What Is It All For?

Friends, I have been looking at my pile over there, the rack full of plastic and vinyl and contemplating again. I have approximately 1050 titles over there, averaging 45 minutes a piece... that's 47250 minutes [787.5 hrs, give or take] of music. To hear every one of my albums end to end I would need JUST UNDER 33 days. If I did it like a job and just dedicated myself to it 8 hours a day, I would need just over 98 days [19.69 weeks considering a 5 day work week]. I'd like to know how much it weighs, but that would be too much math for one day...

Anyway, what is it all for? Am I just hoarding these pieces of plastic the way other people keep matchbooks and momentos? How much of this can I do without? What am I holding on to to keep for the one day I make a tape [and those days may be coming to an end; I am contemplating a DVD player for the truck as my faceplate just lost the spring for the EJECT button... but it's been a tough old player ever since they tried to yank it out two July's ago...] and need Ted Nugen't Wango Tango or Ric Ocasek's Pink Flag Joe or drivin 'n' cryin's Scared But Smarter? The stuff I love is all ready burnt into the synapses of my brain... I can truly 'hear' Television's Marquee Moon and Superchunk's The Animal Has Left It's Shell and the 'Mats' Bastards of Young in my head.

What is it for? Why am I holding onto all this? I think about Michael who's hauled racks and racks of records all over the country, probably now more and more piles of CDs, but he keeps the old vinyl there... is it just a nostalgia of the fun of bringing home a recortd and popping it on for the first time? Discovering things like Public Animal #9 on Alice Cooper's Schools Out [sorry if that reference touches a nerve Michael, I know it still hurts...] or Bring It On Home on Led Zeppelin II or a Johnny Winter or Rory Gallagher record, Ron Wood's I've Got My Own Album to Do, things you'd NEVER hear on the radio?

I know when I'd find something new I'd try to buy or tape everything I could get my hands on so I could know the artist's work, which has lead to some disappointments like Rory Gallagher's catalog after Against the Grain or The Who By Numbers or Hot Tuna's Hoppkorv. Still, considering the amount of hours logged trying to find the next song to blow my socks off, the amount of just total SHIT I have found is surprisingly low.

Am I just at the point again where I am ready to trade it in again? Am I ready to see what I can really live without? Have I reached a saturation point with my heroes where I don't need ALL the Stones albums, all the Pat Metheny, all the ... well I don't know. You fill in the blanks. Can I drop 200 albums and 50 Cds and not feel anything? Well, I can drop them and feel the pain some later day when I go looking for Ron Wood 1234 for a song or Brian Setzer's The Knife Feels Like Justice...

Am I just going crazy?

I jump on my beloved Michael for being the 'elitist completist' for buying every album by every band he likes and getting every collection for he has like the Stones' Satisfaction on five different CDs, not counting all the live ones. I am trying to avoid that trap. I bought a great Heart collection, do I still need Dog and Butterfly just for Cook With Fire or Mistral Wind? Do I need both Golden Smogs when I only listen to one? Do I need the Goo Goo Dolls last one? [Well, it wasn't BAD...] Am I just hitting a wall?

From My Friend Amy:

I know I'm picking an argument here, Chaz, but Christ... I gotta say it:

I don't necessarily agree with his taste in music, but I agree with the point he's making 100%.

The Rap Against RockismBy KELEFA SANNEH
New York TimesOctober 31, 2004

BAD news travels fast, and an embarrassing video travels even faster. By last Sunday morning, one of the Internet's most popular downloads was the hours-old 60-second .wmv file of Ashlee Simpson on "Saturday Night Live." As she and her band stood onstage, her own prerecorded vocals - from the wrong song - came blaring through the speakers, and it was too late to start mouthing the words. So she performed a now-infamous little jig, then skulked offstage, while the band (were a few members smirking?) played on. One of 2004's most popular new stars had been exposed as. ...

As what, exactly? The online verdict came fast and harsh, the way online verdicts usually do. A typical post on her Web site bore the headline, "Ashlee you are a no talent fraud!" After that night, everyone knew that Jessica Simpson's telegenic sister was no rock 'n' roll hero - she wasn't even a rock 'n' roll also-ran. She was merely a lip-synching pop star.

Music critics have a word for this kind of verdict, this knee-jerk backlash against producer-powered idols who didn't spend years touring dive bars. Not a very elegant word, but a useful one. The word is rockism, and among the small but extraordinarily pesky group of people who obsess over this stuff, rockism is a word meant to start fights. The rockism debate began in earnest in the early 1980's, but over the past few years it has heated up, and today, in certain impassioned circles, there is simply nothing worse than a rockist.

A rockist isn't just someone who loves rock 'n' roll, who goes on and on about Bruce Springsteen, who champions ragged-voiced singer-songwriters no one has ever heard of. A rockist is someone who reduces rock 'n' roll to a caricature, then uses that caricature as a weapon. Rockism means idolizing the authentic old legend (or underground hero) while mocking the latest pop star; lionizing punk while barely tolerating disco; loving the live show and hating the music video; extolling the growling performer while hating the lip-syncher.

Over the past decades, these tendencies have congealed into an ugly sort of common sense. Rock bands record classic albums, while pop stars create "guilty pleasure" singles. It's supposed to be self-evident: U2's entire oeuvre deserves respectful consideration, while a spookily seductive song by an R&B singer named Tweet can only be, in the smug words of a recent VH1 special, "awesomely bad."

Like rock 'n' roll itself, rockism is full of contradictions: it could mean loving the Strokes (a scruffy guitar band!) or hating them (image-conscious poseurs!) or ignoring them entirely (since everyone knows that music isn't as good as it used to be). But it almost certainly means disdaining not just Ms. Simpson but also Christina Aguilera and Usher and most of the rest of them, grousing about a pop landscape dominated by big-budget spectacles and high-concept photo shoots, reminiscing about a time when the charts were packed with people who had something to say, and meant it, even if that time never actually existed. If this sounds like you, then take a long look in the mirror: you might be a rockist.

Countless critics assail pop stars for not being rock 'n' roll enough, without stopping to wonder why that should be everybody's goal. Or they reward them disproportionately for making rock 'n' roll gestures. Writing in The Chicago Sun-Times this summer, Jim DeRogatis grudgingly praised Ms. Lavigne as "a teen-pop phenom that discerning adult rock fans can actually admire without feeling (too) guilty," partly because Ms. Lavigne "plays a passable rhythm guitar" and "has a hand in writing" her songs.

Rockism isn't unrelated to older, more familiar prejudices - that's part of why it's so powerful, and so worth arguing about. The pop star, the disco diva, the lip-syncher, the "awesomely bad" hit maker: could it really be a coincidence that rockist complaints often pit straight white men against the rest of the world? Like the anti-disco backlash of 25 years ago, the current rockist consensus seems to reflect not just an idea of how music should be made but also an idea about who should be making it.

If you're interested in - O.K., mildly obsessed with - rockism, you can find traces of it just about everywhere. Notice how those tributes to "Women Who Rock" sneakily transform "rock" from a genre to a verb to a catch-all term of praise. Ever wonder why OutKast and the Roots and Mos Def and the Beastie Boys get taken so much more seriously than other rappers? Maybe because rockist critics love it when hip-hop acts impersonate rock 'n' roll bands. (A recent Rolling Stone review praised the Beastie Boys for scruffily resisting "the gold-plated phooey currently passing for gangsta.")

From punk-rock rags to handsomely illustrated journals, rockism permeates the way we think about music. This summer, the literary zine The Believer published a music issue devoted to almost nothing but indie-rock. Two weeks ago, in The New York Times Book Review, Sarah Vowell approvingly recalled Nirvana's rise: "a group with loud guitars and louder drums knocking the whimpering Mariah Carey off the top of the charts." Why did the changing of the guard sound so much like a sexual assault? And when did we all agree that Nirvana's neo-punk was more respectable than Ms. Carey's neo-disco?

Rockism is imperial: it claims the entire musical world as its own. Rock 'n' roll is the unmarked section in the record store, a vague pop-music category that swallows all the others. If you write about music, you're presumed to be a rock critic. There's a place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for doo-wop groups and folk singers and disco queens and even rappers - just so long as they, y'know, rock.

Rockism just won't go away. The rockism debate began when British bands questioned whether the search for raw, guitar-driven authenticity wasn't part of rock 'n' roll's problem, instead of its solution; some new-wave bands emphasized synthesizers and drum machines and makeup and hairspray, instead. "Rockist" became for them a term of abuse, and the anti-rockists embraced the inclusive possibilities of a once-derided term: pop. Americans found other terms, but "rockist" seems the best way to describe the ugly anti-disco backlash of the late 1970's, which culminated in a full-blown anti-disco rally and the burning of thousands of disco records at Comiskey Park in Chicago in 1979: the Boston Tea Party of rockism.

That was a quarter of a century and many genres ago. By the 1990's, the American musical landscape was no longer a battleground between Nirvana and Mariah (if indeed it ever was); it was a fractured, hyper-vivid fantasy of teen-pop stars and R&B pillow-talkers and arena-filling country singers and, above all, rappers. Rock 'n' roll was just one more genre alongside the rest.
Yet many critics failed to notice. Rock 'n' roll doesn't rule the world anymore, but lots of writers still act as if it does. The rules, even today, are: concentrate on making albums, not singles; portray yourself as a rebellious individualist, not an industry pro; give listeners the uncomfortable truth, instead of pandering to their tastes. Overnight celebrities, one-hit-wonders and lip-synchers, step aside.

And just as the anti-disco partisans of a quarter-century ago railed against a bewildering new pop order (partly because disco was so closely associated with black culture and gay culture), current critics rail against a world hopelessly corrupted by hip-hop excess. Since before Sean Combs became Puff Daddy, we've been hearing that mainstream hip-hop was too flashy, too crass, too violent, too ridiculous, unlike those hard-working rock 'n' roll stars we used to have. (This, of course, is one of the most pernicious things about rockism: it finds a way to make rock 'n' roll seem boring.)

Much of the most energetic resistance to rockism can be found online, in blogs and on critic-infested sites like ilovemusic.com, where debates about rockism have become so common that the term itself is something of a running joke. When the editors of a blog called Rockcritics Daily noted that rockism was "all the rage again," they posted dozens of contradictory citations, proving that no one really agrees on what the term means. (By the time you read this article, a slew of indignant refutations and addenda will probably be available online.)

