Labels Are for Bottles, Boxes and Cans

The dishwasher hums under Chet Baker with strings. If you want to capture the true definition of melancholy listen to Chet Baker. His songs evoke Technicolor scenes from the 1950s and early 1960s with some shadows framing a man with a glass within swirls of smoke and a lady silhouetted against a large windowpane of city night sky. His life played out like a black and white Film Noir creation of despair confronting fading hopes.

The Fifties are now remembered as the decade that ushered in Rock 'n Roll and Leave It To Beaver episodes. It is not remembered as that time of post war reality when men and women had to learn to live "normal" lives again with each other. The struggles of men who survived with memories of battles and other images of war pitted against the awakened aspirations of women who had held responsible jobs in areas formerly reserved strictly for males can be heard tugging against heavy wool on cotton in Chet Baker's music. There is no embrace, but really a tired collapse amid the daily grind.

Chet Baker and his music bore the label Cool Jazz during the post war era, and really until he died falling/pushed from the second story of an Amsterdam hotel. Listening to his music today you have a hard time figuring out the "Cool" within the jazz inflected heartache of the songs. After World War II, many of the seminal jazz greats had drug addiction woes to ease their decline from public popularity while the world embraced the 4/4 beat and stripped down arrangements of bass, guitar, piano and drums. The planet became rock.

Labels have been around on everything we buy from clothes to medicines. Labels adorn bottles of all types and boxes of every size. Labels belong on packages, not people or art. In the downturn of our fortunes during this decade too many of us rely too heavily on marketing tags to define our world, making our lives smaller and less interesting as a result.

In the sound recording world labels were the visions and results of dedicated dreamers who defined musical moments with a roster of musicians and songwriters. These recordists captured their day's vibrations authentically. What vast talents these people uncovered and brought to the public defined their label for all time. Record labels have no meaning today. We live in a world of URLs in cyberspace and the vat of waste that Target and WalMart permeate in the brick and mortar world of consumer convenience.

There is a bright moment weekly on the television when Mad Men runs, and captures the 1950s to 1960s moments of divine tragic-comedy when Madison Avenue dictated lifestyle to America. A show that illuminates how labels were attached to our conscience, and how hollow they all have become. Reach for a Chet Baker tune and pour yourself a drink. You'll feel better.