tag:themilkmen.space,2005:/blogs/the-milkmen-versus?p=2The Milkmen versus ...2023-12-27T14:44:59-07:00The Milkmenfalsetag:themilkmen.space,2005:Post/73250322023-12-27T14:44:59-07:002024-02-11T13:24:39-07:00The Epic Pastel That Fueled "Dickheads and Fuckfaces"<p><span style="color:#1F1F1F;">One vibey summer evening in 1986, at the opening of R Lee White’s show at McClaren Markowitz Gallery in Boulder, I struck gold. After the briefest of flirtations, I got lucky and went home with “Phone Call For You, Sweetie.”</span> </p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/s:bzglfiles/u/262866/cb99f3d175a6405589ebaa8c948d1c6ac2b78ef9/original/rlw-phone-call-pro.jpg/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==" class="size_l justify_center border_" /><o:p></o:p><p style="text-align:center;"><span class="text-small"><i>“Phone Call For You, Sweetie” </i></span></p><p><span>With its trio of one-legged human and canine figures, a semi-erect pair of wolf-gray schlongs, and an anomalous date palm exploding in vivid pastels, the vibrant </span><span style="color:#1F1F1F;"><span>64”x48” outlier bore no resemblance to White's Native American-themed acrylics the townsfolk had flocked to see. </span></span></p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/s:bzglfiles/u/262866/d7e4064fbbca8d8a04a84a3c63b6121151befce6/original/randy-lee-white-untitled-lithograph-1970.jpg/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==" class="size_l justify_center border_" /><p style="text-align:center;"><span class="text-small"><i>A typical R Lee White ledger-book-style painting depicting Native American themes.</i></span></p><p><span>It was hard to take my eyes off this cartoonish rendering of an aggressive wolf clawing a zoftig babe's left boob, while a passive one remains detached, perhaps waiting his turn, absorbed in an art magazine headlined “Exclusive: Very Personal Gossip.” </span></p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/s:bzglfiles/u/262866/cc72ba907c64a3af6af1de82b1e610bb742027f8/original/xclu.png/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==" class="size_l justify_center border_" /><p style="text-align:center;"><span class="text-small"><i>In 1986, “Phone Call for You, Sweetie,” was temptingly priced at a mere $1,875 per penis.</i></span></p><p><span>Any rhyme or reason why the three figures combined had three legs—not six—wasn’t readily apparent. The only phone present is a word in the title. If that wasn’t enigmatic enough, the formally dressed wolfmen wore shades. Previous indentations on the woman’s calf were visible; apparently, this ongoing </span><span style="color:#000000;">ménage à trois<span> </span></span><span>left its participants marked. </span></p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/s:bzglfiles/u/262866/71e60fee280962309b2a63df324bbfc6427b6e34/original/claw.png/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==" class="size_m justify_center border_" /><p><span>On the off chance the rest of the composition was insufficiently shocking, White formed the woman's thumb and forefinger into an unmistakable hand job gesture, punctuated by her pointy blood-red nails. </span><span style="color:#1F1F1F;">As incendiary as it was inspired, this epic pastel had to be the most outrageous painting I'd ever seen!</span></p><p><span style="color:#1F1F1F;">Coincidentally, earlier that same day, I'd been wracking my brain, trying in vain to rewrite someone else's lyrics to the most outrageous song I'd ever heard. Someone else was a drummer we’d get high and jam with for hours, Vince “Vinnie” Costa, as the moniker on his licensed tree surgeon card read. Before he hit the wall, the arboreal rhymester had scratched out about half a song's worth of lamentations unlikely to be taught in next semester's Troubadour and Balladeer class at The Oxford School of Poetry. The song needed work—and the next balladeer up was me. Gulp! I’m the sole lyricist on every song in The Milkmen’s vaunted Silo of Hits but one—<i>this</i> one—and poem doctor wasn’t a specialty I practiced.</span><span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p><span style="color:#1F1F1F;">My visionary side foresaw this raw outpouring of human emotion<span> reimagined as a tour de force so catchy that frenzied fans couldn’t possibly resist howling along to it at sold-out South American soccer stadiums. The problem was, my rational side balked at investing time and energy to conjure up the missing lyrics and dream up a suitably massive production for any tune with a name like, ahem, “</span></span><a class="no-pjax" href="https://themilkmen.space/songlab-2018" target="_blank"><span>Dickheads and Fuckfaces</span></a><span style="color:#1F1F1F;">.” </span><span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p><span style="color:#1F1F1F;">T</span><span>he </span><span style="color:#1F1F1F;"><span>kiss-of-death title alone spelled automatic disqualification from radio. </span></span><span>Besides the title conundrum, it was debatable whether the hastily scribbled lyrics were bedrock a supposedly superior wordsmith could build on. I had a sneaking suspicion they were or I wouldn't have been sweating the rewrite. But circumstances had changed; now I was taking another crack at it with artwork that had run me $1,875 per penis inhabiting a formerly blank wall in my home studio. </span></p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/s:bzglfiles/u/262866/cfdfbf3e9450bf250d7630fbe2e9e2b8269848c6/original/phone-call-in-proportion.jpg/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==" class="size_l justify_center border_" /><span><o:p></o:p></span><p style="text-align:center;"><span class="text-small"><i>“Phone Call” in perspective: the epic pastel measures 64"x 48"!</i></span></p><p><span><o:p></o:p></span><span style="color:#1F1F1F;">As usual, I was camped out there, clutching a lyric sheet, standing within arm's reach of last night's pickup. It dawned on me that, ironically enough, the luminous if tormented work was adorned with<i> dickheads </i>and <i>fuckfaces</i>. The dickheads on the cover of the passive wolf’s magazine were obvious. The fuckfaces … not so much without the backstory I heard at McClaren Markowitz that fateful moment “Phone Call” entered my world. Captivated by the surreal composition, I was fixating on the 2D faces in the painting, zooming in on the woman’s, contrasting it with the 3D faces milling about the gallery… when I did a double take. Whoa! Was I tripping, or was a pertinent presence schmoozing with artsy-fartsy gallerinas not the same being whose primitive likeness also appeared on the painting? </span><span><o:p></o:p><o:p></o:p></span></p><p><span>According to Joan Markowitz, who’d caught me staring as salespersons will and had sidled up next to me, this duplicated personage was none other than Mrs. White herself—a voluptuous Latina who also happened to be his business manager. “I think he must have been a little jealous about something or other,” she confided with a laugh, then added, “It’s her”—nodding at the missus—before flitting off. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p><a name="_Hlk155681591"><span style="color:black;">Aha! Something or other … like discovering that his wife (ding—fuckface sighting!)</span></a><span style="color:black;"><span> was in the habit of having rough sex with two guys at once? Perhaps he confronted her about it and disbelieved her denials—which explains why </span><i><span>none of them</span></i><span> </span><i><span>have a leg to stand on </span></i><span>and a sun-colored lamp casts the light of day on the interspecies threesome's unnatural alliance?</span> </span><span><o:p></o:p></span><span style="color:black;"> </span><span><o:p></o:p></span></p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/s:bzglfiles/u/262866/b2bff65b9b4f6b5de9e8ea765930e9776a4306cb/original/leg.png/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==" class="size_l justify_center border_" /><p><span>And now, the morning after, it seemed entirely plausible that the universe had ordained White to create a rage painting that would forever dazzle and rankle people in equal measure, led me to acquire it, and was putting my feet to the fire to see if I had the nerve to forge “Dickheads and Fuckfaces” into a song as polarizing as the painting. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p><span style="color:#1F1F1F;">Reservations aside, I wasn't the worst choice. I hadn't sworn a blood oath to avoid any inkling of controversy. Who do you suppose loosed “</span><a class="no-pjax" href="https://themilkmen.space/spilt-milk-mm-classics-1980-1985" target="_blank"><span>Lolita</span></a><span style="color:#1F1F1F;">,” a three-verse condensation of the banned Nabokov novel, on an unsuspecting public? The mischievous wordplay begins:</span><span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p><i><span>she’s a bouncy little number and a gymnast to boot</span></i><br><i><span>pouncing like a tumbler she’s as fast as she is cute</span></i><br><i><span>she sucked upon a popsicle, I had to play it dumb</span></i><br><i><span>because there was an obstacle presented by her mum</span></i></p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/s:bzglfiles/u/262866/f81a216ca65bd3e9c36387fd505a4f3fc049bc65/original/lo.png/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==" class="size_l justify_center border_" /><span><o:p></o:p></span><p><span style="color:#1F1F1F;">This playful pop confection topped some 6,000 entries in a highly-publicized songwriting contest held by KBCO—a blowtorch radio station that radiated out over the entire country music-crazed state of Colorado. Journalists marveled that the men of milk won the judges over with a pop tune that risqué. </span><span> </span></p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/s:bzglfiles/u/262866/f1a201d062f9644d824a357e0e1a5541b9a2e3b5/original/retropromo.jpg/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==" class="size_m justify_center border_" /><o:p></o:p><p style="text-align:center;"><span class="text-small"><i>Imagine accepting “Best Song in Colorado” in these get-ups!</i></span></p><p><span>And it wasn’t like jolting people out of their everyday lethargy via suggestive verbiage like this chorus for “</span><a class="no-pjax" href="/spilt-milk-mm-classics-1980-1985" target="_blank"><span>Late Night Delivery</span></a><span>” came about due to some accident in the lab:<o:p></o:p></span></p><p><i><span>late night delivery night delivery</span></i><br><i><span>milkmen man your trucks</span></i><br><i><span>late night chivalry</span></i><br><i><span>from those handsome strong young bucks</span></i><span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p><span style="color:#1F1F1F;">Those lyrics weren’t exactly what mountain folks were accustomed to hearing from country swing bands like Dusty Drapes and the Dusters at Peggy's Hi-Lo, but they were still squeaky clean, 100% free and clear of naughty words that simple minds might deem “satanic” or “obscene.”</span><span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p><span style="color:#1F1F1F;">And speaking of the dark prince no one’s ever seen but billions believe exists, “Phone Call” is laced with hot-button elements scorned by fundamentalist Christians as the work of the devil. Impressions like that can form when artists hear voices in their heads telling them their masterwork would be incomplete without a tandem of wolf wangs—and act on the urge. Or when demons whisper salacious song titles into the ears of reefer-mad drummers.</span><span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p><span style="color:#1F1F1F;">At least my prospective co-writer had had the good sense to heed the adage “write what you know.” As best I could tell, Vince intended his “Dickheads and Fuckfaces”—a title he’d come up with off the top of his head to designate a five-minute portion of our latest 90-minute indulgence he’d labeled <i>Mouth Open Jam</i>—to be about a guy jonesing for some killer weed. At this juncture, I was all-too familiar with the tale of woe: a sativa-starved workingman drives through crosstown traffic to pick up a bag of buds his dealer crows could be some of the best stuff he’s ever tasted. Our antihero gets what he came for and he goes on his way. But after the poor schmo gets home, rolls a big juicy doob, fires it up, and inhales a few huge lungfuls … well … nothing happens. Ripped off, riled up, and all by his lonesome, the protagonist compensates by wailing “dickheads and fuckfaces.” </span></p><p><span><o:p></o:p><o:p></o:p></span></p><p><span>Okay, so maybe it’s not </span><i><span>Macbeth</span></i><span>, but not all our fans were English Lit majors, and everyone needs to blow off steam now and then. The hotshot artist who’d signed his name and the year, “86 R Lee White,” and the best title ever, “Phone Call For You, Sweetie,” in hot pink pastel certainly had. My eyes darted from White's florid signature back to the barely legible lyric sheet.</span></p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/s:bzglfiles/u/262866/5801d34e49be7d93bbf7f8d85e1dd01242d217a8/original/sig.png/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==" class="size_l justify_center border_" /><p><span> Here’s what the stoner bard had scribed so far:<o:p></o:p></span></p><p><span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p><i><span>straight into traffic, you called me to taste it</span></i><br><i><span>I got what I came for and I’ll be on my way</span></i><br><i><span>you said that it could, but I’m far from wasted</span></i><br><i><span>I’ve seen lotsa bait that’s been taken this way</span></i><span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p><i><span>dickheads and fuckfaces</span></i><br><i><span>dickheads and fuckfaces</span></i><span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p><i><span>now time is a-wasting while I’m wasting myself </span></i><br><i><span>talk about love, it’s like a book on a shelf</span></i><br><i><span>I may be the dealer, but I’m still being dealt</span></i><br><i><span>If I mess with you, I only mess with myself</span></i><span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p><i><span>dickheads and fuckfaces</span></i><br><i><span>dickheads and fuckfaces</span></i><span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p><span>Out of who knows how many nouns in existence, Vince, the esteemed author of the autobiographical </span><i><span>Drummers Come First,</span></i><span> had selected the same rhyme word, “way,” not once, not twice, but </span><i><span>thrice </span></i><span>in a four-line verse (“wasted” is “way-stead”). He compounded the sin by doubling down on “myself” in verse two. While I never would have done that in a million years, the stilted verses weren’t entirely devoid of colorful imagery (“talk about love, it’s like a book on a shelf”). They had their lowbrow charm—just not near enough of it to leave well enough alone. The overall mood felt stark. It would have been just plain wrong for any song with a title that radioactive to take itself </span><i><span>too </span></i><span>seriously. If I wanted the lyrics to be irresistible to sing along to, the remedy was adding a few good punch lines to lighten things up. <u1:p></u1:p> <u1:p></u1:p><o:p></o:p><o:p></o:p> <o:p></o:p></span></p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/s:bzglfiles/u/262866/2f134b355756f43e71412a8194047de0b33fa686/original/picture-of-dorian-gray.jpg/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==" class="size_l justify_center border_" /><p style="text-align:center;"><span class="text-small"><i>Can a painting have supernatural powers? The Portrait of Dorian Gray is Exhibit A.</i></span><span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p><span style="color:#1F1F1F;">Meanwhile, not only was I locked in on “Phone Call,” I had the distinct sensation its figures <i>were observing me</i>. The longer I spent in the presence of this willing cavewoman in a clingy dress accompanied by carnivorous mammals, the more I felt myself responding to the call of the wild. At first, the subliminal pull of “Phone Call” tugged at me, gently, then this Dorian Grayish portrait was all but elbowing me in the ribs, pleading with me to override my scaredy-cat objections and go all-in already. I can't believe I'm typing this, but a painting broke down my resistance, coaxing me into action. </span><o:p></o:p><span style="color:#1F1F1F;"> </span><span><o:p></o:p></span><span style="color:#1F1F1F;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p><span style="color:#1F1F1F;">Finally, the missing lines materialized:</span><span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p><i><span>Straight into traffic, you called me to taste it</span></i><br><i><span>I got what I came for, and I’ll be on my way</span></i><br><i><span>you said that it could, but I’m far from wasted</span></i><br><i><span>I’ve seen lotsa bait that’s been taken this way</span></i><span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p><i><span>dickheads and fuckfaces</span></i><br><i><span>dickheads and fuckfaces</span></i><span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p><i><span>now time is a-wastin’ while I’m wastin’ myself</span></i><br><i><span>talk about love, it’s like a book on a shelf</span></i><br><i><span><u>you look for a job, you look lotsa places</u></span></i><br><i><span><u>but they only hire dickheads and fuckface</u>s</span></i><span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p><i><span>dickheads and fuckfaces</span></i><br><i><span>dickheads and fuckfaces</span></i><span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p><i><span>I may be the dealer but I’m still bein’ dealt</span></i><br><i><span>if I mess with you I only mess with myself</span></i><br><i><span><u>I never got praise or warm embraces</u></span></i><br><i><span><u>when I was raised by dickheads and fuckfaces</u></span></i><span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p><span>Yes! His weed sucks, his love life sucks, his job sucks, and his upbringing sucks, too. So much for lacking the common touch—“Dickheads and Fuckfaces” was a cry for everyman. The anthemic singalong closed every Milkmen show throughout the '80s, sending everyone home spent but happy.<o:p></o:p></span></p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/s:bzglfiles/u/262866/5e8b47db99f53915da66467d9d6b4284af0f4a9f/original/rlw.png/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==" class="size_m justify_center border_" /><p style="text-align:center;"><span class="text-small"><i>Artist R Lee White</i></span></p><p>Nearly forty years later, through a dozen moves, that rockstar painting I initially thought of as just another pickup on Pearl Street and I are still together. Throughout the decades, R Lee White’s caricatures have remained in the background, letting me process life’s vicissitudes on my own—<i>until lately</i>. After some conferring amongst themselves, they're sending out smoke signals again. It’s almost as if the wanton woman and her canine consorts know I've got one more siege of recording left in me … but I’m clueless how to finance it. They’re also well aware that the framed space they’ve been trysting within has appreciated to a whopping $75,000 per penis on the secondary art market. Hint! Hint!<br><br>It's crazy to think “Phone Call For You, Sweetie” is prodding me into action again after all this time. Yet the more I think about it, the more its astute strategy makes sense. The epic pastel deserves to be sold to a private collector so that a new set of art lovers can admire it and a new bunch of haters can hate on it. I deserve to record fresh milk stuff for a new set of music lovers to adore and a new batch of industry types to ignore.</p><p><span style="color:#1F1F1F;">Can a painting have supernatural powers? Stay tuned.—Lory Kohn</span><br> </p><p><span><o:p></o:p><o:p></o:p></span></p><p><span><o:p></o:p></span></p>The Milkmentag:themilkmen.space,2005:Post/70419562022-08-23T18:44:26-06:002023-10-16T08:51:59-06:00"I Should've Stayed at Laurie's" Resurrected!<p><em>Three plastic storage bins worth of passé storage media: reel-to-reel mixdown tapes, analog cassettes, VHS home movies. A runaway mixdown and a disappeared DAT tape. Digital dilemmas and divine intervention. Heart-stopping drama and a comedy of errors. A longstanding-quest and a cast of quirky characters. The resurrection of “I Should’ve Stayed at Laurie’s” had it all!</em></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe class="justify_inline" data-video-type="youtube" data-video-id="OyUVOQpzLQk" data-video-thumb-url="https://img.youtube.com/vi/OyUVOQpzLQk/mqdefault.jpg" type="text/html" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/OyUVOQpzLQk?rel=0&wmode=transparent&enablejsapi=1" frameborder="0" height="360" width="640" allowfullscreen="true"></iframe></p>
