Mrs. Everything: A Novel

I loved this book. I mean loved, loved, LOVED!

I am not a guy’s guy. If you want to make fart jokes and snap towels in the locker room I won’t be there, or I’ll be standing in the corner, detached.

Not that I don’t like a good fart joke. I’m just referencing the way guys interact, with sexual innuendos, talking about people’s appearances, what they’d do to so and so, however laughingly. I guess I’ve been put down enough in my life that I’m unwilling to put down another. And I’ve been made to do so much I don’t want to that I won’t force anyone to do anything they wouldn’t want to. In other words, I’d never get arrested for sexual harassment. Or as that old shrink once told me, I’d rather talk to women than screw them.

Which is all to say this is not a book for most men.

Men like to read books that get them somewhere. Biographies, business books. They want to improve themselves, they want to see themselves as members of the group, participants in the game. And even though music is very much an independent business, where individuals thrive, inside the halls of the corporations, the labels, the radio stations, the promotion outfit, it’s very much about getting along. That bro behavior I referenced above. It’s anything but being vulnerable. You can be vulnerable in your music, but that does not work if you’re a cog in the machine. And in this machine, the music business, if you’re not going up, you’re out. Which is why all the successful acts have managers, because they themselves can’t interact with the suits. The better the artist, the less they’re able to be compromised. They can’t go through the mental machinations of negotiation, they don’t have a tolerance for it.

But women?

Women are different.

Then again, our entire culture has changed. You can express vulnerability if you’re on your way to rehab, or giving a mea culpa, otherwise everybody is a winner, at least on the exterior. And groupthink is rampant, whether it be on the college campus or amongst your own little circle. Challenge the precepts at your peril.

In the seventies it was different. Sure, we had the personal development programs like EST, but after the tumultuous sixties, people were looking inward, trying to figure out their problems, and that’s when Sara Davidson’s “Loose Change” came out. It was a rage amongst my older sister’s friends. It told the story of girl friends from the sixties and how their lives played out. I read it, I’ve never forgotten it. Even though I’ve never read it again. I don’t understand rereading, watching movies over when there’s so much stuff left to check out for the first time.

But life, it’s a mystery.

Today I had a long conversation with my mother. In December, she’ll be 94. You think you want to live that long, but you don’t. All your friends are dead, you’re forgotten by society, at best you can play cards and go to the movies and to a great degree just wait to die.

You don’t want to be old in America. First and foremost because you might be broke. This is what I don’t understand about people taking social security early. You’ll want more dollars if you live that long, because you won’t be able to make any, there’s no place for you in the workforce. And I’m willing to die with some money on the table, letting the government beat me, but in a world where the government is the enemy and it’s everybody for themselves that’s anathema. You blew your money on a fancy car and now you want someone to rescue you when times are bad. I feel for you, but how come our entire country can’t save for a rainy day, assuming people can do more than make ends meet. Meanwhile, the rich get mad when the public hoards its money, because by not spending they’re hurting the economy, the stock market, the rich are not continuing to get richer.

And if you’re over sixty, wait for it, you’re instantly irrelevant. Younger people make fun of you. You’re happier and have earned wisdom but that does not matter, you’ve got lines on your face and are subject to derision. So how many people can be true winners, have all of their dreams fulfilled? Very few, if any at all.

So “Mrs. Everything” is the story of a family, from there to here, essentially from the nineteen forties until now. The two sisters are a little older than I am, and that matters, because what was acceptable in the seventies was not in the sixties, but people are people, as Depeche Mode sang.

So you think you’re in charge of your journey. But if you keep the reins too tight, you miss out on opportunities. And if you loosen them too much, you close doors. I didn’t want to get married, because I didn’t want to get off track, I didn’t want to sacrifice my vision. Buy a house, have kids, and you’re working to support them. Then again, family might be the most important thing, who knows.

And your choices…

Talk to anybody and they have dreams. Some times puffed-up, false dreams. Oh, I was pre-med before I dropped out and became a musician. Yeah, right. I went to college and I know that organic chem separated the winners from the losers. If you didn’t get an A, find another career track. I’d see it in slow motion, students’ dreams getting dashed.

