bobby Darin still owns “Mack the Knife”? I mean, sure, other singers can sing it, but it takes a lot of damned nerve, and it is always compared to his version.

It led to a good discussion of music, something I always enjoy, and over the years it has kept bringing in the comments, presumably from fans who Google *Scarlet Billows” or “Bobby Darin” and land on that post. A lot of folks had a lot of ideas about songs that may or may not be “owned” by one singer or another, and the most recent comment (by Lil Doozcoop) nails it perfectly, as did many of the earlier ones:

February 11th, 2009 at 4:42 am

This is 2 years late but, Patsy Cline owns Crazy (written by Willie Nelson) and Peggy Lee owns Fever.

I have to admit, it’s hard to think of either of those two songs without hearing Patsy or Peggy, once you’ve heard those versions.

If you’re desperate for something to do, check out the original post. While you’re there you’ll be able to listen to Bobby Darin’s definitive recording of “Mack the Knife.” Do you agree or disagree with me or the commenters? Do you know of another song that has become the complete “property” of one performer?

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PS: Here’s my version of the song, posted because I have a lot of damned nerve. If you have already complimented me on my singing, don’t feel you must do so again. Please step back and let someone else have a chance.

Live blogging.

8:00 PM PST: U2 opens the show. Kind of Elvis Costello meets Subterranean Homesick Blues. Hey! “Recorded Earlier?” All day they’ve been saying this would be live. WTF?

8:03 PM: Whitney looks very relaxed. Wow, she’s really sucking up to Clive Davis. Is Jennifer Hudson wearing a bib? At least there’s no lobster on it.

8:06 PM: The Rock tries out his standup. He’s really got great teeth.

8:08 PM: This is not fair. Justin Timberlake gets to sing with Al Geen? Fucking Mousketeer. Al, please say you’re not seriously passing the torch to this little schmoe.

8:20 PM: I’m not crazy about Coldplay, but I wouldn’t blame Chris Martin if he got up from his piano and kicked that rapper off the stage. Right in the middle of a song! How rude!

8:26 PM: Carrie Underwood hoo ha ain’t she some bad rockin’ mama? Oh wait. This is country music.

8:31 PM: Sheryl Crow has a nice tan. I hope she’s not spending too much time in that old sun over Santa Monica Boulevard.

8:39 PM: I’m having a hard time paying attention to this “show.” I don’t know if I’ll be able to finish watching. They introduced Al Green and Duffy as “two winners already tonight,” but I don’t know what they won. Did I hear that right?

8:42 PM: Kid Rock, keeping alive the legacy of Alice Cooper.

8:47 PM: They keep teasing “Taylor Swift and Mylie Cyrus sing together for the first time.” Does that mean they plan to sing together more times in the future? Should we care about this?

8:48 PM: OK, Mylie, you are way out of your league. That older woman singing with you is much more professional.

8:50 PM: Robert Plant and Allison Krause. She didn’t hug him back when they won. What’s up with that?

8:58 PM: I wonder what those earrings are made out of that Jennifer Hudson is wearing? They seem like they would hurt. She did seem to be crying a little at the end there.

9:01 PM: Seems like a lot of commercial breaks. CBS must think a lot of people will watch this mess. I wonder why?

9:02 PM: OK, good spot about Guitar Hero, with the hot blonde doing a Tom Cruise to the old Seger song. But they blew it. She should have been somebody’s mom, and the family should have appeared at the end of the spot, looking at her like she was crazy for rockin’ so hard all by herself like that. That would have made me go out and buy whatever that thing is they’re selling.

9:07 PM: The Jonas Brothers have a new keyboard player. It’s Stevie Wonder! Bet he wouldn’t have passed their audition. Not up to their standards. What a bitter old man I have become!

9:12 PM: OMG! Blink 182 is back together! Music is saved! But the guy with the broken arm shouldn’t have had to open the envelope. That’s just cruel.

9:20 PM: Katie Perry. She’s cute, but you can tell when an act has no real content or substance by the HUGE production surrounding it. Remember Ricky Martin on the Grammy’s ten years ago? What spectacle! The costumes! The dancers! The percussionists! The brass section! The vacuousness!

9:25 PM: Kanye West. Silver lame jacket. Still complaining about not winning Best New Artist. Ooh, he is so outspoken and controversial! Whoever won it that year ought to just give it to him, so he’ll shut up.

9:29 PM: It kind of spoils the “live show” illusion when they show clips of upcoming performances.

9:40 PM: Record of the Year. Allison gave Robert a little pat on the arm this time. He gets back at her by not letting her speak.

9:42 PM: More commercials. I’m getting sleepy. Apparently they think McCartney is enough of a draw to keep us watching to the end. I have to clean the cat litter box. Hope I don’t miss the finale.

9:49 PM: Highlight of the night has got to be M.I.A. nine months preggers in a polka-dot bikini performing with the “rap pack.” She’s due TODAY, so we might have had an even better show than we did. What a trooper. Hope the baby isn’t injured.

9:54 PM: Macca kicks ass. He can still hit the high note in “I Saw Her Standing There,” and sing lead while playing eight to the bar on the bass.

10:12 PM: Hey, wait a minute. This thing is still on? I thought it was over at ten o’clock! Holy shit, that Adele has a powerful voice, and she belts it out seemingly with no effort. She’ll be around for a long time, i predict. Not like that Katie Perry or Ricky Martin.

10:18 PM: Radiohead with the USC marching band. Weird, but effective. Gwyneth — call me.

10:56 PM: I guess I’m too old for this. The only part of the show that moved me in the past half hour was the list of dead people. Somebody please leave a comment here about what a great show this was, and how exciting the current crop of new musicians and singers is, so I will know once and for all that I’m totally out of it. Otherwise, it seems to me that we are in a music recession, as well as an economic one.

I’m going to bed. Let me know how it ends.