To quote the final line of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest: I been away a long time.
My last “shuffle” post was in 2022 and I worried about what I would do when “my laptop goes”. Well, it happened just a couple months later.
I “lost” my music collection when my laptop went kaput in 2022. My response would involve a rant about the state of affairs in re: the concept of ownership – which may be the most sinister aspect of the slow-creep tech takeover and also a monologue on the regret I feel that I did not have the foresight to see what was going on. The only music I had left after the laptop crashed was what had been purchased on iTunes, which meant I lost the thousands and thousands of songs I uploaded when I first converted my 100s of CDs, in my permanent collection for decades, and also uploaded all my mp3s, stuff I downloaded from YouTube. In other words: my music collection, curated by me, since I was 13 years old. This was when I gave up ownership and submitted to a landlord. This was my error. I didn’t realize that that was what I was actually doing. BUT. Recently, my friend Allison was here and she had computer problems and called the helpline. She befriended the help-line guy – who spent literally an hour on the phone with her restoring her computer. He became our friend. I then mentioned my issue with music collection having vanished. He said he could take a look. He said my complaint was one of their most common complaints. He said if I backed up my laptop then the music should still be on there. Thankfully I do regular backups. So we then transferred him to MY computer which he then took over and found my music collection – no longer in the “music” folder but in the “media” folder. There it was! All my music. Including the clip of my DAD talking. The songs from my sister, my brother, none of which are on iTunes. My Pat McCurdy collection. Like, the music that really matters to me. I have it back. I was in tears. Thank you, Mark Help-Desk Guy. You live up to your job description.
I am sure this problem will come up again. I want to get everything back into physical form, to avoid the landlord’s noblesse oblige. I only trust physical media now because the tech companies not only do not care but want it to be this way. They want us to give up the sense that we can own anything, and they wanted to position lack-of-ownership as the better way. This is why I have an entire bookshelf filled with DVDs. I’m supposed to trust Netflix? Or Amazon? Trust them to keep The More the Merrier on their streaming platforms? Fool me once, shame on you and etc.
I’ve been having so much fun re-acquainting myself with the music I love. Seriously it’s been bliss in one of the most difficult and stressful and jam-packed seasons of my life (July of 2024 to now. And counting.)
I’ve been listening to music as I do my “day job”. Simple pleasures are sometimes the best. Always, maybe. Simple pleasures are all we’ve got. Shuffling my music collection is a pleasure, not just for the music but because it also connects me to my past, past me’s, when I discovered an artist, what I was doing then, how it made me feel. Dropping into this “mode” is meaningful for me, as a human but also a writer. It shakes things loose, and I like that.
Without further ado:
“Pick Me Up” – Air Traffic Controller. I discovered them because they opened for Bleu, one of my favorite singer-songwriters (ever?), when I saw Bleu at Rockwood Hall, a night that – to this day – makes me shiver because I was suicidal that night and completely dissociated on my bus ride home. I don’t remember getting home. I went by myself. It was right after Hurricane Sandy, and the concert raised funds for relief. I think my neighborhood had just got power back, we were electricity-free for two weeks. Seeing Bleu was soothing and beautiful, marked by wild pangs of pain because I was alone. I can be seen on some of the videos taken by people in the audience that night, and in one I can hear myself laugh. Which gives me a strange sensation because it was such a harrowing time for me. I try to hear in my laugh the anguish, but I can’t. Right after Sandy, I was “broken up with”, or … ghosted … by a man who had overwhelmed me with companionship over the summer/fall. He pursued me. Hard. Then … poof. Nowhere to be found. I wasn’t suicidal because of him. Fuck him. I was suicidal because I am bipolar. Only I didn’t know it the night I went to see Bleu. It was the beginning of a terrible period – which I’ve written about ad nauseum – so terrible it led to a crack-up of such epic proportions I am lucky I am here today. So. That’s Air Traffic Controller.
“King of the Road” – Dean Martin. So smooth. He regulates my blood pressure. You can hear him smiling.
“Freedom” – Anthony Hamilton and Elayna Boynton. The key track on Django Unchained. Inspirational but angry. You don’t get your freedom until you get good and pissed.
