Letter to Lawmakers--Pandora Bill

Jonathan Carroll
_____________

_____________

November 26, 2012

The Honorable Mark Warner
United States Senate
475 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510‑4601

The Honorable Jim Webb
United States Senate
248 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510‑4604

The Honorable Frank R. Wolf
House of Representatives
241 Cannon House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515‑4610

Re: Oppose the "Pandora Bailout Bill"

I am a lifelong musician, artist and writer/composer and have had personal experience with the issues stated below which have direct import into the legislation in question below.

I have lobbied for fairness in the Broadcast Performance Royalty legislation, and, like all else like me, have been beat to the punch in your offices by the profoundly well-funded NAB, which preempted many of the efforts by front loading many inaccurate and misrepresenting scenarios, hoping to shift the focus --and culpability--from broadcasters to the labels themselves, even to the songwriters, who happen to have a much fairer deal historically, even citing only the most profoundly successful acts (a very small percentage even in the industry’s heyday) whose names are recognizable enough for them to be salient spokespersons for this cause, as greedy, spoiled and Pollyannaish.

Recently there have been deals made between some new labels (with already successful acts who are enjoying high sales and exposure via many new delivery systems, such as Pandora) which falsely cite "parity" as the end all justification for lower rates. In reality these lower rates HAVE NEVER been fair or justified. The new digital services, such as Pandora who launched in 2003 and formed, developed and tweaked its business model with a library supplied FOR FREE by label and non-label and artists alike, before starting to pay the MINIMAL fees only within the last few years.

These recent arrangements are unique deals by companies that can uniquely benefit from them as they have a large digital presence, not a template for universal extension to all broadcasters.

Since Napster woke the industry up in the 90's--too late, I might add---many within the industry have been scrambling to catch up since the new paradigm has been established, with all its ever-changing shifts and adjustments with the status quo. If you look at the % drop in music sales during the last 15 years, you will see the decimation of a once healthy and thriving music industry brought about by its tardy response to the digital revolution.

But please consider the fact we had just recently become encouraged that there could be a final legislative resolution for Broadcast Performance Royalties after a much much longer period of time
during which the United States enjoyed the dubious company of Qatar, North Korea, Rwanda and China as countries who HAVE NEVER paid fees for terrestrial broadcast performances.


I write to express my strong opposition to the so-called "Internet Radio Fairness Act" (H.R. 6480/S. 3609) and to ask you not to cosponsor the bill. If the bill comes up for a vote, I urge you to vote NO.

Pandora and broadcasters support this bill, claiming that fairness and parity are needed. But the bill ignores the greatest inequity in music compensation -- the lack of a performance right to compensate performers when their songs are played on terrestrial radio.

And the bill isn't fair to the creators of music whose work makes up the content of Internet radio. This bill would slash payments to artists by hundreds of millions of dollars. Under current law, artists and music creators receive from Pandora payments for the use of their performances based on a fair market, "willing buyer, willing seller" standard. Pandora's special interest bill would slash those payments to a below market, government-mandated subsidy rate. With the music business shrinking to half the size it was ten years ago, working class musicians wait for these royalty checks every quarter to help make ends meet.

Despite crying poor to Congress, Pandora is expected to clear more than $600 million in revenues next year, and is valued at more than $1.5 billion. This isn't about fairness, it's about lining stockholders' pockets. Musicians should not be deprived of the income that they deserve to subsidize Internet radio.

Congress shouldn't pick winners and losers on the Internet, and shouldn't force artists and music creators to pad Pandora's wallet.

Historically, recording artists have already the deck enedemically stacked against them.

This bill is a giveaway to Pandora and I urge you to oppose it.

Dear Senator Warner:

I am writing to express my strong opposition to the so‑called "Internet Radio Fairness Act" (H.R. 6480/S. 3609). I urge you  not to cosponsor this bill and to vote "NO" if the bill is brought up for a vote.

Although this bill claims to be about fairness, in reality it is nothing more than a bailout for Pandora to increase shareholder profits by taking money away from artists and music creators. Under the law, Pandora and other Internet radio services must pay a statutory royalty rate that represents the fair market value of the music they use to build their businesses. The "Internet Radio Fairness Act" would cut the royalty standard to a below market rate that amounts to a government‑mandated subsidy. Music creators will be paid less while corporate shareholders are paid more.