But you’ve got to pay your bills and you end up with a job that becomes your life. It started out temporary, or maybe you prepared for it in graduate school, and now it’s unfulfilling, it was your safety net, but you’re making too much money to start over and you certainly wouldn’t be able to pay your bills so here you are, this is your life.

This describes many huge music fans. They use their bucks to feed their addiction. They couldn’t risk coming to Hollywood and trying to make it. It was too dangerous. Or maybe their parents would not have been supportive. Which is to a great degree why entertainment is run by individuals, entrepreneurs, oftentimes college dropouts, who are so unique that if they didn’t run their own organization, they wouldn’t be able to get a job. That’s what they don’t teach you in school. As a matter of fact, school teaches you to conform. It’s very hard to break out of the system, just like it’s very hard to be anti-bro amongst bros.

So…

Kids never turn out the way you planned. The one with straight A’s drops out of school, or gets pregnant. Or loses their job.

And who is your responsibility to? Your parents or your siblings or yourself?

And what if what you’re doing is taboo? Kind of like trans rights today. But that was just like gay rights back then. And gays are still fighting for equal rights, look at what Thomas and Alito said just this week.

So, life is complicated, daunting, and you wake up one day and you find out you’re too old. Hopefully, before that, you found out you don’t matter. Even Sumner Redstone died, even though he believed he never would.

So I grew up in a female dominated household. My dad earned the money, took care of the financial issues, but my mother and two sisters steered the softer issues, the social issues. So, I’m quite comfortable hanging with women, I know what they’re interested in. However I have learned, that despite their delineated preferences, their yearning for softer men, they frequently like the exotica of the opposite, the bros. For every woman who wants to forge their own path, there’s another who wants the door opened, the chair pulled back and the man to bring home the bacon.

I’m not laying down the percentages. I’m just saying it’s complicated, not that we can discuss any of this out loud, because chances are we’ll fall into a politically incorrect pit, where we’ll offend someone and when you’re the target of slings and arrows, those bros won’t come out and defend you, no way, they’re staying silent behind the scenes, which is also to say that despite Harvey Weinstein many men are still unconscious sexual abusers.

So, “Mrs. Everything” is the story of women. Sure, men play a part. And they’re sometimes what they appear to be on the surface, but…

You’re in high school and you’re hyper-aware, everything is important. And then you get old and laugh at yourself. You’re hung up on someone romantically and you get older and you can’t believe you were. Or you get married and wake up one day and realize not only does it not solve all your problems, it hinders you and you’d rather be somewhere else.

These are the questions, the issues you won’t find in business books. Or biographies. The issues of life. The choices, the mistakes, the successes, the willingness to accept where you are, even if it does not match your dreams.

And life never works out how it’s planned. Hopefully not, it’s the accidents that deliver rewards. But a lot of bad stuff happens along the way.

This is what “Mrs. Everything” is about. Life. How it’s rough and tumble. How you make snap decisions that have you turning left and end up somewhere where it’s impossible to turn right.

I looked forward to reading it every day. It’s a treat.

For a special kind of reader.

Maybe that’s you.

Cousin Brucie is a legendary deejay who was friends with everybody from the Beatles to Lesley Gore. Listen to hear how Brucie retrieved Ringo’s St. Christopher medal as well as how he got his start, his name and so much more. Brucie was my gateway drug for music radio. It was a thrill to speak with him!

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Pence wouldn’t commit to a peaceful transfer of power.

You need to read this article. It’s more important than anything I have to say herein:

“Democrats Need To Be Clear About Where This Could Be Headed”

It’s about the system, not the issues. The above was written by a Harvard professor, not someone wearing a tin foil hat.

No one’s mind was changed via tonight’s debate. As a matter of fact, I’d recommend all further debates be canceled, they’re a waste of time. We’ve seen the candidates, we get it, all that is left is for Donald Trump to browbeat Joe Biden while he fails to observe the debate rules that he agreed to.