<p>Around the 40-year mark after some 20-odd moves, schlepping a binful of deteriorating reel-to-reel tapes through time and space gets a little old. What a relief when, in 2018, I finally got around to the long overdue task of digitally archiving the Milkmen’s entire recorded output. The preservation phase was a prelude to the enhancement phase—in which golden-eared wizzes wielding mythic Neve mastering gear sprinkled just the right amount of "magic fairy dust" on every last track until it oozed sonic goodness. The monumental job of conserving the Milkmen’s discography for posterity was complete—or it would have been, if "I Should’ve Stayed At Laurie's," a major production recorded at The Village Recorder in Santa Monica in 1983, was where it should have been— on the same reel of half-inch mixdown tape with the three other songs we laid down during that session. But “Laurie’s” wasn't there. Maybe some over-eager engineer somewhere along the line had moved it to another reel? Nope. I must have pored over miles and miles worth of blasts from the past until my worst fear was confirmed: "Laurie's" was gone like yesterday. </p>
<p>We'll never know how a few hundred feet of half-inch Ampex recording tape unspooled itself, wriggled out of a storage bin, and escaped from the four dimensions of reality. In any event, its absence left just one distasteful option—mastering "Laurie's" from a 40-year old cassette tape I plucked out of another storage bin I’d been lugging around since the dawn of time. <em>Gulp</em>. I swallowed hard before giving Bruce Brown from Puget Sound Mastering the go-ahead. The Jet City mastering maven gave it a heroic effort, one that sentient beings have actually cited as a favorite from our classic era. That's all well and good, but a card-carrying compulsive like myself was never ever going to rest easy with that compromised solution marring our permanent collection. But I’d have to live with it, that is, unless that runaway mixdown tape somehow slithered its way back into the storage bin, respooled itself, then managed to alert me it was back in the fold. Fat chance! For all intents and purposes, the "Laurie’s" story had reached an unsatisfying end.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/520e6d34745288ea9cf935624c8983f15636e18b/original/reel.jpg/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><span class="font_small">Welcome to extinct media week! Our first entrant: spools of bulky but much-loved reel-to-reel tape.</span></p>
<p>Then again, filed away under “hope against hope,” there was a certain trillion-to-one possibility I found myself clinging to although, admittedly, that was completely irrational. You see, in another lifetime, Steven Solomon and I had exhibited rare vision and foresight; we’d actually archived that same collection of analog mixdown tapes comprising our entire “Silo of Hits” to DAT (Digital Audio Tape) back in the mid-to-late '90s. At the time, archiving sound recordings to a promising technology like DAT seemed like the closest thing to placing our life's work in a time capsule, one that teams of enlightened archaeologists who unearthed it in, say, the year 6014, could gush over.</p>
<p>The problem with mastering "Laurie's" from that 90-minute, 33-song DAT tape, painstakingly prepared some 25 years earlier, appeared insurmountable: it had been misplaced by its usually reliable curator—me. <em>Sigh</em>. The diminutive yet power-packed two-inch by three-inch repository was every bit as lost in space as the half-inch “Laurie’s” mixdown! What's my excuse? Well . . . er . . . um . . . back in 2001, I was pondering entering the human status commonly reffered to as "divorced." Prior to that decision, being the compulsive type, I of course made a list of every pro and con I could come up with. One epic con I was insufficiently prescient to anticipate was that I'd wind up moving like 15 times in the next 20 years after signing away my Boulder County ranch in exchange for not having to pay maintenance and child support. When someone pulls up stakes that often, things have a way of slipping through the cracks.</p>
<p>A few moves into what was rapidly turning into a nomadic existence, I realized that I hadn't seen that tape in a while. I checked all the logical landing spots I could have place it. No luck. Getting a little frantic, I began rifling through all the illogical places I might have stashed it. Several hours later, If I still had it, I had to concede it was well-concealed. I was overcome with the sinking feeling that I'd never see the sum total of our lifework ever again. Each time I found myself packing and unpacking all my earthly possessions, I’d comb through the whole kit and kaboodle, only to reprise that same old sinking feeling.</p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/b08583beb9e85c533d57b3bfce085db7fc331298/original/dat.jpg/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><span class="font_small"><em>Next up we have examples of DAT tapes, like the one our entire life's work was archived on that some space cadet lost track of.</em></span></p>
<p>Meanwhile, as time marched on (cue montage of calendar pages flipping through the better part of three decades), I had a longstanding but as yet unfulfilled desire to digitize a third binful of tapes, the one containing dozens of VHS home movies this amateur auteur shot of his daughter from birth>infant>toddler. At least those clunky cartridges had stayed put in one spot—between the Christmas tree ornaments and the skiwear 'n ski gear safely ensconsed in the storage room of what was now the ex's ranch. Since my now grownup daughter’s boyfriend Ryan is a video editor, at some point I brought up the subject of those undigitized videotapes. Not only did Ryan still own a working VHS player, he volunteered to help out with the project, and, in due time, managed to procure that boxful of tapes. Shortly thereafter, he revealed that the daunting process of transferring some 30 hours' worth of videotape to MP4 was well underway. The next time he checked in, Ryan let me know that the job was just about wrapped up, and oh, by the way, <em>was there some odd chance I happened to know what a certain strange, unmarked DAT tape was doing lumped in with all those VHS tapes</em>? </p>
<p>What??? No f**king way!!! OMG!!! Mystery solved!!! What a break!!! Previously, I hadn’t believed in obscure ontological concepts like divine intervention—well I was starting to now!</p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/14dab3134c5517fa8ca8cf200d7eda2422db491b/original/vhs.png/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.png" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><span class="font_small"><em>And here we have VHS videotape</em></span>—<span class="font_small"><em>a <em>f</em>ormat that ruled the movie world for decades. </em></span></p>
<p>"Laurie's" was almost certainly somewhere on that DAT tape, along with a mixed bag of early studio efforts secreted away for some 25 years. At long last, in August, 2022, the payoff from a 25-year pursuit lay nestled in the palm of my left hand. I stared at it in disbelief—all I could do with it without a DAT player at my disposal. The thing to do, Ryan advised, was sign up for ShareGrid and see if anyone in the Pasadena area had one for rent. Any "one" is accurate: there was exactly one guy in all of SoCal loaning out a DAT machine, a Panasonic SV-3800, reputed to be the cream of the crop. I agreed to his terms for a weekend rental. </p>
<p>As I, a babe in the DAT woods, someone who’d never been in the same room with a player since we archived our classics all those years ago, eagerly opened the latches on the Panasonic’s road case, it never occurred to me that the listening experience would be anything but a pleasurable stroll down memory lane. I mean, if I could operate a cassette player, what challenge could a DAT player possibly present? <em>Hah</em>! And what reason could there have possibly been for a couple of guitar players archiving their complete studio output circa 1996 to suspect that DAT: </p>
<ul> <li>Would never live up to its promise as a premier storage medium because the introducion of more robust and higher-capacity hard disks and SSDs was coming right around the corner. </li> <li>Had a built-in limitation—like CDs, the format reduced musical information from a lifelike 24 bits down to a compromised 16 bits using first-generation compression technology that hadn’t been completely shaken out. </li> <li>Was dependent upon funky tape formulations which turned out to be nowhere near as long-lasting as supposedly inferior cassette tape. The media just wasn't produced long enough for any significant technological advances to take place; degradation over time was a distinct possibility. </li> <li>Would virtually disappear from the face of the earth; few engineers had any need to own, much less maintain, finicky DAT machines over the coming decades.</li>
</ul>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/a33c106d697f9c2c6abb3959fa5fa383d31c2ef8/original/panasonic.jpg/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><span class="font_small"><em>A Panasonic DAT player; can you say "a wing and a prayer?"</em></span></p>
<p>But I hadn’t figured any of that out yet, as I found myself assessing how to establish a connection between the DAT player and my home studio's audio interface (a hardware piece which converts sound signals like live instruments, MIDI keyboards, and human voices into files written to PC hard drives from whence they can be further manipulated). I took note of the Panasonic's more esoteric AES/EBU and SPDIF digital connections, which I paid no attention to as the only digital inputs on my interface were ADAT; that wasn't a match, so why care? Once I spied the Panasonic's pair of common XLR outputs—knowing my interface was well-stocked with no less than eight XLR inputs—I relaxed, as it appeared that transferring tunes from the DAT machine to my PC’s hard disk would be simplicity itself. All a guy had to do was connect a pair of L/R XLR outputs from the Panasonic to a pair of L/R XLR inputs on my interface, press Play, then monitor the progress as the WAV files were written in real time.</p>
<p>Excitedly, I plugged in a pair of high-end Mogami XLR cables with gleaming gold connectors and prepared to bask in my own past glory. I mean, what could possibly go wrong? Well, everything! My hands instinctively jerked up to protect my ears after pressing Play sent a horrifically overloaded signal to the interface—which responded by flashing every red warning LED it had, protesting for all it was worth. A humongous amount of clipping was going on, even though the channel inputs were zeroed. </p>
<p>Yikes! What the hay??? </p>
<p>The Panasonic's owner let me know that I was feeding a line signal into mic inputs—a no no, since mic inputs have to account for the possibility that a singer is seductively whispering into a microphone or a musician is playing a quiet passage and just might need a little boost in the gain department. Whoops! Excessive "clipping" (engineer-speak for volume overload) would have been bad enough, but that was only half my sorrow—a second problem was even freakier. Insinuating themselves into the proceedings every ten seconds or so came a hideous collection of moans ‘n wails, followed swiftly by crinkly sounds that mimicked sheets of aluminum foil being wrung out and balled up, and stuttering effects, a.k.a “wow and flutter,” the stronest possible hint that the tape heads had become disoriented. A bright yellow CLEANING message, blinking away on the DAT player's display, had my heart palpitating along in time. Cleaning what? Potentially fatal digital errors, no doubt. </p>
<p>Further messaging with the Panasonic's owner informed me that the engineering cognoscenti typically transfer DAT tapes to PC hard disks via arcane digital protocols like SPDIF and AES/EBU—the ones I'd initially dismissed—not your everyday analog connections. Doing that, in theory, would resolve the clipping issue. In practice, the prescribed cure, renting an unfamiliar interface with a set of matching inputs and acquiring the requisite esoteric cabling (this fellow just happened to have both), was not only disagreeable from a financial perspective, it was guaranteed to be a gigantic PITA. There was no getting around the fact that incorporating a new interface into a recording setup necessitates tackling a steep, time-consuming learning curve. Nonetheless, I would have been severely tempted to lean in that direction, that is, if only what I was hearing during the rare stretches when the tape played back flawlessly wasn’t a major disappointment: the poorly compressed, gradually deteriorating source material struck me as dull and lifeless. </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/88c6f4724581007d7f6acc9383d5b5d39c50564a/original/rockman.jpg/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><span class="font_small"><em>The Tom Scholz (Boston) designed Rockman amp heard on "Laurie's" and any number of '80s hits by the likes of Billy Idol and Def Leppard.</em></span></p>
<p>At my wits end, I remembered that my interface had a set of “Super Channels”—combo XLR/quarter-inch input jacks which defaulted to either mic (hotter) or line (softer) levels depending on what type of signal they detected. Mercifully, employing those Super Inputs with the plain old mic cables established a matching line in to a line out relationship, brringing the overall gain down to an acceptable level. Nice! So much for the first major problem. Yet that grab-bag of obtrusive howls, shrieks, and stutters persisted. I took a deep breath. Was there some way, <em>any </em>way, that all that digital garbage could be eliminated or cut down to a bare minimum? Well, one suggestion that I found on a user forum was fast-forwarding the tape all the way to the end, then rewinding it back to the beginning, the better to align the tape with the tape heads. I gave it a shot ... and ... occasionally ... the tape played back error-free for five minutes or so— before the enraged Satanic squeals came back for an encore. On the bright side, I'd confirmed that the components I had at my disposal were capable of performing properly, for short stretches at least. </p>
<p>Somewhat emboldened, eventually I made enough halting progress to verify that "Laurie's"—suspensefully positioned at song #32 out of 33— was actually on the tape! So was "Magical Bay," an appealing reggaeish concoction, the first song that Steven Solomon and I ever recorded together, way back in the '70s. Under the circumstances, I narrowed my focus to going all-out to capture those two tracks. Toward that end, I must have made like 30 nerve-wracking passes. Every single attempt was riddled with demonic visitations that made chalk-scraping-on-blackboard seem like a Brahms lullaby in comparison. I would have stood a fighting chance of cobbling different takes together had there only been a few screeches per pass. Nothing doing—there were just too many of them to contend with. </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/a93fc53a811cdffa6ce8a054f6366554c629ea77/original/artie.jpg/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"> <span class="font_small"><em>Artie Kornfeld, erstwhile MM manager, strolls the Woodstock grounds with Michael Lang.</em></span></p>
<p>As tempted as I was to throw in the towel, some unknowable force (divine intervention redux?) compelled me to fast-forward and rewind the entire tape some five times in a row, turn the machine on and off thrice, eject the cartridge and put it back in the machine, unplug the machine from the wall and plug it back in again, cross my fingers, and make the sign of the cross . . . at which point the digital gods blessed a miracle pass of "Laurie's" that captured the entire three-minute performance error-free! "Magical Bay" kept up its stiff resistance until I had to return the machine; it merits a complete remake somewhere down the road. </p>