Pandora's estimated value is over $1.8 billion. It can afford to fairly compensate the hard‑working artists and professionals who make a living by creating music. Instead of providing another bailout for big business, Congress should provide real radio parity by requiring terrestrial broadcast radio to compensate music creators just as Internet, satellite and cable radio services do.

Please oppose the "Internet Radio Fairness Act." There's nothing fair about robbing music creators to pay for Pandora's profits.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Carroll

Minstrels

                                                

                                                                                             MINSTRELS 1961-1968

It's since become a full-fledged exurb of Washington D.C. but in 1961 Fredericksburg, Virginia was as Southern as any Carolina town. If any of its restless eyes sought livelier sights under city lights, they turned toward Richmond, forty miles to the south.

Our family's middle-class house stood on a slight rise beside a two-lane road in rural Falmouth, with a few grassy fields between us and the Rappahannock River. The windows of the den looked out across those fields then beyond to the two church steeples of downtown Fredericksburg and a  monolithic sign announcing the grocery at the top of William Street, just close enough for its non-specific red then yellow then white "S" of Safeway to be visibly repeating after dark until closing.

I was 4 years old when entered into the annual Kiwanis Club talent show in 1961. My older brother and sister felt that my rendition of Mama’s Little Baby Loves Shortnin’ Bread had potential. I don’t recall learning it or from whom I did, but I knew it well enough to tap, snap and sing it much to the beaming amusement of the tall ones. Nor did I grasp the meaning lurking within its repetitive rhymes:“two little babies ---lying in the bed—one was sick and the other one, dead” verse. I liked singing them. The song was funny. Folks laughed.

The try-outs took place in the booming wooden auditorium of Maury School, an aging mainstay in the heart of downtown Fredericksburg. The late afternoon sun poured down from high windows through the municipal dust while hopeful youngsters sat in or scurried about the rows of theater seats. Jugglers, dancers, singers, plate spinners, card flashers, baton twirlers, joke tellers and trick mongers each awaited their turn to step up onstage for their shot at being in the annual show.

One contestant was a girl who was bigger and older than me--7 years old, I thought.  I sat silently and spellbound beside my older Brother as she sang “Yellow Bird”. There on the stage, she stood starkly and stiff, with barely moving but slightly trembling blond braids, blue jeans and white sneakers and holding a painted wooden bird on a stick before her, carefully and softly reciting in a shaky voice the lyrics which her darting eyes scanned from its back.

Several times she started then stopped then started , Yellllow Biiiird Up high in banana treeee
Yellllow Biiiird You sit… all…alone…like me…  

On the third or fourth try, she made it to the end and the judges were gently reassuring as she was led offstage by her mother. I was glad to see her utter relief that it was over.

Soon we heard my name called and I slid off the theater seat, looked to my brother who said something like “go on, Jon…just like at home…it’ll be great” which shored me up enough to launch into my bit without too much fuss.

To this day I still feel that original pang of “this is the real thing” jitters after rehearsals in a well lit room give way to the dress rehearsal onstage and opening night in front of audience whose anticipations cannot be known. It was they who were now upright and attentative in those theater seats, judging from the dark night instead of ushering us through a sunny afternoon.

All performers sat on bleachers in a remotely stark and echoing sodium lit gymnasium in the bowels of the school. Waiting for their names be called when they would then proceed, three by three, toward the world which waited in their near untold future.  I held my brother’s hand as he led me down long locker-lined hallways around and through various realms of the school's daytime life, quietly moving toward my moment of truth.

We scaled one last steep stairway leading up to a lady who smiled and “shushed” us as we rounded the corner, stepped through a door and found ourselves gazing from the offstage shadows onto the spotlit stage.

There before us, with two bows in her braided hair, a frilly dress and slightly nuzzling in shyness into the pleated curtains gathered before her,  stood the Yellow Bird girl. Her shiny patent leather shoes made short brittle scraping noises against the hard floor as she fidgeted.

We arrived just as the emcee's ominously amplified voice announced her name. From around the corner where we couldn’t see came the roaring applause of the roomful as she inhaled slowly then stepped out and crossed toward the lone glinting microphone stand. The clapping scattered and ebbed to silence as the girl stopped and stood facing them, holding the wooden bird on a stick. She and it were still, rigid and silent. She glanced down and squinted at the back of the bird, turning it around then around again, her neck gradually craning forward and toward the indistinct and impermeable black silhouette created by the giant spotlight.

