We used to be fans of the artist.

Maybe that’s why baby boomers continue to buy albums.  Not because they don’t
know how to download, but they remember when you could still believe in
artists, when their albums were a statement.

Think of it like love.  You can be attracted by a pretty face.  But you fall
in love with the whole person.  You forgive imperfections, actually, they’re
what ultimately enamor you, they HUMANIZE the person, make them unique.  When
every rapper known to man appears on the track it ceases to be the work of the
original artist, we can’t identify.  We want to dig down deep, bathe ourselves
in the artist’s identity, see who they are and what they stand for.  But the
artists are no longer playing to us, they’re playing to the gatekeepers.

Tell me a story.  That’s what the gatekeepers say.  Tell me why I should go
on this new act, this new single.  How much money are you committing?  Let me
see the video.  Is MTV on it?  Used to be the gatekeepers asked to hear the
record.  And it was a WHOLE album.  A statement, not just a single.  The
gatekeepers saw their mission as educating and fulfilling their audience.  They
wouldn’t just play an authorized track, not shifting to a new one until the label
authorized a switch, rather they’d play as many tracks on the album as they
thought were good right away.

The record store used to be the museum.  Where you went to visit your
friends, the greats.  All the albums you wanted to eventually buy.  You’d check for
inventory on your obscure favorites, hoping they were available so someone else
could buy them.  And when someone came over you didn’t play them one song,
you put on the album and let it play through, let them bask in the sound.  You
recited a bit of history.  Where the act came from.  Who they played with
before.  There was a whole CULTURE!

And if you were hooked, you purchased the next album without even hearing it
first.  You had no choice.  You wanted another hit of what had hooked you.

CDs just don’t have the same tactile feel as albums.  Cardboard is organic. 
Plastic is that anti-environment stuff that doesn’t degrade in landfills for
millennia.  The pictures are so small, the text even tinier.  They’re not made
for people.  Executives wonder why we have no problem switching to MP3s.  The
packaging hasn’t been worth shit for years.

So going to the record store is not what it used to be.  It’s kind of like
going to McDonald’s and finding out the hamburgers are the size of a quarter and
you get two french fries in the super size.  You go a couple of times for the
old hit, and then you stop.  It’s just too depressing.  And it’s worse than
that.  CDs may not scratch, but they sound like shit.  The only thing that DOES
sound good on them is rap.  There’s no warmth.  It’s like living in a
concrete block instead of a wood house.  It’s a cubicle instead of a home.

It must be funny to be a baby boomer musician.  Oh, I’m not talking about the
legends, selling out arenas, like the Eagles.  I’m thinking of people who had
careers, selling albums, who no longer have major label deals.  Do you get a
day job and give up, or do you soldier on?  Knowing there’s no place for your
music to be exposed.  That you’ll never be big again.  In a culture that
reveres youth.

I go places and everybody’s so enamored of the business and I don’t get it. 
For it’s absent the soul that hooked me in the first place.  I just end up
playing the old stuff.  Because the new stuff tends not to have what I’m looking
for.  It’s made for instant consumption.  And I’m looking for something to
keep me warm at night.

And the new music by the old superstars.  It’s creepy.  They’ve dyed their
hair.  It’s like when our parents wore jeans.  They just didn’t look right.  You
can only play at being young when you’re old.  And you can’t win.  You must
age with your audience.  Only an inert enterprise like MTV can stay forever
young.  People fill out, their hair grays, their eyesight wanes.  But it’s not
all negative.  You gain INSIGHT when you get older.  It’s THIS insight I’m
interested in.  It’s this insight that the famous oldsters don’t deliver.  They’re
too busy selling out.

I’m hooked on the Internet.  I read yesterday that China’s got detox
programs.  Maybe I should move there.  So I won’t sit in front of this machine
endlessly, looking for nuggets as I wait for people to deliver e-mail from their
heart directly to mine.