Just like Mike Pence.

At first you had to have sympathy for the vice president. He had to defend the terrible record of the Bizarro in Chief. But as one continued to listen, one could see that he buys into a lot of the crap he was saying, which is positively scary.

As for the Trump team’s governing philosophy…Pence came out with it right away, and then hammered it over and over again, he believes in the American people, not government, that the people will do the right thing, in other words…YOU’RE ON YOUR OWN!

I’d go deeper but you’ve already made up your mind. But it’s clear if you believe Donald Trump cares about you, is gonna help you, the answer is no, AND PENCE ADMITTED IT RIGHT UP FRONT!

Not that he’d answer the question, almost never. Which is why these debates are such a waste of time. Kamala could think on her feet, Pence just repeated his talking points over and over again, like a third grader who didn’t do his homework.

But having said that, it was painfully obvious that the same people who prepared Trump for last week’s debate prepared Pence for this one. Not only would Pence not answer direct questions, he consistently went over time, again and again, as if the rules didn’t matter. And the truth is both Trump and Pence believe they don’t. Never forget that.

The one thing we learned, that was loud and clear, is that Kamala Harris is the smartest of the four people running, the most nimble, the one who can think while talking, who can deftly argue her case. After tonight, no Biden fan should have any worry about Harris taking over his Administration. She’s beyond competent. As for experience, she’s more experienced in government than Obama was!

But you can see why Kamala lost the nomination. She’s a prosecutor through and through. She’s tough as nails and there to win. And some of her expressions when Pence railed on worked against her, she was disgusted by his lies. However, she did temper those reactions as the debate wore on.

My point being you wouldn’t want to have a beer with either of these people. That was George Bush, who ran on being warm and fuzzy. And I’m talking about impressions here, image, not truth. And the unfortunate thing is running for public office is oftentimes too much about image, substance is kicked aside.

Like Pence’s lies.

We live in scary times. The Trumpers get all their news in a parallel universe, where falsehoods and twists of truth are de rigueur, to the point where when Trump or Pence utter them their acolytes believe them. Then again, almost everybody watching is not up on the facts of what is being discussed. Like fracking…it’s an ungodly large money pit. These companies will never make any money, meanwhile they paid their CEOs millions. It’s been all over the “Wall Street Journal,” the right wing paper of record, but once again, don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story.

Americans hate change, sorry to say so. They’re all fearful they’re gonna lose something in the transition. So if you try to throw the long ball, they cower, even though it’s Sanders and Warren who were truly standing up for the average American, who is financially challenged and behind the 8-ball. So we’ve got Biden.

The problem with Biden is he’s not good at conveying his message. He can only lose in further debate. Biden is experienced, he knows the right thing to do, he’s exercised good judgment, but as a candidate…not good. Furthermore, there’s no doubt he’s not as sharp as he was in the VP debates of yore.

Which brings us back to Kamala Harris. She’s too edgy to win general election. But as #2 she’s a princess, a hammer in a velvet glove. To watch her work her way through what she wanted to say to ultimately answer the question was amazing. We haven’t seen this skill since Bill Clinton. Then again, if you’re smart and educated you’ve got two strikes against you with the right. The right would rather pray the problems go away, are so busy keeping themselves in the hole they’re in that they cannot be lifted up. The right is so busy denigrating the left that its disadvantaged constituents can’t see what they’re losing, their religion is hating liberals just as much as loving God.

Now if Biden were to become incapacitated, or to pass, I’ve got complete confidence in Harris, she proved her mettle tonight. She can think on her feet, weigh the evidence. And if she were to inherit the presidency I have no doubt she would do a good job and be electable thereafter. But, once again, I can see why she lost in the primaries. America doesn’t like smart women, doesn’t like women with a backbone. And I’m wary of prosecutors, but maybe that’s exactly what our country now needs, to stand up to the bullies, not that Harris responded as to what measures she and her party would take if Trump refused to leave office.