With a quivering voice she started to sing, Yelllow Bird…high up in banana treeeee ….

She trembled through four lines before sputtering to a halt. Still trying to make out the written words there cloaked in shadow she began again, stamped one shiny shoe, then restarted, then  gasped while lowering and raising the stick in desperation, holding it at arms length with both hands for one last try. Letting loose a tearful yelp before turning on her hard heels, she ran as if being chased directly toward where we stood in the wings.

My brother quickly stepped aside letting her blow past and we could hear her sobs echoing away down the stairwell while the man onstage uttered something jovial to the awws of sympathy and warm complicit applause.

I had never been that near to such panic and anguish, and it all happened moments before I heard my name called. 

Don’t worry about it, Jon..remember, just like at home…

I don’t remember much more about that night, other than the invisible roar of the audience, the blinding  glare of the super trooper spotlight which cloaked the seated crowd into a penumbra of anonymity. But I heard my family comments of how I must have just been nervous, etc.

It was next year, 1962 when I would sit in that same dark auditorium as an audience member to see the Lion’s Club Minstrels. My father explained to me that there were no winners or losers and that it was a variety show, and he and our mom would be singing and dancing a romantic duet. We had heard them at home practicing at the piano once or twice, a show tune from My Fair Lady, On The Street Where You Live it probably was.

My mother became ill and my dad would have to do the number with the alternate, which only made it more of an episode for her. There was arguing and accusations. It was a pattern, and the same drama would occur again the next year.

But the Mistrel Show, as it was known,  was a lively celebration with many varied numbers, each of which were enjoyable for a 5 year old, especially the vaudeville type bits. One such routine sported a group of 6 or 7 men bursting onstage in clownish suits of polka dots, wide stripes and bowler hats while cavorting and careening all about the stage crowing jokes and doing stunts. They shouted and guffawed in exaggerated Amos and Andy accents with their faces each painted black as a moonless midnight.

The audience roared with laughter, and I watched with glee as they volleyed risqué punch lines, poked each other and carried on like that for 5 minutes or so. One bit involved pushing a hen’s egg across the stage with a broom. I've never heard that one explained.

The next day, after overhearing their arguing about last night’s show, I mentioned the blackface men to my parents. It seemed to be the centerpiece highlight of the show. My father responded by brusquely mumbling, that it probably had been the last time for that act to appear, and that was also probably a good thing. He said sternly that it wasn’t nice to make fun of colored people that way, and that lots of folks had been upset about it.

Another year passed and it was again time for the Lions Club Minstrels Show. Mom and Dad rehearsed, mom got sick, dad did the number with another lady and there were jealous arguments before and after the show. I recalled the black face minstrel men, and my father’s remarks a year earlier. He once more uttered something about their not doing black face anymore.

The opening number of the show that year was again jovial, rousing and as harmonious as only grown-up singers and performers can deliver. The solos, duets and dance routines were met with rousing hometown appreciation. Intermission came, and I was wondering what would be the central “funny” bit, as I was already impatient to see it.

Back in our seats, we waited as the lights went down. A fat moment of silence was pierced by the wailing siren announcing the clown men who emerged in their flapping tails, bright scarves and bow ties, top hats and bowlers. They scurried and crowed, howled and hammed while the audience reeled with delight. I was only 6, but I knew that what I saw was something sad, silly and very, very wrong. 

My Dad was right and so were the other good folks who had raised their concern about the men with the black grease painted faces. Those folks who wanted to keep the act in the show decided on the only thing that they felt would make everyone happy: They painted their faces white.

A few years later I was entered into another Kiwanis Club Talent Show. I played piano--a Clementi Sonatina which was abruptly followed by an “original” boogie woogie composition. The crowd liked it, and I won the $25 first prize in the Elementary Division and used it to buy my first guitar at Bill Ross’ Music store, where I spent a lot of my after school afternoons and Saturdays. Mr. Ross was a pretty stiff lipped fellow most of the time, and it felt good to see his faint smile as we made the deal.

After that year's show dress rehearsal, I was waiting in front of a closed store across the street from the school near a pay phone where I’d called my mom to come and fetch me. The late afternoon sun had sunk and the street corner was falling into early nighttime. A group of neighborhood kids was walking down the sidewalk toward me. As they came closer I heard their laughter turn to whispers, and one of the three came up to me and asked for money. One of the other kids started patting my pockets hard then harder, and the others began shouting until the first piped up and said to stop because I was “the boogie woogie boy”. 