“We Ain’t”- The Game (feat. Eminem). The Game and Eminem had a recent beef, started by The Game, who blazed back onto the scene talking shit about Eminem. It kind of came out of nowhere. Maybe because there’s this famous clip (or at least famous to Eminem fans) of The Game saying, “Everybody knows you don’t mess with the white boy.” Meaning: if you take on Eminem he will destroy you. Basically conceding Eminem’s greatness. This clip comes up all the time in Eminem circles. So maybe The Game finally had had enough. Which is totally valid. Eminem fans can be annoying. i.e. “The Game said Eminem was the best 20 years ago, therefore Eminem is always the greatest, always has been the greatest, no one else can be great, it’s all about him.” Meanwhile they don’t listen to hip hop. They only listen to him. Don’t tase me, Eminem fans, you know it’s true. So I can see how that kind of thing would get super annoying for someone as tough as The Game. The beef didn’t go anywhere, it was a minor dust-up. It definitely didn’t have the pure entertainment value of the MGK/Eminem beef which took over the Internet. God, that was fun. At any rate. Here is their collaboration. It’s angry-sounding and threatening and I think it’s sexy. The Game is great. He can be great and Eminem can ALSO be great. Calm down.
“Got My Mojo Working” – Elvis. He recorded this in 1970 and was included on his slapdash (and super fun) country album and it was also on Love Letters from Elvis. He was in the studio all the time, and it was such a creative period for him. This arrangement is a mashup of the Muddy Waters r&b song and “Hands Off”. Everything he did in this time is so good, so activated – he was full IN – and it all felt new. He was looking forward, not back. As an artist, he didn’t look back. He was always about the future.
“You Know You’re Right” – Nirvana. There’s something about some of their chord resolutions that connect them back to the rock ‘n roll past, the past of which they momentarily obliterated, or maybe “absorbed” is the better way to put it. The choruses are all Nirvana, punk-rock sensibility in its almost monotonous tonal quality. The verses harken back, even though they’re made fresh by the grunge burst of sound (soon to become a “tic”). You can hear Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, even the Beatles. Only screamed and whined by a child of the 70s. Talkin bout my generation.
“Rock, Baby Rock” – Bob Hicks and the Fenders. I think I grabbed this off a rockabilly compilation. It has all the elements of its time. An Elvis imitation, basically. There’s even a “Come on, baby!” from Jerry Lee Lewis. Elvis created a generation who wanted to sound like him. Their heyday was short, but there is still a lot to discover in all of these one-offs.
“Minority” – Green Day. I wasn’t really into them in their first wave. I remember discovering them when I worked at The Hub (a channel on the AOL Welcome Screen. Anyone remember this?) I got the job, part-time, when I was in grad school. The Hub was eventually bought by New Line Cinema, and we worked in one of their offices on maybe 59th Street? Or, they were upstairs, and we – the crazy internet kidz – were on the floor below. Like the 17th floor in Bernie Madoff’s operation. I made lifelong friends during my time there, and it was my “introduction” to the internet, and I’ve had jobs in New York media ever since. Anyway, someone had International Superhits on CD, and I listened to it and was like, “Oh, I like this!”
“Keep Me” – Brendan Benson. I look forward to every new album. I first heard him, as I am sure is true for the majority of us, in the first commercial for the first iPod. They clearly bought his song to use, and … well, it made me a fan for life, so I guess the tech overlords have SOME use. I love his songs. Not a clinker among them.
“Maybe I’m Amazed” – Tim Christiensen, Tracy Bonham and Mike Viola. This trio – of artists I love separately – came together to record a bunch of Paul McCartney songs (there’s also some live tracks). I love the album. It’s called Pure McCartney.
“Time Warp” – The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Did every high school play this song at their dances in the ’80s? It was as popular as “Purple Rain”. I went to the Rocky Horror Picture Show in high school. I didn’t even know it existed until I saw the movie Fame. These are my bread crumbs through the forest of my own history. Every first encounter includes an encounter with something else before that.
“We Know We’re In Love” – Lesley Gore. It’s a 1965 JAM. You want to bop around snapping your fingers. Listen, I’m just describing the effect of the thing. I adore her voice. It has a piercing quality but also a gentle vibrato. She was a real singer.