No one answered the tough questions, no one answered the gotcha questions. Harris bobbed and weaved. Pence employed the Trump playbook, just hammer the points and lie, lie, lie…what are the chances your voters are gonna see the corrections in the “New York Times” or on CNN, never mind MSNBC. NONE!

But the truth is there is now no truth. We all drink from different media wells and Donald Trump has done an excellent job of undercutting truthful media. So far, it’s only been pundits fighting back, but tonight Kamala Harris fought back, and that was inspiring.

It’s time we got a fighter.

And isn’t it interesting that the fighters in the Democratic party are all women. From Harris to AOC to Pelosi. It’s the men we’ve got to worry about, the mealy-mouthed Schumer who seems to have left his balls in the locker room. You don’t bring a knife to a gun fight and to win you have to know your enemy and prepare for their behavior, whereas the men in the Democratic party whine and then say to trust the system. As for that system, I was waiting for Harris to say that Trump put in so many unqualified and biased judges because the Republican Senate refused to approve Obama’s picks. But, once again, these are not history lessons, just impressions.

Maybe, like in “Borgen,” we need a scoreboard. Maybe we have to move to the world we presently live in, reality television, where Trump made his bones. It seems that straight reporting, doing it the tried and true way, no longer works. So let’s get the flashing lights and buzzers. Let’s have a counter that evidences the number of lies told. Let’s declare a winner. Hell, we can have a panel, like in boxing, or in ice skating…a judge from each team and then a neutral arbiter.

Trump has turned America into a cartoon. Harris expertly listed the Trump administration’s foreign policy flaws and Pence couldn’t get out of the Middle East, telling lies all the while.

But I guess their debating style, Pence and Trump, is just like their governing style. Let’s forget the big picture, the “losers,” the people of color, while we drill down on broad issues that don’t speak to everyday life, like religion. Or coal. Or the “fraud” in mail-in ballots.

Unfortunately too many Americans are just that dumb. Whomever hammers their message more consistently too often wins, no matter how flawed and fraudulent.

This is where we’ve arrived.

But thank god we’ve got someone who’s up to the challenge.

That’s what we learned about Kamala Harris tonight.

Some records you only have to hear once.

Johnny Nash was the face of reggae. Sure, there was a whole scene down in Jamaica, Paul Simon had used the island groove for “Mother and Child Reunion,” but most people still did not know whether you pronounced it “reggie” or “reg-gay,” if they’d heard the term at all. The big buzz didn’t happen until the following year, in anticipation of the first Wailers album on Island and the ultimate distribution of “The Harder They Come.”

Although he’s now truly a legend, Bob Marley didn’t have purchase in the American market until his fifth American album, when the act was now known as Bob Marley and the Wailers. Recorded at the Lyceum in London in the summer of ’75, the album wasn’t released until the following December, and then the legend of “Live!” built over the course of a year, to the point where the following studio album, “Exodus,” was a certified hit. Not that the studio albums before had not possessed some great numbers, “Burnin'” had “Get Up, Stand Up,” never mind “I Shot the Sheriff,” but Clapton had the hit, with his execrable overplayed version on “461 Ocean Boulevard.” And “Natty Dread” had “No Woman, No Cry” but it took years for that to become a standard. “Rastaman Vibration” had the sound but not the hits and it looked like Marley and the hyped to high heaven reggae sound was going to remain an island curio, it was never going to break through.

You only had to drop the needle on “Live!” to get it. All the way from Jamaica the boys immediately locked into the groove of “Trenchtown Rock” and one thing was for sure, when you were listening you were feeling no pain.

And from thereafter the world was hit with Bob Marley’s music. In some respects it was like the Grateful Dead, you had to see the band live to get it. But unlike the Dead, anybody who listened to “Live!” could get it, you could not help but move your body in time. Furthermore, unlike the Dead, Marley permeated the ears of the entire world and reggae was now a well-known genre.

To help promote reggae, to break his acts, Chris Blackwell funded a movie entitled “The Harder They Come.” It was raw and violent, yet meaningful. It was a Boston legend, playing forever at the Orson Welles Cinema, but the film took years to permeate the culture. Yesterday you went from market to market and if you were good enough you got a chance, everybody could see what you were doing. Today, you have the power to reach the whole world instantly yet be great and go unnoticed. The times they have ‘a-changed.