My dad was gone two years later when I served up the same Sonatina/Boogie Woogie formula for that talent show. He had already been around for the first time, though. It was pretty much the same deal too, except that I was now 12 and old enough to win the Grand Prize:  a trophy and another 25 bucks, I think. 

My big sister had taken me to those try-outs where there was a black kid whose act was singing along with Otis Redding’s Dock of the Bay. I wondered if he might have been one of the kids from last year’s phone booth convergence.

I loved that Otis record. The kid snapped his fingers, tapped his feet and sang it like he felt right at home. 

One day that summer I was in the kitchen singing along with the radio playing  Aretha Franklin’s Respect  and my mom asked me to turn it down because she thought those records “sounded like angry colored girls shouting at someone”. 

But later that year, we would sit at the kitchen counter and listen silently to the radio until the very last note of Brook Benton’s A Rainy Night In Georgia was done flowing past. My mother looked at me with an accepting distance in her eyes and said “you know what? That was a really great vocal performance”. 

A year to the day after my father died, our next door neighbors took me with them to the second annual Smithsonian Festival of American Folklife on the Mall in Washington D.C. The live concert that night was to be Muddy Waters as well as the Chambers Brothers. The field was packed with folks of all shapes and colors, and I had not heard or seen anything like the sounds and sights of that night. Muddy’s slide guitar came straight from the heart of someone’s holy heaven and hell, and the Chambers Brothers’ voices weaved around and pounced upon the beats like a funky orchestra. They moved forward and toward the crowd while wearing brightly colored double breasted suits and proud floppy wide brimmed hats. One singer danced to the edge of the stage, then sat down on its edge. Time Has Come Today…!

Like most childhoods, mine flew by like a bittersweet breeze in Summer. My adulthood allows me to stand and look back on those few years from Boo Radley's porch, if you will, and appreciate the social changes that were happening above, beyond and all around me. I can still hear my father’s and my mother’s voices like so many other sounds that continue to echo down a long hall, and I think about the Yellow Bird girl more often than I probably should. And when asked an honest question by a child--questions such as why is that wrong? and why not?--I also think carefully before uttering my answer. 

~JC

LEVON

LEVON

There are many brands of bullshit in every business—especially show business—and Levon Helm seemed to cut right through them, each and all.

The Great and Powerful Levon Helm 

It was the autumn of '69, and I was an eleven year old kid beginning to play in bands in Fredericksburg, Va., when the elastic funk of a wah-wah clavinet first bounced out the radio announcing the arrival of the train that would take us Up On Cripple Creek. The conductor called us on board with a sonorous Arkans-drawl, and a smitten country-wide collective gladly boarded. The beat was brawny and adult, the tale was crowed proudly, each syllable making every stop through the ululating pipes until it was laid before us all, resolute and unashamed. It was news: the sound, the message and the manner and everything but shy. It teemed with spirited energy while relaxed and playful. It was delivered plainly, self-assuredly and directly without being the least bit harsh, hostile or aggressive.

I now realize that we were then listening to a man presenting his heart and soul entirely with every word, every beat. The whole honest deal swirled before you, or rather sat in the saddle of celebration while digging in with the sophistication of the lived-in ages, crookedly smacking each rimshot, twisting his torso toward the thing that was undoubtedly the truth: the only prize worth clamoring  for instinctively, relentlessly-- the thing worthy of stumbling toward like a fool, if need be.

Levon Helm was known for crowing about what’s worth crowing about. He was able to do precisely that for a long time, but we wish it were for much longer. Wisdom seemed to have been born with him. He had that wonderful duality, at once the tenured wise beyond his years teenager and the old-timer with the rough and rowdy heart of foolish youth.

I’ve been fortunate to have performed with more than a few talented folks over the years (dumb-luckier than a per-chance spied evening meteor to have played with the man himself on a few occasions), and I’ve mostly endeavored, by his inspiration, to try and put the utmost heart and commitment into every note of each performance –enough so that there may be no doubt about being “all the way in”. It’s an ambitious and hopeful touchstone of an approach, and not always a successful one, but it was hearing and seeing Levon that showed me that if you stood in the ring squarely on both feet, looked the song in the eye, and brought your soul to its statement with total conviction, that an inarguable truth could be willed out. Damn—how could anyone up there get away with “phoning it in” while that dude was singing and playing? I dunno, is how. 