“Ignition” – The Ragtime Gals. When it came on, I was like “what is this??” and then I remembered. Uploaded from YouTube. Dumb. But fun.
“Can’t Hardly Stand It” – Charlie Feathers. 1956. The year everything burst open. Feathers does all those little Elvis hitches in his voice – only here they become … a style choice, a little meta, deliberate. With Elvis those hitches were organic, it came from the feel of it, and the closeness he had with himself and his own impulses. Jim Jarmusch used this sexy track in Only Lovers Left Alive. I think Charlie Feathers should be much more well-known. He inspired a lot of people.
“Carried” – Ebba Forsberg. Okay so here’s what I mean about autobiography. I am not sure how I discovered her – maybe I heard her on the radio and then went to Virgin Records in Times Square and bought it on cassette. Or maybe on CD. Probably on CD. I know I was in grad school and I know I was living in the project-housing up near Lincoln Center, kind of behind the John Jay college. I only lived there for four months. There was an index card on the main bulletin board at school (the New School), advertising for a roommate. I needed to move – fast – so I reached out and moved in the next week. I had two roommates. One was a ballet dancer with the Joffrey (a wild gay boy of about 18 years old), and one was a kindly older gay man (well, he was older than me. He was probably 30, lol). The older man was named Brian, and Brian and I were the calm elders, gently indulging the wild party-boy who’d come home at 3 in the morning with 4 of his wild Joffrey friends. I didn’t even have my own room. What would have been the “living” room was cordoned off with a curtain, and I lived behind the curtain. It was a weird time and Ebba Forsberg – this is the only song of hers I have – makes me think of it. I think I found the song comforting. I was going to church a lot at St. Malachy’s, the “actor’s chapel”, one of the prettiest little churches in New York. It was only a couple blocks south of that apartment so I’d walk down there. Even after I moved from that neighborhood over into Hoboken, I used to just go in and sit in there during the day if I was auditioning for stuff, or running from job to class to audition. I’d go there even when there wasn’t a mass. I loved it those times the most. Just a quiet place to step outside the busy stream of life. I used to go every year for the stations of the cross mass before Easter, where we’d walk around the church from station to station. Even just writing about this makes me miss it and I will go back to visit on my trips to New York, of which there will be many in the coming months. When I became a godmother to my niece Lucy I needed to get an official stamp of approval and I got it through St. Malachy’s and have received mail from them ever since. So this song, basically about God carrying her, somehow spoke to me at this kind of lonely – but busy – time. “When I look at my life and what my life’s become I know it could not have been different.” I had moved to New York. Kind of impulsively, even though I’d always wanted to live there. I regret it now. I was so sad. I was so young, my God, but it felt like everything was behind me. I didn’t know my roommates, and the curtain gave me no privacy (how the hell am I supposed to masturbate now? sorry: but I thought this at the time. It was a real dilemma. I can’t NOT masturbate for the four months I’ll be here. I’ll never make it! So I knew I’d have to be very intentional about it. “Both roommates are always gone on Tuesday afternoons so … I know what I’LL be doing.” Not very romantic but those were desperate times.) This is what comes to mind when I hear “Carried”.
“Hound Dog” – Shonka Dukureh. She played Big Mama Thornton in Elvis, and God, she was fantastic. Baz giving Thornton her flowers for what she did, the inspiration she was. Because “Hound Dog” was a hit BEFORE Elvis. It’s not HER fault that Elvis became Elvis. So give credit. Dukureh helped place her where she belonged to people who might not know. Tragically, Dukureh died a month after the film opened. She was only 44.
“Blue Suede Shoes” – Elvis. Live. 1956. Little Rock, Arkansas. The first wave. Well, 1954-55 was the first wave. Leading to 1956. These live clips are crazy. You can hear how WILD he is and the audience is a herd of feral BEASTS. Deafening screams. You can hear him screaming at Scotty to take it away, and during the musical breaks, you can tell when he’s dancing because the audience loses their shit. He laughs, makes wild grunting noises … Man, the boy was WILD.
“I Might Stop Getting Stoned” – Pat McCurdy. An old friend. I mean, I hope so, considering this. And this. That photo was taken – by Pat – backstage at the Milwaukee Summer Fest, where Pat was performing on the main stage. He’s a Milwaukee legend.