<p>In any event, after a weekend's worth of beating my head against the wall, I now had a hard-won transfer of "Laurie's" to show for my efforts, ready for mastering! Was dame fortune smiling on me again? Apparently so, because, not 24 hours later, I received a contact email from Craigslist regarding a Dean Soltero electric guitar that I'd listed for sale. "Well, it's a damn shame I'm not in LA right now 'cuz I'd buy that guitar," it began, "I do get down there every month or 6 weeks for work. If I do, and it's still there, I'll buy it for sure. My name is Mark. xxx-xxx-xxxx. Keep me in mind. I'll look for your ad in a few weeks before my next trip down. Hopefully it'll be there." The sender's signature included a link to "Mark Fuller Mastering." Aha! I visited his website and discovered a batch of before and after samples that sounded pretty damned good by anyone’s standards. A light bulb went off in my head. "Tell ya what," I emailed back, "If you'll master one song, I'll hold that guitar for you till you make it down to LA." I trust you can guess the rest. </p>
<p>So, how'd it turn out? So much for dull and lifeless—this revitalized "Laurie's" captures a moment when we were vying to become the next big thing. It's definitely a major improvement over what we had. </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/fd6770b1060c0d864283ebbcfbaa23a648eba7fd/original/neve-mastering.jpg/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><span class="font_small"><em>A rackful of "holy grail" mastering gear.</em></span> </p>
<p>In case you're wondering about the "Laurie's" backstory: </p>
<ul> <li>Song ideas can flow from just about any font of inspiration. In this case, I was pissed at co-writer Steven Solomon's for some perceived slight that sensitive artistes in pressurized situations have been known to stew over. I responded by writing lyrics that forced him to sing my name over and over again. I wish I could tell you that I had nobler intentions, but, nope, that's where the title comes from, lol. Recently, I changed the spelling from Lory's to Laurie's—as if that somehow makes my motivation any less petty. Well, on second thought, I suppose the whole band had just moved from the familiarity of Colorado to the strangeness of El Lay . . . and a little bit of that disorientation found its way in there, too. </li> <li>Around this stage of my development as a songwriter, I discovered I had a knack for <em>overdelivering </em>rhymes. How does someone "overdeliver" a rhyme? Take verse two: "makeup and muscle on display/wake up to hustle every day." That's three rhymes in two eight-syllable lines . . . which make perfect sense and don't sound the least bit forced. Sadly, even the most ardent musicologists rarely notice details like that. </li> <li>I'd rate this as Steven's finest vocal performance. He had a decent amount of natural ability, which he could have cultivated and made some strides toward emulating his vocal idol, Jack Bruce, but he never did. In later years, his instrument became thinner, he began suffering from self-esteem issues, and he chose the lazier Rip Van Winkle approach—rolling out of bed after a decade of inactivity and seeing what happens—over the more demanding path of staying sharp vocally. None of those issues are present on "Laurie's." Here he hams it up, sounding confident in the process. </li> <li>"Laurie's" guitar parts are a rare role reversal for us; Typically, Steven played the single note lines and I took care of the chordwork. In this one, I play the hook, and Steven rocks out on rhythm like nobody's business. </li> <li>Our coke-addled management team—which included Artie Kornfeld of Woodstock and The Cowsills fame (he managed them and wrote the classic hippy anthem, "The Rain, The Park and Other Things," a.k.a "I Love The Flower Girl")—lined up an all-star producer and engineer for our session at The Village Recorder in Santa Monica. Gary Ladinsky had just engineered massive hits for Cheap Trick that sounded absolutely fantastic and helped define the sound of late '70s/early '80s rock. John Hug was just coming off producing two #1s: "Party All The Time" for Eddie Murphy and "Hearts" for Marty Balin. The money budgeted to pay Hug and Ladinsky went up Kornfeld and pals' noses instead. Neither one was around for the final mix. An intern engineer, a Cliff Somebody who liked the material, wanted to build up his chops, and was given access to use the studio for free after hours as a reward for interning, stepped in for the final mix.</li>
</ul>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/2b8e830a20af3009e57e261da9b7d54bff556a90/original/village-studio-a.jpg/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><span class="font_small"><em>The Village Recorder Room A: those Neve consoles bring out the stars.</em></span></p>
<ul> <li>The Village Recorder consisted of Studios A, B, and C. We tracked in Studio A, Ratt—who cut their megahits "Round and Round" and "Lay It Down" while we were there and dropped by our room to watch us track "I Mean What I Say" were in Studio C, and some Jewish chick from Brooklyn named Barbra Streisand crooned away in Studio B. Our final mixes were done in a series of late night sessions in Studio B—directly following the songbird's slot. </li> <li>Guitar-gear aficionados may recognize the distinctive recorded tone of the Tom Scholz-designed Rockman X100 headphone amp on the hook and the dreamy chords. </li> <li>The brief reverse sound transition during the opening and the much more pronounced one between the end of the bridge and the beginning of verse three were accomplished by turning a reel of two-inch tape upside down and recording it backwards, shades of Jimi Hendrix. That was Hug's bright idea, which I'm not sure I adequately appreciated at the time. I do now. </li> <li>The drummer is Tim Pantea. Nobody ever looked better behind a drum kit than this platinum-haired 18-year old pretty boy, who had to follow a drum god, Ric Parnell, kicked out of The Milkmen for passing out at too many gigs and into immortality as the exploding drummer in <em>This Is Spinal Tap</em>. We knew Tim was an awesome replacement cause nobody could take their eyes off him and he could sing really well . . . but we probably underestimated what a great drummer he was in his own right. </li> <li>The bass player is Rick Wilson, also booted out The Milkmen, for the sin of partying with Ozzie Osborne and his band after the heavy metal headbangers came to see us headline Filthy McNasty’s. Rick’s best bud, Randy Castillo, who Tim borrowed his schtick from when Randy was making the circuit of Denver clubs, was Ozzie's drummer at the time. Within a month of receiving his marching papers, Rick’s "After The Rain," deemed too pukey for us to play, wasn’t too pukey for The Nelson Brothers (I absolutely adore their dad, Rick) or the Billboard charts, where it settled in at #1. I've said it before: in retrospect, I wished I kicked myself out of the band!</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: center;"> —Lory Kohn</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"># # #</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>The Milkmentag:themilkmen.space,2005:Post/68776262022-04-21T13:09:30-06:002022-08-19T17:03:40-06:00And Now a Word From Our (Inadvertent) Sponsors ...<p>Milkmaids and milkmates from Ecuador to Estonia have been getting after me to refocus this blog on the Men of Milk. You were mildly amused when I assumed the role of musicologist, studiously analyzing the merits and warts of more commercially successful bands—but that's not really what drew you to themilkmen.space in the first place or what's kept you coming back for more. </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/e92c6d54ab86d672cc3a89b038349b21512e2e44/original/windfall.jpg/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p>Let me take a wild guess what you've missed most: it wouldn't happen to be <a contents="more shameless self-promotion" data-link-label="Lory Kohn Bio" data-link-type="page" href="/lory-kohn-bio" style="" target="_blank">more shameless self-promotion</a>, would it? You know, those chatty missives hyping us as one of the greatest undiscovered bands of all time and yours truly as the top dual-threat songwriter/prosewriter extant?</p>
<p>Message received! And it's certainly true that <a contents="historically I've relished my role as resident hypemeister" data-link-label="Milkmen Bio 1982" data-link-type="page" href="/milkmen-bio-1982" style="" target="_blank">historically I've relished my role as resident hypemeister</a>. I would have been happy to continue in that vein, but 2021 wasn’t exactly a banner year in Dairyland. It’s hard to crow about achievements or accomplishments ... when there weren’t any. Our lack of production was, er, <em>humbling</em>, to say the least. If that wasn’t humbling enough, I had to contend with becoming a septuagenarian—a septuagenarian finally forced to face the devastating reality that the band nearest and dearest to my heart may never receive the plaudits for our long-term output that we garnered nonstop when <a contents="we broke so briskly out of the gate" data-link-label="Press" data-link-type="page" href="/press" target="_blank">we broke so briskly out of the gate</a>. That never stopped me from producing one recognition-worthy tune after another, until, uncharacteristically, I sulked my way through 2021.</p>
<p>I'm already unsulking in 2022, chewing the cud and weighing the canniest ways to reconnect our fanbase with the mother teat. Come to think of it, there’s a compelling tale I’ve held in reserve that addresses a vexing question I’ve deflected for the better part of forty years: how on earth did we ever find the funds to keep churning out topnotch tunes over seven decades without selling umpteen million recordings and stadium seats—like every other band that's survived anywhere near that long’s had to do?</p>
<p>“Desire” is the one-word answer. </p>
<p>Fine, but the money to alchemize desire into “product” had to come from somewhere. In our case, monolithic conglomerates like Apple, IBM, Intel, Century Link, and Safeco Insurance all (inadvertently) pitched in, not to mention even stranger bedfellows like Marijuana, Inc., and no less a facilitator of our dairy dreams than the freakin' United States Treasury Department by order of the Department of Labor! </p>
<p>Hooking up with these deep-pocketed benefactors must have taken us years and years of high-level planning and tense negotiations to pull off, right? Nope. It was all serendipitous—though par for the course, when you pause to consider the peculiar script my "inside-out life” has followed. You see, whenever I’ve made concerted attempts to monetize my artistic efforts, I’ve usually failed miserably; on the other hand, I’ve been on the receiving end of one startling windfall after another, allowing me to keep expanding my songwriting Silo of Hits and my prose writing portfolio. If I sit in a lotus position, I can see those out-of-the-blue cash infusions as some form of karmic recalibration, arranged by a benevolent universe, compensation for the Herculean effort I've poured into creative projects that's rarely been rewarded through conventional means. </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/32316821aa8db8f2064003622e619893c739eac3/original/potogold.jpg/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" />But I'm getting ahead of myself. Back in the days of Milk Crusade I (1979-1985), there actually was a plan in place, masterminded to rocket us to the outer stratospheres of superstardom. It was simplicity itself: soliciting and receiving support from the most obvious player—the dairy industry.</p>
<p>That was the intention, anyway. I saw it all, in vivid detail, right from Day One in 1979 when I stumbled out into a frigid early morning mist after an all-night recording session in a Table Mesa suburb. As yet unidentified crunchy sounds preceded the emergence of a milk truck swinging onto an icy driveway. The grand scheme was already formulating in my mind, even as I watched a uniformed milkman hop out of his snub-nosed conveyance, jiggling milkstuffs in a bottle carrier, striding purposefully toward a Watts-Hardy Dairy milk box. By the time he'd gingerly arranged an assortment of lactose-based staples and retraced his steps, the whole milking <em>schtick </em>had crystallized in my mind: our name would be The Milkmen, our stage show would feature a robotic bovine, and our uniforms would be adorned with patches proclaiming our proud sponsors in the dairy industry, just like racecar drivers' uniforms are speckled with patches advertising their backers in the oil and gas racket. It was, bar none, the best idea I've ever had. I get all tingly just thinking about it. </p>
<p>Alas, this noble ambition never evolved beyond two dozen stenciled milk boxes gifted by Boulder’s Watts-Hardy Dairy. I’ve cried in my milk over our (okay, <em>my</em>) failure to execute that game plan more times than I care to admit. </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/26a5350ef6209f20e451eb6cb6e6cc9b24437fb5/original/wh.jpg/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><span class="font_small"><em>Boulder's lamentably defunct Watts-Hardy Dairy was reconstituted into the Dairy Arts Center</em>.</span></p>
<p>Inability to ally with the dairy industry could have spelled disaster for our fledgling enterprise if the milk gods hadn't been looking out for us—in the most roundabout ways imaginable. If The National Enquirer wrote a headline about it, it would be : “Fortune 100 Companies Paid Me $300,000 Not to Write!”</p>
<p>That's just a little taste.</p>
<p>But first there was ...</p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong><span style="color:#d35400;">Marijuana, Inc.</span></strong><br>The entirety of Milk Crusade I (1979-1985) was bankrolled through selling metric tons of "the magical herb." Everything from our guitar picks to our outlandish costumes and stage set to Bessie the Cow was purchased with proceeds generated from these “ill-gotten gains.” </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/b55b7e6fcc9c319f1c2a9c14270f4a8245022632/original/live1.jpg/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p>Oh, wait, tell a lie: “Lolita,” the song that won the 1981 KBCO Songwriting Contest, jumpstarting our career in the process, was incubated in a private fantasy studio literally built into the rocks above Left Hand Canyon. A pad and a half like that existed because its foosball-loving owner was the brains behind conceiving, manufacturing, and distributing millions of doses of Mr. Natural blotter acid (LSD)—an all-time great product worthy of enshrinement in the Hallucinogens Hall of Fame. To be precise, Acid, Inc. paid for the studio itself—which offered us weeks and weeks of free time to come in and put the radically-designed room through its paces—while Marijuana, Inc. picked up the tab for everything else, including an engineer, a studio musician like Ric Parnell, who'd later become immortal as Spinal Tap's expoding drummer, and prepping and pressing a single. </p>
<p>Back in the day, gigs like New Wave Mondays at Boulder’s Blue Note Club actually paid us really well—but not nearly well enough to afford extravagances like flying Parnell and his redheaded “bird” Cindy out from LA to play <em>one gig</em>. If you didn’t fly her out too, well, then her “old man” would go on a coke binge and wind up <a contents="playing the snare drum with his head" data-link-label="Ric Plays The Snare Drum With His Head" data-link-type="page" href="/ric-plays-the-snare-drum-with-his-head" target="_blank">playing the snare drum with his head</a> at sold-out shows we'd have to end early, pissing off everyone in the club who was worshipping us like the second coming moments earlier.</p>
<p>In the early 1980s, the commodity with that sort of purchasing power was usually reddish-golden Colombian weed, pressed into 20-50 pound bales in South America, exported to Florida by plane or boat, then overlanded to key distribution points like Boulder/Denver in recreational vehicles, typically Winnebagos, or "Winnies" as they were affectionately called. Despite the presence of unsmokable stems and seeds rarely encountered in today’s meticulously groomed sinsemilla strains, a $35 ounce of Colombian was affordable enough, tasty enough, and effective enough to keep your average stoner blissed out for weeks, if not months.</p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/b466544a60ca49791dcfc5cfa432dfa75ef95f3d/original/winny.jpg/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p>If you were well-connected, like I was after a few years of dependable service, you could buy a pound of Colombian for roughly $300 in 1980 money. There are sixteen ounces to a pound. Selling 9 ounces for around $35 each—which invariably “flew off the shelves”—left seven ounces of pure profit. In other words, buy for $300, sell for $560, make $260—which came in handy back in the day when $600/month rents for decked-out, mountain-view two-bedroom condos were commonplace and dinner for two with a decent red at the swank Flagstaff House looking out over the plains all the way to Kansas cost $75. That was the retail market in a nutshell. </p>
<p>Before long, I graduated into wholesaling, marking up each pound $20 or so. That translated to a quick $1,000 killing on a 50-pound bale ($20 x 50 = $1,000). When things were rolling, I’d sell more enterprising customers three bales at a time and pocket $3,000 for an afternoon exchange. </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/992daf8fff17bc8c58b7e62d5a5770578d6e6e4c/original/bales.png/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.png" class="size_l justify_center border_" />There was also the option of selling a certain amount of individual pounds out of every bale, at, say, $50 profit per, and wholesaling the rest. There were unlimited ways to win at the outlaw pot game (and some ways to lose, too, as we'll find out). </p>
