We used to be fans of the artist.<\/p>\n
Maybe that’s why baby boomers continue to buy albums.\u00c2\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
Think of it like love.\u00c2\u00a0 You can be attracted by a pretty face.\u00c2\u00a0 But you fall
in love with the whole person.\u00c2\u00a0 You forgive imperfections, actually, they’re
what ultimately enamor you, they HUMANIZE the person, make them unique.\u00c2\u00a0 When
every rapper known to man appears on the track it ceases to be the work of the
original artist, we can’t identify.\u00c2\u00a0 We want to dig down deep, bathe ourselves
in the artist’s identity, see who they are and what they stand for.\u00c2\u00a0 But the
artists are no longer playing to us, they’re playing to the gatekeepers.<\/p>\n
Tell me a story.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s what the gatekeepers say.\u00c2\u00a0 Tell me why I should go
on this new act, this new single.\u00c2\u00a0 How much money are you committing?\u00c2\u00a0 Let me
see the video.\u00c2\u00a0 Is MTV on it?\u00c2\u00a0 Used to be the gatekeepers asked to hear the
record.\u00c2\u00a0 And it was a WHOLE album.\u00c2\u00a0 A statement, not just a single.\u00c2\u00a0 The
gatekeepers saw their mission as educating and fulfilling their audience.\u00c2\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
The record store used to be the museum.\u00c2\u00a0 Where you went to visit your
friends, the greats.\u00c2\u00a0 All the albums you wanted to eventually buy.\u00c2\u00a0 You’d check for
inventory on your obscure favorites, hoping they were available so someone else
could buy them.\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c2\u00a0 You
recited a bit of history.\u00c2\u00a0 Where the act came from.\u00c2\u00a0 Who they played with
before.\u00c2\u00a0 There was a whole CULTURE!<\/p>\n
And if you were hooked, you purchased the next album without even hearing it
first.\u00c2\u00a0 You had no choice.\u00c2\u00a0 You wanted another hit of what had hooked you.<\/p>\n
CDs just don’t have the same tactile feel as albums.\u00c2\u00a0 Cardboard is organic.\u00c2\u00a0
Plastic is that anti-environment stuff that doesn’t degrade in landfills for
millennia.\u00c2\u00a0 The pictures are so small, the text even tinier.\u00c2\u00a0 They’re not made
for people.\u00c2\u00a0 Executives wonder why we have no problem switching to MP3s.\u00c2\u00a0 The
packaging hasn’t been worth shit for years.<\/p>\n
So going to the record store is not what it used to be.\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c2\u00a0 You go a couple of times for the
old hit, and then you stop.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s just too depressing.\u00c2\u00a0 And it’s worse than
that.\u00c2\u00a0 CDs may not scratch, but they sound like shit.\u00c2\u00a0 The only thing that DOES
sound good on them is rap.\u00c2\u00a0 There’s no warmth.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s like living in a
concrete block instead of a wood house.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s a cubicle instead of a home.<\/p>\n
It must be funny to be a baby boomer musician.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, I’m not talking about the
legends, selling out arenas, like the Eagles.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m thinking of people who had
careers, selling albums, who no longer have major label deals.\u00c2\u00a0 Do you get a
day job and give up, or do you soldier on?\u00c2\u00a0 Knowing there’s no place for your
music to be exposed.\u00c2\u00a0 That you’ll never be big again.\u00c2\u00a0 In a culture that
reveres youth.<\/p>\n
I go places and everybody’s so enamored of the business and I don’t get it.\u00c2\u00a0
For it’s absent the soul that hooked me in the first place.\u00c2\u00a0 I just end up
playing the old stuff.\u00c2\u00a0 Because the new stuff tends not to have what I’m looking
for.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s made for instant consumption.\u00c2\u00a0 And I’m looking for something to
keep me warm at night.<\/p>\n
And the new music by the old superstars.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s creepy.\u00c2\u00a0 They’ve dyed their
hair.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s like when our parents wore jeans.\u00c2\u00a0 They just didn’t look right.\u00c2\u00a0 You
can only play at being young when you’re old.\u00c2\u00a0 And you can’t win.\u00c2\u00a0 You must
age with your audience.\u00c2\u00a0 Only an inert enterprise like MTV can stay forever
young.\u00c2\u00a0 People fill out, their hair grays, their eyesight wanes.\u00c2\u00a0 But it’s not
all negative.\u00c2\u00a0 You gain INSIGHT when you get older.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s THIS insight I’m
interested in.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s this insight that the famous oldsters don’t deliver.\u00c2\u00a0 They’re
too busy selling out.<\/p>\n
I’m hooked on the Internet.\u00c2\u00a0 I read yesterday that China’s got detox