“Will the Circle Be Unbroken?” — Jerry Lee Lewis, featuring Mavis Staples, Robbie Robertson and Nils Lofgren. From Jerry Lee’s 2010 album Mean Old Man. It’s glorious. Look at that lineup.
“Drive” – Joe 90. This is the only song I have of theirs. I just looked it up. It was a single, released in 1999. It’s a bit of a banger. I wonder if I heard it on a soundtrack.
“Black Betty” – Lead Belly. THE version of this song, sorry Ram Jam, I like your version but this … A capella, with just those single hand claps. Shivers.
“Ballad of Maxwewll Demon” –Shudder to Think. Beautiful. From the great Velvet Goldmine soundtrack.
“Monkey Wrench” – Foo Fighters. I was just talking about this album to my sister the other day. She said something funny, along the lines of: “The O’Malley siblings all agree on two albums. Foo Fighters The Colour and the Shape and The Eminem Show.” I think it’s because these albums came out when we all were, more or less, adults – or at least college-age and into 20s, and not siloed off into age groups through school. We all – including cousins – got obsessed with these two albums – so much so that we all have vivid memories of being at a cousin’s wedding, sitting at the same table, and not talking about the happy nuptials (which ended in divorce, anyway), but The Eminem Show. Going track by track, all as we ate the wedding banquet. The Colour and the Shape came into my life during the same period I mentioned above, working at the Hub and going to grad school. I over-listened to Tori Amos. I can’t listen to Little Earthquakes anymore, sadly. But The Colour and the Shape – which I legit played on repeat for a full YEAR – still shivers with excitement. It’s a time capsule but it’s also Right Now. I just found this clip on YouTube: at a concert in Austin in 2018 Dave Grohl calls up onto the stage a young guy wearing KISS makeup who has been holding up a sign saying “LET ME PLAY MONKEY WRENCH”. So Grohl does. And ….
“One Brick at a Time” – Glenn Close, Barnum. Oh my God. My sisters and I know this by heart, including the counterpoint. Get us started and we can’t stop. I saw this on Broadway when I was a kid. With TONY ORLANDO as P.T. Barnum. TONY ORLANDO on a tightrope.
“I Hate You” — Jerry Lee Lewis, from Jerry Lee Keeps Rockin, 1978. When he died, someone said, “There’s very little filler in his whole career”. It stuck with me. Because there might be a same-ness to what he did over decades – he didn’t try to suddenly do New Wave, he didn’t try to fit in or “grow” with the times in terms of style – but … every single track has HIM, and what he does, and it’s MORE than enough. Like this.
“Say What U Say” – Eminem (feat. Dr. Dre). Off The Eminem Show. SPEAKING OF WHICH. Track 17. That’s another thing, and a throwback to an earlier time. I remember track lists, and the order. The song creates an anticipation of the next song. So I’m listening to “Say What U Say” but I know instantly what comes next, the opening keyboards of the great “Til I Collapse” – one of his best tracks. I’ve been listening to this man since he first exploded onto the scene, changing everything. I’m not sick of him yet. Clearly. Not even exaggerating: Eminem and Jackass got me through the first months of lockdown. I mean, look at the date of that post I linked to. Working on that for a month literally helped me get through the day. I lived alone. My brother-in-law was dying. He died in November. My godmother died. My cat would die in September. The world was shut down. I CLUNG to Eminem. Whatever gets you through the day.
“Birth of an Accidental Hipster” – The Monkees. From their 2016 album, which I absolutely devoured. I love it!
“Tossin’ and Turnin'” – Freddie Keil And The Kavaliers. A very well-known song, and it’s on a compilation record, but I just looked it up. I didn’t know much about them. They were from New Zealand, and they didn’t record much, mostly singles in the mid-60s.
“Sister Rosetta Goes Before Us” – Robert Plant and Allison Krause. Off of Raising Sand, an album I adore. What a pairing. You wouldn’t think it would make sense, but then you hear their voices together and you wonder why it didn’t happen earlier. The song was written by Sam Phillips. No, not that Sam Phillips. Obviously a tribute to Sister Rosetta Tharpe. Assuming that’s Krause on violin. Beautiful song.