<p>Eventually, I seized upon the most creative of them all: manifesting a pound of weed out of thin air! How exactly does that work? A pound is 454 grams. I’d take a bunch of bales, spread them out all over my living room’s orange shag carpet as was my custom, and divvy the lot up into one-pound Ziploc freezer bags. Then, I’d reach into each bag, carefully extract precisely one gram from each bag—according to a dead-accurate Ohaus triple beam balance scale—and place it inside a “special” bag. In a couple of weeks, that special bag would swell in one-gram increments until it reached 454 grams. </p>
<p>Voila—that's how you summon something from nothing! Only the something was now worth at least 400 bucks. Back then, you could buy a pretty decent guitar or amp for $400 … or hire a seamstress to design, fabricate and customize Milkmen unis … or start saving up for a synth … or pay a soundman’s salary for three or four gigs … and so on. I could get away with doing that because everyone knew that weed dries out over time. Minor amounts of shrinkage were accepted as an occupational hazard; no one had any problems with pounds that were 99.77% intact.</p>
<p>Another avenue for monetization opened up: “the transport sector,” driving cars and recreational vehicles between south Florida and Boulder. Piloting a Winnie crammed to the gills with the devil’s weed through bible belt states where they regularly locked guys up and threw away the key for interstate transport came with a commensurate amount of pressure—and commensurate compensation, around $7,000 per round trip. That’s $7,000 each for you and the babe selected to pose as your better half seeing the USA on a road trip. Then full-size car routes to less perilous locales like Pittsburgh opened up; the Boulder-Pittsburgh route was a relative breeze. That paid roughly $3,000 for the round trip, plus expenses, for four days’ work, when the weekly personal income per capita in the United States averaged $200—<em>before </em>taxes. Not bad!</p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/b59f6482c53dd157590d9c7ea8b48d25c7c6cd76/original/colombian.jfif/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.jfif" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p>At my intermediate level in Marijuana, Inc., the lifestyle was ideal. I was deep enough into it that I thought nothing of plunking down cash on the barrelhead for a new Toyota Corolla hatchback, but not in so deep that I had to deal with the risks and logistics of importing a skunky, bulky substance into the country. My “co-conspirators” consisted of a few college buddies that I'd stayed in touch with and friends of those friends; I never once saw a Colombian or a gun (much less a chainsaw!) during the decade I thrived as a purveyor of outlaw pot. Looking back over my checkered career, I'd have to say that outside of my highest calling—lead singer for The Milkmen—saleshuman in the cannabis trade is the position I've been most suited for.</p>
<p>In 1989, two factors brought this reddish-golden era to a climactic denouement: several of my "associates" were busted and “went away,” and my daughter, Isabelle, popped out. Her tiny helpless protoplasm was way too cute to contemplate not being around. Clearly, the smart move was quitting while I was ahead, exactly what I did. <br> </p>
<p><span style="color:#d35400;"><strong>The Transition Phase</strong></span> <br>You might suppose that "professional life' couldn’t get a whole lot more off-the-wall than playing a space-milkman heaving bucketsful of lactose into a pulsating crowd—or being cast as half a husband/wife team maneuvering weed-laden Winnies through redneck Georgia—but supposedly stolid, sober Corporate America stages some sneakily great Theater of the Absurd. </p>
<p>Take, for instance, the drama at one of my first corporate stops, a quick two-week PC-support stint at Telecommunications, Inc., or as John Malone, “the king of cable television," initialed it, TCI. IT had me scampering all over their Denver Tech Center towers, setting up PCs, installing software, swapping out blown CRT monitors, and so on. One day I was tasked with installing Microsoft Office—which, in 1992, came on 25 floppy disks which took an hour and a half to install—on a high-ranking exec's PC. </p>
<p>The most provocative station in TCI's lineup had to be <em>The Spice Channel</em>, a treasure trove of softcore porn. That's the channel this exec left on for my viewing pleasure, one man of the world to another, while he took off for lunch. It had the desired effect: <em>Emmannuelle 2</em> minimized the drudgery and really made time fly, very considerate of him. Anyway, somewhere around the 14th disk mark, I called my wife on the office phone, thinking nothing of it. To make a long story short, the same guy who’d directed me to watch porn on his personal TV had me axed for having "the audacity" to use his personal phone! Okay, then. </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/a24de6ceabb61541c2508e212130b134f1fadbd0/original/mv5bogflnjzhntityzawmy00yjkxlwizoditytg0mddkoty5mwezxkeyxkfqcgdeqxvymte4mdg3ntiz-v1.jpg/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" />Speaking of phones, my punishment for being summarily dismissed by TCI for pawing one was finding my salary doubled at my next stop, communications colossus US West (later Qwest and now Century Link), “the phone company” for fourteen western states. I reported to their facility in the Denver Tech Center, all bright-eyed and bushy tailed, ready to show the world what this PC Support Specialist was really made of. Aside from the fact that the same supervisor who'd hired me on a Friday was no longer working there by the time I showed up the following Monday, one small hang-up kept me from making the positive impression I had in mind: it took the phone company, which had brought me on for “phone support,” six weeks to bring me a phone! </p>
<p>When a phone eventually materialized, naturally I anticipated that the dead zone otherwise known as my cubicle would instantaneously transform into a hotbed of activity. Think again! I began receiving maybe one 13-second phone call every three days or so, more often than not from some confused linesman in Idaho or South Dakota, who’d shinnied up a telephone pole and dialed the wrong support number in a blizzard. </p>
<p>I was still without a computer, that was a bridge too far for the US West IT Department. When soul sister Sharon, an inner-city black supervisor intent on proving women of color could excel in the workplace (which by then had already been proven beyond any reasonable doubt innumerable times) tapped me, of all people, to sort out some imagined life and death crisis requiring the immediate use of a working PC, she issued an executive order to march right over and use the department manager’s. </p>
<p>Once bitten twice shy, I was feeling more than a little squeamish about the possible repercussions of carrying out what amounted to a suicide mission. Big Paul, the heavyset leader-of-men this early Dell machine belonged to, was one surly dude. He’d given us underlings, er, “motivational talks,” informing us that he’d warned his own wife that if she ever failed to carry out his bidding, he’d “bone her like a fish,” so imagine what he’d do to us. Oh. Of course we'd have all have run through brick walls for him after hearing that ... that is, right after we all got done throwing up in our own mouths. Anyhow, I’d barely begun untangling this supposed crisis on the department manager's PC when I caught a glimpse of his stocky frame huffing and puffing my way. Uh-oh. Drawing closer, Big Paul's cool, calm, and collected mien morphed into a sinister scowl. Looming behind me, he stared intently, pupils dilating, eyebrows lifting, before bellowing, “I feel so violated!”</p>
<p>And here I was thinking musicians were the world’s biggest prima donnas! </p>
<p>Until it was so rudely interrupted, that was my first taste of sitting in a cubicle all day long doing absolutely nothing while getting paid absolutely everything. I figured that had to be an anomaly in Corporate America; boy, did I figure wrong! You might think I’d never work at US West again after committing yet another unpardonable workplace faux pas, but you’d think wrong—not only did an organization entrusted with the care and maintenance of a communications network stretching from Santa Fe to Sioux City hire me again, it hired me again <em>twice</em>!</p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/2118948366cdf9d98c76427fdae34bc7bbf989cf/original/mittal-power-grid-16x9-0.jpg/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" /> Perhaps you're wondering how someone without a corporate bone in his body wound up working for one Fortune 100 company after another? Curiously, love of music paved the way. In the late 1980s, with The Milkmen down and possibly out, I wanted to keep playing in a band context—only there weren’t any analog beings in my immediate orbit I was psyched to play with. As luck would have it, this was the exact point in time and space when digital bandmates became a thing. Not only were they a thing, but I already had them at my disposal. One of the better purchases I’d made with my filthy Marijuana Inc. lucre was a now-mythic Oberheim System. The cutting-edge trio consisted of an OB8 synthesizer, a DMX drum machine, and a DSX sequencer. Hardware sequencers like the DSX could simulate an entire band by recording passages of notes played on synthesizers and drum machines, layering various sounds from bass through brass together, then playing them all back with your timing imperfections corrected. </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/61800515061b2b3cf964a36969c2105a5545b742/original/oberheim-dsxdmx-nov81-key-pg4647.jpg/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" />That was empowering enough, but right on their heels came software sequencers, designed to exploit the new MIDI protocol. That was a big deal because not only could PCs perform more complex sequencing feats than hardware sequencers, they could display a full screen's worth of information to boot. An endearing little Mac SE running <em>Mastertracks Pro</em> replaced the DSX as the brains of my outfit, expanded to include Yamaha DX7 and Roland D50 synthesizers, and a Yamaha Rev 7 rackmount reverb. Now I could compete with commercial studios in the privacy of my own home, without forking over hefty hourly rates for studio time—or I could provided I had the time and patience to demystify how all the components worked individually and collectively, with minimal help from manuals written in inscrutable "Japo-Saxon." In the advent of the digital age, when online user forums were just becoming a thing, unraveling the vagaries of electronic gear out was no small feat.</p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/022b4eb92fbe1bf3b9c692a98d765f7440dbf78d/original/macse.jpg/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p>Some PCs, more often than not Macs, showed an aptitude, if you will, for creative pursuits, though by and large the vast majority of bland, beige boxes churned out by the likes of IBM and Compaq wound up on the desks of corporate drones, designated for bread and butter tasks like word processing and spreadsheets. </p>
<p>In the dawn of "the dotcom" era, business sections of "great metropolitan newspapers" began running articles about the wonders of computer networking, where a server PC—programmed by and attended to by highly-compensated network gurus with arcane knowledge of router tables, mainframes, and communications protocols—controlled anywhere from a few to a few thousand PCs. It occurred to me that was pretty much what I was already doing with my music setup, and, hey, <em>I could get paid to do this</em>. </p>
<p>But no one becomes a highly-compensated network guru without first familiarizing themselves with the nuts and bolts of PCs. And so it came to pass that at the age of 40, I sucked it up, enrolled in the PC Support Specialist program at Votech in Boulder, and, a few seasons of relatively intense labwork later, officially became one. After I posted a, shall we say, <em>somewhat fictionalized</em> resumé on nascent job search sites dice.com and monster.com, high-tech recruiters seemed impressed with the fresh educational credit. Didn't Hall and Oates raise their voices in song about the joys of "Adult Education?"</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe class="justify_inline" data-video-type="youtube" data-video-id="XLYqTZKEpvs" data-video-thumb-url="https://img.youtube.com/vi/XLYqTZKEpvs/mqdefault.jpg" type="text/html" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/XLYqTZKEpvs?rel=0&wmode=transparent&enablejsapi=1" frameborder="0" height="360" width="640" allowfullscreen="true"></iframe></p>
<p>Before I knew it, I was fulfilling temporary "contracts" for employers who needed to bring someone on, but either didn't want to go through all the rigamarole of hiring full-time employees or liked the idea of a no-commitment trial period to see how you worked out. Meanwhile, I'd enrolled in night school at Red Rocks Community College in Golden (not far from world-renowned Red Rocks Ampitheater), on the fast-track to becoming a Certified Network Engineer.</p>
<p>Making the grade as a CNE involved passing a trickily-worded series of multiple-choice tests—and, curiously, no lab work whatsoever. After a few near misses, I eventually passed those by the skin of my teeth. However, just like passing law exams doesn’t automatically make someone the terror of a courtroom, just because I happened to have passed some written tests on the third try didn’t mean I was anywhere near ready to run a mission-critical network serving some 35 million customers. That didn’t stop the business entity which had just switched names from US West to Qwest from hiring me to do precisely that! </p>
<p>In fairness to the name-challenged utility, being completely unprepared to run a network didn’t mean it didn’t <em>look like</em> for all the world that, certificate in hand, I <em>was </em>ready to run a network, or <em>sound like </em>I was ready to run a network at interviews I aced—primarily because <a contents="I had so much practice entertaining reporters" data-link-label="Press" data-link-type="page" href="/press" target="_blank">I had so much practice entertaining reporters</a> who'd asked me everything under the sun about The Milkmen. Sure, I was well-spoken, at least in comparison with tongue-tied engineering types unaccustomed to dummying things down for laymen. That's why some genius thought I'd make an ideal personal network guru for Chairman Joe Nacchio and the rest of the Qwest cabal; that bunch was in the final stages of transforming a $34 blue chip stock into a 34¢ penny stock, from the vantage point of their plush executive aerie atop the 44-story Qwest tower at 1801 California, Denver. </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/1eea7a3863c05218c2e8bf1733e55ea1b665cdb9/original/qwest-tower.png/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.png" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p>That logic behind that move may have made sense at the time, but, in my heart of hearts, I knew bombing out as a network administrator was just a matter of time. While it was inevitable, it still took a while, since, unbeknownst to me or anyone else at the time, Nacchio and cohorts were only days away from being busted for securities fraud. After the FBI yellow-taped off the 44th floor in a showy raid, business activity at Qwest ground to a standstill. The resulting brouhaha provided momentary cover, delaying my "outing"—but not before the fateful day toward the end of my tenure that, with nothing more pressing on my calendar than exploring the bowels of a skyscraper, I meandered into the Technical Writing Department.</p>
<p>This newly discovered department momentarily threw me for a loop. I had no idea that it existed, or what a technical writer even was. The name implied an individual blessed with perfect left-brain and right-brain symmetry, someone who only had to be technical half the time— which sounded like an immense relief—while the other half of their time, they followed in the footsteps of Ernest Hemingway and Jane Austen, though perhaps that's over-romanticizing the imagery.</p>
<p>In any event, I counted five such beings manning their stations in their obscure corner of a lower floor. One of them was composing ad copy for a flyer publicizing a forthcoming company picnic, earmarked for conspicuous posting in the cafeteria and break rooms. Huh. I was imagining something more along the lines of user manuals. Corporations actually paid these souls to document condiments, cold cuts and cole slaw? Like, really? My jaw dropped. My head tilted to the side. Ding! I think they call that a eureka moment. </p>
<p>I immediately inquired whether the department needed any help—they did! Apparently, tech writers were in demand. Promising. Enough so that I updated my resumé with actual non-fictitious experience, placed the beefed-up version on job sites, and prepared to field calls from headhunters. I didn't have long to wait. Wouldn't you know it, one of the first ones to get in touch claimed to have an in with the main Qwest tech writing group.</p>
<p>Nah—there was no way the battered telecom was going to allow the likes of me inside another one of their extensive downtown Denver commercial real estate holdings—was there? Oh, yeah, there was! And not only did Qwest bump my salary and print me out another ID card, but they were gracious enough to set me up in a dream cubicle overlooking Larimer Square!</p>
<p> </p>
<p><span style="color:#d35400;"><strong>Qwest</strong></span><br>You may have heard of government programs that pay farmers not to farm. Would it stun you to learn that corporations pay writers not to write? Not only was yours truly one of them, I may have cashed in <em>more </em>for writing <em>less </em>than anyone who ever strode the corridors of industry. It was fitting that I took the first steps toward earning (well, making) a six-figure income under the aegis of the same Rocky Mountain utility that had already sent me packing ... <em>twice</em>. </p>
<p>When I learned that I was under consideration for a third stint with Qwest, I figured there was no possible way the troubled utility could outdo the Daliesque Theater of the Absurd productions it had already put on for my benefit. I severely underestimated them!</p>