But as more than one online ranter has discovered, it's easier to complain about rockism than it is to get rid of it. You literally can't fight rockism, because the language of righteous struggle is the language of rockism itself. You can argue that the shape-shifting feminist hip-pop of Ms. Aguilera is every bit as radical as the punk rock of the 1970's (and it is), but then you haven't challenged any of the old rockist questions (starting with: Who's more radical?), you've just scribbled in some new answers.

The challenge isn't merely to replace the old list of Great Rock Albums with a new list of Great Pop Songs - although that would, at the very least, be a nice change of pace. It's to find a way to think about a fluid musical world where it's impossible to separate classics from guilty pleasures. The challenge is to acknowledge that music videos and reality shows and glamorous layouts can be as interesting - and as influential - as an old-fashioned album.

In the end, the problem with rockism isn't that it's wrong: all critics are wrong sometimes, and some critics (now doesn't seem like the right time to name names) are wrong almost all the time. The problem with rockism is that it seems increasingly far removed from the way most people actually listen to music.

Are you really pondering the phony distinction between "great art" and a "guilty pleasure" when you're humming along to the radio? In an era when listeners routinely - and fearlessly - pick music by putting a 40-gig iPod on shuffle, surely we have more interesting things to worry about than that someone might be lip-synching on "Saturday Night Live" or that some rappers gild their phooey. Good critics are good listeners, and the problem with rockism is that it gets in the way of listening. If you're waiting for some song that conjures up soul or honesty or grit or rebellion, you might miss out on Ciara's ecstatic electro-pop, or Alan Jackson's sly country ballads, or Lloyd Banks's felonious purr.

Rockism makes it hard to hear the glorious, incoherent, corporate-financed, audience-tested mess that passes for popular music these days. To glorify only performers who write their own songs and play their own guitars is to ignore the marketplace that helps create the music we hear in the first place, with its checkbook-chasing superproducers, its audience-obsessed executives and its cred-hungry performers. To obsess over old-fashioned stand-alone geniuses is to forget that lots of the most memorable music is created despite multimillion-dollar deals and spur-of-the-moment collaborations and murky commercial forces. In fact, a lot of great music is created because of those things. And let's stop pretending that serious rock songs will last forever, as if anything could, and that shiny pop songs are inherently disposable, as if that were necessarily a bad thing. Van Morrison's "Into the Music" was released the same year as the Sugarhill Gang's "Rapper's Delight"; which do you hear more often?

That doesn't mean we should stop arguing about Ms. Simpson, or even that we should stop sharing the 60-second clip that may just be this year's best music video. But it does mean we should stop taking it for granted that music isn't as good as it used to be, and it means we should stop being shocked that the rock rules of the 1970's are no longer the law of the land. No doubt our current obsessions and comparisons will come to seem hopelessly blinkered as popular music mutates some more - listeners and critics alike can't do much more than struggle to keep up. But let's stop trying to hammer young stars into old categories. We have lots of new music to choose from - we deserve some new prejudices, too.

MY REPLY:

Let me first say this: Ashley Simpson IS a no talent fraud. But no one in this day and age cares that she can't reproduce live what you can punch in [i.e. edit] kline by line in the studio. She is eye candy with marginal talent and it doesn't matter as long as she looks good and reproduces the dance of her video. Same as Britney, Jessica Simpson, Christina, et al. It's all about The Show.

Having said that, POP stars [be it Michael Jackson, the Archies, Bay City Rollers, 1910 Fruitgum Company...] do not REQUIRE any credability. All you need is a nicew smile, a catchy hook and a half alaive producer to keep you yarbling on key. Think David Cassidy. Or Sean Cassidy. Or Leif Garret.

Don't kid yourself. You and I both have guilty pleasures. I like some of the Bee Gees pre-Saturday Night Fever singles, especially Jive Talkin' and Lights of Broadway and How Can You Mend a Broken Heart?... I LOVE HAll and Oates hits album... I still like Faster Pussycat's first two albums... Were the Cars Pop or Serious Music?... How about all those great Steve Miller Band singles [including the overplayed Joker, smoker, midnight toker... it's a good song just overplayed!] or Paul McCartney and Wings of the 70s? Part of that comes from growing up with AM Top 40 wher you'd get Jive Talkin' followed by Why Can't We Be Friends followed by Listen What the Man Said followed by Earth Wind and Fire's Serpantine Fire and the Commodore's Brick House then Hall/Oates' Rich Girl then ... you get the idea. How about David Bowie's Fame?

There has always been a division between Pop and 'serious music,' although in rock and roll that line becase blurred about the time of the Beatles' Rubber Soul. Come on, early albums by Charles Mingus or Miles Davis or Charlie Parker or How Much Is That Doggie in the Window? But I blame the split in rock and roll on the rise of the previously unknown 'Rock Critic,' the guy who tells you that Jefferson Airplane or the Doors or the Fugs or MC5 are 'cool' and the Stooges and Velvet Underground and Count Five and Frank Zappa are 'shit.'

I am sure critics of today remain the same 'couldn't get a date in high school' uncool losers 'we' were back in the 60s and 70s, frustrated with our inability to write the great novel depicting the search for the heart of the American dream or play guitar. 'We' champion sweaty unshaven hard drinking/living souls doing what 'we' wish that 'we' could do.

Of course there are those who take 'the High Road' looking at rock and roll as art and championing Sgt Pepper's over the much more interesting Revolver and trashing [in the words of Jeff Bebee of Stillwater ala Almost Famous] 'breaking up Cream, trashing every album Led Zeppelin ever did,' and calling Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan fantastic even at their worst. [Don't believe it? Check out the Rolling Stone review of Bob Dylan's Self Portrait or Jann Wenner's rebuttal to a bad review of one of Bob's late 70s albums, Slow Train Coming I think. But Jann also loved Art Garfunkel, too.]

I understand everyone doesn't want to 'Rock.' It's old hat, cliche, tired and dead and no fun anymore. Plus if you rap, you can wear lots of gold, call women bitches and you don't have to be able to hold a note or play guitar. Avril Levigne isn't rock, but really neither is Sheryl Crow.Though Sheryl is closer than Avril. Is Kid Rock pop? By definition, it's popular...

The Rockists are the purists of today. Remeber that jazz/blues purists in England hated the Rolling Stones for mixing in Chuck Berry with the blues. People said that Sinatra and the crooners were 'a passing fad.' We miss turning on the radio and hearing real songs played by real people with real instruments. I don't dig Jimmy Eat World, but I'd rather hear that than ANYTHING with some sub-woofer destroying boom-doom fake ass beat. Welll... maybe. Rock 'n' Roll or 'Rock' doesn't rule the world anymore. Just as there's a cable channel for every taste, there's a pigeon hole for every offshoot of music that could intrest someone. Baby boomers hold onto their Motown, Beatles, etc the way their parents held on to Mitch Miller, Sinatra and Perry Como and moaned about the 'junk kids are listening to today.' I include myself as one of those people with my 70s dominated music collective.

As for the current 'backing track' questions, all I can say is this: When the Beatles felt THEY couldn't reproduce their records for a live audience, they quit touring. The Stones take keyboard players and horns and backup singers on the road. Manic perfectioninst Lindsey Buckingham and the once mighty Fleetwood Mac too AT LEAST two other guitar players, a keyboard player, a second drummer and a couple of backup singers to fill out their sound. I realize this is an expensive option for a 'band' or a singer on a first or second tour. But instead of trying to reproduce the record in person, make a statement and do what you can live. Speed up, slow down, do acpaellas and make your show interesting, not just recreating the look from your video. When bands like U2 started using sequencers and drum tracks [ala Bad from Wide Awake in America] and the Cars using 8 programmed keyboads on the Heartbeat City tour, it was all over. You lose room to improvise or make mistakes and removed the 'human element' from the show. I've seen some good shows: Springsteen, Queen, Aerosmith that were about energy, the band feeding off an audience's energy and pulling out the unexpected, like Aerosmith doing One Way Street or Rats in the Cellar.

I guess then we also have to blame the audiences of today. These kids grew up with MTV speed cut videos and Playstation and they have the attention span of a gnat so you have to keep moving and grooving and flashing lights and shit to keep their minds from wandering. It's not about MUSIC to them, it's about ENTERTAINMENT.

I sound like a 'Band-Aid,' but I fell in love with all these silly little songs that bring back memories for me. I hear Queen's We WIll Rock You or Ted Nugent's Dog Eat Dog or Steve Miller's Jungle Love and I think of Saturday afternoons spent at Big Wheel Skateland with my friend Mark. I hear Fame or Borwnsville Station doing Smokin' in the Boys Room and I think of driving north from West Virginia to see my grandparents in Pennsylvania. Stupid shit like that. I never went to see some blonde dancing around in her underwear trying to recreate a video... well, not a concert anyway.

Anyway, all I can say about lip synching is remember Milli Vanilli. One day your recording will get stuck or speed up to sound like Mickey Mouse and you'll be roasted on the internet as a no talent fraud. If Ashley had made a joke or something and started over, this would be nothing. What was her band playing during this time? Didn't they have guitars and drums, too? Were they actually playing or was this an American Bandstand/Hard Day's Night performance with no cords plugged into the guitars for them, too? My point would be, backing/sweetening track, maybe; total fraud on an audience, fuck you.

I'm a rockist and I stand proud of it. But for the record, Springsteen, Mellencamp, James Taylor, you're washed up, go home. And U2's output since Achtung Baby [except Lemon and Stay (Faraway, So Close) from Zooropa] is shit. Oh, their new album was stolen and posted on the internet... does anybody REALLY give a fuck or is it a publicity stunt?

Man I see it now, Poison and Motley Crueand the Fixx and Berlin and U2 [who never really quit but should have] and all these 80s bands reuniting and hitting the nostalgia circuit... please, my fellow 80s high school graduates, don't be like your parents and buy into this shit. You have the CDs, going to a club of small areana and standing up for three hours is just going to make your feet hurt.

That's all I got....

More Thoughts About ARTISTIC INTEGRITY

so I am driving to work Saturday morning and one of the local radio stations, in one of there 'We're Going to Play Songs NOT in Our Usual 250 Song Rotation Weekend' and they throw on Graham Nash's Chicago. You know, Graham talking about the big gathering of 1968: "Won't you please come to Chicago/ Or else join the other side/ We can change the world/ Rearrange the world/ It's dying/ If you believe in justice / And if you believe in freedom/ Let a mna live his own life/ Rules and regulations, who needs them?/ Throw them out the door..."

My first though was How Anarchistic for 1968! Then my second thought was Thank God they'll never use that in a commercial.