“Damned for All Time / Blood Money” – Carl Anderson as Judas – the best Judas – in Jesus Christ Superstar. Back in the grunge days, I wished all my grunge faves would get together and record their versions of all these songs. I had it all planned out in my head. Kurt Cobain would be Jesus. Kim Deal could be Mary Magdalene. Or Courtney Love. But I mainly wanted to hear Chris Cornell sing the Judas songs. RIP, Chris.
“No More to Say” – Eminem [feat. Proof and Trick Trick]. Old-school. Proof! And Trick Trick. Detroit Royalty, right there.
“Look What They’ve Done to My Song” – Amanda Jenssen. I’ll buy your record if you cover this song. Same thing with “Good Night Irene”. You put that on wax? I’ll buy it. I think I discovered her though through “Happyland”, a track I love. Then I dug deeper and saw she covered “Look What They’ve Done to My Song” and I was very excited.
“Hotel California” – The Eagles. Live. Anything about California right now makes me sad.
“Forever” – Drake, Kanye, Lil Wayne, Eminem. Wow, a lot has happened since this track dropped. Auto-tune it up! I think this was the track where Kanye wrote something up, heard Eminem’s verse, and then went back to re-write his. He told this on himself. I know Kanye is … a problem. But he’s talented. This is clearly Eminem’s Recovery era. What he was doing with his voice – and his rap style – is a fingerprint of that particular moment in time. Like, if you hear him rapping in a bunch of crazy silly accents, that’s the Relapse era. And the super-fast rapping – which isn’t my favorite, it’s more a party trick than anything else – started around Kamikaze-ish.
“Green Hornet” – the great Link Wray. His guitar sound is so nasty, so aggressive.
“Normal” – Eminem. Off of Kamikaze, which I just mentioned. He complains about why his girl isn’t “normal”. Meanwhile, he is the least normal human being ever. He started experimenting with different rhythms around here, very a-rhythmic, unexpected, hard to predict. People are like “You can’t dance to this!” or at least that’s one of the critiques you hear. You don’t play his songs in the club. Yeah. You don’t. “Without Me” you can dance to but … that’s not his thing. Never was his thing. But … that’s not the only measurement of an artist’s success? “Maybe I’m just too ugly to compete with him. You weren’t supposed to agree with me, bitch.” I mean, that’s funny. His relationship songs are so wild. Yes, there’s the Kim era. Which isn’t really an era. It’s just who he is. But the other ones … either they’re an extended metaphor (for drugs or for the music industry: abusive relationships, in other words) … or they are these super neurotic angsty needy angry songs, which are so revealing. He has almost no songs where he brags about his sexual prowess. “Superman” comes to mind and it’s … not as real. It sounds like a pose. With him, it is a pose.
“Macosa” – Outsidaz, with Eminem. Okay so this is very obscure, unless you’re an Eminem fan. Outsidaz were this New Jersey based hip hop trio, and they were friends with D12, the hip hop group Eminem put together (I am not a D12 fan, in general). So they did collaborations with each other, and when Eminem “hit” (understatement) things got weird almost immediately. He tried to bring everyone with him but … nobody was going to be as famous as Eminem, because Eminem was, as he puts it, “a product of pop fizzing up” and nobody else really was (at the time). Also, I just don’t think a lot of those D12 guys “had it”. Em is so young here. He sounds like a punk. Which he was. Not punk as in punk rock, but punk as in “what a fucking punk”.
“I Walk the Line” – Johnny Cash. That chug-chug rhythm. So him. I love, too, how the song descends, it goes down a tone, not up. It really showcases his beautiful impossibly deep voice. He wrote it as a ballad. Sam Phillips wanted him to do it faster. Sam was hard to resist. So Cash changed it. It worked well.
“On Account of You” – Dale Hawkins. He’s really only known for “Susie Q” and … that’s more than enough for one lifetime, but he’s really worth a deeper dive. I love him.
“Got a Heartsick Feeling:” – Adam Faith. 1958. He’s got a beautiful full voice, reminiscent of Eddie Cochran, with of course a little Elvis in there. Great band, too.
“Magick Flute” – Babes in Toyland. I’m so happy this is the sound of my young womanhood. I mean … it sets you up right. I’m not saying I don’t have 5,000,000 problems but … this was what in my ears when I was figuring myself out.