<p>The surreal nature of human resources, Qwest style, was in evidence as early as the initial interview. A crack committee of lifers described the caliber of character they were seeking to hire—nothing less than a walking-talking combination of Shakespeare and Edison. Whoever landed the job would have to think like the inventor and write “release notes” like the bard. This Übermensch would also need a good working knowledge of Unix, an operating system I was about as fluent in as ancient Etruscan. I’d digested a morsel or two of it in computer school, which I leveraged by typing the four-letter word in the Relative Skills section of my resumé. Those four innocuous characters landed me the job. </p>
<p>I learned that the release notes I’d be compiling would theoretically be read by systems administrators at various satellite POTS (plain old telephone service) line installations scattered throughout the vast American West. What these systems administrators administered, holed up in outlier locales like Truth or Consequences, NM, were the desktop environments of customer service reps (CSRs, aka ”operators”). The issue was these CSRs had to login to way too many slow-loading mainframe programs in order to carry out basic tasks like adding services, handling billing inquiries, and so on. The halting process took a good fifteen minutes to complete and required advanced improvisational skills, which not too many operators possessed, in the event the creaking system went down during a call, as it was wont to do.</p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/f15a6ca0b4393ad20532512f2b4baec4e7fcbb04/original/t-or-c.jpg/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p>A new system was under development that would automate and accelerate this awkward series of procedures, rendering the old system obsolete in the process. Until it was up and running, the division I was assigned to was expected to keep issuing one or two-page bulletins describing minor patches that could be applied as needed, in order to keep the antiquated system chugging along. The computer language the patches were written in was the aforementioned Unix. </p>
<p>The specific tech writing feat which supposedly required familiarity with it turned out to be nothing more than cutting and pasting a couple of sentences’ worth of command lines from one document to another—without having to grasp what a single syllable meant. I kid you not when I swear that my fourth-grade daughter could have performed the same operation just as efficiently. Even if I'd slammed twelve shots of Tequila and took a handful of horse tranquilizers, it still wouldn't have taken me any more than fifteen minutes to tweak the release notes into an intelligible state. The first month or so into my contract, the pattern seemed to be that these bulletins had to go out maybe once or twice a week.</p>
<p>So, once again, I had next to nothing (constructive) to do at Qwest, which gave me all the time in the world to notice that my absolutely fabulous cubicle at 1475 Lawrence Street boasted an operable glass door, providing easy access to a patio overlooking the sights and sounds of Larimer Square, downtown Denver's most bustling block. Not too shabby! I spent a good portion of the day bathed in actual sunlight, as opposed to mind-numbing fluorescents, free to take girl-watching breaks whenever necessary. When you're the only human on the third floor not actually working, that was pretty often. And those breaks became even more habitual, once I realized that our division was being phased out, fewer and fewer release notes needed to be readied, and no one was really minding the store. </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/3cf2742831517d1cf38ad59663217d65178caffb/original/chalk.jpg/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" />But how many girls could I watch? And how many rays could I catch? What was I supposed to do with myself the rest of the time?</p>
<p>Well, at the start of my third and last stint at Qwest, there was the occasional tête à tête with Jerry Jackson, our doomed division's department head, who'd send for me whenever he required my not-so-special talents to touch-up release notes about arcane software—which no self-respecting field engineer would ever read, since every last one of them regarded consulting them as a sign of weakness. He’d dispatch one of his attractive software testers to fetch me from my cubicle or the patio, depending on where I happened to be exulting in the present moment. Barb or Shiela would present themselves at my cubicle, give me a wink and a nod, then beckon with an index finger. That was the call to arms—“writing” services were required. I was to follow one of them through the security labyrinth and into the formidable server room, where Jerry held sway. </p>
<p>Most server rooms are sterile, EMF-ridden, windowless spaces you wouldn’t want to spend a second in more than you absolutely had to. Our server room had an imposing array of floor-to-ceiling windows, framing epic views of the Front Range and the downtown Denver skyline. Stylish ergonomic chairs that looked like they belonged on the flight deck of the Starship Enterprise added to the designer chic. In a random universe, the low-level background hum emitted by an entire floor's worth of fans, hard disks and power supplies felt somehow reassuring. </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/35afdcd1cc8414275ac92d6f82f38c2d8a34b534/original/cl.jpg/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" />After the first few forgettable forays inside this high-tech haven, I settled into my real role on "the team"—a role for which I was, indeed, invaluable. I’d noticed the existence of a Nerf basketball hoop hanging off a Herman Miller overhead storage bin in Jerry's command center. The toy apparatus was somewhat of an anomaly; it hadn’t been in use during my initial visits—or before Jerry had a chance to size me up. But now he was casually squishing a Styrofoam ball in the palm of his right hand ... shooting the breeze about what was up with the Broncos or some forthcoming concert at Red Rocks … nonchalantly tossing the porous orange orb a few feet into the air … then taking aim and firing. Swish! He threw me the ball. I too fondled it for a few seconds, getting a feel for the heft and the distance, then swished it myself. He threw it to me again and again. I swished it again and again, from further out each time. I was accurate, too! Jerry was elated—finally, he’d found someone in the department who could give him some real competition! My status in the <em>sanctum sanctorum</em> of the Qwest empire shot up exponentially, along with the frequency of my appearances.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe class="justify_inline" data-video-type="youtube" data-video-id="hfZLxAxpWyI" data-video-thumb-url="https://img.youtube.com/vi/hfZLxAxpWyI/mqdefault.jpg" type="text/html" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/hfZLxAxpWyI?rel=0&wmode=transparent&enablejsapi=1" frameborder="0" height="360" width="640" allowfullscreen="true"></iframe></p>
<p>Now Barb and Shiela were sidling up to my cubicle several times a day. If that wasn't enough, shortly thereafter I received security clearance to come and go as I pleased into a highly-sensitive nerve center, where an errant Nerf ball landing on the wrong switch could cripple phone service across a fourteen-state grid. </p>
<p>At that point, Qwest was showering $30/hr. (equivalent of $65/hr. in 2022) on their rookie tech writer to contest game after game of Nerf basketball on a court with a view to die for. Duking it out with Terry in a simulated playoff series gave me the illusion I was a professional athlete, which, for all intents and purposes, I was, for a good six months. Over the forthcoming weeks and months, any business need to pretend that release notes mattered anymore vanished. A live-and-let-live policy was in force throughout the doomed department.</p>
<p>“Fifteen-minute breaks” became hour-long departures spent sampling single-origin coffees or indulging in the art of the sandwich across the street at City Market.</p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/ca674be92d2bd82656868397161be8979f723cbd/original/the-market-the-market-1080x720.jpg/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" />“Lunch-hour” turned into two-hour plus explorations of the many stimulating amenities and attractions that had sprung up all around Larimer Square. I’d try on retro western wear at Rockmount Ranchwear or check out the latest trekking gear at Patagonia. Overland Sheepskin Company stocked some sumptuous pelts. </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/7e1fb6bb9e023abf314308ac032fb0e228f5654e/original/rockmount.jpg/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" />As I recount these retail ramblings on Qwest's dime, it should be noted that the general public wasn't completely unaware that things had become a trifle, um, shall we say, <em>unstable </em>over at Qwest. Not only had its stock taken a nosedive, wiping out the retirement funds of loyal employees and the brokerage accounts of conservative investors who'd been looking for a safe play and lost their shirts instead, but it had also been widely reported that the publicly-traded utility was now billions of dollars in debt.</p>
<p>So, how does a “phone company”—which collected an average of $75 a month from every home in a 14-state area, in pre-cellphone days when everybody absolutely had to have a landline and charges for long-distance were exorbitant; before you even figure in the immense revenue stream that flowed in from business customers—manage to get itself tens of billions of dollars in debt? Wouldn’t Qwest have had to make a concerted effort to fail that miserably, when it had a monopoly and a mandate to collect all those proceeds each and every month? Not when you’re paying guys and gals $60,000+ a year to play Nerf basketball in server rooms! And, don’t forget, contract workers’ agencies got paid really well, too, almost as well as we did. The split was 60-40, so they raked in $40,000/yr. from Qwest, too. </p>
<p>Many dollars banked and clutch baskets sunk later, Qwest finally pulled the plug on our terminal division. There was some real talk of keeping me on—assigning me to the new division tasked with automating CSR logins seemed like a natural progression. That probably would have gone down, or it would have if I hadn’t become infected by the laissez faire attitude running rampant inside the condemned division I was assigned to—which wasn't necessarily the case with other divisions, in particular the tech writing division I was actually employed by. Specifically, it hadn’t spread to the hall-monitor type with access to the same industrial office copier I’d commandeered to print early drafts of <a contents="Dick, a detective novel" data-link-label="Dick" data-link-type="page" href="/dick" style="" target="_blank"><em>Dick</em></a>, a detective novel I’d been plotting to keep myself occupied. I must have printed thousands and thousands of pages of drafts before this exec caught me red-handed. For some reason, she took offense at my use of company copiers to produce the great American novel. Imagine that! </p>
<p>The copier incident sealed my fate at the hemorrhaging telecom, but not before I’d built up quite a nice little war chest. I could afford to take some time off, continue working on the novel, and prep the songs I anticipated recording for our comeback CD, <a contents="Dairy Aire" data-link-label="Dairy Aire (2000)" data-link-type="page" href="/dairy-aire-2000" style="" target="_blank"><em>Dairy Aire</em></a>. <em>Dick </em>and <em>Dairy Aire</em> wouldn’t have turned out a tenth as well as they did without the generosity of Qwest, the first of many inadvertent angel investors who came to the aid of Los Lecheros (as we're known in Lima) in our hour of need. </p>
<p> </p>
<p><span style="color:#d35400;"><strong>Apple</strong></span><br>The transactional relationship I had with Apple when I worked for them as a MIDI music demonstrator in 1992—getting paid exactly what I actually deserved to be paid for the actual effort I made—was a rarity, a one-time exception, when the stars aligned and my financial life didn’t feel twisted inside-out. There’s nothing to satirize here; the tragicomic adventures don’t write themselves like they did at every other corporate way station I stopped off at. </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/7fb7b4532cf996452d70caa0d7a524aa12a2e98e/original/appl.jpeg/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" />I'm not going into depth about the Apple show for a simple reason: it was the antithesis of all the Theater of the Absurd productions I had a front row seat for at all my other corporate gigs; it was more like a well-rehearsed musical. When I tease the headline that “Fortune 100 Companies Paid me $300,000 Not to Write,” those of you who own Apple stock will be relieved to know the i-nnovative Cupertino company wasn’t one of them! </p>
<p>I bring up my time at Apple because: </p>
<ul> <li>Apple not only paid me to write marketing copy, <em>they also compensated me really well to compose original music!</em> I spent months writing and refining an hour-long demonstration they rolled out at a highly publicized, well-attended, white-tie catered function at their swank 17th floor digs at the Denver Tech Center. </li> <li>It’s noteworthy that in an era (early 1990s) when Apple and IBM were going at each other’s throats like King Kong vs. Godzilla, Apple focused on shaping public opinion that original thinkers, creatives, and the truly hip used Macs, while dull, boring, conservative drones settled for IBM PCs. That’s the exact same brainwashing meted out by my local Mac User’s Club as well. Well, the reality was that every last male I saw at Apple wore a three-piece banker's suit, while the supposedly staid IBM workers (I'd find out shortly) went "casual Friday" every day, in golf shirts. </li> <li>It’s interesting to note that with the rivalry between Apple and IBM at its most contentious, and everyone taking sides, which "dashing dairyman" do you suppose a few years later became one of the few earthlings who'd cashed checks from both of them? That’s right, <em>me</em>, the least likely corporate infiltrator you'd expect! </li> <li>For contrast, since the next section takes such a deep dive into arch-rival IBM. </li> <li>To note that the only company which didn't throw away money on me around the turn of the century is the only company that's even better positioned in 2022. Duh!</li>
</ul>
<p>I could go on, but this recently unearthed and digitized video of "Compose Yourself," speaks for itself. Enjoy! </p>
<p style="text-align: center;">{video coming soon}</p>
<p> </p>
<p><span style="color:#d35400;"><strong>IBM</strong></span><br><em>Worming my way through two heavily-fortified security checkpoints that screamed “military industrial complex,” I was stupefied that International Business Machines would even consider hiring <a contents="the same character who’d introduced ritualized milking" data-link-label="Dashing Dairymen" data-link-type="page" href="/dashing-dairymen" target="_blank">the same character who’d introduced ritualized milking</a> to the art of stagecraft. The burgeoning PC industry, having exhausted the supply of cookie-cutter geeks, had been reduced to recruiting alternative types, such as yours truly, esteemed author of “Dickheads and Fuckfaces.” </em></p>
<p>IBM. From the 1960s through the mid-1990s, the computing colossus was the most influential and recognizable PC maker on earth. Its Charles Eames and Eero Saarinen designed Egg Pavilion took the 1964 New York World’s Fair by storm. An audience of 500 fairgoers took their places in The People Wall, a steep grandstand, gasped as it was hydraulically hoisted inside an ovoid precursor to an Imax theater, then had their minds bended by multimedia presentations spread across multiple screens. The message conveyed by IBM's Information Machine was plain: its “idea men” could solve just about any technological riddle you could possibly run past them. Yeah, it was gonna cost you more than the price of a set of studded snows, but if you were seeking a NASA-level partner to launch your growing concern into the Space Age, you knew who to call. </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/ad11fe57184f6700e63ae5ef08fb1308a0f1b912/original/ibm-egg.jpg/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" />“Coot Lake” was another IBM recollection filed in the “Fond” section of my memory banks. In 1980, I’d stared out at the IBM campus, off in the distance, its bevy of sandstone buildings camouflaged in the grasslands between Boulder and Longmont, while I was skinny-dipping in Coot Lake or sunning along its sandy shores—alongside hundreds of free-love inclined satyrs and nubiles. The scene gained national, er, exposure, after it was featured in <em>Newsweek’s</em> "investigative report" on hedonism in Boulder, catchily titled, “Where the Hip Meet to Trip.” The magazine’s writers described the city as “one giant fern bar, a haven for the counterculture, and a place where “dropouts drop in.” Small wonder I fit right in. </p>
<p><em>Now I found myself off course, roving</em><em> the wilds of IBM’s 3,745,080 square-foot campus, attempting to find a mid-manager's burrow situated somewhere in one of ten interconnected buildings on a site the size of LAX. </em></p>
<p>In the 1990s, in common with most people who already owned or were looking to buy a personal computer, I’d been bombarded with ad agency propraganda that buying an Apple computer affirmed that you were young, hip, and creative—and that owning one automatically made you superior to IBM buyers, who were, in so many words, old, fuddy-duddy, and dull. And oh, by the way, Apple epitomized a paragon of virtue and IBM was an evil empire. </p>
<p><iframe class="justify_inline" data-video-type="youtube" data-video-id="1rV-dbDMS18" data-video-thumb-url="https://img.youtube.com/vi/1rV-dbDMS18/mqdefault.jpg" type="text/html" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/1rV-dbDMS18?rel=0&wmode=transparent&enablejsapi=1" frameborder="0" height="360" width="640" allowfullscreen="true"></iframe></p>