How can Jefferson Airplane/Paul Kantner & Marty Balin allow Volunteers to be used for a fucking wireless phone commercial? "Gotta revolution" was not written about some new PRODUCT! It was expressing a [radical] political belief! Do the songwriters need a shot of cash THAT BAD? I realize the re-re mastered [yes, the THIRD issue of these albums in 10 years, this time with bonus tracks, all of which appeared on the box set all ready] Jefferson Airplane albums aren't flying off the shelves, and half of the Jefferson Starship catalog remains unavailable on CD.. probably with good reason. Earth, Spitfire, Wind of Change and all of the Starshit/"We Built This City"; all mediocre AT BEST. [Who was worse in the late 80s, Starshit or Heart? Had to be Starshit, Heart still has credibilty and dignity...]

How can write a song like Volunteers or We Can Be Together or Chicago or Revolution about your deep misguided feeling of frustration and anarchy [Hey, Jim Morrison was right, sort of; "They got the guns but we got the numbers" (Five to One).. of course, he thought that equalled victory, but how many people without guns are going to stand up to napalm and M16s?] and thirty years later let it be used for a fucking cell phone or a shoe commercial?

I am glad John Lennon isn't here to see this shit. Can you Imagine [couldn't resist] the words he's have for his fellow artists? "You fuckin losers, you sell outs, you just let your souls be bought and sold, you fucking cowards. Are you trying to sell some records or just fattening your wallet on a fucking nostalgia trip?"

Note to Everyone

Friends, when you look at yourselves, don't be shallow; see yourselves for the uniqueness that is YOU. See what you have and what you are, not what you don't have and are not.

Chasing A Thought or an Idea...

I have been putting a couple of tapes together for someone special and in writing notes [YES, In write liner notes for my own compilations... you got a problem with that, Squarehead?] I have come face to face with myself.

The song in question is Mother Love Bone's Man of Golden Words; to quote "Words and Music - my only tools."

I have always have the love of both words and music. I have found when I am short of words I can use someone else's put to music, ala making tapes and CDs; and when words fail I can still enjoy the music. I find the joy in an instrumental like Eric Johnson's East Wes or Victory and Van Morisson's Spanish Steps [and Poetic Champions Compose album] and Santana's beautiful Incident at Neshabur as I can in something as nice as Hendix's Little Wing or thge Stones' Wild Horses or Zeppelin's Ten Years Gone or Televsion's Marqueee Moon or Guiding Light... depending on the mood you're in of course. If you feel like driving over every motherfucker blocking your way on the freeway, there's nothing better than Metallica's Master of Puppets album. If you want to drink youself into into a depression, Lou Reed's Berlin. Sitting on the balcony watching the traffic flow in the rain, Hendrix's Electric Ladyland or a Jerry Jeff Walker compilation set to random play... maybe the Eagles new 2 CD best of, disc 1, also set to random. Sad snot slinging drunk, some Replacements or George Strait.

But anyway, the point is, I have always linked words and music. I have never really been able to write music except for one or two things and a rip of of My Best Friend's Girl by the Cars. But I have these words. Am I like Lester Bangs, a frustrated lyricist in search of a band? [Of course Lester was a punk purist, where as I'd be more open in the musical end, despite my limitations on guitar and bass. I'd love to be Rick Danko putting great bass lines and great vocals out there. Of course I am not as NASAL as Rick. Maybe Phillip Lynott of the late great Thin Lizzy.] Anyway, I have always been able to use the words of others when my own have failed me. Those who have received compilations like this know what I mean. I can tell my own tale or tell people what is truly in my heart without having to come up with something to say myself. And I do occasionally run out of my own words.

Why do certain people have this aptitude? Why have I been blessed with the gift that allows me to hear the music so clearly in my head? Maybe that's the point; I hear the songs and string them together to help you all understand what goes on inside Chazzy World.

Go put on some album you have not heard for a long time, like BAD II's The Globe or Faster Pussycat's Wake Me When It's Over or ELO's opus Out of the Blue or Johnny Winter's Second Winter [now available expanded and remastered by Sony/ Columbia's excellent re-issues division Legacy Recordings, who I hope will be getting to the Dylan/Band Basement Tapes VERY SOON!!!] fall into the music and think of me sitting here struggling with the words...

My $ 1.25 Opinion on the NHL Lockout!!!
[or: Who's to Blame? The Rant You've Been Waiting For!]

Jumping into the Wayback Machine, I wasn't really affected by the NHL lockout of 94/95... I didn't have cable to catch many games and we'd only just begun watching playoff hockey the summer before with Jim off from school. There was playoff hockey and that was cool, even though I thought the 94/95 Red Wings would wipe the Devils off the face of the Earth... Fuck the TRAP !!!

But that was then, this is now. Having a team in Dallas, as mediocre even as the Stars were in 94/95 to about 1997, the beginning of the Ken Hitchcock years [Fucking Puck Possession TRAP!!!] provided spark, going to Fort Worth Fire, Dallas Freeze and Fort Worth Brahamas games provided cheap entertainment, kicking Tracey's ASS at Blades of Steel on Sega provided understanding and passion...

Now though, I understand the BUSINESS of hockey and IT SUCKS! It sucks to be a fan of a sport the only National Sports Network [ESPN] considers seventh or eighth [football, baseball, basketball, college fball, college bball, GOLF...] and 95% of America only knows from Slap Shot [yes, a classic, but... think about it, does America think of college as Animal House? Austin, maybe...]

Lok at this: in just the ten years I have been a hockey fan, the NHL has gone from an average salary of .73 mil to 1.81m [147%]. Current estimates indicate that player salary is taking up to 75% of 2 billion dollars revenue generated. National TV revenue [Canada] distributed among the teams to about 4m each. Local TV/radio and gate is not shared. Compare to other sports:

NFL Avg salary: .63m to 1.26m [100% increase; 53 man roster, players get 64% of 5 billion revenue; National TV: 18b/8 yrs, approx 75m/team; 40% gate pooled and split amongst all teams]

NBA: 1.8m to 4.92m [173% increase, 12 man roster, players getting 58% of 3.2 billion revenue; National TV:4.6/6yrs, approx 25.5m/team; gate not shared]

MLB: current avg salary 2.5m [no #s on last ten years], 25 man roster, estimate player salary taking 63% of 4.1 billion revenue; National TV: not given, 34% of gate pooled and distributed, approx 9.3m/ team

**source - The Hockey News 9/21/04

I know, that's a lot of numbers and they promised NO MATH, except that this is IMPORTANT, so stay with me! The NHL has all ready priced the everyday fan out of the arena and with almost NO US TV money coming [NBC will be airing the Stanley Cup playoffs [excuse me, almost typed layoffs there...] but the money is laughable and might as well be in Canadian dollars. I know owners [like baseball, where the Yankees created artificially high market... well, we'll get to that in a second] forked out for players and are now crying poverty, and teams like Detroit, Dallas and Colorado bank on many rounds of playoff games to BREAK EVEN, but we'll get to that in a minute.

Am I saying the NHL needs 'cost certainty/salary cap?' Boy, I am thinking so. SOMETHING must be done to halt the upward spiral. I can't believe a good, free market conservative [liberal in Friedman's terms, see Capitalism and Freedom or Free To Choose] like me just said such a thing... Lybbert would smacketh me down!

Players at this point have the pipe dream that offering a salary reduction [5% across the board; that's a $ 550,000 rebate on Jaromir Jagr; 500k on Nick Lidstrom, Sergei Fedorov, Chris Pronger, Alexei Yashin and my whipping boy for 'cost certainty' Bobby Holik; 450k on Mike Modano, who sucked last year and Bill Guerin...] and a luxury tax to force overpaying teams to share revenue ala baseball, some changes on the entry level structure [that's right, let the next generation take the hit] in order to drag salaries. All, of course, to avoid a cap. I think there are staring points in there, but I think we're looing for major overhaul here. Dallas billionaire and NBA owner Mark Cuban [rumoured at one time to be interested in the Stars] was quoted in THN 9/21 "...hockey economics...make the NBAs -and they aren't great, look like a dream."

NHLPA [union] President Trevor Linden stated in his article for THN that a salary cap would impose "severe and artificial limits on the market value of a player (and) salary caps also handcuff team management. To stay under cap limits clubs are forced to get rid of popular players or take a pass on signing players who can help improve the club."

This makes me think that the NHLPA leadership is sleeping under some sort of rock because this is all ready happening for many small market teams who cannot afford to keep up with the St Louis, Toronto, Detroit, NY Rangers, Colorado, Dallas et al. Look at the players who have exited or been forced out of places due to 'market value' in Pittsburgh, Edmonton, Buffalo, Washington, Chicago, Boston [two mediocre ownerships in those last two, but at least they are saying no to this salary spiral madness] and, until recently, Phoenix. We're still looking at a league in which we've had three teams in bankruptcy this decade [Pittsburgh, Buffalo and Ottawa] and the NY Islanders in a shaky ownership situation until Charles Wang stepped in.

My question becomes this: Would the NHLPA rather have 30 viable teams under some sort of salary rein or have 26 [losing 92 NHL level jobs] with no cap?

I understand [now] that the owners had the upper hand for so many years, like the 1920s to about 1970 and hockey didn't have a player making a million dollars until Wayne Gretzky. Wayne SHOULD have been paid that much, he brought a spotlight on the game and put asses in seats. I understand that the NHL has the most control over its players, basically controlling them from draft at age 18 until free agency at age 31. The players though have salary arbitration rights after age 25 [which I will get to, I promise] AND NHL salary qualifications MUST be made at a raise of 10% over the previous years salary.

These are areas that must be improved. The pendulum has swung to far the other. This game cannot afford to pay players the way other leagues can. Any business where salary takes up 75% of your income is not going to be viable very long. I have seen the arguments that 'hockey owners have other interests that they make money on.' Mike Illitch in Detroit has Little Ceasars, the NY Rangers MSG group has cable TV and the Knicks, the Waltons in St Louis have the Wal Mart fortune, etc etc. Which just goes to prove that you have to have some other source of income because you cannot make money as an NHL owner.

Granted, no on is holding owners feet to the fire to sign players to these contracts like the 45m/5yrs Bobby Holik signed for or paying 42 year old Mark Messier 6m or 39 yr old Ed Belfour 10m [though to be fair, the Leafs really have no farm system except other NHL teams and they will have to go buy another goalie when Eddie the Eagle's back finally gives out] or 11m for Jaromir Jagr who hasn't been within a sniff of a scoring title since being traded out of Pittsburgh; guess it was all about the guys setting him up, eh, Mario and Ron Francis? [I still say he's selfish and locker room poison.]