“Is It So Strange” (take 12) – Elvis. One of his most beautiful tracks from the early years. The song – and his tender performance – was made even more poignant after I read June Juanico’s book. He recorded this for her. It was “their” song. By the time it was released they had broken up. So imagine being her. Listening to that on the radio. So weird. I recommend her book!
Elvis and June, summer 1956
“Help!” – The Beatles. I was wondering when they would show up. This is the mono version. I have everything they did in mono. It’s noticeable, the difference in the sound. Although they’d be great coming through a staticky radio channel.
“Livin La Vida Loca” – Ricky Martin. I saw him on Broadway in Evita! He was amazing, a walking talking sexual personae. We could FEEL it from our seats in the audience. “She’ll make you take your clothes off and go dancing in the rain”. She’ll “make” you? And dancing naked in the rain is like a bullet to the brain? Really? You have to get out more, Ricky!
“It’s a Sin to Tell a Lie” – The Quebe Sisters. What a happy discovery! This sister trio do covers of traditional songs in the old Western swing style, they all play the fiddle, their harmonies are perfection. I keep meaning to catch them live.
“What’s Left of Me” – Waylon Jennings. I feel you, Waylon. At this point, I have to say to any new man, “Are you sure you want what’s left of me?”
“Love Is a Beautiful Thing” – Pat McCurdy. “I don’t want to see you cry anymore.” Too late.
“Sweet Thang” – Jerry Lee Lewis and Linda Gail Lewis. I adore the stuff they did together. The sibling blend of voices is so pleasing. And it’s equal. She’s out in front of it, her own performer. Let’s face it, it probably wasn’t easy to be equal with Jerry Lee as a performer.
“#1” – Imagine Dragons. Last summer (I think? Time has no meaning.) we went to go see them at Fenway Park, with Macklemore opening for them. It was insane. We took the kids, who all freaked out. It was their collective first stadium concert. And it was at FENWAY. The kids are way more into them than I am – they know all the words – but their music is catchy. I was impressed with how they were live.
“Alligator Tears” – Beyonce. One of my favorites off of Cowboy Carter.
“Crazy On You” – Heart. This song is Rated R.
“Life in a Northern Town” – Chris Collingwood. There’s this album called Here Comes the Reign Again, with contemporary artists covering the songs of the second British wave. I really like it. Some of these songs I have heard so many times in their original versions I really never need to hear them again. But hearing a new spin on it makes me hear the song fresh and I like that.
“Stick That In Your Country Song” – Eric Church. Church does not give a fuck. He’s the biggest country music star in the world right now. He sells out stadiums in freakin’ Germany. Church is clearly not some hippie liberal, but he’s also not a “try that in a small town” gasbag, although he has some of that “those Northerners don’t get us” vibe, which isn’t the same thing. He has never “played well” with Nashville (i.e. the industry), because he was too wild. One of his first hits was called “Two Pink Lines” about two teenagers waiting for the results of a pregnancy test. It got no radio play and was “controversial”. (Meanwhile, the boy in the song – clearly him – says something along the lines of “well okay maybe I’ll have to go buy a ring if we see those two pink lines”. Like, he’s planning on marrying her. But no: teenagers having sex WON’T DO. It’s the 21st century. I am so sick of these morons.) Anyway, he’s had a lot of controversies along the way but he’s been so popular country music has had to fall in line. He literally refers to Nashville as “a devil” and “a whore”, in one of his best songs. And he’s so huge Nashville just has to eat it. This song might have been his biggest “controversy” yet. This song was released in July 2020. Think of July 2020. The George Floyd protests were erupting across the country. The song was written by Jeffrey Steele and Davis Naish. Eric Church – superstar – who writes his own songs – beautifully – sang a song written by two other people because he felt the message was important. The message was important but it had even more resonance because it came from HIM, in his position of ultimate power and privilege, as a country music star no less. And the usual suspects were disgusted, declared they no longer liked him. It’s a sad sad state of affairs when a song about caring for the needy and the suffering and the forgotten/ignored should be seen as weak or “woke”. I guess some people think the Statue of Liberty is too woke. I’m so glad I’m not like those people. But Eric Church meant business and wanted people to know where he stood. To have the biggest country star in the world sing a line like …
Momma’s cryin’, young boys dyin’
Under that red, white, and blue still flyin’ …
was powerful. No one should have been surprised. He wrote an entire song about Bruce Springsteen’s influence on him. He knows what he’s doing. He needed to make himself clear, particularly to those fans who just assumed he was like them, in all ways, including political. Although, again, what is political about caring for people and helping people? What a poisonous evil attitude. Here he is playing it live.