“The Harder They Come” soundtrack broke earlier and bigger than the film. It introduced the world to Toots and the Maytals, as well as the Melodians, but the star of the album and the film were one Jimmy Cliff, who not only sang the title cut, but “Many Rivers to Cross” and the album’s sleeping giant, “Sitting Here in Limbo.”

But this was the peak of Cliff’s career. Even though he’s a stellar performer, he never had a big hit. He faded from the public consciousness. He was ostracized from the scene because he was not a Rastafarian, but a Muslim, he was not a member of the island club.

And Johnny Nash most certainly wasn’t.

Now if you read the obits, if you read the press back in ’72, not only the rock but the mainstream, you were aware that Johnny Nash had not come from nowhere, but his heyday was in the fifties, before the Beatles, before boomers tuned in and music changed the world.

In 1972 I was going to college in Vermont, back before Amazon, back before VHS, never mind DVD. There was no FedEx and no streaming. As for music? You could listen to the college station. But I never did, because I was used to New York radio, I didn’t want to hear the records the wankers spun, too often passé or the same Derek & the Dominos, Allman Brothers and Dead songs I’d burned out on long before. So I was left with the magazines, “Rolling Stone,” “Fusion” and “Crawdaddy.” That’s what I truly studied in college, and reading them word for word I was kept up with what was going on in the real world. And that’s how I’d buy my records, based on reviews. Because I could not hear the tracks, no way. And since I bought so many records I needed to buy them at a discount, I found the prices at the Vermont Book Store, full pop, an insult. Occasionally I employed the Record Club of America, but they always lagged on new product, and I had a connection to Sam Goody and could buy at wholesale but the minimum was fifty bucks, which was a little too rich for my blood.

And in the early seventies, most cars did not have FM tuners. Kids still hadn’t thrown over 8-track tapes for cassettes, that really started about ’76. And the FM tuners in cars were really bad. My dad’s ’69 Thunderbird and our ’70 Country Squire had FM, I’d insisted on it in the latter, but reception was weak, you could not easily listen to New York stations in Connecticut, the signal kept cutting in and out.

So, you listened to AM.

And the first time I heard “I Can See Clearly Now” was in a friend’s automobile in Vermont. I did not have a car. And it was like an elixir poured down from the heavens by God. This was an instant smash. It didn’t sound like anything else on the radio. Imagine hearing “I Can See Clearly Now” on Top Forty today, it would be just as revolutionary, even though there’d be no chance, Top Forty is only hip-hop and pop.

But I gave up buying singles back in the sixties. They were a bad value. I took my music seriously. I needed the album, I needed to go deep, assuming the LP was just not the hit and some filler.

And “I Can See Clearly Now” was so gigantic that it permeated airwaves to the point where papers and magazines stopped writing about it. Why? It was in plain sight, just twist the radio dial and you’d hear it, but I couldn’t, because I lived in Vermont, but every time I got in someone’s car I’d yearn for it to come over the airwaves.

My sister Jill graduated from BU in ’73 and was starting graduate school at USC in the fall of ’74, I drove to California with her. We camped. But the problem is most of these camping areas were for RVs, our tent pegs couldn’t penetrate the compacted dirt, and whenever we could we’d camp in state or national parks. And this night in West Virginia we had one picked out.

West Virginia is hilly. Which is a surprise, because the roads leading in are not. And the goal is to get to the campground before nightfall, because there’s little lighting in the woods, in the campgrounds themselves. But this evening we were running late. We’d entered the park in pitch black and I was driving the LeMans on the twisty two-lane when…THERE WAS A GIANT HOLE!

You remember your close calls. Obviously there’d been a rain event, which had washed out half the roadway, OUR HALF OF THE ROADWAY!

