Christmas. It’s the time for joy and camaraderie and faith. It’s the time of giving and sharing and, for most, receiving. Debts are forgiven at Christmas, and people too. Indeed, the power of Christmas could almost save the world and would, according to Hollywood, if given half a chance.
That’s right, sports fans, I have once again rammed the ol’ cranium up against the proverbial brick wall. Four good starts on this week’s column and nothing to really show except four three-paragraph dead ends, at least for now. And deadline looms. What to do, what to do… After much thought (not really), I have decided to pack together a whole string of odds and ends for you to pick through, if you so desire— flotsam and jetsam, as it were. Ideas not long enough for a column, musical bits and pieces, brain farts and the like. Indeed, I looked up the term “flotsam and jetsam” on thefreedictionary.com just to make sure that I had the term right and, for once, I did. “Useless or discarded objects,” it said. “Odds and ends.” Well, I hope I stay away from the former, but the latter seems to fit. Just remember— no overlying theme. Whatever comes to (my) mind.
Welcome to the new Millennium, ladies and gentlemen, and in this case, the new Music Millennium. I don’t have to go into details to explain the situation with record stores these days (okay— “music” stores, but they will always remain record stores to me). They are struggling, even the biggest of them. Even the best of them. Even Portland, Oregon’s legendary Music Millennium. Sure, they’re hanging on and doing better since the recent vinyl revival, but hanging on is not what owner Terry Currier wants. Hanging on is the least that he wants. And he has never been one to pocket money, either. Most of what Terry has made over the past 45 years he has put either back into his store or used toward something to strengthen the music community. And not just that of Portland. He has stepped beyond that city more than once, mainly in a capacity to organize indie record stores.
I feel sorry for kids these days. They do not know the pleasure of the 45 RPM record. They do not understand the thrill of buying a hit and finding a song on the flip side that gets as much or more play time as the hit. They do not know, in this day of pay-per-track that they should be getting two songs for the price of the one. It’s the law. Or should be. I am sure that asshats at corporate chuckle every time us idiots order a song, knowing that they are shortchanging us. Yep, we used to get two songs. Like I said, it was the law. Labels and distributors, though, write their own laws these days. I know I’m a dinosaur, but anything less than two is a fuck you to us music junkies. Well, fuck them.
After ending this last year cranking out two long columns about musicians we lost, I feel the need to counterbalance. While I know that death is a part of life (indeed, life = death according to the laws of nature), it was not all that much fun to dig through the past year searching for musicians recently passed. It was, in fact, a bit of a downer. Reliving the news that I knew was not half as bad as discovering the news I had missed. All too many musicians I admire tripped off this mortal coil without so much as a thank you, Frank, it’s been fun, and I was more than a little unsettled with each discovery. But the past is the past, whether we like it or not, and it was not all bad.
Nick Holmes is a friend of mine. I have never met him nor have I even talked with him on the phone but he is a friend, nonetheless. He sends me stuff. Anyone who sends me stuff is my friend. Send me some stuff and you’ll find out. It seems like only yesterday (it was over two years ago) that he sent me CD copies of two albums I, up to that time, never even knew existed: And it seems like just yesterday (because it was) that I received his brand spanking new CD, Sonar. There is a story behind Nick and his music and I hesitate to tell that story here because I have told it a few times and hate to repeat myself too much, but if you want to read a fascinating story about his early years in New York and how we became acquainted, follow this link.
I’m going back to school. I’ve been going to school since I graduated, in fact, because if there is one truth in the world it is that as much as we know, we know too little. About people. About science. About truth. And about music, among a few thousand other subjects. We are a defective lot which is to say in vinyl terms that we are warped or scratched or that we skip. Us humans are, in effect, not the top but the bottom of the food chain as far as I can tell because we are the only species who think we know it all.
Bullseye Records of Canada