And I’ve got my usual sites.  That I hit every day.  And then there are lunar
pages.  That I go to more frequently than Halley’s comet appears, but
sometimes don’t visit for years.  It’s just that a synapse fires.  And I decide to
check up on my old buddies.

And that’s how I found myself at Wendy Waldman’s homepage.  Inspired by the
re-release of her catalog on CD.

I’ve got all those albums on vinyl.  But, not every track in an MP3.  I’m
missing stuff from the third record.  And I don’t have an MP3 of "Lee’s Traveling
Song", one of my all time favorites.

And I’m haunting the site.  And I click a link to a page with downloads.  And
I find an MP3 of a live take of "I Want To Touch You", from the first Bryndle
album.  And, after taking that, I explored and found "What The Gypsy Said".

Karla Bonoff’s Columbia debut is a classic.  One that does not seem to be
surviving.

But every teenage and twentysomething girl and sensitive boy should hear "If
He’s Ever Near".  "They say that just once in life, you find someone that’s
right.  But the world looks so confused, I can’t tell false from true."

And this unreleased Bryndle track featuring Karla just wasn’t fantastic. 
Typical latter day Bonoff.  Close, but no cigar.  And then I hit the change.  And
what came thereafter.  I slowly got hooked.  I remember just this time of
year back in ’77, buying her debut, listening in the new apartment I shared with
my girlfriend.  We ate at the coffee table.  We didn’t have a couch yet. 
Candles were flickering.

I went back to the store and bought more promo copies.  I gave one to my
sister.  Another to Tony.  We sent one to her mom.  It was my mission to turn
everybody on to Karla, and her record.

And it had been the year before I’d laid in my sister’s apartment listening
to Wendy Waldman’s "Prayer For You" as the sun set.

I got inspired.  I fired up Rhapsody.  Maybe they had those newly-released
albums.

They didn’t.

But, they DID have Wendy’s odds and sods album from two years back.  I’d
thought about buying it.  But I ultimately didn’t.  I figured I’d be disappointed.
And I didn’t want my memories tarnished.

But now, confronted with the ability to instantly hear it, I fired "Seeds And
Orphans" up.

I was stunned.  It SOUNDED like her.  From decades back.

And I kept judging.  How good WAS it.

And then I realized this was like listening to albums in the seventies.  You
came home and ripped off the shrinkwrap and played them.  Again and again. 
Trying to see if they delivered.  You were looking for that one track that
jumped out.  That made you play the album again.  Which eventually led you to other cuts.  Maybe it was the covers of "Letter Home" and "The Road Song" that kept me listening.  Kept me playing the album.  Again and again and again.

And it was about the fourth time through that I got hooked on "Restless In
Mind".

I didn’t hear it at first.  It was too subtle.  But this time through, I got
it.  Or, should I say, it got me.

"What The Gypsy Said" is a second-rate track by a favorite that we come to
love.  "Restless In Mind" is first-rate.  Not a hit single, but a concoction
that PENETRATES!  It’s EXACTLY why I love Wendy to BEGIN WITH!  To discover a new song by one of my old favorites elated me.

And you’d think I’d be satisfied able to stream it.

But you’ve got to own your music.  You don’t want to rent love, you want to
MARRY IT!  You want to be able to COUNT ON IT!

They say rental is as good as sale, if you can hear it all the time.  Well,
portability via Janus doesn’t work.  But really, I want it lock, stock and
barrel.  So I can hold on to it late at night, in bed.  When I’m overwhelmed, when
I can’t count on anybody or anything.

That’s the relationship we had with music.

That’s the relationship I’m searching for.

I’m looking for artists.  Who are doing it because they have to.  Because
they can’t do anything else.  Who consider tampering with their material as
fucking with their identity.  I want music from someone as honest as me.  Someone
untemptable.

(You can download "What The Gypsy Said"
If you’re on a Mac, hold down the Control key when you click on the
title and select "Download Linked File".  Or just listen to it in QuickTime in
your browser.)