April Fools

Sun's up. A morning breeze cools the french roast in my hand with doves, jays and sparrows taking their usual breakfast places underneath the plum tree. The dog trots on patrol from one side of the yard to the other letting out various low sounds of growl indicating a feline intruder wandered the grounds recently. The morning commute echos in the air, forming the usual wall-of-sound din that serves as the sonic background to my urban lifestyle. My big cat inside the house peers through the french-door windows with a look of disgust at his imprisonment. I walk inside with the dog to cheer him up. It's not my endearments, but the offering of dried salmon which rescues the awkward reality. The lady inmate cats appear quickly to receive their usual ration of dried fish, which always must follow the big guy's preferred bribe.

The cracks in the stucco need a patch and quick touch of paint. I retrieve my tools and arm myself with latex gloves. I cover the spider web lines of separation at a corner and underneath a few of the windows. I complete the fill in the back of the house where a broom handle marks the final area of wear. A fast brush after getting the paint put back together with a quick stir ends the project.

Several kids move up and down the street with ipod cords bouncing in rhythm to their steps. I see a lot of kids out and about throughout the town everyday. Apparently school schedules must be on flex time these days.

NPR buzzes with Sam Donaldson. Sam serves up some memories of Nixon, and actually praises Oliver Stone's film of the same name. Sam tells a funny story about questioning Ronald Reagan amid his popularity slide in the early eighties when the economy was about as bad today. Reagan, as Obama does today, had a habit of always reminding the nation that the previous office holder and party created the mess. Sam's question was when would Ronald Reagan accept responsibility for some of this financial crisis. Reagan's response was funny. He acknowledged that, yes, he had once been a Democrat.

I need some tunes on to calm the critters before heading out the door. I put on a collection of oldies the Nixon chronicles had tweaked into my brain. Arthur Lee exclaims, "I just got out my little red book the minute you said goodbye......................... There's just no getting over you."

The Same "American Tune"

March Madness takes on a very new meaning this year, 2009. I sit typing and watch the rain here in "drought" headlined California. It looks like we dodge a fatal bullet to our reeling economy in the Golden State this year with these late winter downpours. There will probably be enough water this year. It doesn't appear to brighten many people's outlook on life, however. People I chat with, of varying ages, seem to be under a dark cloud that this is the worst of times for America, ever.

I was listening to some compilation CDs I put together a few years back. I still engage in the practice of personal deejay in my unfailing pursuit to convert all my analog tapes and records to shiny disc. (Pity, CDs are almost as retro and useless today as my albums of tape and melted plastic grooves. Technology advancements to make sure obsolescence occurs to make you repeatedly buy the same shit over and over again.)

After that small digression, on one of my homemade masterpieces there spilled into the air Paul Simon's American Tune. The song first appeared on Simon's There Goes Rhymin' Simon album in 1973. At the heart of the song is the line "You cannot be forever blessed." That's the way the country felt during the decade of the 1970s. Viet Nam, Nixon, Watergate, high unemployment, rising interest rates.

It didn't get any better for most of the 1980s. Unions met Reagan and took it on the chin. There is a splendid documentary, American Dream, now almost 20 years old which covers the plight of organized labor when pitted against large corporations in America. The film deals with the Hormel meat packer strike in the 1980s but seems eerily topical today. The 1980s had the precursor to our latest financial woes with the Savings & Loan meltdown, the insider trading of Ivan Boesky and junk bond shenanigans of Michael Milken to ponder. We also witnessed the art of the leveraged buyout from private equity firms that decided mob economics could work on big scale with the RJR Nabisco deal.

I still remember the wild initial-public-offering ride of the 1990s followed by the collapse of the dot.coms from 2000 to 2001 and of course, 9/11, which put the nation on its collective heels, and ushered in an era of no recovery for anyone except the very top of the earnings pyramid until our latest greed-splurge bubble burst over real estate and credit crunches.