And this was an American car, not a nimble, fast-braking German automobile. And we’re going about 45 and I had to jerk the steering wheel to get the car over to the other side of the road on a curve, I’d say lord knows what would have happened if someone was coming in the other direction, but to tell you the truth that would have been preferable to falling into this ten foot hole that was a good fifteen feet long and like I said, went all the way to the stripe in the middle of the road, assuming there’d been one.

And it’s like the circus. You keep on driving. Maybe a bit slower. Meanwhile, you’re on autopilot, the Grim Reaper was just about to get you and his scythe missed you by just this much.

And then “I Can See Clearly Now” came over the radio. I remember. Vividly.

When I got back to Connecticut I bought the album and took it with me back for my senior year at Middlebury.

The album opened with “Stir It Up,” which wasn’t released in America until the Wailers’ ’73 Island debut, “Catch a Fire” with its hinged cover, once they eliminated that I didn’t bother to buy it.

Nash’s album also had a version of “Guava Jelly,” which had been released by the Wailers in ’71 on Tuff Gong, but it had no impact in the U.S. whatsoever, like “Stir It Up” it wasn’t commercially released here, at least not to my knowledge.

So, unlike Paul Simon, Johnny Nash was fully embracing reggae, it permeated his LP.

But then, over time the Wailers gained purchase outside Jamaica and then really broke through in the late seventies and Johnny Nash was seen as a pariah, an interloper, he’d become an outcast, like Jimmy Cliff, but much worse.

The truth was Nash was heavily involved in reggae as a business. It was he who broke the sound big in America. But since he wasn’t Jamaican, since he was not a Rasta, he failed the authenticity test. Johnny Nash paved the way for reggae in America but then he was plowed under. “Stir It Up” made it all the way to #12 after “I Can See Clearly Now” but then Nash never ever had another hit, he was essentially blackballed.

BUT HE WROTE “I CAN SEE CLEARLY NOW”!

It’s one thing to rape a culture, be Pat Boone detuning, making R&B safe for white audiences, but that was not the case with Nash, who was black himself, albeit from Texas.

“I Can See Clearly Now” is not the boasting winner of today, rather the singer is coming from under as opposed to on top, he’s managed to get his head straight to play another day, his optimism is back.

And the truth is pessimistic songs are more legendary than optimistic ones. But “I Can See Clearly Now” is so much the other, so innocent, so heartfelt, so personal that no one failed to resonate with it. It was not smarmy, this was not the Archies’ “Sugar Sugar,” this was not bubble gum, this was the real thing!

So yesterday Johnny Nash died. He lamented “I Can See Clearly Now” did not win the Grammy, but as good as “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” was, “I Can See Clearly Now” is vastly superior. But the Grammy organization always catches up late, it’s a club, if you’re an outsider they don’t acknowledge you, and what’s a Grammy worth anyway? So many legendary artists never won one, then again the Starland Vocal Band has a Grammy for “Afternoon Delight.”

I wish everybody could see clearly today. I wish the dark clouds were gone. I wish we could be optimistic, but that’s not the vibe permeating the culture. But if you just drop the needle, click Spotify to hear “I Can See Clearly Now,” your mood will be instantly transformed, you’ll see the opportunities, the glass will be half-full. Only music has this power, but it’s hard to achieve. We can talk all day about capturing lightning in a bottle, inspiration, but most people never even see the idea, never mind catch it and lay it down for all to hear.

Johnny Nash retreated from the scene, licking his wounds, like Rodney Dangerfield he got no respect, he could live off the publishing royalties from his one big hit but everybody saw him as a one hit wonder.

Do I want to argue that? Do I want to cite what came before?

I’m not even gonna bother. Sometimes a single track can cement your place in the firmament for all time, just look at Don McLean (sure, he also had “Vincent,” but Johnny had “Stir It Up” and more).

At this point in time, I’d wager “I Can See Clearly Now” is the biggest, most well-known reggae track of all time. Johnny Nash achieved what very few have, he wrote and recorded a smash that defies age, that continues to play, that is for all time.

Thanks Johnny, you’ve given the world many bright, bright, sunshiny days.