No, the biggest part of what's driving player salaries these days is ARBITRATION! [See, I told you we'd get there.] In the history of NHL salary arbitration, only ONCE has a player been forced to play at the rate of the previous year, and never has a salary been lowered. I have no problem using this as a tool, but players are getting an unfair boost. Rewarding players for growth is one thing, but raising salaries at the rate they are is ridiculous. Alex Tanguay [Colorado] has a raise from 1.5m to 4.25m [283%] and Milan Hejduk [also Colorado] raised from 3.2m to 5.7m [83%] this summer. Tanguay is showing steady growth from 47 to 67 to 79 pts the last three seasons while Hejduk leaped from 44 to 98 to only 75 points last season. These are two of the up ands coming guys in this league, but why should one get a 283% raise? Hejduk put up a couple less points last year, but gets 5.7m? Shouldn't he be back down around the 4.25 Tanguay is getting [or around 4.0m]? Is Hejduk being rewarded late for the 98 pts he put up two years ago? The NJ Devils [Fuck the TRAP!] forward John Madden had has salary bumped from 2m to 4m [100%] despite posting HALF the points [23/41/35] of Hejduk and Tanguay!

Two other high profile arbitration cases this summer were NJ Devils [Fuck the TRAP!] defenseman Scott Neidermeyer and Ottawa Senators giant defenseman Zdeno Chara. Neidermeyer was rewarded with a jump 4m to 7m [75%] raise for a good year, jumping from 33 to 39 to 54 points last year, though his +/- hovers near +15, which means he was on the ice for 15 more goals for his team than were scored against them. Chara was rewarded for steady growth in the offensive categories [23 to 39 to 41 pts] but his +/- has been around +30... which suggests he is twice as good a defenseman as Neidermeyer. Chara was given a raise from 2.4m to 4.6m [92%].

Wondering what's wrong with this picture yet? Arbitration is creating SEVERE AND ARTIFICIALLY HIGH MARKET VALUES ON PLAYERS, NHLPA/ TREVOR LINDEN!!!

Also the fact that players must be qualified with a raise of 10% no matter what... how manyb teams would consider qualifying and securing the services of a player they know if they could offer them 85% of what he made the year before. This would be GRAND for players in their twilight years, in a city they like making 2.5m who could sign on for one more year at the same or slightly lower money to allow the team to let them bow out gracefully. Or players knowing they had a crummy year or didn't play the year before or only played and handful of games[CHRIS PRONGER] to allow the team to recoup a little bit. And allowing the team to take underachievers to arbitration [ALEXEI KOVALEV, JAROMIR JAGR, BOBBY HOLIK, MIKE MODANO] and have someone say 'You stank last year, play this year for a reduced rate and prove yourself again.'

What's the answer them Answer Man? Well, a few years ago in his book, Bob Costas laid forth a plan for baseball that might work here. It includes revenue sharing and a salary cap, but also includes a floor cap, a minimum spending cap to keep owners from pocketing their shared revenue and putting crap teams out there... you know what I am talking about Milwaukee Brewers fans! So say there is a top cap [or even a luxury tax] of 40m; what would also be in place is a floor which would force ownership to pay out 25m in player salary. Philadelphia Flyers center [and never shy] Jeremy Roenick has proposed an individaul salary cap of 6-7m [but no limit on the number of capped players a team can carry, so the Rangers can continue to have their quota of 8 7 Million Dollar Men] and a cap on bottom level players.[THN 9/14/04] JR stated "We need to be creative here. We bring the minumim salary up for guiys at the other end, plus put caps on what rookies can make, depending on where they're drafted. The one thing we need is for each team to gaurantee it will spend a certain amount of money to make it fair across the board."

Two people surprisingly silent right now are two guys who should be able to clearly see both side of the issues: Phonix Coyotes owner Wayne Gertzky and Pittsburgh Penguins owner/cener Mario Lemieux. [Mario is busy trying to get a new arena or secure licensing for a slot machine palace in dahn-tahn to fund a new arena.]

On thing I had not considered was the possibility that an impass is declaired and ownership invites players to training camp. On ESPNs NHL page 10/6:


From lockout to strike? E.J. Hradek, ESPN The Magazine: If the NHL refuses move off its salary cap proposals, the two sides will remain hopelessly deadlocked. At some point in the process, the league will seek to have the dispute legally declared a labor impasse. Once that is accomplished, the NHL can unilaterally impose a salary cap system and invite the players back to their respective teams. The players likely will refuse that invitation, effectively turning the lockout into a strike. At that point, the league will have to determine whether or not it would like to go forward with replacement players. In this scenario, the work stoppage could last anywhere from 12 to 24 months. If, however, the league opts to negotiate a compromise luxury tax system, the two sides could solve their differences in a matter of days. That seems like a better route to take.

Ross McKeon, San Francisco Chronicle: I estimate a labor relations board will step in at some point, declare an impasse which will touch off the players' calling a strike. The season will be completely lost, then a compromise will be struck in time for next season with a new CBA featuring both a hard cap for top-salaries ($7 million), a minimum teams MUST spend ($30 million) and a luxury-tax mechanism for teams that don't eclipse top salaries for individuals, but who exceed a pre-set cap for team spending (i.e. $45 million).

Personally, I think if this lockout becomes a strike, the players lose in most people's eyes. They become greedy millionaires who refuse to compromise, no matter what the NHLPA puts out saying 'We've offered..."

My prediction is that serious negotiating will begin after Thanksgiving [US] to try and salvage a half a season ala 1994/95 with conference only games. The players will give on arbitration and owners will lower free agent ages and agree to a luxury tax. But in coming years, more players will see huge offers dwindling or see fewer free agents picked up as owners try to keep salaries in check. They'll scream collusion, but it will be their own doing. Also teams are realizing, as in baseball, that you can't buy championships anymore, you have to have homegrown talent ready to step up. The NY Rangers have FINALLY seen this and sold a bunch of players last year, as did the Washington Capitals. Detroit, NJ and Colorado have enough emerging talent to make retooling short term projects, but teams that started a few years ago [Pittsburgh, Calgary, Tampa Bay, Nasville, Atlanta] are al ready begining to show improvement and a changing of the 90s staus quo is now begining. If we ever see these guys in the NHL again.

Would NHL fans go see replacement players? I think there are enough minor leagues to stock teams again if they go that route, but I think there are enough minor, juinior, college, etc to allow true HOCKEY fans to get their fixes. No, it won't be the grandness of the best in the world, but it will be some good stuff. And I think owners would be hurt by bringing in replacements and saying "These are the Colardo Avalance" or whatever. It owuld make them look seedy and greedy when I really think they hold the high ground today.

OTHERS PREDICTIONS [ESPN/NHL 10/6]

The lap of luxury (taxes) Larry Brooks, New York Post: If the league holds to its percentage-of-the gross link, the season will be cancelled. If by the middle of November the league commits to negotiating a luxury-tax based system, a deal probably can be reached by Christmas.

Al Morganti, ESPN: This lock out is going to last through the Canadian Thanksgiving, American Thanksgiving, Christmas Day, Boxing Day, and into the first weeks of the new year. The maddening part is that the end result is something we can predict right now: there will be a luxury tax on payrolls over about $42 million, the arbitration process will be dramatically different, the age for free agency will drop to about 27 years old, and the Rangers will still stink. Figure that pressure from the owners on Bettman will start getting greater around November, the number of anonymous quotes in the media dramatically increase around the first of December, and a settlement sometime around Christmas will lead people to think the luxury tax was the NHL's idea in the first place. The season will resume with a conference-only schedule of 45 games, a fast-paced playoffs, and the Tampa Bay Lighting retaining the Stanley Cup.

What's on Your Mind???

Disturbing Trends in CD Land

Has anyone else noticed these new one name 'critic pick' bands [i.e. The Strokes, The Hives] are issuing 30 minute CDs? 12-13 songs but only 30-35 minutes of music? Is this a good 'Less Is More' trend? Rancid's great Life Won't Wait has 22 songs clocking in at just over 64 minutes... that's 2.9 minutes a song. The Hives' Tyrannosaurus Hives 12 songs clock in at 31 minutes for about 2.5 minutes a song. They're not writing Soundgarden/Black Sabbath long spiraling dirges, not even writing Beatle-esque pop masterpieces, just three or four chord shouters... they couldn't come up with two or three more songs or added an extra chorus or verse for a short guitar solo or anything and gave the 'Consumer' a better value for his money? I could understand the Ramones financing their own low budget first few records {$ 6000 for that first album!} but in this day and age, on a major minor label [Interscope, dist by Universal]? I admit I bought mine used for $ 8, but did the label lower the 'Suggested Retail Price' for such a short CD? If they did, then okay, but if they suggested a full $ 16.99 for this, then I understand and lean a little more for the 'Music Sharer.'

Are You Serious?

I feel like Jack Black in High Fidelity saying this; You know the scene where he's playing the Kinky Wizards tape in the store "What is this?" "It's those skater fucks... and it's really good." The new Silverchair.. apparently the lead singer dude almost croaked last year and he's been writing good songs since then.

Other buying habits recently, I have been buying a lot of older country since I can't find much current 'Rock' that I want to listen to beyond about three listens and current country sounds like 80s pop. Fabulous collections by Merle Haggard, Steve Earle, Hank Jr's Greatest and some Dwight.. the Hives, Heather Nova from the 90s [reminds me of ex Breeder/Belly girl Tanya Donelly], best ofs by ELO and Heart... FINALLY got the new Westerberg tonight. I guess it's good that my CD shop kept selling it out, at least it means SOMEONE is buying it besides me.

Can someone explain a Fritz Ferdinand to me?

Living In the Past

Put my earrings in this past weekend to go hang out with young 'Holy Mikey' [who came over fresh from getting new tattoo-age]... I felt like a punk again, or at least someone younger. I felt like the nights we'd go into Deep Ellum to drink it dry and catch some bands, knowing we weren't going to get laid or anything, and basically howl at the moon and be rockers. Friday and Saturday nights for forgetting that the five other nights you were a lonely music snob and seeing unapproachable girls in mini skirts and cleavage to think about later... basically living those drunken, lonely Replacements songs. Friday night is killing me, indeed.

