Although I don’t know how much more. The wind was taken out of my sails last week when I found out that Steve Young had died. The musician and not the football player— jeez, I have said that so many times over the years but always with a chuckle. Not this time. Steve is really gone and things just don’t feel right.
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I am a vinyl addict. The gateway drug was radio. When it was riding the crest of the wave before TV came along and kicked it to the curb that wasn’t there. Before TV which a lot of people thought would be the death of radio, a format already writhing in pain. You could only get so big and radio was gargantuan— a seething mass of gelatinous goo— an 800 pound gorilla. By the time I came along, everyone had a radio.
1. Usufructed, and it ain’t fun. Before you ever wrote or even heard that first note of that first song, the cards were already stacked against you. Record labels, publishing companies and every other segment of what would build into the corporate structure which is the music industry have plotted against you from the start. Of course, it was done legally. God forbid that Universal or BMI take anything from you as regards what finally was termed your “intellectual property”. God forbid that they treat the worker bees creating that which they would build into a multi-billion dollar industry like so much chattel. I mean, after all, corporations are people, right? And we know what people do to each other on a constant basis.A simple recipe it was. Sprinkle a few hundred radio stations throughout the United States and Canada, mix with rock ‘n’ roll and stir. Stir up would be a more apt term because when the music hit the airwaves, the shit hit the fan— the music fan, that is. Not a big deal, you say? You’re probably right. In the grand scheme of things, a handful of traditionalists screaming McCarthyisms in a world already changed beyond their understanding would turn out to be flies on a horse’s ass, so to speak, and to scream them at teens plugged into a jukebox or record player at full volume was, well, laughable, but scream them they did and, as they say, the rest is history.
A couple of years ago— well, maybe a few now— I spent a summer reading and hearing about how this Sheryl Crow track (I can’t think of the title at the moment) was the anthem of the summer and captured everything good about the season. When I finally heard it, my mental jaw dropped. I could not believe that anyone could hear anything inspiring about the song or the performance. It was decent enough, I suppose, but it didn’t make me want to sing or dance or hit the freeway with the top down and sing along at the top of my voice. That’s what an anthem is supposed to do, right? Inspire?
Boy, the things some of us have to do to find the free stuff, eh? I was sitting back enjoying college football Saturday when Erin Ivey busts down the door and starts screaming about this Emily Wolfe character and how I have to listen to her album and maybe I can get a free download or something. I was about to throw her out when she got to the “free” part and, well, you know me— cheapest sonofabitch in the lower 48— so I heard her out, checked out Wolfe’s music and then tossed Ivey out on her keister, after which I calmly downloaded Wolfe’s Director’s Notes. At least, that’s the way I choose to remember it and I’m sticking to it.
I know a go-go girl. Not one of those Studio 54-types who more than likely considered it a job or a chance to take her dancing to a higher level, but an honest-to-God go-go girl who danced because it was (and still is, thankfully) in her blood. Her name is Elaine McAfee Bender. I will be writing about her go-go life soon. I know a girl who sings about go-go girls. Well, about go-go girls in the modern world. Her last album, in fact, is titled A Go-Go Girl In a Modern World. Her name is Laurie Biagini. I will be writing (more) about her soon, too.
Bullseye Records of Canada
Segarini: Don't Believe a Word I Say 