<p>Said demonically effective programming had me doing double-takes when I encountered IBM employees dressed in anything and everything but conservative banker’s suits—which is all I ever saw at Apple. I saw maybe two suits that day, spotted on execs from IBM Corporate wearing orange Visitor tags like my own. The majority of white guys wore golf shirts, Indian and Pakistani guys stood out in turbans and braids down to their butts, Ethiopian dudes said “I’m black and I’m proud” in dashikis and sandals, Asian women carried out their assigned tasks in pleated crepe skirts and silk shirts embroidered with date palms. The “I” in “IBM” was starting to make sense; the Fortune 100 juggernaut was certainly far ahead of the diversity curve. </p>
<p>Everyone I asked for directions seemed really chill, way more than I was, as I hustled down a series of impossibly long hallways connected to other impossibly long hallways, too close for comfort to being late for the big interview. Those extended passageways shared an architectonic feature that was giving me the willies: lined up one after the other, like little honeycomb cells, were a series of puny, windowless, fluorescent-lit closets, I mean offices. None of the doors were cracked open so much as an inch. Occasionally, one opened just long enough to let someone out or in, and I’d catch a quick glimpse of way too many drones crammed elbow-to-elbow, moored to their PCs, staring at low-resolution monitors, getting a good whiff of each other's patchouli and now extinct-for-good-reason aftershaves like Hai Karate. It was hard to imagine that some of the ideas that had changed the course of civilization germinated within these constricted confines. </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/63e28dd7a1972108aef46c336284d5505e738057/original/ibm-early.png/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.png" class="size_l justify_center border_" />When I finally found myself hovering outside the office of LeRoy Coleman, an Afro-American middle manager who'd risen up from Denver’s Five Points neighborhood, it took all my willpower to stop ruminating on the IBM Egg, sybaritism at Coot Lake, the odds of becoming the first earthling to collect paychecks from both Apple and IBM, and waking up screaming inside a sardine can. I inhaled from my diaphragm, knocked on the door, heard a deep, "Come in," and stepped inside. The greeting coming from behind a desk could have been scripted by Beckett or Ionescu for The Theater of the Absurd.</p>
<p>“To be honest, I don’t know why they asked me to interview you or what you’re supposed to be doing here, but Troy isn’t here today,” he bellowed, in a gospely basso profundo. </p>
<p>Existentialism is hard to define, but you know it when you see it. Being supervised by persons who had no idea how or why they were supposed to supervise me was a recurring theme reprised throughout my corporate travels. I'd learn that Troy, presumably my supervisor, wasn't present and accounted for because IBM had ordered him to take some R&R in Cabo, along with his wife and towheaded progeny, since he hadn’t taken a vacation day in three years, he was the department MVP, and they needed him fresh for some momentous-sounding mission classified top secret for the moment.</p>
<p>“I guess I should ask you a few questions about your resumé.” </p>
<p>Fire away. Wait a second—was this a done deal already? LeRoy seemed to be going through the motions. I was getting the sneaking suspicion that I was a shoo-in to be hired for a yearlong contract with IBM. That’s not something that I would have predicted back in the day when I was side-stroking the circumference of Coot Lake sans swim trunks. </p>
<p>After lobbing a few softball questions about all the good work I’d done at Qwest (not!)—which were so basic I was unable to sustain my preferred fantasy that I was a guest on the popular <em>Dick Cavett Show</em>—LeRoy wrapped things up: </p>
<p>“Look, I’m a real hands-off manager. As long you’re doing what you’re supposed to—whatever that is, I dunno—you’ll find me the nicest guy on the planet. But if you mess up, I’ll be all over you like a cheap suit.” </p>
<p>I blinked my eyes at the threatening cliché; faking subservience had never been a go-to option in my emotional repertoire. One emotion I wasn’t faking, irrational fear of confined spaces, kept me from embracing the shock hiring more fully; claustrophobia was making me more light-headed by the second. </p>
<p>“We’re running out of space and PCs,” LeRoy informed me, <em>as if I hadn’t noticed</em>, “but we’ve found a place for you to sit and a PC for you to use.” </p>
<p>Gulp. Images of a sputtering 286 CPU and a ten-year old radioactive CRT monitor with mucous-green phosphorescent dots crossed my mind. </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/41e1f99c81f8a4cdadf63f88a4821389d196cd22/original/pc.jpg/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" />Trailing LeRoy down those elongated passageways, I'd seen the horrorshow hiding behind each and every doorway. The inference that these were the first-call cages and we were heading toward more stopgap solutions was even more worrisome. </p>
<p>Boring inside the matrix, LeRoy swiped a card, unlocking a control room of sorts, dominated by a retro array of IBM 360 magnetic tape-based data servers which would have looked right at home on the set of science fiction flicks like <em>Forbidden Planet.</em> With a flourish, he pulled open a solid oak door-within-a-door. Gasp! Adrenaline— manufactured in rapid response to a dire need for self-preservation— surged up my spine. Inside a windowless, oxygenless room, no bigger than a breakfast nook, seven sensory-deprived <em>schnucks </em>kept the home fires burning.</p>
<p>And there it was, an unoccupied place for an eighth, no bigger than the space allotted for a stool at a cramped lunch counter, my own slice of heaven. The silent scream I let out could have been heard in Nepal. Permit me to sum up my state of mind in one word … <em>petrified</em>. No. Can. Do. My conscious mind succumbed to brain lock; fortunately, my subconscious mind was already diagramming a Hail Mary play to salvage the situation. I wasn’t exactly brimming with confidence that I could sell the resourceful suggestion it spit out, but it was the only shot I had. </p>
<p>“I appreciate that you’ve found a spot for me in your rapidly expanding division,” I began, in my most diplomatic tone. “If I heard you correctly, you said that you’re running short of space for workers, and that you’re running out of office computers, as well.” </p>
<p>LeRoy’s face didn’t give much away; maybe I caught a trace of “marginally pleased” that I’d paid attention to his pronouncements and validated them. </p>
<p>“That’s right,” he confirmed. </p>
<p>“Well, maybe I could help things out by … (I swallowed hard) working from home, you know, <em>telecommuting</em>.” </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/566a0c135e1353437dacbc35254ad11b45f945a1/original/tele.jfif/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.jfif" class="size_l justify_center border_" />The word “telecommute” had only recently appeared in certain early-adopter dictionaries. I paused to see if the intransitive verb confused him. It didn’t seem to, so I forged ahead.</p>
<p>“If I work from home, someone else on <em>our team </em>(corporations love sports analogies) could have <em>this </em>valuable space and <em>this</em> (mismatched) PC and monitor. The PC I built at computer school is a 486 (flying jets at the time). It’s got a 40-meg hard drive (capacious at the time!), and it’s already loaded with <em>FrameMaker</em> and other tech writing software (that I’d smuggled from Qwest and loaded onto my home machine for just such an occasion). I also have a modem and a reliable laser printer (at a time when not everyone did).” </p>
<p>I awaited LeRoy’s reaction, psychologically prepared for a sanitized, corporate version of “Fuck off and die.” </p>
<p>What I heard instead was: </p>
<p>“That’s something to consider. Let me talk it over with Troy.” </p>
<p>Ah, Troy. LeRoy had spoken about the Global Services Division’s absent Golden Boy in glowing terms. When he wasn’t jet skiing, slamming body shots or “otherwise engaged” during his forced vacation, Troy was checking in with the mothership. I knew, because a few days later, word came through that my request to telecommute to IBM had received the department's stamp of approval. Yes! There is a God! What a break! It wouldn’t be the last time my subconscious mind bailed my conscious mind out. </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/d9a469cee868903ca2c3a49a5a24d4d990d79024/original/information-wall.png/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.png" class="size_l justify_center border_" />That week was the first of around fifty that I’d bill IBM eight hours a day from the comfort of my own home, bivouaced in an extra bedroom, familiarizing myself with a stockpile of synths, sequencers, and drum machines I'd requisitioned to record an instrumental CD. I was making progress, in baby steps, when the fellow from the recruiting agency that represented me called. Although I was pretty sure he was just checking in to see how I was getting along at IBM, I still got a little antsy—there was no telling how they'd react to the announcement that I was telecommuting.</p>
<p>“So, how are things going over at IBM?” he asked, matter-of-factly. </p>
<p>“Well, I’m not working at IBM, I’m working from home.” A more accurate statement would have been: “Well, I’m not working at IBM, and I’m not working at home.” </p>
<p>“Oh. Have they got you working hard?” </p>
<p>“Hard as in <em>hardly</em>; I have no idea what the assignment is, and the only guy who can get me up to speed is kayaking in the Yucatán.” </p>
<p>“No problem. Just keep on billing ‘em.” </p>
<p>Sir, yes sir. Whatever you say. </p>
<p>We'd just established there was no issue whether I'd get paid whether I typed a single word or not. But things couldn’t possibly keep slipping through the cracks, could they? Surely a model corporation like IB-effing-M could never be as lax as Qwest, could it? Unlike Qwest, their top execs hadn’t been hauled off in a paddy wagon, their phone booths weren’t being replaced by cellphones, their stock had just soared to an all-time high and appeared unstoppable. I naturally assumed that once Troy returned from Margaritaville, absurd practices like paying contract workers <em>not </em>to write would screech to an immediate halt. </p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe class="justify_inline" data-video-type="youtube" data-video-id="2UZYG33D2B4" data-video-thumb-url="https://img.youtube.com/vi/2UZYG33D2B4/mqdefault.jpg" type="text/html" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2UZYG33D2B4?rel=0&wmode=transparent&enablejsapi=1" frameborder="0" height="360" width="640" allowfullscreen="true"></iframe><em><span class="font_small">You're gonna wanna watch this!</span></em></p>
<p>On paper, that reads like a reasonable assumption, <em>but </em>… they didn't. Back in the coal mine, Troy had a lot of catching up to do. Sorry, he was digging out, no time for a tech writers, but he’d get back to me whenever he could. A week went by. And another. Finally, Troy cleared his power-packed schedule and penciled me in—only to cancel at the 11th hour, explaining that there were “just too many fires to put out.” The fire danger must have been great, since Troy postponed our next three or four scheduled meetings, as well, blaming on the same element. </p>
<p>Two months after I started cashing IBM paychecks, I still hadn’t worked a single second—snapping the previous record I’d set at US West by a good two weeks. My latest unintentional push to set the Guinness Book of World Records for Getting Paid Not to Write was off to a rip-roaring start. </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/67d99ecd7e3b3ce6d1ff4304e2d58f6966aedf78/original/5mb-ibm-hard-drive.jpg/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" />Eventually, the mystery man kept an appointment. Any need to guess at the motivational forces that spurred Troy on was rendered moot once I made myself at home in his golf and grog-themed office. Lit in the soft neon glow of Coors and Rolling Rock beer signs, surrounded by 8x10s of his idols like Tom Watson and Jack Nicklaus grinning ear-to-ear as they donned their prized green jackets after winning The Masters at Augusta, this server savant—who looked like a quarterback and thought like an astro-physicist—gave demystifying the nature of my mission at IBM the old college try. </p>
<p>The best I could piece things together—which was about as easy as piecing a shredded document back together—IBM Global Services, out of Boulder, Colorado, was determined to build the world’s most extensive “data cloud” (whatever that was) to support “virtual help desks” (whatever they were). Extensive means expensive; they had high hopes that IBM Corporate, headquartered in Armonk New York, would chip in—to the tune of <em>some 50 million dollars</em>. Ah. Silly me, how could I not guess <em>that</em>? Funny, they left that eight-figure number off the online job description. Or maybe I was hitting the bong or something when I skimmed it? </p>
<p>I couIdn’t quite wrap my head around a number like that, but I could put two and two together: <em>the assignment at IBM I’d been hired to successfully complete was writing for fifty million dollars</em>. The audacious number made my ears perk up; the challenge wasn’t entirely without appeal. After all, I really was a persuasive writer, wasn't I—even if up to that point no corporation had shown the good sense to tap into that available superpower. Surely IBM was the exception? </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/0d2c1f26c8604835b3d1c111a27a05a2a4b89c3f/original/ibm-again.jpg/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" />But first, there remained the not insignificant matter of getting up to speed on the data cloud itself. Sounds easy peasy, except that since the project was clearly Troy’s baby, he was the sole conduit to unlock its mysteries. Therein lies the rub: just because Troy had the right stuff to conceive and design the biggest, baddest, boldest and most potentially lucrative project IBM had ever undertaken, that didn’t make him the right guy to break it down for a layman. I sensed, correctly, that even tangential involvement with the writing process gave him the heebie-jeebies. </p>
<p>But the data cloud of doom wasn’t going to get funded unless some walking, talking combination of T.S. Eliot and Sir Isaac Newton, presumably yours truly, documented precisely what it consisted of in the way of componentry, capability, and scalability—not to mention what sort of ROI the most sophisticated network ever built was projected to generate. Refining the concept would take a year or so, Troy guesstimated, and would have to be documented every single step of the way—which is why I'd been handed that one-year contract. </p>
<p>A subtheme I picked up on is that this network prodigy stood to make out pretty well in the event his brainchild was greenlighted by IBM Corporate. I was perfectly happy to make his dreams my reality. After all, Global Services had already regaled me with an $10,000 endowment to spend as I pleased—like on immersing myself in electronica. On top of that, Troy was down to earth with me, and I liked wallowing in the soft glow of his office ambiance (I forgot to mention the imaginative installation of small-distillery Scotch bottles, separated into Highland Malt, Lowland Malt, Speyside Malt and Campbeltown Malt variants). His lair felt somehow detached from a cold cruel world. So, yeah, I was down to help his young family out any way that I could—which isn't to say it was going to be any less of a bitch. </p>
<p>Over the next weeks, whatever semi-coherent jargon I could leach out of Troy in person or over the phone came out impossibly cryptic. Cryptic, sryptic, after collecting two months’ worth of IBM bucks in exchange for breathing air, it occurred to me that that it might be in my self-interest to produce something, anything, in the way of documentation—if only to justify my continued presence on the payroll. Toward that end, I pored over my sketchy notes and a complex, yet easy-on-the-eyes series of drawings Troy furnished (he was a whiz at creating those in a program called Visio), like a monocled archaeologist deciphering hieroglyphics. </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/b5313d65ea5f6964dd92e760be931db912ad6186/original/solar.jpg/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><span class="font_small"><em>It's a solar fam now; the former IBM campus outside Boulder.</em></span></p>
<p>This is as good a place as any to point out that long before and after I roamed the IBM campus, I’d tried my hand at all manner of writing—prose, poetry, lyrics, novels, short stories, journalism, academic treatises and so on—that I justifiably took pride in, and I can confidently state that much, if not most, of it was “up to snuff” (to use a slightly archaic turn of phrase). I tossed in that admittedly haughty self-evaluation up in the express hope of assuring you that self-deprecation isn't my default mode—because the “deliverable” I was about to hand in was, without question, the rankest, rancidest, rottenest drek I’ve ever shown another human being! An assessment like "embarrassing" doesn't begin to hint at its god-awfulness. The only redeemable parts were the powerful technical drawings that I’d liberally pasted in. They were so advanced, they could only have been created by a Vulcan. Or Troy. </p>
<p>Sheepishly, I turned in what I made a special point of emphasizing was a <em>beyond-rough first draft</em>. I waited as Planet Earth's leading data cloud architect thumbed through it, professorially, bracing for the expression of horror that was surely coming. </p>
<p>“This is great!” he enthused. “You’re quite a wordsmith. Let me have a few of the guys read this.” </p>
<p>Huh? Say what? Really? Had he been hitting the Laphroaig 30 Year? I can recollect handing in what I'd hesitantly termed a “report” on a Monday. That Friday, I heard back from my supervisor. He sounded downright ecstatic, as if he’d just holed an ace. </p>
<p>“You’re not going to believe this!” </p>
<p>“I’m not going to believe what?” </p>
<p>“We just got the $50 million from Corporate. Lew Gerstner (IBM CEO) loved it!” </p>
<p>“Loved what?” </p>
<p>“Your <em>report</em>, what else?” </p>