But the question arises: Am I pretending to be someone I used to be or allowing the 'true me' to surface again? I have locked myself into Mr Cool Calm Collected Music Snob for so long, have I forgotten my 'true self?' Am I what I am now or am I what I was then with a few years of polish to smooth out the rough edges? Or are they the same? Did I let my inner teenager/Chaz of youth out to play again for a while?

The earring are out now [like a fool I bought piercing studs and they stretch my holes and stab me in the back of the ear when I sleep on them... should have been paying attention!], the jack is back in his box, and I am part of the briefcase carrying 'Do Nothing' brigade again. They even have me wearing slacks and real business shirts at this new job! They're trying to make me respectable!!! But like cool fall and spring [and even summer] nights that push you into feeling alive again... maybe that's it. Maybe I just felt REALLY alive again for a few hours.

Stuck Inside of Euless With Hall of Fame in Mind [OR Reading the Back of My T Shirt]

The Lovin' Spoonful is a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame worthy band????!!!!???? For what, electric harpsichord? I got nothing against John Sebastian and the boys personally, they made some great singles, but they 'changed the face of rock and roll?' NO. UH-UH. NO WAY.

Thoughts? Answers? Shut ups? chazg66@yahoo.com
SALEH!!!

Rock and Roll [Part II]

I was just thinking this morning wether the Velvet Underground REALLY deserve to be in the RRHoF... I mean, really, [to paraphrase Lester Bangs] do people love the Velvets because they really like them or because it's 'cool' to like them. I mean either way, Loaded is a GREAT record, but that first one? What the fuck did Nico really do? Venus in Furs, Waiting for the Man, Heroin okay... I don't know about 'Hall of Fame worthiness,' though.

How about the Allman Brothers? Don't you really have to consider their WHOLE career, nut just Fillmore East and Eat A Peach? How about Win Lose or Draw or Enlightened Rougues?

Travel Notes Part III: The Long Trip Home

After three days of lazing at Grandma Sheets' doing a WHOLE LOT of nothing, a Wednesday night ice cream social and a card game in which I knocked MYSELF out of... drove up to Port Matilda/State College to take care of some more family business, drove back toward Ohio in a spitting rain, got turned around in another fucking construction zone trying to get into a hotel and wound up on a toll road headed back toward Grandma's. Took the PA and Ohio turnpikes and wound up just outside of Kent OH, home of Kent State.

After Friday nigh spent eating good pizza [no matter what my cousin Karl thinks] and watching Karl's little boy play with my uncle Ken, I got up Saturday morning for the high mission: the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

I had never been to 'the mistake by the lake' known as Cleveland, but as I drove in, I could see it's charm; not too large and it looked like a nice downtown. Entered right by 'The Jake' [Jacobs Field] where the Indians were fixing to whomp the Twins again [but they have sucked ever since I left town and appear to have fallen out of the playoff race, something I need to drop Jay a line on...] weaved through construction and came down to the lake where the street was closed off for some Red Bull sponsored street festival [I watched some skateboarders while waiting for the films later; nice view of the lakefront].

Anyway, if you didn't get a postcard, the RRHoF is a big six story pyramid looking building and you start at the BOTTOM with a couple films [which I skipped due to length of the line] then some photos and paragraphs about the pre-rockers [Robert Johnson, Bessie Smith, Louis Jordan, etc]... UNFORTUNATELY there is only one pair of headphones to check out five or six of these pioneers, so I never got to hear Ma Rainey or Jimmie Rodgers or [I point out the CMHoF had small mounted players with speakers that held about 30 seconds of 6 or 8 artists in the featured display] The you're into the 50s with Elvis' two sided big glass case... do we NEED his fifty grade report card or about a dozen old magazines with Elvis on the cover? [I have the same complaint about the Beatles area: it's about 75% of frivolity like the Flip Your Wig game and Beatle Wigs; the Rolling Stones exhibit has NONE of this crap]

Anyway, most of the exhibits are 30 foot long glass front cases with any information about the era or scene [British Invasion, San Francisco, LA, Seattle] along the left end of the exhibit, then just items numbered with a description at the bottom... kind of lame and had NO flow. Some of the most interesting items are original song lyrics on hotel stationary, steno pads, whatever with scratch outs and corrections... I think that's neat and perhaps they should have their own area, like all the fucking clothes! But I digress...

I guess my point is this: there's a LOT of interesting stuff. I didn't spend four hours there because I am some sort of nerd... well, scratch that... But [perhaps in the great spirit of Rock and Roll] it's disorganized and seems half assed. There's WAY too much Jimi Hendrix for someone who released like 6 albums in four years; granted he was/is one of the best and most influential guitar players that EVER came along and like Hank Williams had a career cut tragically short... BUT his childhood drawings? like a dozen stage costumes? Come ON all ready!

Another major complaint: there is no central inductees area [except in the RRHoF gift shop/CD store where they are in a separate section]. The bronze plaques of the CMHoF are dated, but I suggest an etched/painted glass ala the Hockey Hall of Fame... THAT would be cool. Maybe thats what needs to be done with the special exhibition areas on floors five and six...

And while I am in the area, let's discuss criteria; While I do not doubt that most of these persons/groups deserve to be here, it seems we are ALL READY reaching only 20 years into this thing. Talking Heads? Jackson Browne? George Harrison - solo artist? Bob Seger? I don't necessarily mind the criteria [25 years after first release] but perhaps there was too great a rush on inductions in the early years to generate interest [70 inductees in the first 5 years, 133 in the first 10]... what if the criteria had been changed to say 6 artists per year, 2 builders, 1 songwriter and 1 media member [and MAYBE start a select committee for 'underrated/underappreciated' artists]; The first class then would have been:

Chuck Berry; Little Richard; James Brown; Ray Charles; Elvis;

and then a GREAT DEBATE over the Everly Bros, Sam Cooke, Bill Haley and Jerry Lee Lewis for that last spot; Alan Freed in the media, Robert Johnson and Sam Phillips [or Ahmet Ertigun] for the builders and Leiber and Stoller as a songwriting team. Then the next year you have the leftovers, PLUS Johnny Cash, the Impressions, Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye, Eddie Cochrane, BB King, etc to vote on... maybe we wouldn't be down to some of the SHIT we are talking about now just yet... are the Grateful Dead really FIRST BALLOT Hall of Fame worthy? My beloved Jefferson Airplane? The Animals? Frankie Lymon? BILLY JOEL? BONNIE RAITT? Give me a fucking break! Oh, and a category for sidemen and producers, i.e the studio guys for Phil Spector, George Martin, Scotty Moore, James Burton, James Jamerson [or the whole Motown Funk Brothers], the Muscle Shoals rhythm section, the Memphis horns et al...

Lots of guitars, lyrics, clothes... great stuff.. Remodel soon.

Then I saw Grandma Galupi... I confess I am not terribly close to any relations on my father's side of the family. I learned much about my Grandfather who died when my Dad was still a boy from Hodgkin's Disease, my grandmother's trips to the VA hospital in Pittsburgh [by bus and cab] and some angels who looked out for her with advice and support; how my grandfather suffered flashbacks of the war [now diagnosed as 'Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome'], how they met and stuff. I find myself asking the elders about this kind of thing now, I guess before their memories are gone and lost so SOMEONE can carry on the traditional talks "When my grandfather was a boy..." Like how Grandma Sheets walked to Rochester [three miles] to school and home each day [no "uphill both ways" from Grandma; just "if your friends wanted to come out they walked, too. That's just how it was."] and worked in Cleveland to work for a family for a short period, returning out of homesickness, I suppose. Learning how my grandfather had actually gone out to try and meet my grandmother's younger sister and tales of a daring young man on a motorcycle... how my great uncle Don's family had a big dairy farm ask of Beaver Falls, an area known as Steuber hill. Anyway, I learned much this trip.

Then Sunday morning I got up and started home. It's good to travel, but it's always good to get home. And after a bit of discussion with my uncle Ken the truck driver, I decided he was right and in spite of EVERYTHING I said below, I should head back the shortest route, which was the way I came, Arkansas construction and all. Never say never, I guess. Donations of CROW to 855 E Ash Ln... I had a better drive back through Ohio, stopped in Bowling Green KY for about and hour for lunch and rest, jumped back down 65 to Nashville [only about an hour away]... seriously considered returning to Thompson's for photo of and to claim whatever change I left, but I was moving well, so I left the way I came, back down 40 blasting Led Zeppelin, planning only to get to Memphis of just beyond before dark. Made good time and decided to get 'through that construction zone in Little Rock,' got into traffic and just kept rolling, stopping for gas and finding the Dr Demento show between LR and Texarkana; from Texarkana it's only two hours to Dallas, so I got in with some trucks and blew on, Springsteen's Nebraska and Darkness on the Edge of Town keeping me company after losing Dr D... got to my place at 345 am 19.25 hrs and 1230 miles later. Called my Mom to let her know I was home and I had just balled it al the way, got called and idiot. Unplugged the phone and went to bed...

Six more days of not much, some lunches, some things I needed to catch up, laundry... now it's back to the grind of a JOB. [shudder] More on that later.

Travel Notes Part II: The Long Version - Nashville and PA

Tuesday [8/10] : No sunrises yet... but we recall...

Two wonderful mornings in Nashville. Marty and Kelly have a great [now multi-tiered] deck overlooking their back yard with its fish pond and wooded grove. It's a great place to look down on while having your morning coffee. The CMHoF is very cool, lots of video and sound and interactive. Videos from Hee Haw and Porter Waggoner gave me flashbacks from my Grandpap's living room... unfortunately I could not make a custom CD because we got comp tickets from a friend of Marty's mother in law, who works at the Opry or Opryland... bought on of those super cool black T shirts with "CASH" on the front you see Wynonna and Brooks [or is it Dunn?] sporting.

Street hockey with Marty, his boys and all the neighborhood kids was a blast; three people on skates, about five not and only me and Marty over age 8.


The drive from Nashville to Pittsburgh covers a lot of America's heartland... lots of green this time of year. I love the ride through Appalachia, looking at the rock face where the mountains have been blasted apart to make the interstate and sections of road where just off the berm and gaurdrail there are fifty and hundred foot drops straight into forests. Then you're into the rolling hills of Kentucky... one of the coolest sights on this leg is coming around some big hills and into the Ohio River valley and suddenly Cincinnati [the Queen City] opens up before you. Cincy is a nice little city.

Ohio drivers are the rudest; they DO NOT move over after passing, so you have long trains of cars stuck in both lanes. I swear it was a busy as a holiday weekend. Other than that, you roll right through the Ohio corn country [oh that fresh Ohio corn yum yum] and it's just like driving a two lane black top through farm country.


