I apologize if you weren’t able to get ahold of me today.\u00c2\u00a0 Or if you weren’t able to subscribe or unsubscribe on my Website.\u00c2\u00a0 You see, it was down.\u00c2\u00a0 The D.N.S. number had to be changed.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, you don’t need to know what a D.N.S. number is.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s transparent to the end user.\u00c2\u00a0 Assuming everything’s copacetic.\u00c2\u00a0 I won’t bore you with the details, but I had to wait for the D.N.S. number to repopulate itself worldwide.\u00c2\u00a0 And it just reached my little neck of the woods, here in SoCal, about an hour ago (the server’s in Colorado).<\/p>\n
It was really strange not to be able to access my e-mail this morning.\u00c2\u00a0 This wasn’t a glitch on my end.\u00c2\u00a0 With the server down, I was locked out, alone.\u00c2\u00a0 Very strange.\u00c2\u00a0 I was jetted back to my old life, BEFORE the Web.\u00c2\u00a0 When I still used to watch television.\u00c2\u00a0 When I still used to roam the countryside looking for…where I fit in.<\/p>\n
Ultimately, I went out hiking with my buddy Jeff.\u00c2\u00a0 And after he regaled me with his take on Cream on PBS, I told him tales of 1971.\u00c2\u00a0 In Dave McCormick’s dorm room.<\/p>\n
I’d never say Jeff lives for music.\u00c2\u00a0 But, in the sixties and seventies we ALL lived for music.\u00c2\u00a0 Only the marginally hip were out of the loop.\u00c2\u00a0 He’s excitedly talking about "Pressed Rat and Warthog" and I’m laughing.\u00c2\u00a0 How we all knew these arcane details.\u00c2\u00a0 Now the details we know are Internet history.\u00c2\u00a0 When we all graduated from AOL to the Web.\u00c2\u00a0 When we started listening to broadcasts via RealPlayer.\u00c2\u00a0 When we installed DSL or cable.\u00c2\u00a0 When we started downloading from Napster.\u00c2\u00a0 THAT’S our shared history.\u00c2\u00a0 Not what some act did on MTV, never mind what was contained on their records.<\/p>\n
LEGEND OF A MIND<\/strong><\/p>\n They play a lot of Moody Blues on XM.\u00c2\u00a0 Sometimes the stuff from "Question Of Balance" and after.\u00c2\u00a0 But really, it’s all about the four albums before.\u00c2\u00a0 From "Days Of Future Passed" to "To Our Children’s Children’s Children".\u00c2\u00a0 "Days Of Future Passed" is played out.\u00c2\u00a0 They don’t even play "Tuesday Afternoon" on Tuesday afternoon anymore.\u00c2\u00a0 But, that’s a classic record.\u00c2\u00a0 Every bit as integral to the rock firmament as "Disraeli Gears".\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, "Disraeli Gears" had a greater initial impact.\u00c2\u00a0 But "Days Of Future Passed" lasted longer.\u00c2\u00a0 It made no impact upon its release.\u00c2\u00a0 It was too far AHEAD of the game.\u00c2\u00a0 Integrating an orchestra with a rock band.\u00c2\u00a0 But, word of mouth kept the record circulating.\u00c2\u00a0 And, "Nights In White Satin" and "Tuesday Afternoon" were spun as a result of requests.\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t know a record like this that plays today.\u00c2\u00a0 A mellow trip.<\/p>\n By time "Days Of Future Passed" really caught on, the Moody Blues had already cut three more albums.\u00c2\u00a0 I’d bought "On The Threshold Of A Dream".\u00c2\u00a0 I’d heard that was the best.\u00c2\u00a0 But, I was wrong.\u00c2\u00a0 Even though I loved "Lovely To See You" and "Dear Diary", "To Our Children’s Children’s Children", which came AFTER, was BETTER!\u00c2\u00a0 And so was "In Search Of The Lost Chord", which came before.<\/p>\n Timothy Leary’s dead If you go to download the Moody Blues’ "Timothy Leary", you’re going to be in trouble.\u00c2\u00a0 For that’s not the name of the track.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s "Legend Of A Mind".<\/p>\n Did you ever do drugs?<\/p>\n My marijuana days were not long-lived.\u00c2\u00a0 Still, "Legend Of A Mind" is the sound of doing drugs.\u00c2\u00a0 Marijuana is not like alcohol.\u00c2\u00a0 You don’t get together and party.\u00c2\u00a0 You get together and zone out.\u00c2\u00a0 Blitzed and in your own mind.\u00c2\u00a0 But the ride was worthless without a soundtrack.\u00c2\u00a0 Sure, you listened to some heavy music.\u00c2\u00a0 But really, it was the spacy, adventurous stuff that got to you.\u00c2\u00a0 That took you on a trip.\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, "Legend Of A Mind" lasted six and a half minutes.\u00c2\u00a0 It had movements.\u00c2\u00a0 It bent in the middle.\u00c2\u00a0 If you played this for a teenager hooked on Zeppelin today he wouldn’t get it at first.\u00c2\u00a0 But then he would.\u00c2\u00a0 This is music made for you when you’re alone.\u00c2\u00a0 And, make no mistake, smoking marijuana is about being alone.\u00c2\u00a0 And nothing is lonelier than being a teenager.\u00c2\u00a0 Sitting in your bedroom, landlocked, surrounded by nobody who understands you.<\/p>\n 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.\u00c2\u00a0 Going to class in the morning, skiing all afternoon, and smoking dope all night.\u00c2\u00a0 Listening to the Moody Blues for HOURS!<\/p>\n HOME AGAIN<\/strong><\/p>\n Sometimes I wonder if I’m ever going to make it home again Last night in the jacuzzi I realized California was home.\u00c2\u00a0 It happened over the years.\u00c2\u00a0 I became inured to the weather.\u00c2\u00a0 To the easy lifestyle.\u00c2\u00a0 But thinking about going to Aspen next week, I remembered who I once was.