I've heard and seen Levon more times than I can count: of course with The Band as well as his other numerous projects (Levon and The Cate Brothers in the 80's was always a must) right up until last year. Throughout that time I heard, saw or sensed nary a false or halfhearted note or moment. I choose to believe there were none.
 

That‘s not to say that Levon was the guy to reel in a breakdown, stifle a gid, wag a finger, be a whip-cracker, task-master or buzz-killer in a studio or stage setting. The few times I remember proved contrary.  Although listening to him tell the tales from his early and then long career, or reading stories from his book, one might be sobered to learn that the glorious music was the end to the means, and up until, around and after that fact, there was much banality and pesky no-nonsense scenes to be seen to by those with level country heads such as his.  

But, before and after all, what is (good) music if not total joy, and what is a show, a gig or a session if not a great hang with other musicians? I was blessed to be able to hang out and be joyful with Levon on several occasions, mainly and thankfully due to my friend and brilliant songwriter Emory Joseph having hired me on, along with a few other longtime band-mates and buds Duke Levine, Dave Mattacks, Kevin Barry and the late great T-Bone Wolk for his recording sessions for Labor and Spirits, and to later perform a few years ago at Levon’s notorious Midnight Ramble house concert in Woodstock.

At the Ramble, I on keys for Emory's opening set, along with Steve Holly, Andy York & T-Bone doing tunes from his Robert Hunter collection Fennario, and his original Labor & Spirits. It was figuratively and literally a Thanksgiving celebration, but that night Levon contributed his spirit exclusively at the drum set as per doctors’ instructions, saving his voice for a better mended fit to crow day, which would indeed would arrive after that healing hiatus and others. 

The Ramble’s stage/studio/barn/playhouse was packed with fans, friends and family. The stage was full of brilliant players and singers and revel truly rocked the hills while Levon beamed and walloped the kit with a  gladiator's zeal, exuberant as any man is allowed to be in this world, perhaps enjoying the tribal celebration and the venerated center spot of a cultural phenomenon to be savored and cherished within those moments. Like all others, they would come to pass and be no more, gone as quickly as their notice. 

After our set I sat on a radiator within yards of the widely grinning man in the starched collared shirt, wearing the short gloves that held the sticks so deftly, at times recklessly, passionately drilling home the deliberate but wiley ride cymbal, ballistic and balanced about the toms with each fill tumbling into rebirth in another verse or refrain, truly a wonder and one-time thrill. All eyes were on him, and every amazed gaze was glad and good. All hearts were soaring and it was as if he had the lot of us on his knee, children giddy-upping along on the whoop-whipping ride of our lives.

The recording sessions years earlier were yet another story to tell.

I had been on a few shows along with Levon, who performed on-- and was the voice for--a television series in the 90’s called The Road. I was participating as a band member with Mary Chapin Carpenter and Rodney Crowell. There were some roll-out shows at Opryland in Nashville, and I remember Levon--bearded and leading with his toothy smile and aviator shades, his lithe and seemingly frail frame swimming deep within a bright blue color coordinated warm-up suit. He sported the endearing charisma of a true bad-ass who could never escape his own sincerity, thus prohibiting him from ever coming off as a flippant, rude or lofty star. Levon seemed to me real, and a real good and cool cat.

Years later, in ‘98, at Longview Studios, a converted 1919 dairy farm in rural Massachusetts, Levon would arrive with a couple of his own closest friends to join us for a day of tracking on Emory’s Labor & Spirits record. He bounded amiably in, proceeded to make himself--and thereby all else there—comfortable and relaxed. Proceeding to wield and prepare organic substances he jovially credited with his remission from throat cancer, it was perhaps the pervasive nature of such a smoky realm that transformed the day into one of the most guffaw-filled and zany fun house rides that I’ve ever survived.

The day was summer sunny, hot and humid, dusty and buggy. I recall his remark that this was “heat that’ll follow you into the shade”, among many other stories, tales and asides. I must include the image of Funk legend Bernie Worrell who aimlessly ambled into our studio, having nothing to do while his sessions in the nearby larger barn studio were suspended due to a death in the family of one of the crew. I’ll forever kick myself for not taking a picture of Bernie wearing his tee shirt, head wrapped in a bright blue bandana, tenuously and daintily tooting notes on my new (to him) penny whistle. Bernie Worrell playing a penny whistle. Think about it. 