To Paul Simon's point, many of us in the USA just haven't been blessed for a long time. A lot of individuals, and families by extension, did leverage everything they had to create an unsustainable lifestyle that now looks like an aberration rather than an American reality. We be back to square one without much to show for all our efforts but more debt.

All this seems bleak, but really that is not the case. We are still in the same boat we were floating in about 36 years ago. Really, no worse for wear as a nation just a little nervous around the edges. There are great opportunities to be had today if we pull together and build a stronger network that includes all of us.

Dog Days of the Music Biz

This weekend ends it for February 2009. Where did all the good times go? I peer in the mirror and see middle age branded indelibly in every line (lots of lines) upon a face I sometimes hardly recognize staring me down. The value of my holdings plummets in precipitous free-fall of late.

Also, many items I held in high esteem are very low on the mass market of worth these days. I never thought music, art, literature, journalism and film collectively would be worth less than a big dairy's lagoon of trapped methane. But that is what has come to pass.

I feel shitty about the current state of the music business today. Hard to believe we live in a world of commerce for music product that is controlled by Apple and WalMart. Or that Front Line Management would become Ticketmaster and dominate the concert market to such an extreme. Honestly, did you ever imagine that the Eagles, Bruce Springsteen, AC/DC and Journey would decide to sell any of their releases exclusively through WalMart? Did you ever imagine that mp3 sound would become the standard of the music industry? Why bother with a recording studio if you want make a product that has an audio range a little better than a telephone receiver? Cassette tapes are high fidelity compared to mp3s. What happened?

I get the fact that people want to be paid for their work, and that file sharing put a big crimp in royalty payments. Al Kooper wrote a great piece on Napster back in 2001. You can find it on his website, which I've linked here, and on the old side panel with other artists I find pertinent. (It's a cool site, and the man who brought a Norman Granz soul-jazz-blues element to the rock world 40 years ago with Super Sessions still has some juice.)

I recently wrote a brief few lines on this blog about record labels, and their total irrelevancy today. They were very important when the men who created the vision with like minded artists collaborated on music and put the sounds into the air and on the streets. That model broke down along the road somewhere in the late 20th Century.

Selling art like a commodity demeans and devalues art. Exclusives kill commerce, competition and creativity. This "new" business model only furthers a monopolist's control of content and marketshare. This type of deal only favors music artists who have become brands. The other 99% of musicians who toil honestly and creatively have no shot in this economic model. This is the blatant reality of an American Idol world, where the only creative forces in play are the promotional tools to get you to think this crap has any value. It doesn't.

Dream a little dream of Duke Ellington, John Coltrane, Miles Davis or Thelonius Monk selling exclusively to Sears or Montgomery Wards back in the day. Maybe you can picture Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry or Buddy Holly doing an exclusive deal at Woolworths or J.C. Penney's. Creeps you out doesn't it? People were technologically more primitive back about 50 years ago, but they weren't stupid. Can't say the same today.

I Still Think In Pink

I received a terrific gift not long ago, Remember That Night David Gilmour Live At The Royal Albert Hall on DVD. I'm a big Pink Floyd fan, and did get an opportunity to see them in Sacramento about 20 years ago minus Roger Waters at Hughes Stadium. It was an amazing show. Timeless really, a 1989 Delicate Sound of Thunder tour, which Floyd seems to always personify at each marking point along the journey.

Watching this DVD of David Gilmour without the giant albatross of Pink Floyd expectations by audiences is a real treat. He has some unlikely guests, Graham Nash and David Crosby, to accompany the band and bring a new perspective to some old classics. The great guitarist from Roxy Music, Phil Manzanera, is part of the band along with longtime friend and Floyd mate Rick Wright, who only last September passed away suddenly after losing the battle against cancer.

This DVD showcases the last major tour David Gilmour undertook in 2006 to promote his On An Island cd and to pay some final homages to Pink Floyd's original songmaster, Syd Barrett. The concert footage is wonderful and David Bowie makes an appearance singing Comfortably Numb and Arnold Layne. Enjoyable high fidelity concert sound and vision.