That was Sunday. For the last two days I have done... not much of anything. Checked out some hockey collectables, got new shoes, written post cards... couple of naps and lots of time out on the swing with Grandma and Grandpap. HE is not doing so well, slow and shaky. But I am more relaxed than I can remember... probably since summers spent here when I was in high school.

I have done the Beaver Valley junk food circuit: Kretchmar's bakery for maple rolls, Jerry's Drive in for burger and rings and the regionally famous Brighton Hot Dog Shoppe for chili cheese dogs with onions... their chili is pretty thin and mostly meatless and mild, but is unique to this area. And cheap. And the HDS and Jerry's are institutions of this area since MY mother was in high school. So it's kind of a must. Unfortunately, the shake machine was down at the HDS; they have the best shakes this side of Arby's Jamocha shake. Frozen custard, like soft serve ice cream is also a staple around here, but there is a little stand with home made ice cream called Brewsters that is THE BEST. [Note: I did not get either frozen custard or Brewsters this trip. My loss.]

I will not get into Pittsburgh or 'The Strip District' this trip to feast in the small restaurants and delis down there. Cory and I got great Lebanese there one year and great Italian deli. I will not get to the Carnegie Museum; all the times I have said I wanted to but I just want to relax out here in the country. I will probably not get back to Charleston WV either,; it will just add about five hours to what will all ready be a 20 hour trip home. It's my sacrifice for relaxation.


I was alone in my grandparents house today. I don't know if I have ever been totally alone in this house before. I take a good look around; the kitchen where meals and conversations and card games have taken place... so many laughs, so many good smells from my grandmother's stove. The big bedroom addition over Grandpap's shop, the master where I'd bounce in when I was younger, Grandpap's stubble scratching my face and the smell of his Old Spice and Grandma's perfume hanging in the air. The two connected bedrooms I remember only as Becky and Emy's rooms, that housed all the kids at one time. My uncle Richard's bedroom, the former master bedroom. The writing desk in the dining room where I used to do all my line ups for dice baseball games between the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Cincinnati Reds as a kid [the two powerhouses of the NL in the 70s].

Some of the trees I loved are gone. The old swing down from the plateau where Grandma used to hang the "worsh", the big maple that used to dominate the front of the house. The big stone cook stove where we used to cook dogs and burgers and roast [and burn] marshmallows is gone. The back yard where we'd play Chinese Freeze Tag and the killer games of croquet... ah, the joy of sending my Dad down under the wash lines and down into the big field at the front of the house... The back porch where I'd put on my Superman cape [blue - the wrong color!] and jump off from between the railings is enclosed with windows, shut up tight. The old grandfather clock that used to scare me and keep me awake doesn't tick very loud any more and it doesn't chime the quarters or the hours any more.

Then there's the pictures... there's tons more now than there used to be, pictures of grown up grandkids and their families [crimeny, some of my cousin's kids are graduating high school!!!], old pictures of my aunts and uncles from way back in high school or weddings [oh the old hair styles!] and now with their own grandchildren. The few surviving photos of the great grandparents and MY great aunts and uncles... five generations spread out on walls and shelves and just about any flat surface there is room. In the bedroom where I am sleeping [Becky's old room] there are two old trees with wallet sized portrait ovals on one of the shelves filled with pictures of my and my cousins circa 1975, 16 in all. Three or four of my cousins on this side of the family had not yet been born... I was just looking at them and thinking how young we all were! And a dozen feet away in the living room there we are all again with wives and husbands and kids of our own... will the circle be unbroken indeed.

I wondered last time I was here if I was in the company of familiar strangers... what was I doing here? I don't know that I have an answer. Family is family, even if you only see them once a year, I guess. I have learned just to smile and nod along when I have no clue what they are discussing, something that came in handy when I found myself on the sidelines with busted glasses at Kelly's family reunion Saturday night. I wonder if this contributes to my closed mouthed [well until ya really get to know me] ways?

Travel Notes Part I: Coming North

It’s been around 20 years since I last had the opportunity to drive north into Pennsylvania; probably not too odd considering I have been working steadily since 1989. I don’t think we had done it as a family since the summer of 1986, which would have been the first of my cousins [Roxanne I believe] getting married; after that we flew. So when I learned that they were closing ADT back in May, I began to consider taking a couple of weeks and driving north, knowing I had a place to stop in Nashville which is about halfway. But I hemmed and hawed and thought about it… I just hate flying now, all of the hassles of security, then being 30000 feet high in a little narrow tube of aluminum… so the closer I got to being unemployed, the more I thought about it. How many times will I get the chance again? So I decided to go for it.

The "Last Day of ADT [Dallas]" went okay. I have no sentimentality for stuff like that anymore. Maybe when I look back in a few years, I will be more something but not right now. There are a few people I will miss; I had a few good mentors who helped me along the way, like Craig Issacs and Joe Francis, but they are long gone... It was just weird. They did feed us some good BBQ, but there was no crying. Exit interview? "Hand your badges and head sets to Cherie on the way out." Yeah, 1230 and they said "You can go home OR you can stay and help Rochester on the phones." Like anyone was working anyway, except me. I figured I was still getting paid to answer the phone and all. Of course, that's just me. But I didn't stay to help Rochester, either.

Let me start by saying that if you'd have told me ten years ago I would be leaving Texas listening to country music, I'd have said you were crazy... but I was leaving Dallas listening to KHYI, then Jerry Jeff... The first thing I noticed was that once one is outside of the cement and glass of the Metroplex [say around Greenville] the air changes; it feels and smells different, definitely more rural. One can look off the freeway and NOT see anything but an occasional house or a truck going down the access road. I watched as the sun rose through the clouds out in east Texas, an orange- red which may or may not be found in the Crayola box. I looked at it and thought of morning spent in my grandparents kitchen in Pennslyvania or my other grandmother’s living room in Ohio and other mornings that burst with energy and possibility and fun….

The bummer of the trip [so far] was the construction in Arkansas. In the 20 [+/-] years since I have come through last, I’ll bet they have quit repairing the freeway ONCE, for about two weeks around Christmas in 1992. Coming into Little Rock, leaving Little Rock, coming into Memphis… the one leaving Little Rock, I swear they closed down a lane of the freeway while the cut the grass on the median! And in Arkansas, they close the right lane down, sent you about a quarter mile in the left then shift everyone back into the RIGHT lane! I thought it was a fluke the first time, but they did it three more times! Apparently someone has stolen all the “Left Lane Ends Merge Right” signs in Arkansas.

The trouble then is you have everyone jockeying coming into the construction to get around the big trucks, then they roll slowly through the construction, then you’ve got everyone jammed up for an hour past the last one trying to pass the trucks as they are gathering up speed… then you’re into another construction zone. Fuck Arkansas, I will not go back that way. I was so mad by the time I got through that I refused to spend another dime in the state: no gas, no food, though I was half starved by the time I hit Memphis…


My stated mission plan was to hit the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. I did not know there was a Rockabilly Hall of Fame in Jackson TN where I stopped finally to get lunch. I thought about stopping, but I was making good time into Nashville and thought I might avoid the rush hour if I pushed it… I didn’t make it, but considering the traffic jams in AK and a couple stops for food and leg stretches, then getting lost two blocks from Marty’s house, 13 hrs was not bad time. Got in with a truck between Jackson and Nashville that was just humpin’ it and ran around 85 for a good stretch through the hills…


More later !!!

So We're Talking in the CD store last night...

Me and young Joe the Kiss Freak and he asked a question that they had been apparently kicking around for a while...

Can you name many acts where somone has left to so "solo" [or left period] and eclipsed their former band? Even more specifically in the area of hard rock/heavy metal?

Sting has sold more records than the Police, but is he broken much artistic ground since Blue Turtles? Joe says Morrisey and the Smiths is about a push... Dio over Rainbow maybe... most definately NOT Ozzy over Sabbath [if Randy Rhodes had lived, maybe we would be saying different]...

The only one we could really hit on walking through the aisles was Joan Jett over the Runanways, but that's not much is it?

Send replies to chazg66@yahoo.com, y'all.

GOOD NEWS: I got signed on with Brinks yesterday and I start 08/23/04, so I can go driving up the east with abondon and still have a few days to recover when I get back! In town, Leone???

Tommy Get His Tonsils Out

Okay rockers, time for the new Tommy Stinson review! Tommy gave us the purity of Bash N' Pop, a great short lived vehicle [Where IS Steve Foley now?] for carrying on the Replacements mixture of rock and roll and introspection without the 'Alcoholic Boob'-ness [i.e. the fun without ALL the self destruction]  and a slice of purer power pop in the form of a 5 song EP by Perfect [6 if you count the hidden send up of Elton John's Crocodile Rock... but that album, paid for and shelved, now being remixed for release AT LAST, featuring now long time Dallas resident/Clumsy leader Mark Soloman]... bt it's been a while since Tommy's voice has graced our views credited, i.e. not some nom de player or side man. But finally we have Village Gorilla Head. This really is Tommy's solo debut; Taking a cue from Westerberg, Tommy plays about 90% of the instruments here, even drums on one track "because it's MY record."

And it kicks off with the rough gem of guitars and drum machines, even sounding eerily similar to that other ex-Replacement, singing "Not in my house / Not in my room/ Not in my home without a view" which he has to leave to "Hear some noise / A murder on a bus / A dealer with his shame / A baby that want's a different name.." then at about 2 1/2 minutes the guitars and real drums kick up "somewhere there's got to be a better view..."  Ah that left handed Minniapolis optimism...

Not A Moment Too Soon reintroduces Tommy's nasal voice and great pop sensibility ala B&P... Something Wrong recall's Perfect...from here on, the refernces are there, but Tommy expands on that base, managing to sound similar to his previous bands [except that first one] but not as obviously, though Couldn't Wait is another slab of purely Perfect metallic pop. Tommy also has a good way with the lines; check out "Looks like you need some sleep with a walk that defies your speech / You're doing good, you're feeling fine / You're looking tore up between the lines." And Biting Your tongue is a bitter swipe at someone who will be cringing upon playing this disc. 