programs.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe I should move there.\u00c2\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
And I’ve got my usual sites.\u00c2\u00a0 That I hit every day.\u00c2\u00a0 And then there are lunar
pages.\u00c2\u00a0 That I go to more frequently than Halley’s comet appears, but
sometimes don’t visit for years.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s just that a synapse fires.\u00c2\u00a0 And I decide to
check up on my old buddies.<\/p>\n
And that’s how I found myself at Wendy Waldman’s homepage.\u00c2\u00a0 Inspired by the
re-release of her catalog on CD.<\/p>\n
I’ve got all those albums on vinyl.\u00c2\u00a0 But, not every track in an MP3.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m
missing stuff from the third record.\u00c2\u00a0 And I don’t have an MP3 of "Lee’s Traveling
Song", one of my all time favorites.<\/p>\n
And I’m haunting the site.\u00c2\u00a0 And I click a link to a page with downloads.\u00c2\u00a0 And
I find an MP3 of a live take of "I Want To Touch You", from the first Bryndle
album.\u00c2\u00a0 And, after taking that, I explored and found "What The Gypsy Said".<\/p>\n
Karla Bonoff’s Columbia debut is a classic.\u00c2\u00a0 One that does not seem to be
surviving.<\/p>\n
But every teenage and twentysomething girl and sensitive boy should hear "If
He’s Ever Near".\u00c2\u00a0 "They say that just once in life, you find someone that’s
right.\u00c2\u00a0 But the world looks so confused, I can’t tell false from true."<\/p>\n
And this unreleased Bryndle track featuring Karla just wasn’t fantastic.\u00c2\u00a0
Typical latter day Bonoff.\u00c2\u00a0 Close, but no cigar.\u00c2\u00a0 And then I hit the change.\u00c2\u00a0 And
what came thereafter.\u00c2\u00a0 I slowly got hooked.\u00c2\u00a0 I remember just this time of
year back in ’77, buying her debut, listening in the new apartment I shared with
my girlfriend.\u00c2\u00a0 We ate at the coffee table.\u00c2\u00a0 We didn’t have a couch yet.\u00c2\u00a0
Candles were flickering.<\/p>\n
I went back to the store and bought more promo copies.\u00c2\u00a0 I gave one to my
sister.\u00c2\u00a0 Another to Tony.\u00c2\u00a0 We sent one to her mom.\u00c2\u00a0 It was my mission to turn
everybody on to Karla, and her record.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
I got inspired.\u00c2\u00a0 I fired up Rhapsody.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe they had those newly-released
albums.<\/p>\n
They didn’t.<\/p>\n
But, they DID have Wendy’s odds and sods album from two years back.\u00c2\u00a0 I’d
thought about buying it.\u00c2\u00a0 But I ultimately didn’t.\u00c2\u00a0 I figured I’d be disappointed.
And I didn’t want my memories tarnished.<\/p>\n
But now, confronted with the ability to instantly hear it, I fired "Seeds And
Orphans" up.<\/p>\n
I was stunned.\u00c2\u00a0 It SOUNDED like her.\u00c2\u00a0 From decades back.<\/p>\n
And I kept judging.\u00c2\u00a0 How good WAS it.<\/p>\n
And then I realized this was like listening to albums in the seventies.\u00c2\u00a0 You
came home and ripped off the shrinkwrap and played them.\u00c2\u00a0 Again and again.\u00c2\u00a0
Trying to see if they delivered.\u00c2\u00a0 You were looking for that one track that
jumped out.\u00c2\u00a0 That made you play the album again.\u00c2\u00a0 Which eventually led you to other cuts.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe it was the covers of "Letter Home" and "The Road Song" that kept me listening.\u00c2\u00a0 Kept me playing the album.\u00c2\u00a0 Again and again and again.<\/p>\n
And it was about the fourth time through that I got hooked on "Restless In
Mind".<\/p>\n
I didn’t hear it at first.\u00c2\u00a0 It was too subtle.\u00c2\u00a0 But this time through, I got
it.\u00c2\u00a0 Or, should I say, it got me.<\/p>\n
"What The Gypsy Said" is a second-rate track by a favorite that we come to
love.\u00c2\u00a0 "Restless In Mind" is first-rate.\u00c2\u00a0 Not a hit single, but a concoction
that PENETRATES!\u00c2\u00a0 It’s EXACTLY why I love Wendy to BEGIN WITH!\u00c2\u00a0 To discover a new song by one of my old favorites elated me.<\/p>\n
And you’d think I’d be satisfied able to stream it.<\/p>\n
But you’ve got to own your music.\u00c2\u00a0 You don’t want to rent love, you want to
MARRY IT!\u00c2\u00a0 You want to be able to COUNT ON IT!<\/p>\n
They say rental is as good as sale, if you can hear it all the time.\u00c2\u00a0 Well,
portability via Janus doesn’t work.\u00c2\u00a0 But really, I want it lock, stock and
barrel.\u00c2\u00a0 So I can hold on to it late at night, in bed.\u00c2\u00a0 When I’m overwhelmed, when
I can’t count on anybody or anything.<\/p>\n
That’s the relationship we had with music.<\/p>\n
That’s the relationship I’m searching for.<\/p>\n
I’m looking for artists.\u00c2\u00a0 Who are doing it because they have to.\u00c2\u00a0 Because
they can’t do anything else.\u00c2\u00a0 Who consider tampering with their material as
fucking with their identity.\u00c2\u00a0 I want music from someone as honest as me.\u00c2\u00a0 Someone
untemptable.<\/p>\n