The real treat for me with this 2-disc DVD set, however, are the three documentaries included on the second disc. You feel like a guest on tour with very unpretentious and cool people you would like to hang out with. It is striking to also see a real commitment to very worthy causes from David Gilmour and crew. There are special humorous, inspirational and touching moments throughout the documentaries. I don't want to give away great surprises but the use of wine glasses and an appearance by an old chum rehearsing in a separate sound stage at the same studio facility as David Gilmour's group is very cool.

For much of the world this music still is the right stuff, and retains the power to cast wonder over audiences in the east and in the west. David Gilmour and his music remain a very special gift people should indulge in more frequently.

Concert Veterans Steve Miller & Joe Cocker

Hot. Bakersfield cooks like no other place during July and August. The heat and really bad air beat and shrivel people to dried pulp husks over the lengthy summer months. Only the desperate venture outdoors during August. My sweetie and I were desperate, and bought some expensive tickets to see Joe Cocker and The Steve Miller Band.

I love both of these guys for maintaining their signature sounds over the years, and never caving to the whims of what passes for pop music fashion. These guys both have pretty cool websites today that give a great look into what they are all about. Check on the links provided on this little blog outpost and take a tour if you are curious.

I bought my first Steve Miller album in 1968, Children of the Future. It was a cool trippy cover in psychedelic blue, red and yellow. My cousin set up a little projector with lights that switched from red to blue to yellow, and we would listen, smoke and watch the band fly on the album jacket. Cheap thrills. Old times, good times.

The album still sounds cool and very different from the mainstream of any era, beginning with the amazing harmonies on the opening Children Of The Future track, and winding through the two sides before closing with a cover of Key To The Highway. The album contains the roots of everything Steve Miller would do musically over his now forty plus years on the pop stage. You find melodic pop with Baby's Calling Me Home. Jimmy Reed and B.B. King inspired blues tunes interspersed with folk/country blends and mixed with lots of space headphone friendly sound-textures inside the pan knob of various effects. It blends straight ahead with humor, improvisation and vocal harmonies the Beatles could be proud of.

The Steve Miller Band on a hot August night in Bakersfield, before about five or six thousand other desperate souls seeking respite from summer, were awesome. Tight harmonies mixed with controlled energetic musicianship from every player brought out a good-time party atmosphere for the small throng assembled (if 5k is a small throng?). The band mixed in four new songs they have recorded and are working on getting ready for downloads with a lot of classic Steve Miller tunes. An extended version of Fly Like An Eagle and The Stake really stood out for me, but all songs from the sublime Wild Mountain Honey to Abracadabera put big smiles on the attendees.

The crowd was terribly thin when the night's opener, Joe Cocker, stepped up to the microphone to belt out Hitchcock Railway. He looked all of his 60 plus years, but his magic voice still sounds remarkable and unrelentingly strong. His band had some nice moments as Beatle covers like She Came In Through The Bathroom Window and A Little Help From My Friends got people on their feet singing right along. Come Together suffered from guitar wizardry that just fizzled and slowed down an otherwise good version.

I was an immediate fan of Joe Cocker after catching the film of Woodstock and seeing his outrageous persona dominate the screen and speakers with the Grease Band churning out A Little Help From My Friends. Joe Cocker created the air guitar craze and remains the world's greatest living air musician vocalist. He is still such an original.

I bought my first Joe Cocker record in 1969. It was the second Joe Cocker A&M album. It has great songs like Hitchcock Railway and Dylan's Dear Landlord, as well as terrific cover of Leonard Cohen's Bird On A Wire. It was released and gathered some steam while Joe assembled his Mad Dogs and Englishmen for their epic tour of America, which would be filmed for posterity. At the time, I could never figure out why so many critics referred to him in the late 1960s and early 1970s as a white Ray Charles. I guess anything can and will always be said to sell some shit, even good shit.

Great show in Bakersfield from these these two great artists. They both have money, which means they have truly been lucky, as well as good. Thanks for being here now, and thanks for being there way back when.