Ah! Leah!
I was sitting in the shrink’s office telling him about Friday night. The
on-sale debut of the new "Harry Potter".
Felice and I drove to Village Books around 11 p.m. and encountered a line
down Swarthmore, of kids who probably had never been up at this hour before,
unless it was two years before, when the LAST "Harry Potter" book was released.
They were dressed up as characters from the series. Kate served theme-based
refreshments. They may have LOOKED like lemon bars and TASTED like lemon bars but they were labeled with some secret code you’d only be able to decipher if
you’d read the books.
At a minute before midnight, Jeff held up the speaker of the portable karaoke
machine, I started counting down the seconds into the mic, and when the date
changed we opened the door and people POURED IN!
It resembled nothing so much as rock and roll. Lining up at an absurd hour
for tickets to an event that only fans were aware of. NEEDING to belong. It
was almost as if Bill Graham was back from the dead, with the free food and the
orderly camaraderie. And the books sold like tickets to the Fillmore. By
time Oliver Platt came in as the last customer, just shy of one a.m., four
hundred books had left the store. I can’t say the tome wasn’t hyped, that modern
marketing methods were not employed, but the RABIDITY, it was PALPABLE!
And as we stood around doing a post mortem, I started conversing with Lea.Â
Down from San Francisco, just in time for this event.
And when I got to this part of the story in the shrink’s office, a song
started going through my head.
Ah! Leah! Here we go again.
I told the shrink that I wanted to leave right then. Go home and listen to
this song. I needed to hear it.
At that price, I stayed till the end, but when I got back in front of my
computer I was stunned to find out that I didn’t have "Ah! Leah!" in my iTunes
library. So I fired up my favorite P2P program and started downloading.
I had no problem finding "Ah! Leah!" Which I’ve got on CD somewhere. But
the album tracks, "Stagedoor Johnny" and "Never Did I"…I just couldn’t find
them.
I sat in front of my computer for an hour and a half. Clicking. Looking for
them. To no avail.
And when you get this frustrated, angry that the days of the original Napster
are gone, when EVERYTHING was available, I fired up a well known search
engine. Which allows you to find MP3s. On Webpages. It’s the last resort.Â
Sometimes it works.
And I was having trouble. But then I searched on the album title, "Fortune
410", and they CAME UP!
I clicked through. And there they all were. All the album cuts I loved. It
was like winning a radio station contest, but BETTER…for instead of having
to wait forever to receive my prize I got it RIGHT AWAY!
There’s a good chance you’ve got no idea who Donnie Iris is.
Well, he was in the Jaggerz. Who had that big hit thirty five years ago with
"The Rapper". Kind of an insidious tune. I didn’t love it, but I certainly
knew it. And was stunned that the singer of that track was the guy I was
hearing on rock radio over a decade later, with "Ah! Leah!"
You know the kind of track that’s SO good you’ve got to go out and buy the
album RIGHT THEN? Not even CARING what the rest of the record sounds like?Â
THAT’S how good "Ah! Leah!" is.
"Ah! Leah!" had power. And a memorable riff. And even the changes were
good. But what put it over the top, what infected you, was THE CHORUS!
It’s a modern day wall of sound. With ENDLESS backup vocals sweetly singing.
That’s Donnie’s trademark. Employed in the almost better "Sweet Merilee".
I ended up buying the subsequent "King Of Cool". And, the follow-up, the
aforementioned "Fortune 410", named after the model number of Donnie’s eyeglasses.
Back in the day, we LISTENED to the album. It was rarely over forty minutes
long. It wasn’t about a single and then filler, rather, after the Beatles, an
album was a STATEMENT! You wanted to delve in, on a voyage of DISCOVERY!Â
And what I found on "Fortune 410" was "Never Did I".
"Never Did I" is the kind of track that gets you moving, involuntarily. The
kind of song you can’t conceive of in advance, but the type you hear that
feels SO RIGHT! So right that I’ve never forgotten it.
"Stagedoor Johnny" is overdramatic. But it’s got another one of those
CHORUSES, with the endless backup vocals.
I just needed to hear them.
Oh, I could have fired up the vinyl. But, I wanted files, that I could play
endlessly. And I looked up the greatest hits CD on Amazon, to find out if
these two tracks were contained, whether I should search my house for it, but
they were absent. And that’s how I ultimately found myself combing the Web.Â
Finding this veritable TREASURE TROVE!
This site had BOTH of them. And live versions of "Ah! Leah! and "Love Is
Like A Rock".
For a minute there, I thought this page had EVERYTHING!
But this was no thief. This was a CURATOR! If it was available
commercially, the track was absent. But if you couldn’t buy it at any price, you could
take it for free, to keep Donnie Iris’s legend alive.
I mean how else are we going to keep the music of these secondary artists
alive? The labels that own the material don’t care, they say there’s no market.Â
But there is. Hard core fans. Who want to turn others on to their
favorites. And, if the stuff is readily available, who knows, kids might surf by and
find it. After all, Led Zeppelin was one of Donnie Iris’s favorite classic
rock bands.
I know that because I listened to the interview with him on the site. Taped
from the radio. Oh, it was in depth. It was an aural GOLDMINE!
Made me feel excited. Got me in touch with who I used to be. A dedicated
believer. Who wanted to know EVERYTHING about acts I was interested in.
I sat in front of my computer for half an hour listening. I couldn’t even
answer e-mail. I was hearing this guy’s life story. Donnie’s probably pushing
sixty. So many of the oldsters are. They’re past their peak. What are their
lives like?
Well, it turns out Donnie still plays. But what’s he living on? What does
he use to buy toys for his grandkids?
Donnie’s a musician. Who had one big hit and some semi-hits. And now all
that’s left to him is his music, hell, I doubt he receives any royalties, even
if they’re due him.
And it turns out Donnie is aware of this site. He mentions it in the
interview. But rather than squash it, send this guy a cease and desist letter, he’s
ADVERTISING IT! THAT guy is helping him out, he’s a key element in his career.
That’s what fans are. The linchpins of careers.
I guess if you don’t have careers you don’t need linchpins, don’t need fans.Â
But that’s a tough way to do it. Because, if you’ve got fans, they do half
the work.
Thomas H. Lee and Andy Lack don’t know what fandom is. They know what MONEY
is. They don’t know that WITHOUT fans, there’s a hell of a lot less money.Â
They think it’s about OVEREXPOSURE! That to sell records you get on the "Today
Show".
But the "Today Show"’s got no fans. Nobody who’ll stay up till an ungodly
hour, WAKE UP at an ungodly hour, JUST to see it. The "Today Show" is commerce.
 "Harry Potter" is art.
Not all art does the blockbuster sales of "Harry". But you never know
exactly what art is going to go gonzo. That’s the story of the late sixties. Who
KNEW these acts would become so big? They were just building careers. Not by
selling out, but by testing limits, EXPLORING!
So, here’s the URL:
http://www.parallel-time.com/sound.htm
Listen to "Never Did I". And "Stagedoor Johnny". Maybe you’ve got to commit
to three plays. But then you’ll be hooked, then you’ll be infected, then you
might even start spreading the word.
(Don’t be surprised if we blow this guy’s site up, he’s not PREPARED for this
number of hits, he probably doesn’t have enough BANDWIDTH, just like labels
of the past had no idea there was such demand for these acts, they were caught
short, when word started to spread…)