I’ve seen him live, but only once, at Outlaw Fest in Camden, New Jersey. He was there without his band, it was just him. It was amazing.
Oh my gosh, I am so glad you connected with Mark Help-Desk Guy! How awful to have been without your music, and to have thought it was gone. What great news.
Apple and Tim Cook.
I didn’t report directly to Tim when I worked at Apple, but I reported to a VP who did. This was back when Tim only ran operations, not the whole company. Since I was managing microprocessors back then, I got more face time with him than a lot of other folks at my level. I had nothing but respect for him, he was one of the reasons that Apple is still around. The company’s dominance today helps people forget that many folks thought the company was in a death spiral back in the mid ’90s. He was one of the people who brought the company back, though Steve J deserves the largest share of credit.
I can tell a little story that indicates music meant something to him at one point. He, my boss, and I were waiting for a conference call to begin. A supplier (Motorola) was having trouble making what they had promised. I imagine you recall that back in the ’90’s companies that hosted conference calls usually had just a little robotic jingle play occasionally, to let you know that the line was still open as you waited for everyone to join the call. But Motorola had their first big hit product back in the 1930’s when they were one of the first companies to make radios small enough to fit into a car’s dashboard. Motor-radio. So, true to their heritage, on a Motorola conference call they would have pop music play.
As we were discussing the details of the situation, the Pure Prairie League song “Amie” came on. Tim stopped and his face just lit up. He talked about how he had a girlfriend in college, and he used to sing the chorus to her – “Amie, what you wanna do?” This was clearly a happy surprise for him, a petite cadeau. This was before Tim had come out publicly as gay. But even more… I want to say “precious” though I don’t mean it in any derogatory sense… perhaps “heartening” would be better, this was a man who never expressed anything personal at work. He was called a shark. I shared that opinion. I don’t know about his journey toward understanding his sexuality, I only know that at that moment that song stirred a sweet recollection for him, to the point that he dropped out of the shark suit and became a regular person for a time.
And now this person doesn’t want us to own our music. He resists letting people repair the products they purchased. He helps demonetize individuals that express unpopular opinions. Does the college boy teasing his girlfriend ever stick his head above water anymore? Seems unlikely.
We everyday people have powerful enemies.
When money is assumed to be the most important value, then we humans are subordinate -and we participate in the exchange – we pay for things with money – but we assume that it’s not at the cost of our hUMANITY. When I pay for something, I don’t automatically assume, “well, there goes some of my soul.” That’s an unfair exchange. AND I don’t pay for something to just RENT it, unless I’m renting an apt/leasing a car, etc. But if I buy a sweater, it’s MINE. nobody can take it back. But somehow – in the last 15 years – that has changed completely in terms of music/movies and books – if you read the books online. You may pay full price but you are NOT guaranteed to own it forever. These people have OVER-STEPPED their purview. They don’t want us to EVER feel like we are owners. THEY are the only ones who get to own things. It’s all quite deliberate and I’m irritated at myself for not really understanding that that was the contract I was signing.
and interesting about Tim Cook! I love “Amie”, lol. yeah these people are in such a bubble that at some point they forget what it is to be human. all of the AI “advocates” now are talking like bots. like, they don’t like the very things we all love about being human. I mean, and then there was the monstrosity of the iPad Pro commercial which actually made me cry. It’s like a fucking horror movie – and the AMOUNT of people who had to sign off on it – shows what a bubble they all live in. The rest of us recoiled, as one. My pal Matt wrote an open letter to Tim Cook – and they did recall the ad after universal criticism. I’m sure you already know all of this!!
These people literally WANT the world to be like that movie The Congress.