Village Gorilla Head and Light of Day are clausterphobic 'Modern' sounding tracks. VGH lacks high frequencies and dirge-like pace really paint a good picture for someone's bad dream. Light feels like Oasis meets KLF with Tommy's restrained vocals. Hey You is the album's longest song and maybe its centerpiece, but Tommy doesn't offer any answers; he forces the listener to contemplate if he is 'them or us' asking "Did you come to fight or come to the rescue?"  Motivation follows the tradition of following somewthing heavy with something to relieve the tension, usually something catchy and crunchy. It wouldn't have sounded out of place on Jet's record. And Someday follows a tradidion of baring one's soul on the last track, Tommy maybe mourning, maybe just saying goodbye to 'wasted youth.'

This is definately Tommy's record, mature, the same way Stereo/Mono put the death nail in his former bandmate's 'Drunken Clown Prince of Rock and Roll' persona. This is a mature record from a guy my age stepping out into the unknown and not feeling sure about himself, but going out there anyway. I think you'll like it.  3.5 stars

The Waiting Game


So I am sitting here at work feeling impotent and useless as... gee I can't even think of anything I am so mind numbed. I still have things I could be doing, but I am told "Don't touch; the new people will work their areas." SO I guess I'm sitting here just waiting to be told to go home, 'waiting for the end of the world.' And 'it's the end of the world as I know it [and I feel fine].'


Oh, it's so mind numbing walking into strange places and asking for applications and filling them out. At least I have everything organized on a little folded sheet of paper I keep in my wallet, though I found I don't have everyone's address current while putting down references. It's such a whipping and I haven't even begun the real grovel festival that interviews will be. "Please give me a chance, I'm the hardest working man you've even seen, I'll do your taxes, wax your car, wash your windows, anything, just give me a chance!"


It's kind of sad, like watching your favorite hockey team trade players for 'salary reasons.' Slowly watching a group break apart and go their separate ways, SOME of whom I like. Makes me wonder what I have been doing for the last six years. I mean I don't kid myself that this is a 'life affirming calling' or that anything I do here changes the world, but now it's all so much smoke and dust. "Thanks for everything, here's your check, bye now!" Sure a small golden parachute, but not much... I guess that the weight is starting to bear down on me a little.

I was sitting here listening and playing along to David Bowie’s great Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust… and remembering my first Bowie and Springsteen fanatic, my high school journalism teacher, Barb Tatum. I encountered Barb as a high school sophomore when they had a big class meeting suggesting electives since you have so many more your junior year. I always liked writing so I signed up for journalism, the only upperclassman in a class of freshmen and sophomores. She had an energy to her that I liked and she got to be a friend when we’d sit around and talk rock and roll. [I also got to borrow records from her; I know I taped the first two Aerosmith from her and Alice Cooper’s Billion Dollar Babies and Springsteen’s Born to Run. Too bad I never asked her about Darkness on the Edge of Town…] She had posters for Bowie’s Serious Moonlight tour up and allowed a few select favorites to bring in posters and add to the décor. I brought a promo Tom Petty Long After Dark poster that was hung prominently on the door, Raymond brought in a Judas Priest Defenders of the Faith flat and Monica Mahaughn brought one of those wall sized posters of Boy George, who Barb was also impressed by. "The Boy" was the source of many discussions, whether feminine weird ala Boy George was worse than "shock you" weird like Alice Cooper. I admit, I was sheltered and didn’t understand at the time what a ‘flamer’ The Boy was. Live and learn, I guess. I may have posted before that Barb let us call for Springsteen tickets from the Journalism phone and she, myself, my Dad, Kristie and I don’t remember who else enjoyed lower blacony seats for the first leg of the Born in the USA tour, the first night’s show INDOORS at Reunion Arena. I admit it was one of the best shows I have seen, a long acoustic set to open, then a rocking set after about a 20 minute intermission. Bruce was a great all around show, from both a musical standpoint and a spectacle. I was sorry to see him go to stadiums, though I thought he was one of the few musicians who could carry a stadium show, but I also knew, even then, that the message would be lost among that many souls, that people were going for "The Experience", to brag that they had seen Springsteen. I was cynical, even as an eighteen-year-old. Of course, I did the same thing seeing the Stones at the Cotton Bowl, but I admit I would never go to a show like that again. Lou Reed was also one of the great shows musically; he had a kick ass band and they played tight. I would still love to have a copy of Doing the Things That We Want To from that show. And I’d like the Black Crowes first show from the Bomb Factory on the Amorica tour. [Why does Feathers remain unreleased? The Crowes have an album’s worth of B-sides and unreleased stuff I am sure, and it’d be nice to have Darling of the Underground Press, Chevrolet, Just Say You’re Sorry, Mellow Down Easy and Tied Up and Swallowed together instead of searching for the singles when I want to tape them!]

Anyway, the thought about Tatum… Her son is about 16 or 17, probably getting ready to start going to shows. I was just wondering what he listens to. Does he listen to Korn and System of A Down to annoy his Mom the way listening to Black Sabbath and Alice Cooper pissed off and scared Barb’s parents? Does he realize the treasure trove siting there in his Mom’s collection? Can he appreciate The River, Ziggy Stardust and Long After Dark or does he reject it because "that’s what my Mom listens to?"

It strikes me now that I did that… partially. I said for years I didn’t like soul music, now I get excited about the Stax and Motown box sets as true classics. I didn’t like my grandpap’s country music, now I find myself just this evening listening to Willie Nelson and buying Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings and Merle Haggard anthologies. [True enough though, some of that is NOT my Grandfather’s country music. Guess I need to go through his stack when I get up there.] Are the kids of my peers rejecting Van Halen, Sammy Hagar, Ratt, Def Leppard, etc outright because "That’s what my PARENTS listen to?" Will the children of the next generation reject Korn, Soundgarden, Puddle of Mud, et al for the same reason?

Then again there are things that seem to cut across generations. People still love the Beatles. People still love the Beach Boys [what 17-year-old hasn’t gone cruising to the Beach Boys daydreaming of fast cars and bikini babes and just being somewhere warm?] Certain things will remain ‘timeless’ because there are few political or dated references: Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Beatles, Beach Boys, and Willie Nelson.

GNR on VH1

While I am no longer and avid VH1 watcher, I do occasionally wander back there to see if anything MUSICAL is happening [it's usually NOT; I ask the rhetorical to end all rhetorical questions yet again, how alleged Music Video channels like MTV and VH1 get away with NOT playing music videos?] and I came across the Behind the Music: Guns N' Roses. [That's Guns An Fuckin' Roses for all you Burleson High School graduates.] Of course, it has been on two nights this week all ready and is scheduled AGAIN tonight, thus reinforcing VH1/MTV rule #2: "Whatever we have, run it a million times, unless it is an actual music video."

Now I dig Appetite for Destruction, though not as much as the next guy. Anyone who is fan of guitar driven rock ala Led Zeppelin and Aerosmith has to admit that it's a great record. GnR Lies was okay; I never got into it, though Patience is a pretty good song and Used to Love Her reminds me of some of the Stones more tongue in cheek stuff like Dead Flowers. But Use Your Illusion is a sprawling mess [and not in a pretty good way ala Exile on Main Street] that should have been pared down to one 2 Lp set, or maybe a 3 Lp set. Come on, Live and Let Die needed to be on that set? Get in the Ring? Whatever the single was after November Rain where Axl's stroking, excuse me, swimming with the dolphins because Stephanie Seymore broke up with him and wouldn't appear in the video? And that wailing note that just drags out at the end of an otherwise descent song like Don't Cry? EWWWW.

So what happened to GNR? Well if you don't know that by now, you've been in a cave since... well since Illusion came out. Some people in the band had bigger egos than their talent could carry I guess, mostly the front man. One lady said "I didn't see one performance where he didn't electrify." Yeah, WHEN he showed up. I am sure it will come out sometime that he's bi-polar or manic depressive. And those long arse corn rows have GOT to go... The one good guy they always have on from Rolling Stone, David Wild said "I think he's trying to make GNR relevant to what's happening, but what's happening has rolled over two or three times on him now." We'll see about that if/when that 'long awaited' [who's calling their record store every week "Is it here this time?"] Chinese Democracy gets released. Axl Rose, the Brian Wilson/ Walter Becker-Donald Fagen super-perfectionist of Generation X.

My thing though is this: Slash, Duff and Matt come together with Weiland and make Velvet Revolver "which critics hailed as a fresh dose of rock and roll [sic, Michael Leone]." Passé rock maybe, maybe a return to Led Zeppelin inspired rock that has been bead as a doornail since the Black Crowes went "on hiatus." Well, Buckcherry and Jet had/have a dose of it...

Yes, it's time for that tired old argument, Isn't it time for rock to re-invent itself again? If we draw parallels from the previous cycles of rock [and roll], we're nearing a flashpoint. Previous cycles have swung from pretty people [see 1960-1963 and oh, 1975-1979] to explosions of new sounds [Beatles 64, punk's TRUE impact period 79-80], then a swing to something radical [psychedilica 67, synth pop/hair pop metal 83] then goes through a splintering and slowdown and 'return to roots' [James Taylor 70, Michael Bolton 91] melts down and then the cycle starts again. Isn't it time that the tuned down "I'm angry at everyone, rage against the inhumanity of it all, voice of the disenfranchised youth" crap went away anyway?

Where do all the hours spent absorbing records go? Was it all worth it?

I ask only because I sit here listening to the Cars Door to Door CD [meant to grab the one next to it, the BRILLIANT first album, but oh well... it's a good pop record anyway] and remembering that this album and Aerosmith's Permanent Vacation came out the same day, a day I was off at Sound Warehouse, but went up just to get them the day they came out [and promptly went over to 'Malibu Deb's' and spun them... another interesting release day was Aerosmith Pump and the Stones Steel Wheels coming out the same day.]. I probably played that Aerosmith every day for week and spent so much time absorbing it at work I think I still know it backwards and forwards, though I probably haven't played more than two songs off of it in two years, and that was just for the Aerosmith road tape re-do a couple of years ago. [Hangman Jury and Magic Touch, maybe Heart's Done Time and St. John got played but not recorded; notice no Dude, no Angel, no Rag Doll... I have become my mother: "I've heard that too many times over the last 20 years!"] I have actually played a whole side of the mediocre Done With Mirrors [say what I will, some of those riffs cook, though the band was in bad shape and Ted Templeman's dry production leaves much to be desired] since I have been in my new place, so in the last two years, more than I have played of Permanent Vacation in probably ten years! So I ask: where does that time go and was it all worth it?

