I’m immune to mainstream hype.

When you e-mail me about your show, your project, I just delete it.

And I’m not alone.

We stumble upon information now.  We start with our trusted resources and see where they lead.

I follow Thomas Meyer on Twitter.  Not because I love Sonos, which I do, I use it every day, but because Thomas is the one who convinced me to tweet.  In a convivial, buddy to buddy way.  Friends bring you along.  Enemies insult you.

So, today I see that Thomas is tweeting about 2009 Bonnaroo downloads.  Are they real?  Are they legal?

I wasn’t sure.  But wanting to know more about this site, http://www.largeheartedboy.com, I clicked through to the homepage.  Whereupon I found out that Shawn Colvin had a new live album.

When I clicked to download it, I was linked to Amazon, where I learned that it wasn’t going to be released until…June 23rd.  That’s WEEKS off.  No, it’s today.  But, high on chocolate I thought it was still the first week of the month and decided to see if I could download the album from RapidShare.  Not wanting to e-mail a friend at Nonesuch and wait upon delivery.  We live in the age of instant.  And coming up empty, with a little more research, I ended up on AOL, listening to a stream of an album I didn’t even know existed five minutes before, but contained some of my favorite tunes of the last two decades.

Records used to be my best friend.  They were my training wheels for love.  Everything I learned about sex was from movies, everything I learned about intimacy was from records.  And intimacy comes first.  You’ve got to know someone before you can truly have a relationship.  How do you start?  Books tell you to compliment them, tell them you like what they’re wearing, how they’ve styled their hair.  But records told me to put forth my personality, to reach out with some inner truth.  If I conveyed who I truly was, I had a chance I’d get an honest response.

Some records are sold by the machine.  Radio and the press tell you to buy them.  Their covers scream out at the store.  There are people like this, who shop all day for clothing, even alter their looks with plastic surgery to attract the opposite sex…  I always thought who I was would be enough.  If only I could get someone to play me.

Home is where I want to be

The Internet is the greatest invention of my lifetime.  Because it allowed me to be home, but a part of it.  The universe.  The action.  Prior to its invention, the explosion of 1995, when everybody got a computer and got online, I was lonely, home alone.  That’s what happens when you’re left.  By your wife, your father and your money.  You become a prisoner of TV.  I knew all the sitcoms, never missed an episode of Letterman.  I had the contents of conversation, just no one to conduct it with.  But not only did the Internet give me willing listeners, along with an audience came invitations, outside my abode.

I was shaky.  I still am.  It’s scary.  But the essence of life comes from being out, interacting with humans, having enough confidence to give your personality a whirl and see if it attracts any takers.

I am just an animal looking for a home

Some people rely on their families.  Their parents or their siblings.  I think that’s why some people create their own broods, to have a private posse, who will always pay attention, who will always listen.  But I’m a limit-tester.  I don’t like to play it safe.  I want to reach for the stars.

But I got sick of doing it alone.

So you end up with an ache.  Which cripples you.  In my case, for years.

Leave your house.  The walking wounded are all around you.  They’re just putting on a happy face.  They’re trying to look like winners to attract winners.  But like that Steely Dan song said, I want a name when I lose.  I’m much more interested in the bruised and battered than seamless perfection.

In the depths of my despair one album made a difference, got me through.  And that’s Shawn Colvin’s "Steady On".

But if you went to the show, you heard covers interspersed with the original material.  One of those was Talking Heads’ "Naive Melody (This Must Be The Place)".

It sounded nothing like the original.  I didn’t even recognize it, even though I owned the Heads’ album upon which it originally appeared.  Shawn made it her own.  And in making it her own, she made it all of ours.  Great music belongs to the populace, not the creator.  We own it not by buying it, but by listening to it, having it deposited deep inside of us.

Eventually Shawn did a rendition on her 1994 album "Cover Girl".  But the live take was tweaked in the studio, with strings.  And, in the process, lost its essence.

Now, years later, it reappears, in naked form.

And you’re standing here beside me
I love the passing of time

I’m lonely no longer.  I’ve got love, I’ve got companionship.

But as much as I love being part of a team, I wouldn’t be honest if I didn’t say I loved having you.  When I hit send and I reach tens of thousands of people, when they care what I have to say, whether they agree or not, I feel I’m a member…of the human race.

Never for money
Always for love
Cover up and say goodnight…say goodnight

Actually, there’s not much money involved.  But I’m not gonna shill anything, promote or hype anything for a paycheck.  Because that would sully the mission.  It would be dishonest.  I’d be disrespecting all those records of yore, that made me who I am.

They were not artifacts to be digested and discarded.  I’ve got each and every vinyl album I ever bought.  To get rid of one would be like abandoning one of the children I never had.

All I’ve got is this music.  These experiences.  I’ve got nothing against possessions, but they don’t keep you warm at night.  And music will.

Click on the last track: ‘Live’ by Shawn Colvin