I apologize if you weren’t able to get ahold of me today.  Or if you weren’t able to subscribe or unsubscribe on my Website.  You see, it was down.  The D.N.S. number had to be changed.  Oh, you don’t need to know what a D.N.S. number is.  It’s transparent to the end user.  Assuming everything’s copacetic.  I won’t bore you with the details, but I had to wait for the D.N.S. number to repopulate itself worldwide.  And it just reached my little neck of the woods, here in SoCal, about an hour ago (the server’s in Colorado).

It was really strange not to be able to access my e-mail this morning.  This wasn’t a glitch on my end.  With the server down, I was locked out, alone.  Very strange.  I was jetted back to my old life, BEFORE the Web.  When I still used to watch television.  When I still used to roam the countryside looking for…where I fit in.

Ultimately, I went out hiking with my buddy Jeff.  And after he regaled me with his take on Cream on PBS, I told him tales of 1971.  In Dave McCormick’s dorm room.

I’d never say Jeff lives for music.  But, in the sixties and seventies we ALL lived for music.  Only the marginally hip were out of the loop.  He’s excitedly talking about "Pressed Rat and Warthog" and I’m laughing.  How we all knew these arcane details.  Now the details we know are Internet history.  When we all graduated from AOL to the Web.  When we started listening to broadcasts via RealPlayer.  When we installed DSL or cable.  When we started downloading from Napster.  THAT’S our shared history.  Not what some act did on MTV, never mind what was contained on their records.

LEGEND OF A MIND

They play a lot of Moody Blues on XM.  Sometimes the stuff from "Question Of Balance" and after.  But really, it’s all about the four albums before.  From "Days Of Future Passed" to "To Our Children’s Children’s Children".  "Days Of Future Passed" is played out.  They don’t even play "Tuesday Afternoon" on Tuesday afternoon anymore.  But, that’s a classic record.  Every bit as integral to the rock firmament as "Disraeli Gears".  Oh, "Disraeli Gears" had a greater initial impact.  But "Days Of Future Passed" lasted longer.  It made no impact upon its release.  It was too far AHEAD of the game.  Integrating an orchestra with a rock band.  But, word of mouth kept the record circulating.  And, "Nights In White Satin" and "Tuesday Afternoon" were spun as a result of requests.  I don’t know a record like this that plays today.  A mellow trip.

By time "Days Of Future Passed" really caught on, the Moody Blues had already cut three more albums.  I’d bought "On The Threshold Of A Dream".  I’d heard that was the best.  But, I was wrong.  Even though I loved "Lovely To See You" and "Dear Diary", "To Our Children’s Children’s Children", which came AFTER, was BETTER!  And so was "In Search Of The Lost Chord", which came before.

Timothy Leary’s dead
No, no, no, he’s outside, looking in

If you go to download the Moody Blues’ "Timothy Leary", you’re going to be in trouble.  For that’s not the name of the track.  It’s "Legend Of A Mind".

Did you ever do drugs?

My marijuana days were not long-lived.  Still, "Legend Of A Mind" is the sound of doing drugs.  Marijuana is not like alcohol.  You don’t get together and party.  You get together and zone out.  Blitzed and in your own mind.  But the ride was worthless without a soundtrack.  Sure, you listened to some heavy music.  But really, it was the spacy, adventurous stuff that got to you.  That took you on a trip.  Hell, "Legend Of A Mind" lasted six and a half minutes.  It had movements.  It bent in the middle.  If you played this for a teenager hooked on Zeppelin today he wouldn’t get it at first.  But then he would.  This is music made for you when you’re alone.  And, make no mistake, smoking marijuana is about being alone.  And nothing is lonelier than being a teenager.  Sitting in your bedroom, landlocked, surrounded by nobody who understands you.

I was waxing rhapsodic about those days back in college, during freshman year, during winter term, when we only took one course for five and a half weeks.  Going to class in the morning, skiing all afternoon, and smoking dope all night.  Listening to the Moody Blues for HOURS!