I think about all the albums I no longer have, things I just lost interest in like, oh, the Thompson Twins Here's to Future Days or Judas Priest British Steel that are still buried deep in the synapses... I can still recall [with astounding clarity] riffs and some of the words of Metal Gods and Don't Mess With Dr Dream though I probably haven't heard a note of either in a dozen years... I wonder if that's just how my brain is wired. I really do hear the music in my head, in my ears. I jokingly say that "it's so I will still hear the music when I am stone deaf from listening to music at ear damaging volumes on headphones for so many years" but it may be true! But unfortunately, I am not wired to create new music, just retain what I hear.

Do you know how long it's been since I have seen a sunrise and sunset in the same day? Probably for good reason, I am whippped, but my truck is 90% waxed [yes I will do the bed, just to seal some of the scratches] and I got 8 hr of overtime in and had a root beer float with my best friend... not a bad day considering...

I thought of a couple other great things I have experienced: getting up at my grandparents in Pennsylvania early enough to walk through dew covered grass... absolutely wonderful! Sitting on the swing with Grandpap with a cup of coffee reading the paper or just talking... Sometimes walking thorough this apartment complex back to the laudry room that faces the park and just noticing the quiet of a summer evening and how the light of the sstreetlamps and the shadows play across my little corner of Euless...

REPLY TO AN EMAIL

Life is indeed a mystery, sweetest mystery. One cannot imagine any existence but this one; that is to say, I cannot imagine life as a fly or a horse or dog or something. I like being a 'man' and having knowledge of the opposable thumb, the wheel and fire [notice: the elements that enable us to use a simple Bic lighter is what elevated man above all creatures according to Darwin], written language and self awareness. But the hard part of all of that is the 'Why?' element. Funny, we revel in the joy and innocence of children asking their 'Why' questions, but we seem frustrated as adults as we continue to run into things that make us ask 'Why.' Friends and family come and go, bubbles in a river or stream, sometimes running together for a while, others lost on other streams, sometimes running into each other again, sometimes lost forever and it makes us ask 'Why.' We lose things and bad things happen and we ask 'Why' but how often do we ask 'Why' when good things happen or nothing bad happens to us? We know there are reasons and some of them we will never know. Some will be shown to us later as part of the learning process. Some we may only get the answers to when we meet God. I wonder if God does tell us all the answers as part of the peace of heaven, or if we will care about our earthly concerns at that time.

No, we were not promised a good beginning or a happy ending [nor anything in between for that matter]. Our roads are uniquely our own, though we sometimes merge into giant superhighways, sometimes two lane blacktops, sometimes lonely tracks that lead only to our door. Even roads we all travel or travel with others suffer from being able to be seen only through OUR perspective. Two people standing side by side can see completely different things... isn't it sad? Isn't it wonderful? Oh, I wish you could all have the passions and hear the music the same way I do! We try so hard to bridge the gaps between ourselves and so rarely succeed in finding somone else who truly 'gets it,' but when you do it's MAGIC. People DO come and go for reasons we don't know, sometimes don't need to know. You're right, some to show us things, some for us to show what we have learned; some to remind us that it is not always about ourselves.

Neil Gaiman wrote "Sometimes I suspect that we build our traps ourselves, then back into them, pretending amazement the while." Some of our sorrow is our own making. Knowing we have the keys to unlock ourselves is hard to admit, even harder to use them, just like saying 'I was wrong, I'm sorry.' Easy to mad at others for our situations, hard to admit it is 'my own damn fault.'

You are correct, it's not change so much I am afraid of, but the unknown. I do the things you suggest, write them on my silly page and let others see that I am going through the same things they are, take their input when they offer and try to plug into someone else's experience to help with mine. I do not suffer fools gladly, but suffer them I do, trying most days to mind my own Ps & Qs and know that they will get theirs in the end.

I have learned the hard way, same as we all do, to cherish what we have and the people we love. We don't know how much time we have here: live and love like there's no tomorrow for it may not come.


I know it's Henry's birthday... the rat got out of a 40th birthday bash that would have been the be-all, end-all of Heather and Henry parties until her 40th or his 50th... I miss their enthusiasm and love of life. I still look at their picture on my fridge and feel my heart sink; I still look at their email address in my book when I send things out and sigh. Thinking about them now makes a tear well up in me still. They would have loved my friend Elizabeth very much, very much alike she and Heather... will our hearts ever really heal from their loss?

One thing I can think of today coming home from church:

I am glad I can see the colors and hear the sounds; not just the music, but the sounds like cars SHHHH-ing arong on wet pavement [see below]. Just looking around and seeing all the various greens in the grass by the freeway. I was coming off 183 to 360 north and some white birds were over in the grass, pretty close to the road since not much traffic goes that way and a few just hopped into the air for a few seconds... what a life where we can see all the colors.

I am reminded of another Ed I knew who was "colorblind" because he did not see colors the same way 'normal' people do [don't go there Deborah S Maness]; I wondered if he saw what I call 'green' as, oh, say a 'purple' what everything would look like if you rainbow was one or two colors off. He was a really talented artist, though,; he was really good at mosaics, taking a bunch of little cut up pieces of one or several pictures and making a NEW picture out of it. And a good writer. Last I heard he wrote for a travel magazine, but that was several years ago, when he lived next door to Tracey and that wild woman he lived with whose name escapes me...

Standing on the back porch of the ADT building, sipping coffee on this muggy, cloudy Saturday, watching traffic and realizing I'm six weeks out from being out on the streets. Oddly, that still does not bother me too much outwardly. I am a little more scatterbrained than usual, which Lizzie is ascribing to stress, though I am sure there are those who know my family that will attribute it to genetics...

Actually, I was watching and listening to traffic flow out on 183. I know I have often said that one of my favorite things to do when at my grandparents in Pennsylvania is to just laze about and listen to traffic going around the curves on the main road. Listening to trucks downshifting and the throaty roar as they apply the throttle and the whine of all kinds of tires on the road. It's strangely relaxing when sleeping on the exceptionally comfortable 7' couch or taking an afternoon nap in the hammock. Of course it's also comforting to be on vacation and be near such wonderful people as my grandparents, so I guess it's a combination of things.

So I am watching traffic and I get to thinking: What would people have said 100 years ago if you had told them that in the field they were standing would be all the buildings and a strip of road where people would be whizzing along in metal buggies going 20 or 30 times faster than they could walk [or five times faster than their fastest horse]. Then I wondered about the trees. There are a few BIG big ones still around here that have probably been here for 50 or 60 years; what changes have they seen and endured? Which leads to more questions, like 'What's the most awesome thing you've ever experienced or seen? What's the most tragic thing that's ever happened to you? What is society's greatest accomplishment in your lifetime? What's our greatest failure?'

No these are not easy questions. Maybe that's the problem sometimes; I don't ask the easy questions, I just jump right on the big hard ones. Too late to change? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe I am just interested in my own answers and curious about the variety of responses I will get from others. I myself am not thinking milestones like babies or weddings, but that's just me...

Hmmm, Ryan Adams on the CD [don't go there those who will criticize; I remain the music snob, so fuck off] 'Starting to Hurt.' Hurt, I know something about. Hurt of not being understood, hurt of losing your dream job, hurt of rejected romantic, hurt of fear, hurt of knowing the truth, hurt of discovering deception... most of the hurt in my life is my own fault caused by my own fears. I know I stay in a groove because it is comfortable, because I hate change. I know most of my regrets are things I didn't do, things I never said, letters never sent. I guess I have learned to live with that.

Raining now at lunch time... I like driving around town in summer showers, love the smell of rain hitting the hot pavement, the sound of cars ssshhhh-ing along rainy streets. I do NOT like driving on the rainy freeway. I still remember when I was 17 and driving to Pennsylvania... I took over in Texarkana in the middle of the night and about 5 seconds into the drive it started pouring rain and then we his the construction zone: 200 miles of one lane freeway, trying to keep up to speed in a driving rain with 18 wheelers up my arse... I don't think I even made Little Rock before Dad suggested he take over. Then one time I was driving up to Wichita at night and me and this truck were going up 35 in and out of squalls, but the road was soaked and every time I'd go to pass I'd get right up behind the cab and I'd be just blinded by spray and I'd fall back [no stones]... this went on for about half an hour before I was able to get by. I loved going down on Lemmon Ave when Oliver lived over in Dallas on rainy Saturdays, down to one of the sub shops and over to the late great Stage and Screen. I have spent quite a few rainy days scrounging through used book and record stores [not necessarily buying anything, you understand, just scrounging]; the old Half Price that was off Camp Bowie was great for spending rainy days, long and narrow and smelling like old newsprint and old wood floors, like some place in the French Quarter in New Orleans, without the humidity. That's something else lost with the cookie cutter modern strip mall; individuality of the space; now every chain store is laid out VERY SIMILAR to every other one. BLECH!

You know, I just spoke to one of those 'my alarm isn't working and I can't function, what if someone comes and takes my stuff, what if something happens' types. People, it's a TOOL, and not a good one. Wonder what she will say if they cut her phone line and come take all her stuff. I know it's inconvenient when your stuff gets taken, but it's just stuff. You can always get more stuff. Probably BETTER stuff, too. Madness, this business of protecting your stuff and the place you keep your stuff so you can make more money and go out and get even more stuff. I don't know, maybe it's me, but if someone wants my stuff that bad... I have VERY LITTLE that's totally irreplaceable; A lot of stuff with SENTIMENTAL VALUE, which would be a major pain to replace, but not much that's irreplaceable. Anyway, if you think that alarm is a force field like they show on the commercials, boy are you mistaken. I love the alarm commercials where the alarm center looks like the starship Enterprise; great special effects and graphics. No, it's not really like that; it's just like your office with a bunch of people staring at computers in little half wall cubicle groups.

All right, back to the serious stuff. The new Wilco... has its odd moments, different, but not that different from Summerteeth [though no mellotrons, ED] and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. More rock roll and straightforward [I'm A Wheel, the John Lennon-esque Hummingbird, even the long Spiders (Kidsmoke) has some great rock and roll sections], but the long droning Less Than You Think is... I don't know. I have no problem with long drone/ambient, but I know some people will. But Tweedy's made a descent living [minus what he just shelled out to Betty Ford] being praised for being 'interesting, fresh, new and groundbreaking' yet being damned for not making 'commercially exploitable [i.e. weird]' records. Basically, it continues exploring sounds like Tweedy has done since Summerteeth. Maybe it has a lot to do with the ongoing connection with producer Jim O'Rourke, with whom he also made the offbeat but very good Loose Fur album. Maybe Jeff has just enough Neil Young FU left in him to keep dodging our expectations. Or as he said in Shot in the Arm: "What you once were isn't what you want to be anymore."