Back to the sessions.

It was decided that it wouldn’t be too insane to set up two drum kits, each facing the other, at which Levon and Dave Mattacks could respectively concoct a tandem groove. It came together like a sideways train on a sky bound track. Those familiar with the artistry and angles of Dave Mattacks can possibly imagine the resulting delight that was those two percussive worlds colluding. You can hear it on Emory Joseph’s Family Dog…

Much music, mirth and magic was made that day, and it all now exists forever, along with some extemporaneous outtakes that Emory was foolishly wise enough to include in the final master.

It was then time to lay down some background vocals on a few tunes (Rhum and Coffee and Family Dog) the first song written for and dedicated to the great Guy Clark. It’s a bouncy, rollicking proclamation and celebration of recipes promoting poetry and the autonomy of personal choices. That’s my read, at any rate. The second is a first-dog description of the canine ethos that you by now may have heard.

We all gathered around one microphone with Emory, T-Bone & Levon, whose hoarse voice was neither a disclaimer nor a discouragement. Once we were done clowning and were underway, every note from his challenged pipes was pure and perfectly pitched, a singer's singer in any circumstance.

Until then though, it was pretty much of a riot. I won’t delve way into it here, but suffice to say that a good joke is worth developing for as long as it promises to be funny, and Levon's efforts wouldn’t end until all was explored. 

To this day, it’s one of my personal all-time favorite outtake bits, and I wish I’d had the chance to laugh to it all over again with him. 

I like to call it Duckboy and The Day Visitors
(careful...intentionally offensive language)

This past few days since Levon’s exit from this world have been like that tough dream you must muddle through until you eventually awaken. You’d rather not be within it, but it’s too late now. It’s hard to peg this feeling, because it’s hard to tag the man, the artist, the voice, the legend. Every note he sang, strummed, picked or played was the whole picture: the picture with which Levon Helm was wholly familiar: the way of the world. 

 

There’s no doubt that The Band was one of music’s most influential forces, and even as an eleven year old, it was clear to me as I listened to other songs that were somehow too real, too honest and too important to become hits you heard on the radio repeatedly alongside Frankie Vallie, The Grassroots, Buckinghams, Monkees or--you get the picture—that these guys weren’t merely onto something that was special like a new sonic discovery or genre recipe. Instead they were continuing, developing and adding to a mountain of heart, soul and song that, without these responsible sentinels minding the other careless kids who were whistling through the candy store, might very well be whittled and weathered down to whispered ephemera. 

Theirs was a stewardship of almost holy proportion. Merely to illustrate the point further: The Night They Drove Old’ Dixie Down was the B-side of their sole top 40 hit Cripple Creek in ‘69. That was and is the  prevailing “wisdom” of commercial radio. 

As a band, the group contained profound multitudes, as any great band must. Multi instrumentalists, gifted storytelling and lyricism, singular and combined vocal magic made them distinctive, almost mystical. Danko’s frantically wavering tenor barely able to contain itself, Richard Manuel’s father time confessor of pain and purity, sincere energy from a darker place that maybe only he and Ray Charles could see—Robbie Robertson’s perfectly placed strums and licks economically serving those brilliant songs while he added vocal element X to the harmonies. And all that dressed up and launched heavenward by the illustrious operatic orchestrations of Garth Hudson's keys and reeds. Also, like any great ensemble, the sum of it all became one glorious sound, not to be easily analyzed or deconstructed, but accepted and appreciated like a golden rising moon.

But its front man, ambassador, pilot, admiral, spokesman, non-apologetic and all encompassing personae that stood undeniably on the shoulders of the sturdiest and most venerable truths of our earthly clan, was the scruffy rascal that knew how to put it across. He wasn’t slick or jive, posing or primping. He was a truth-teller with gusto, a crusader with class, a clarion call for all to fear not. Go on and have a REAL good time. Do a good job and tell it like it is.

He was what making music is about. He was what being alive is all about. 

Wow—a jewel is gone. Let all shine on.

~JC

To Folks Who Condemn Addicts on Moral Grounds

There is a fatal disease called drug addiction. Millions of people have it, and millions seek help --many working hard enough and being blessed enough to begin successful recovery.

Many are unsuccessful.

