This is not my favorite column to write. In my youth, death was death, something which happened to everyone else. As a young man, I looked upon it as simply draining the talent pool because by then I was consumed with music— immersed in it to the point that life beyond it was a blur. In middle-age, it began becoming personal— friends and favorites taking the dive either stunningly quick or in dire circumstances.
That’s right. You! You, the Incipian Heed, the Flaccid Peni, the Ego Centered! You, the ones who are always talking about how much they know about music and fart facts in concentric circles. You, who complain that there is no good music anymore while listening incessantly to the decades-old— music which by all rights should have been put to bed long ago but instead is held high by listeners who stopped listening as examples of what music used to be. Well, you can kiss my Rival Sons-loving ass! All of you who don’t know that band, pucker up.
How long ago was it that Spotify tossed their hat into the ring on this now contentious music subscription battle? A little over a year? And did I not hold off judgment during that time, awaiting results? I know! Wottaguy, huh? Well, I fell off of the fence the past couple of weeks and landed in a mosh pit full of musicians, most not too happy with the cake that the music industry’s Marie Antoinettes been offering. A slice of cake so thin you can see through it.
I sit in a small enclosed room and await the first rain in a few months, feeling sorrow for those who live in drought-infested areas and have to wait for the life-giving water which falls from the sky. It is a wondrous thing, rain. I cannot imagine living without it, having grown up in the Pacific Northwest where rain and indeed weather is such a factor in life. In the past more than the present, of course, because the State of Oregon depended upon farming and logging for so many decades and God knows that farmers and loggers constantly looked and look to the sky, hoping that the gods are friendly.
When I first started getting into music, really getting into music beyond AM radio and the string of hits I always thought was everything music, there were three cities. Only three. Los Angeles, Chicago and New York. Those were the three graced by the large offices of the major labels and those were the three which produced the vast majority of music which made it to the airwaves. Or so it seemed. Isolated in Oregon (and trust me, kiddies, it was isolation), the world looked so simple and yet so daunting, even on AM radio. Generalizations were common. Vocal groups all came from or at least came out of New York City. Soul was courtesy of Detroit and Chicago and Detroit. Surf music was West Coast and sand-infested. Country was all Bakersfield or Nashville. But they all were filtered through the Big Three: Los Angeles, Chicago and New York. That’s where the major labels lived. That’s where the money was. That was where artists went to make it big, no matter where they originated.
Bullseye Records of Canada
Segarini: Don't Believe a Word I Say 