I’m glad that horrific ad exists because it confirms what we all already know. It showed how they feel about art – how they feel about US. they think we can do without statues from antiquity and grand pianos. They honestly believe we don’t care about those things. they want us to release our emotional ties to things like pianos and fucking antique statues. the NERVE. They have OVER-STEPPED. You’re a technology company. You don’t OWN art. Or history. Or memory. You ghouls.
That ad was of a piece with Tim wanting musicians to give away their music for free for three months as part of Apple giving people a three month free trial of Apple Music. I’m glad Taylor Swift sent him that “WTF are you even thinking” letter. Tim was still capable of PR-inspired shame.
I used to go along with the C. S. Lewis quote:
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
Now, I’m not so sure that robber barons would be any better, would ever turn off the machines and go to sleep..
And since government has become a religion-equivalent for so many folks, with multitudinous government agencies that want to control what we see, hear, and say, we are between the hammer omnipotent moral busybodies in government and the anvil of AI/big companies that view us as content farms to be plundered.
The robber barons are robbing us blind and the moral busybodies want to take us back to the 19th century. Or to a fictional town like Mayberry. that doesn’t exist. the literal worst people are in charge, but I guess that’s always the case.
Whenever I can I try to favor the artifact when I am buying music- I have, e.g. two cds by your sister, purchased on your recommendation. Thanks. I tell myself that I don’t really collect vinyl, but there’s a surprising number of recordings that never made it to cd, and that don’t stream, and I’ll seek those out. I never deacquisitioned my records, which I realize is more a function of a fairly stable life. Because I had those sides there is not a lot of overlap between my cd collection and my album collection. They are pretty different – lots of punk, a fair amount of reggae, and a goodly number of 70’s stuff on vinyl. The CDs tend towards jazz and blues. I stream a lot. My Apple music subscription makes exploration simple. I like to read music bios, and it is nice to be able to play, e.g. a Charlie Parker cut when it is referenced in a text. All that said, sometime things get lost in the digital age. My iPod classic would be a interesting to access- what was I into 20 years ago?- but it doesn’t work anymore. I’m sure there are things there which would bring me a moment of happiness, but they are gone now.
Love to hear you have some of my sisters’ albums!!
// I like to read music bios, and it is nice to be able to play, e.g. a Charlie Parker cut when it is referenced in a text. //
I love doing stuff like that too. People upload crazy esoteric shit onto YouTube too – really obscure tracks. I was reading my friend Dan’s book on Bing Crosby.Frank Sinatra/Billie Holiday/Ella Fitzgerald, etc. – and he gets into all of the early tracks – and Bing Crosby’s were more obscure than the others, his first heyday of recording in the late 30s. And none of that stuff appears to be streaming anywhere – but some Bing Crosby nerd uploaded the tracks to YouTube, so I could go check it out. and those tracks were a real revelation – since I had very little concept of who Bing Crosby was as a singer. Not REALLY.
I miss the old iPod days – again I didn’t realize what was happening – and why they had to get rid of the iPod, because the iPod, essentially, was analog. once you got your stuff on there, it was yours. Nobody could take it away. Nobody could force-feed you a U2 album you hadn’t bought – because the iPod was an object out in the world. Yes, you had to plug it in to update it – but besides that, it actually existed, and the landlords couldn’t get to it.
Until they did, of course.
Love this and glad to see these posts returning. I stopped using Spotify a few months ago and have been slowly building up a secondhand CD collection. Still have a lot of favourite albums to find but my listening habits have changed completely.
PS– condolences from the UK.
// Still have a lot of favourite albums to find but my listening habits have changed completely.//
This is great to hear and I’m inspired. I need to start building up a CD collection again too.
and thank you. Dark days. I’m so ashamed and pissed and scared.
Really pleased you got your music back!
It reminded me I need to sort out all the music files still on my very old laptop before that goes kaput. Lots were ripped from CDs I no longer have, and now I want to put them back onto CDs. Which is a bit nuts, tbh.
it’s totally nuts but I feel the same way. It’s just a matter of time before THIS laptop “goes” and I can’t keep doing this! So I need to get all of this stuff OFF my laptop and out into the actual world.
Meanwhile, it’s so great to hear music from these old CDs that I basically refuse to purchase AGAIN, because i already purchased it 20 years ago – and I still believe that ownership MEANS something.