Many people who battle drug addiction (which some prefer to call "demons") have creativity, artistic expression and the quest for beauty as their raisin d'etre. Their status and cultural prominence as celebrities has them venerated as well as awarded with financial success (That Whitney was one of the greatest singers of all time is something most folks are capable of appreciating) but that is often fleeting as the disease is unrelenting and progressively defeating. It's reported that at the time of her death Ms. Houston was not only financially bankrupt but as anyone who's traveled to their own "bottom" of addictive descent can attest, she was more than likely just as physically and spiritually depleted.

 It is an insidious (and I reiterate, fatal) disease. It's cunning and baffling. Look it up. It is as clinically diagnosable as diabetes, hepatitis or cancer.

Many here and elsewhere are quick to condemn addicts on moral grounds--a sophomoric knee-jerk reflex which is utterly ignorant. There are some who are offended by an outpouring of sympathy, grief and over-appreciation of these victims as if it were the obsequious cloying of an adulatory public for a beloved artist or personality who meets an untimely end which they may consider to be self-inflicted. I  recoil wincing from the professional punditry (many of whom are not only relatively mediocre non-creative performers, but suffer from addictive disorders themselves) who serve up their judgemental sanctimony with moral indictments of the victim's character to their "followers" who collectively hoist them to some perversely procured pedestal.

But we should better mind and consider that this disease discriminates even less. It doesn't discriminate at all. 

With all that considered, addiction and self-destructive behavior, albeit collaterally pervasive for the family, friends and associates of the sufferer, are perhaps not as abjectly and overtly destructive as that of so many others' whom we admire, pardon and emulate while never acknowledging and accepting the simple truth that good folks oftentimes lose battles with profound diseases. Addiction is but one of those, regardless of the victim's soulful fortitude or strength of character.

~JC

On Chris Richard's Washington Post Grammy Review

It’s unfortunate that Chris Richards [Disjointed Grammys honor Whitney Houston] couldn't find more to appreciate positively about the evening. A live broadcast of a multiple-act performance oriented variety show will of course not have uniformly seamless transitions and as a whole, and will be technically "disjointed".  

With variety, one must expect some inconsistency.
 
The few positive remarks he did make were framed and diluted with cynically contextualized. He cites a few “moments of clarity”, while merely relating others without comment, reserving all his writer's eloquence for stabs and snarks.
 
His commentary on Springsteen's opening number “We Take Care of Our Own” (“given Houston’s death, an ill-considered opening line: “America, are you alive out there?”) was just plain opportunistic and trite.  
 
And Taylor Swift's number (which received a show-stopping standing ovation, hello...) was strong and masterfully rendered. "Sour grapes"...o.k., but that's indeed the theme of the song, man. 
 
If Richards feels the night's show was "something to be endured ...a ceremony riddled with disjointed collaborations that spanned genres and generations for the sake of ... what, exactly?"...
and a "missed opportunity" some 25-hours after the untimely and unfortunate death of one of the music world's all-time greats, then perhaps he's the one that's missing an opportunity to consider writing about something else.
 
I've seen, performed at, and attended numerous Grammy telecasts, and I felt this was one of the more memorable and richly enjoyable, warts and all.  

The WP Piece Here

In Response to WCP

As per dialogue concerning This Piece

Dear Jon & WCP~

You seem to have acknowledged the full dress of the issue, addressed it with articulate and consultative dialogue, than stitched it all together once more into a nice hat that more closely resembles a burlap sack then crammed it back over our head.

My problem, after all, is how the term singer-songwriter is presented as a sonic signifier as well as a genre dismissal. Not that all recordings begin or end with a song, but most do. And regardless of what that song is saying and how it’s being said, anything with lyrics is a written song whatever the genre. And someone is singing that written song.

To name a mere few: Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits, Paul Simon, Lou Reed, Coldplay, Bowie, Beefheart, Band of Skulls, Lola Jesus, Junip, Jesus and Mary Chain are each and all songwriters or bands with songwriters. Take your pick of most any recordings, and unless it’s strictly instrumental--and sometimes even then--you’ll see a song with lyrical content in there.

Are some edgier than others textually or sonically? One might easily neglectfully overlook one while knowingly dismissing the other. Some more pop-ier? Some folk-ier? Folksy-pop, maybe not an established genre--but what does that exactly mean?