<\/p>\n It’s different on the east coast.\u00c2\u00a0 You see you’ve got November.\u00c2\u00a0 With the shittiest weather of the year.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s biting cold.\u00c2\u00a0 And the precipitation is usually rain rather than snow.\u00c2\u00a0 So, by time the ski areas open at the end of the month, at the beginning of December, you’re ready.\u00c2\u00a0 You’ve been locked up inside too long, you want to get out.<\/p>\n But we’re always out in SoCal.<\/p>\n I wonder.\u00c2\u00a0 If I’ve changed.\u00c2\u00a0 Irrevocably.\u00c2\u00a0 If I’m no longer the person I was.\u00c2\u00a0 And it creeps me out.\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t want to let go.\u00c2\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n 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.\u00c2\u00a0 I had time to hear ten thousand songs.<\/p>\n The first track was the New York Dolls’ "(There’s Gonna Be A) Showdown".\u00c2\u00a0 I’d like to tell you it resonated.\u00c2\u00a0 But the production is so thin and compressed it sounded like an historical artifact.\u00c2\u00a0 But then, when that track was finished, I heard a piano flourish.\u00c2\u00a0 It sounded rich.\u00c2\u00a0 It resonated.\u00c2\u00a0 It was Carole King’s "Home Again".<\/p>\n The song I sing in my head all the time is "So Far Away".\u00c2\u00a0 With its poignant line "Doesn’t anybody stay in one place anymore?"<\/p>\n In case you haven’t noticed, they don’t.\u00c2\u00a0 Suddenly, their e-mail addresses stop working.\u00c2\u00a0 They move across the country.\u00c2\u00a0 They get new jobs.\u00c2\u00a0 My life never changes, why does THEIRS?<\/p>\n I don’t cope well with change.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s too jarring.\u00c2\u00a0 I can’t adjust.\u00c2\u00a0 I can’t afford to lose my underpinnings.\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t jump from a bad situation to a good one easily.\u00c2\u00a0 God, when I experience a loss it lasts for years.<\/p>\n We graduated from the Moody Blues to "Layla".\u00c2\u00a0 And then to "Idlewild South".\u00c2\u00a0 And by spring term, by time the days were long, "Tapestry" had invaded the dorm.\u00c2\u00a0 Not Dave’s room.\u00c2\u00a0 Not my personal library.\u00c2\u00a0 We needed something edgier, more meaningful, something that everybody else didn’t have.<\/p>\n It was funny.\u00c2\u00a0 Carole King had gone out in support of James Taylor.\u00c2\u00a0 And, in a matter of months, she was bigger than he.\u00c2\u00a0 "Tapestry" became the biggest selling album of all time.\u00c2\u00a0 After hearing it enough in other people’s rooms, I bought it too.<\/p>\n I’m not sure you can divorce the musician from the scene.<\/p>\n Maybe that’s the reason we’ve got such vapid acts today.\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c2\u00a0 Utterly meaningless.\u00c2\u00a0 Grease to have a good time.\u00c2\u00a0 But, if the lifestyle is one of contemplation, you get music like the Moody Blues and Carole King.<\/p>\n It’s not like Carole King has been forgotten.\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c2\u00a0 After all, today’s quiet music has no credibility, whereas what sold the melancholic music of yesteryear WAS its credibility.\u00c2\u00a0 We’d all lived through a war.\u00c2\u00a0 We weren’t frivolous.\u00c2\u00a0 We were battle-damaged.\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c2\u00a0 The acts we listened to either soothed us or gave us insight.\u00c2\u00a0 Or both.\u00c2\u00a0 Listen to that first Elton album.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s like skin lotion.\u00c2\u00a0 It feels so good.\u00c2\u00a0 It revitalizes you.<\/p>\n Carole King never equaled "Tapestry" again.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe, like Alanis Morissette, she got freaked out by all the success.\u00c2\u00a0 But, if you go back and listen to the record, you’ll be stunned how good it sounds.\u00c2\u00a0 I understand the appeal of Debbie Harry.\u00c2\u00a0 But, Blondie had the quality of an intellectual statement.\u00c2\u00a0 Whereas Carole King was a woman, not a femme fatale or waif, singing straight from the heart.<\/p>\n I won’t be happy till I see you alone again What I like about this medium is it’s personal.\u00c2\u00a0 Just from me to you.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s the opposite of celebrity culture, the opposite of dance club culture.\u00c2\u00a0 I go about my everyday business, and then I send you a letter, telling what’s going on in my mind.\u00c2\u00a0 My goal is to give you the feeling of listening to one of those great early seventies records.\u00c2\u00a0 That it was written just for you.<\/p>\n My server is working again.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m home again and feelin’ right.<\/p>\n <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I apologize if you weren’t able to get ahold of me today.\u00c2\u00a0 Or if you weren’t able to subscribe or unsubscribe on my Website.\u00c2\u00a0 You see, it was down.\u00c2\u00a0 The D.N.S. number had to be changed.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, you don’t need to know what a D.N.S. number is.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s transparent to the end user.\u00c2\u00a0 Assuming everything’s 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No, no, no, he’s outside, looking in<\/em><\/p>\n
It’s so far and out of sight<\/em><\/p>\n
Till I’m home again and feelin’ right<\/em><\/p>\n