It’s confession time. Some of my devoted readers are not going to like it. It’s related to my disdain for certain genres of music so if you’ve got a strong constitutional defense for the music you love you may want to read the ‘New Yorker’ in your smoking jacket instead. Or track down re-re-re-runs of the Grand Ol’ Opry on TVland. I’m a dyed-in-the-wool music snob. I have no patience or interest in Jazz, The Blues or Country music.
Full disclosure. I don’t do Country music. I’ve never been a fan of those Good Ol’ Boys singing – through their noses, I might add – about dogs and bar fights and pick-up trucks and hurtin’ songs about how a good woman gone done them wrong or some endless road trip of wide open spaces carrying a rack full of guns because: FREEDOM!
Rolling Stone Magazine recently released their latest ‘list’, “The 100 Greatest Songwriters” rollingstone.com). Let me repeat that title, “The 100 Greatest Songwriters”. Their descriptive line states “From Brill Building tunesmiths to Punk poets, from Woody Guthrie to Max Martin, the visionaries who defined music history.”
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.
The first time I think I even thought about death was when Hank Williams died back in 1952. New Year’s Eve it was, but I only remember the headlines. I was five years old and Hank was a regular part of my day. Dad, the curator of the famous Gutch record collection, had only a few records at that time and Never Again (Will I Knock On Your Door) was one of them. I loved that song so much that I begged and begged Dad to play it every time he headed toward the record player and, usually, he obliged. I remember Dad humming along in a grunting kind of way, almost as if the music was going to bust out of him at any moment, but it seldom did. Dad was a lot like myself in that when the music was playing, singing along seemed a lack of respect.
Social media surrounds us. You can reach out and touch almost anyone with the click of a button.
We’ve got all sorts of lovely technology. There’s no need to make a phone call, if you can email instead. Or why email when you could just text? Surely, your message is far too urgent to leave to the vagaries of voice mail!
Bullseye Records of Canada
Segarini: Don't Believe a Word I Say 