<p>“What report are you talking about? Wait—no way! <em>You showed that rotten first draft to Lew Gerstner</em>?” </p>
<p>“That rotten first draft just got us $50 million. You’re a god!” </p>
<p>Dumbfounded, I would have loved to freeload off Troy’s euphoria, but there was a big question where the grand slam outcome left me—had I just made myself obsolete? Global Services hauling in the fifty mill was beyond comprehension. While it’s true I’d strewn a smattering of psychological selling seeds amongst the steaming pile of dung that passed for a prospectus, unknowable forces had to have informed Corporate more than anything I put in that dopey doc. </p>
<p>“What’s next?” I asked. </p>
<p>“We’ll let you know.” Click. </p>
<p>Then they didn’t. That didn’t deter me from chanting my agency’s “just keep billing ‘em” mantra. As the hours, days, and weeks rolled on, I had to wonder: was IBM just going to keep on paying me indefinitely? It was a long shot, although, based on the strange phenomena I'd already encountered on my various corporate odysseys, by no means was it an impossibility. </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/bd10084ce7275aabe33b6d62f4841624bcf84d51/original/d1.png/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.png" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><span class="font_small"><em>For some reason, most people in the 1990s assumed Dilbert was satire ...</em></span></p>
<p>Troy did call on me again, right after the seed money had cleared the last bureaucratic hurdle and had been safely deposited in Global Services' coffer. He said he had another job for me, I should come in, he'd fill me in on the details. Sigh. Oh, well—the notion of getting paid indefinitely to not write was more than a little bit far-fetched. </p>
<p>This new “job” would turn out be a patrician proposition—compared to the more pedestrian pastimes I pursued at Qwest. I caught wind of this as we sped away from the IBM campus in Troy’s Corvette C5 Special Edition convertible, his coveted collection of MacGregor clubs rattling in the boot, making a beeline for his slant on hallowed ground —Lake Valley Golf Club. Instead of getting paid to play a goofy niche sport like Nerf basketball, now I was getting paid to play a gentelman's sport enjoyed by kings, rajahs, and caliphs. I was really coming up in the world! Then we were a god and a guru in a golf cart, one of a half-dozen of 'em full of freshly-funded cloud services engineers, downing flasks of the good stuff, Macallan 24-year old, as as we hacked up the innocent course’s fairways, rough, and sand traps. </p>
<p>Wow! Global Services was so over-the-moon that it got the funds it vitally needed in a few months instead of the full year they anticipated, they just kept on paying me for the rest of the yearlong contract. I suspect the logic was as simple as <em>what’s fifty thousand to make fifty million</em>? It didn’t even register to them. No one at IBM or my agency ever said boo. By the end of the contract, I had all the time, money, and gadgetry I’d ever need to record <a contents="Silicon Rebels" data-link-label="Silicon Rebels (Instrumental - 1989)" data-link-type="page" href="/silicon-rebels-instrumental-1989" target="_blank"><em>Silicon Rebels</em></a> to my exacting standards at Coupe Studios in Boulder. The instrumental CD exceeded my high expectations, receiving a fair amount of praise when it came out; it’s a collector’s item now. </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/b1759c059211c3e578c42d74e653b32c9e1f17a4/original/d2.png/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.png" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><em><span class="font_small">Based on what I saw in Corporate America in the 1990s, it was reality!</span></em></p>
<p><em>Silicon Rebels</em> wasn’t an official Milkmen recording, per se, but it was still “instrumental” in prepping my subconscious to conjure up ever more ingenious ploys to source financial aid for forthcoming Milkmen projects that my conscious mind wouldn't have dreamed up in a thousand years. Additionally, that investment in MIDI music production came in handy for fleshing out what had previously been guitar-heavy Milkmen arrangements. Our productions turned more luminous, more “technicolor,” as a result. </p>
<p>Après IBM, my resumé was starting to look stellar; no recruiter or employer would ever suspect that I’d failed upwards like five times in a row—or that I’d been paid for something like 3,000 hours when I’d actually worked maybe 120. Now I could pass myself off as a Senior Technical Writer, get paid twice as much, and really sock away some dough. </p>
<p>The next (unintentional) victim, I mean (inadvertent) benefactor, on my list was none other than Intel Corporation, riding high after selling half a billion CPUs in the dawn of the information age, but currently rudderless after founding father Andy Grove passed away.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong><span style="color:#d35400;"><em>Intel</em></span></strong><br><em>I was sitting on a chunk of coal colored lava outside an adobe earthship, a Taylor 612C on my knee and metal fingerpicks affixed to my right thumb, index and middle fingers, rehearsing the Travis picking part to “World Without Dreams.” The sacred mountain loomed in the distance, lording over Pueblo Indian lands. In the foreground, a mayordomo and his crew were clearing out acequias— a series of primitive man-made ditches used to irrigate farmlands—the traditional way, with hand tools. Liking what I was hearing, I carried my six-string inside. Surveying all the recently acquired gear in my makeshift yet mighty studio, I positioned a Rode Classic mic in front the Taylor, took a deep breath, and pressed Record. </em></p>
<p><em>Four and a half minutes later, I played the track back, expecting to be elated with the results. Instead, I was astonished to discover at least three dozen mistakes and a bunch of loud pops where the metal picks had inadvertently struck the spruce top. Those tiny mishits sounded like thunder. It occurred to me that during a four-and-a-half minute fingerpicking song, with those three fingers in constant motion, a guitarist strikes the strings over two thousand times. Even if I played the part 98% perfectly, dozens of retakes and corrections were required. Oh. Funny thing about that! It was hard to miss the conclusion: there’s a huge difference between what sounds good sitting on a rock and what sounds good on a recording you’ll be listening to for the rest of your life. I also realized I couldn’t have picked a harder part to tackle right out of the gate! Huh. This was going to take a whole lot more time, effort, and focus than I’d ever imagined.</em> </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/ba23056a42f60558e8d4f7f9aeaa94c823cd71ec/original/acequia.jpg/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" />By 1999, I’d banked enough “fuck you” money to record a CD in an inspiring locale of my choice—preferably one that put some physical distance between myself and the prying eyes of my about-to-be-estranged wife and her two-pronged plan for self-improvement (mine): 1) become a full-time, uncomplaining, wage slave like her and her yuppie friends; and 2) stop whining about spending all my not-so-hard-earned money on home remodeling—and none of it on home recording. </p>
<p>Practicality is not, in and of itself, an attackable concept, but I’d already leaned so far in that direction, I was about to keel over. Taos, New Mexico, 315 miles away from Boulder, Colorado, beckoned from afar. The scenic tricultural (American Indian, Hispanic, “White People”) community was far enough away, yet close enough—about a four hour drive away, back in the days when I’d think nothing of racing 100+ MPH through the middle of nowhere and a speeding ticket only cost $75—to check a lot of boxes. </p>
<p>Two natural features demanded attention: the Taos Gorge, almost as awe-inspiring as the Grand Canyon—particularly if you hiked one of the trails leading down to the bottom of it with llamas and a guide or took a balloon ride through it—and Taos Mountain, jutting majestically out of sacred Indian lands. Somewhere up there was Blue Lake, the mystical wellspring no white person had ever visited or was ever likely to. Concealed by a stand of ancient cottonwoods, the Taos Pueblo, still inhabited after 1,000 years, was the most recognizable Native American structure in the American West, an artist and photographer’s staple. </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/8ed715cbcb9c9e18d53f0dd4eb8b22f968a760b7/original/tm.jpg/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p>I settled into a fabulous adobe abode overlooking a sea of sage and pinion-dotted Indian lands. There was something particularly virile about the volcanic soil. Sunflowers regularly hit twenty feet and hollyhocks came close. The night sky humbled the great planetariums, especially with a full moon rising over the crest of the Sacred Mountain. Gazing out into infinity emphasized just how small my imagined problems were, in comparison with the enormity of the cosmos. The tiny hamlet of Arroyo Seco, within walking distance of my casita, was far, far away from the land of the cubicles, far, far away from the chain stores uglifying the suburban highway interchanges encroaching on my acreage in East Boulder, far, far away from the cares of the world. In other words, Arroyo Seco’s fertile environs couldn’t have been any more ideal for cultivating creative projects. </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/6673c7c4b9d60e444fb46b70a80825309f69419d/original/gorge.png/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.png" class="size_l justify_center border_" />Before I could tap into that energy, assimilating a new PC, a Soundscape SSHRR1 Digital Audio Workstation (which eliminated the need for tape recorders), and a lineup of unfamiliar studio gear was going to take a whole lot of woodshedding. That wasn't going to happen overnight; user documentation hadn’t really taken a great leap forward; user forums were still in their infancy. Getting the hang of how it all worked as well as experimenting with where each piece should be positioned within easy reach was some tough sledding. I kept at it, though, and, after a lot of trial and error, I was getting acclimated to wearing multiple hats—engineering, performing, arranging, producing, writing, editing, etc.— at once. </p>
<p>With no one else around to take up the slack, I began recording all the instruments and vocals myself. That included bass and drums. Faking an entire drum kit on a MIDI keyboard (Alesis Quadrasynth Plus Piano) was doable, although it was a grind—but that’s what artists did in Taos, they ground out art, the noblest human endeavor in my book. I felt unfettered and alive, to quote one songstress, at one with time and space, responding really well to life in a gallery-filled town that was basically one big arts colony.</p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/ba4d96c4fabe347f6a1006b60aaae5671bbb87ca/original/to.jpg/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" />It was big news when Milkmen co-founder Steven Solomon joined the fray. He began making regular pilgrimages down from Denver to escape his own domestic, er, challenges. That upped the ante exponentially—at long last, The Milkmen were recording again, after a, sheesh, fifteen-year absence! All was right with the world! Natural order had been restored. </p>
<p>We were methodically working away, track by track, song by song, relentlessly going about the business of recording the collection of tunes that ultimately became the <em>Dairy Aire</em> album. Suddenly, the assembly line ground to a halt, interrupted by a call from a headhunter. That wasn’t unusual, I was in high demand—I mean, who wouldn’t want to hire a top gun tech writer who’d already pocketed six figures for pecking out maybe two readable sentences over a three-year period, right? With little appetite for more Theater of the Absurd, and with fortune smiling down on us in the digital recording domain, I’d been blowing off all tech writing gigs. This one, however, took on a life of its own. We join the call just as it was getting interesting ... </p>
<p>“So, how’d you like to work in Salt Lake City?” </p>
<p>Hilarious! What delicious jest! Luring me to the land of the Latter Day Saints (LDS) was never going to happen, but this Lorraine Rougement had an undeniably sexy name and a very seductive voice. I played along for a lark, impressed with her detective work; after all, she’d tracked me down in Arroyo Seco, NM, population 1,385. </p>
<p>“Why would anybody want to do that?” </p>
<p>“Because we pay more. Not everybody wants to come to Salt Lake City.” </p>
<p>“You don’t say?” </p>
<p>Having already herded the star-studded likes of Apple, Qwest, and IBM into my corral, to the outside world, I must have seemed like the type of can't miss, blue-chip prospect underdog Salt Lake City could recruit to compete with the big dogs in Silicon Valley. The process wasn’t any different from BYU recruiting out-of-state football players to knock heads with four-star recruits from Stanford. </p>
<p>Let’s see, did I really want to exchange my freedom and a drop-dead gorgeous view of the Sangre de Christo range—where eagles and hawks now glided on the thermals—for captivity and closeups of the synthetic fibers woven into cubicle wall panels? </p>
<p>While I mulled that over, Lorraine filled in the pregnant pause by moving on to, what they call in sales, the “trial close.” </p>
<p>“Let me rephrase the question. <em>What would it take</em> to get you to come to Salt Lake City?” </p>
<p>This time I was quicker on the draw. </p>
<p>“A private jet, a limo, an expense account, a deluxe hotel room, and dinner with you!” Flirting with the recruiters was part of the game. They all sounded like goddesses who might have an extra bonus for you, provided you played along with the seduction. The wisecrack got a belly laugh out of her. </p>
<p>"It's five dollars every time I make you laugh." That one, too.</p>
<p>“No, really, what’s your hourly?” </p>
<p>This wasn’t the time to think small. Stalling for time, I asked Lorraine to read me the job description. Based on my previous tech-writing stops at Qwest and IBM, published job descriptions were maybe five percent accurate, if that. This one included some long-winded gobbledygook about product specifications, milestones, and localization. </p>
<p>“Who’s it for?” I asked. The bigger the fish, the more valuable the catch. </p>
<p>“Well … I shouldn’t be telling you this … but. . . Intel.” </p>
<p>Intel? Hmm. You don’t say? I'll quickly note that Apple's Steve Jobs & Co. loved smearing Intel—which designed, manufactured, sold, or licensed 95% of Earth’s CPUs and chipsets (think motherboards)— almost as much as IBM. To hear them tell it, Intel was part of an evil empire, in cahoots with IBM, that was subjugating the valiant alliance of Apple Computers and Motorola CPUs, condemning their precious Macs to a niche proposition scarfed up by artistes and creatives. Well, ever since IBM a) demonstrated they actually had a more relaxed culture than Apple, even though Apple ads constantly portrayed PC users as douchebags in ill-fitting polyester J.C. Penny suits; b) showed me they were way ahead of the diversity curve, hiring amiable humans from all walks of life who treated me really well, c) proved that PCs could handle creative tasks as well as any Macs, and d) kept the checks coming for the entire year of my contract despite my pathetic output (albeit hiring me actually paid off for them)—consider me reprogrammed. Suffice it to say, yeah, I’d work for Intel—but only if the price was right, as in <em>very </em>right. </p>
<p>“$60 an hour,” I finally responded. That <em>very </em>right price ought to scare them off, pronto. Virtual monopoly or not, what company could sell enough PC parts to justify that hourly, $20/hr. more than I’d made at IBM, the equivalent of over $110/hr. in 2022? </p>
<p>As days turned into weeks and I still hadn’t heard back from my Gallic-named LDS sweetheart, the odds that Intel would swallow a ludicrous hourly rate like that shrank to one in a trillion. I put Intel out of my mind until, another day in paradise, Lorraine called back to relay a special news bulletin: </p>
<p>“Intel wants to interview you.” </p>
<p>Silence. </p>
<p>“Do you have a writing sample you could send?” </p>
<p>“Ummmm. . . uh. . . yeah.” </p>
<p>Sixty bucks an hour—for at least six months—was a deal even a sensitive artiste approaching the top of his game had to take seriously, especially after it had begun dawning on me that even though home recording was technically “free,” you still had to “buy the time,” beaucoup amounts of it, in fact, in order to compete with A-room studios like The Record Plant. I didn’t want to come up short, the main reason I agreed to a phone interview. As for the writing sample? Well, one major reason that I’d managed to keep failing upwards for so long is that the companies looking to hire me as a tech writer could only guess how good I really was based solely on my resumé—no one works for Fortune 100 companies without signing confidentiality agreements. So, when the next company up asked me to provide a writing sample, I could always fall back on, “Sorry, I signed a confidentiality agreement.” Perhaps a couple of pages from those innocuous minutes of that meeting I wrote up between IBM Global Services and IBM Corporate would satisfy Intel? Yes, that would do. </p>
<p>A few days later my interviewer and prospective supervisor, Anne Flack, called as scheduled at 2:30 sharp. She was a tough guy all right, all business, with a bunch of nettlesome hypothetical questions designed by corporate psychologists to weed out prospective wage slaves—I mean employees—who were easily rattled. “What would you do if . . . <em>you saw a monkey juggling mushrooms</em>?” “How would you prepare for … <em>sexual reassignment surgery</em>?” I had little appetite for this line of suppositious inquiry. There were guitar solos to work out, lyrics to hone, imperfect takes to edit. I doused that line of questioning with, “Look, I’m flexible, and I get with the program, whatever the program is. If that works for you great. If not, great.” </p>