If WCP is referring to acoustic, folk, spare or simple 3 to 4 chord starkly accompanied performing songwriters, you might state so more articulately, more specifically. You clearly wax colloquial in a time when labels are so blurred (you do acknowledge the mix tape/album ambiguity) that we’re ever-compelled to clamor for descriptive certainty. So this could be a discussion of semantics, but I fear it concerns something more formidable and more consequential. 

Is one to perceive WCP’s reiterated policy statement as an unwillingness to write about, promote or cover any artist whose principal element purveyed through their art is lyrical content? Should WCP then recuse itself from critical regarding the lyrical content within any of the genres they do cover, or at least admit that lyrics are the least and last aspect worth regard?

It would be refreshing to sense a more positive eagerness to welcome a field of potential critics to cover “singer-songwriters”, rather than beholding your skepticism-laced frontloaded naysay based on your two-year history with the paper. In any vibrant arts city--especially this Capital one—any apparent ongoing intransigent policy or a status quo smells very uncreative, inartistic, unadventurous, unliberated, stodgy— etc. and ew.

Art reviewers--music reviewers in particular—can sometimes understandably frustrate and unnerve an artist for they enjoy the privileged license to impart the first and last official word regarding works whose very creation was something in which they had no direct hand. That’s not meant disrespectfully, or as a dismissal. Critical review is essential to a healthy artistic process, within and without, published or not.

Many a critic’s names have become household words. The great Edmund Wilson was a well admired and respected writer, although mostly known for his abundant critical reviews and pieces. He had enough inherent and cultivated taste and judgmental skills as well as earned erudite credibility to be a trusted source for literary appraisal. He, too, had a dismissive side. He, too, felt some types of writing were not worth consideration. He also believed that all writing--even critiques—should be good enough to be considered literature.

I’ve heard other music critics state proudly that their primary concern is to provide their readership with something colorful, enticing and entertaining. H.L. Mencken, Christopher Hitchens, Martin Amis (certainly a novelist first) each discerning to barbed degrees, always manage to be fun to read.

Yes, a critic’s job contains multitudes. It should never be taken lightly. Perhaps you feel that critical commentary on the work of singer-songwriters doesn’t offer enough fuel for that sort of fire.  

Critics have the ironic power of the written word with which to express an informed, informing and seasoned opinion of a work with the intention of aiding and influencing the audience’s approach to it, possibly hastening a decision whether to approach at all. It can and often does pass as entertaining reading. In fact, words and their crafted scan and sequence combine for an eerily powerful commodity.  Any songwriter known for their songs would more than likely attest to them being if not the most important aspect of their work, than the one requiring the most focused and intensely invested effort.  

The creative process is a painstaking and subjective one. So is the act of critically reviewing, assessing and assailing, praising or poo-pooing the resultant work. Each process can be fulfilling, endearing, gratifying and righteous or unsettling, dyspeptic, vindictive and torturous.

But for WCP to proudly brandish categorical and sweeping subjectivity as a policy statement (furthered in the guise of speculation that no one with “the chops” will likely come forth to mollify the situation) is pure bigotry, somewhat poorly articulated, at that.

Today’s social networking platforms can create the unfortunate illusion that one’s proximal and encircling universe is the only universe. A newspaper (a City Paper) has the task (and you largely rise to it) of transcending that phenomenon and unifying—magnifying-- a city’s diverse art scene into our one proud corner of the sky. Within that though, exclusionary policies based on vague terminology will prove counterintuitive. You notably and generally do excel at this mission--the title of your piece was the inviting inquiry, “so how’d we do?” which is, on one hand, amiable, admirable and encouraging--unmistakably in the spirit of convivial inclusion and pluralistic awareness. One the other hand, it contrasts into an unfriendly and unbecoming light the reiterated intent to banish a huge--and I believe legitimate--faction of our arts community to the literary elsewhere.

‘What is hip? Tell me, tell me if you think you know…”

I’ve been around long enough to know what isn’t: bigotry and uninformed dismissiveness. We might all strive to be cooler in that regard.

Thanks for indulging my far too many words, and many thanks for all you do! I’m digging the 2011 list of salient artists and recordings from 2011.

I can also chime, apart from this bit of a blip, job well done!

May yours and other area publications along with the efforts of all the artistic players in the Washington DC area continue to be a hearty, mindful and soulful collaboration toward an ever-more realized, flourishing and thriving artistic community.  

~Jon Carroll  Songwriter, Musician  www.joncarroll.org