HOME AGAIN

Sometimes I wonder if I’m ever going to make it home again
It’s so far and out of sight

Last night in the jacuzzi I realized California was home.  It happened over the years.  I became inured to the weather.  To the easy lifestyle.  But thinking about going to Aspen next week, I remembered who I once was.

It’s different on the east coast.  You see you’ve got November.  With the shittiest weather of the year.  It’s biting cold.  And the precipitation is usually rain rather than snow.  So, by time the ski areas open at the end of the month, at the beginning of December, you’re ready.  You’ve been locked up inside too long, you want to get out.

But we’re always out in SoCal.

I wonder.  If I’ve changed.  Irrevocably.  If I’m no longer the person I was.  And it creeps me out.  I don’t want to let go.  I don’t want to give up the person I am now, but I don’t want to lose who I used to be either.

When I got home from my hike and my server still wasn’t up and running, I laid down on the floor with my iPod to do my back exercises and I hit random.  I had time to hear ten thousand songs.

The first track was the New York Dolls’ "(There’s Gonna Be A) Showdown".  I’d like to tell you it resonated.  But the production is so thin and compressed it sounded like an historical artifact.  But then, when that track was finished, I heard a piano flourish.  It sounded rich.  It resonated.  It was Carole King’s "Home Again".

The song I sing in my head all the time is "So Far Away".  With its poignant line "Doesn’t anybody stay in one place anymore?"

In case you haven’t noticed, they don’t.  Suddenly, their e-mail addresses stop working.  They move across the country.  They get new jobs.  My life never changes, why does THEIRS?

I don’t cope well with change.  It’s too jarring.  I can’t adjust.  I can’t afford to lose my underpinnings.  I don’t jump from a bad situation to a good one easily.  God, when I experience a loss it lasts for years.

We graduated from the Moody Blues to "Layla".  And then to "Idlewild South".  And by spring term, by time the days were long, "Tapestry" had invaded the dorm.  Not Dave’s room.  Not my personal library.  We needed something edgier, more meaningful, something that everybody else didn’t have.

It was funny.  Carole King had gone out in support of James Taylor.  And, in a matter of months, she was bigger than he.  "Tapestry" became the biggest selling album of all time.  After hearing it enough in other people’s rooms, I bought it too.

I’m not sure you can divorce the musician from the scene.

Maybe that’s the reason we’ve got such vapid acts today.  I mean if the goal is to go to a nightclub, get fucked up and dance, you’re going to get the music we’ve got.  Utterly meaningless.  Grease to have a good time.  But, if the lifestyle is one of contemplation, you get music like the Moody Blues and Carole King.

It’s not like Carole King has been forgotten.  But the fact that she was the biggest act in the business for a year is known not at all by anybody who didn’t live through it.  After all, today’s quiet music has no credibility, whereas what sold the melancholic music of yesteryear WAS its credibility.  We’d all lived through a war.  We weren’t frivolous.  We were battle-damaged.  We weren’t running mindlessly, endlessly, we were trying to figure out how the fuck we got here and how the fuck we were going to get out.  The acts we listened to either soothed us or gave us insight.  Or both.  Listen to that first Elton album.  It’s like skin lotion.  It feels so good.  It revitalizes you.

Carole King never equaled "Tapestry" again.  Maybe, like Alanis Morissette, she got freaked out by all the success.  But, if you go back and listen to the record, you’ll be stunned how good it sounds.  I understand the appeal of Debbie Harry.  But, Blondie had the quality of an intellectual statement.  Whereas Carole King was a woman, not a femme fatale or waif, singing straight from the heart.

I won’t be happy till I see you alone again
Till I’m home again and feelin’ right

What I like about this medium is it’s personal.  Just from me to you.  It’s the opposite of celebrity culture, the opposite of dance club culture.  I go about my everyday business, and then I send you a letter, telling what’s going on in my mind.  My goal is to give you the feeling of listening to one of those great early seventies records.  That it was written just for you.

My server is working again.  I’m home again and feelin’ right.