<p>The quintessentially bad interview concluded with Anne offering me the usual opportunity to ask her any questions. Instead of demonstrating some want-to by posing a perfunctory question or two about the position, I focused on what was most important to me: could I or could I not telecommute from Arroyo Seco? That was nixed; if hired, I’d be part of a “team” (of course) that held a lot of meetings (I’ll say!). I put the chipmaking Goliath out of my mind and went back to figuring out how to fake horn parts on a MIDI keyboard. Ah. Better. This was much more like it. I went back to "walking in self;" it had been misplaced for a while. </p>
<p>Three days later, with the recording moving right along, Lorraine called back, all giddy to inform me that Intel had just offered me a six-month contract for some $60,000—despite the fact I hadn’t developed any rapport with my prospective supervisor to speak of. Lorraine and her agency also stood to split some $40,000 for their trouble. </p>
<p>Intel Corporation had just made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. </p>
<p>As you can imagine, the contrast between The Land of Enchantment and The Land of the Latter Day Saints was stark. I can reduce it to three words: welcoming vs. unwelcoming. The Mormons were never overtly rude or mean to me or anyone else who <em>wasn't one of them</em>—they just acted as if we were invisible and weren’t there. They’d talk to me in meetings at Intel because they had to. Or they’d talk to you at their places of business, also because they had to. When they didn’t have to, when you ran into them on neutral grounds, like, say, Aisle 27 at Super Target, well, I could have dropped my drawers and no one would have given it a second glance. I tolerated being an invisible man for about a week, couldn’t abide it a second longer, then took up residence in Park City, a forty-minute commute away. The artsy, thriving community was hopping, with the Sundance Film Festival right around the corner and excitement building for the 2002 Winter Olympics. </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/ed7c6e4857f2fec066fb5cea21207e86ddd869c9/original/fall-mountain-bike-dallin-knaperek-1200x0-c-default.jpeg/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><span class="font_small"><em>Sundance Resort, outside Park City, a fall-in-the-American-West hotspot.</em></span></p>
<p>I had high hopes that first day as I dallied in the Intel lobby, grinning at a fanciful display of Intel Bunny People, waiting for someone in my department to come down and fetch me. I was into outer space <em>tchotchkes </em>as much as the next guy; those little dudes in their silk spacesuits suggested that Intel might have a lighter side than I anticipated. The free ride surely had to end this time; it was inconceivable that a company renowned for reliability wouldn’t make damn sure I had more than enough on my plate to keep me occupied every single hour, every single day, right? Wrong on both counts! </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/8823bf37d0821758d96ae50090b9da9bff02ee83/original/bp3.jpg/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><span class="font_small"><em>A luminous display of Intel Bunny People. I like those little guys!</em></span></p>
<p>I was doting on the gaily colored Bunny People because the Intel show started off reprising the classic “my supervisor is away on vacation” theme. A guard manning the front desk had been paging Anne, only to conclude after a raft of calls that not only wasn’t she even in the building, she wouldn’t be for two weeks. It took a while to find someone in the tech writing department with the faintest idea what a Jewish guy named Lory from New Mexico was doing in their building. Once the confusion was sorted out, I lingered in my assigned cubicle—regulation sized, thank you—surfing the primitive, graphically-challenged, slow-loading “before” version of the worldwide web in 1999. </p>
<p>Two weeks and $4,800 later, Anne returned, in a buoyant mood, refreshed from a long break, the proud owner of a shiny new fire-engine-red Volvo V70 Turbo Wagon she'd taken delivery of that very weekend. She was enthralled with the Swedish Steed, like a pigtailed girl with her first bicycle. I spotted this handsome object of desire in the parking lot, where she pointed it out. This Asian-American supervisor conveyed a flattering message—she was so happy and grateful to have a heavy hitter like me around to serve as the lead writer on two new product launches the powers-that-be at Intel were stoked about.</p>
<p>Naturally, I had more than a passing curiosity exactly what those unidentified products were; alas, the full skinny would not be revealed that first day that Anne was back in the saddle. Nope, she had like 67 meetings to attend, she told me, scurrying off to attend the first one, but she’d be sure to fill me in whenever she could. </p>
<p>Around $600 later, she did. Before I describe the projects I was slated to write user manuals and online help files for, I should note that Intel’s terminally ill guiding light, Andy Grove, had left the company six months prior to my coming on board. The company he helmed was foundering a bit at that point. It had just released its first series of chipsets that weren’t rock solid. For the first time, Intel faced competition from a rival chipmaker, AMD, which had developed a compatible CPU that represented the first real threat to its supremacy. Anticipating losing market share in the forthcoming CPU wars, the new brain trust sought to insure the company’s future through diversification. With that in mind, the not-so-bold Mormon thinkers in the Marketing division—their fiefdom was right down the hall from my cube—must have been tripping on their own planets when they dreamed up the oddball products I’ll describe. </p>
<p>The first proposed future product launch was, of all the useless things, an ISDN router. What is an ISDN router, 99.999% of you are wondering? Well, it's really nothing more than “a modem”—<em>for a protocol practically unknown in the United States</em>. ISDN, a broadband protocol like DSL, achieved a whopping .001% market penetration in the continental United States at the <em>height </em>of its popularity. I read that the target Marketing was shooting for was <em>one percent of the US market</em>. Really? For an Intel product? What happened to world domination? Talk about aiming low! Like, why bother? </p>
<p>Stranger still, instead of relying on what had been for a decade a world-beating internal R&D department to cobble together what was essentially a simple box, Marketing decided to outsource development to save money. That misguided attempt to save money wound up costing the chipmaker orders of magnitude more than they would have paid their own perfectly good staff—only the best and brightest engineers they could lasso after scouring every corner of the globe. The third-party entity Intel selected which theoretically had some sort of demonstrated track record in ISDN router design was Zarco, out of San Jose (not Krypton). </p>
<p>The internal code name for the ISDN router was ... it pains me to type this … <em>Rhine</em>. Ouch! </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/cc5975468fbfac1e508c1c3e9c32d3113dc58954/original/pk5-2033-klein.jpg/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p><span class="font_small"><em>Some companies managed to bring ISDN routers to market. Here's one where it belongs—in a museum!</em></span></p>
<p>Future product launch #2 that I’d ostensibly (you already know where this is going) write the manual and help file for was a small-business one-size-fits-all server. Its internal code name was … wait for it … <em>Berlin</em>. Berlin and Rhine. Rhine and Berlin. I wondered: what's with the Third Reichian names? Were Moab and Zion already taken? Anyway, the one-step-above-useless one-size-fits-all server with minimal RAM and enough storage capacity to hold maybe a tweet and a half was less capable than just about any workstation it would theoretically be going out into the field to control. More damning, the under-specced utensil was proprietary, meaning owners couldn't make upgrades themselves. Instead, they'd have to call a support line if they really had a hankering for a hard disk that could store more than a month’s worth of emails and a geek in a van to make a house call and install it, for a bloated fee. When I attempted to point these shortcomings out—folks in PC-land detested proprietary, non-expandable systems; closed systems were Apple’s claim to fame, and they cost markedly more to buy and maintain—I was shot down. Non-expandability was written-in-stone. </p>
<p>Besides their Teutonic code names, both under-development products shared a common bond: <em>neither one of them existed at the time Intel was paying me $2,400 a week to write user documentation for them</em>. There were no molecules, electrons, or ions. In the tech writing sphere, you generally want all the tactile interaction with the hardware you’re describing you can get, to do a halfway decent job of it, then, you’d typically like to pound on it a bit as "end users" are wont to do, to find out if the merchandise can take a licking and keep on ticking. Not only did neither bright idea ever see the light of day during my six-month tour of duty, they never even made it to the working prototype stage.</p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/f262e031c2af4dbb2c7eccaf9b2adec3859420a8/original/img-1059.png/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.png" class="size_l justify_center border_" />Nonexistence didn’t seem like any kind of stumbling block at all to Anne. I maintained that knocking out documentation for products that never made it off the drawing board was like paying to enter a filly in the Kentucky Derby when you didn’t own one; the analogy went right over her head. What, pray tell, was the paramount concern for my obsessive, trying-to-prove-her-worth-as-a-female-Asian-American supervisor? Insuring that the documentation (that hadn't even been started) was finished in ample time to be “localized” (translated into the world's seven most popular languages). Her bonus, performance review, possible promotion, and even brownie points were contingent upon hitting every milestone like clockwork. To put it in the plainest possible terms, my "superior" at a Fortune 100 company was asking me to refer to the functional specification and the product specification—<em>then just make the manuals and help files up</em>. </p>
<p>Well ... the truth is she really couldn’t have found anyone anywhere who could have done a better job of fictionalizing user manuals than a “wordsmith” who’d scripted everything from beat poetry to detective novels with varying degrees of success. That burst of ego aside, as you might imagine, I had several issues complying with this insane request. Aside from the basic dishonesty, very few people on earth had spent the massive amounts of time I had trying to figure out how to operate devices that shipped with inscrutable instructions. If it was hard for me, what about my ninety-year old dad, struggling to perform the simplest operation on his Gateway computer, stymied every step of the way by piss-poor documentation. There was no way I wanted any part of making a bad situation worse. Creating faux documentation guaranteed to fuddle “users” from Fiji to Finland was a truly unappetizing proposition. I told Anne as much. The argument fell on deaf ears. </p>
<p>The impasse between Anne and myself remained intact throughout the duration of my six-month contract. How’s that possible? Well, the development teams charged with producing the router and the server never got their act together— notwithstanding the “Monday-Friday” act they put on during our bi-weekly conference calls. On Monday: “Oh, sure, we’ll have a working prototype for you on Friday.” On Friday: “Oh, sure, one last tweak, and we’ll have that overnighted to you on Monday.” Repeat once a week for six months! Each interminable meeting lasted a solid two hours plus and felt like two epochs. Attending each two-hour snoozefest compensated me to the tune of $120—for sitting there daydreaming about being back recording in Arroyo Seco, going to barn dances with fun-loving cowgirls in boots 'n twirly skirts, chowing down on huevos rancheros at the Taos Inn. </p>
<p>Anne’s hysterical emphasis on achieving localization milestones by artificially-imposed deadlines, for products no one in their right minds in the real world was clamoring for, had a way of taking her over her body. If I had to put a label on it, I'd stop short of “satanic possession.” On the other hand, stating that her persona shape-shifted from land-of-opportunity success story to screaming banshee whenever the touchy subject came up, which it often did, is no exaggeration. When she wasn’t racing her engine, Anne spoke the King's English flawlessly, with only the slightest trace of an accent. She could put herself on the page perfectly well; I knew, because every now and then she’d ask me to edit a blurb she'd written about this or that. Conversely, when Anne had at the one sentence a month I was being paid some $10,000 or around $1,000 per word to pen, the edits seemed sensible enough. But when she became excited, fretting about missed milestones and hammering me to fictionalize pages and pages of user guides for products that never advanced past a circuit board with blue wires dangling off it or a PC case minus its innards, she really slipped. </p>
<p>“Chest fa woe wha fawn shun oh specks! Wha conned yew doe at?” she’d impel me. Translation: Just follow the functional specs. Why can’t you do that?” </p>
<p>Of course she was right, I <em>could </em>do that, that is, if I was willing to ignore all the havoc psychotropic documentation was certain to wreak in seven languages on five continents. The problem was, I saw myself as a “user advocate.” Anne saw herself as a milestone Nazi. I had a conscience. Anne had a deadline. And so the battle lines were drawn. </p>
<p>We had our first big spat just as the place was emptying out one fine Indian summer evening. </p>
<p>“Yew own kay boat meyers tone foe yoko eyes eh shun!” Translation: you don’t care about the milestones for localization. </p>
<p>“That’s right, I care a lot more about the people who actually have to use the products,” I responded. It’s fair to say that was decidedly not the reaction she was looking for. </p>
<p>That time, things blew over. The coming weeks found me reposing in the all-too familiar confines of my cubicle, waiting for operable prototypes I could put through their paces. It’s an uncomfortable feeling to be doing absolutely nothing while everyone around you is doing absolutely everything—even when the clock's running and a Fortune 100 company is lining your pockets <em>not to write</em>. Making money for nothing is a lot more of a laughfest when you’re telecommuting or starring at Nerf basketball six hours a day. I was soooooo bored, I volunteered to help out on other projects; but no, any second a fully-functional Berlin or Rhine was sure to appear out of a puff of smoke on my desk— just like the ISDN wizards at Zarko had promised. We were so far behind, I had to be ready to jump on it at a moment’s notice. Whatever. </p>
<p>Five months into my contract, in vital need of something new and different to raise my spirits, I’d come up with just the ticket: spending the upcoming four-day Labor Day weekend at Larry Seyer’s studio in Austin, turning him loose on a test mix of “Tide to Turn.” There were several reasons Larry was an outstanding candidate to mix <a contents="Dairy Aire" data-link-label="Dairy Aire (2000)" data-link-type="page" href="/dairy-aire-2000" target="_blank"><em>Dairy Aire</em></a>. He used the same Soundscape SSHDR1 system I did; that’s how I found him, on our fledgling user’s group, and he just happened to have won <em>seven </em>Grammys for mixing Asleep At The Wheel. Promising! I flew down there and proceeded to have the time of my life, watching Larry do his thing, hearing my songs transformed from sounding pretty darned good for a beginner to pretty darned great full stop. Larry was one of the first well-known engineers to embrace digital recording; spending time with him was an invaluable crash course in exactly what to and what not to do. </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/2b59bed9c851ed8c75839debcf6f5bd7d130bc88/original/finalcover.jpg/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" />“Tide to Turn” needed a drum track (which would have taken me a week to peck out on a MIDI keyboard). I asked Larry to choose a studio drummer in a town full of superb ones. The guy he picked was none other than Pat Mastolloto, who’d laid down the beat on all of Mister Mister’s megahits like “Broken Wings” and “Kyrie,” the Rembrandts' “That’s Just the Way It Is, Baby,” and regularly toured Japan and Europe as a member of King Crimson. OMG, you couldn’t even be in the same room as him, he was such a woodchopper, but what a performance! After playing it like 500 times in a week, I couldn't find a single nit to pick with the test mix. Larry was <em>the guy</em>, all right. </p>
<p>After that brief yet spellbinding return to the creative world, I don’t know how I would have made it through my remaining time at Intel without that mix to buck me up. I’d play it on my old-school Alpine car stereo in my Acura Legend, over and over, sitting in the Intel parking lot, psyching myself up before I could bear to enter the building. There was a huge contrast between the inspiration I got out of my creative efforts and the consternation my inside-out professional life caused me. I was becoming increasingly conflicted about it. Conflicted or not, my war chest was overflowing. I’d accumulated a nice little chunk of change, enough to live high on the hog, save a little something, and still have plenty left to fund what was on track to become an epic Milkmen comeback album. </p>
<p>Fall in Utah is as glorious as anyplace in the Rockies to visualize the triumphant return of the Milkmen, but Jack Frost was nipping at my nose. I wasn’t sure how I could afford to keep living in Park City once ski season began, rents tripled, and "the jet set" would take over my cushy condo. If my contract wasn’t renewed, that was a moot point. If you’ve made it this far, you can probably guess that despite the ongoing battle royale with my high-strung supervisor and six solid months of unparalleled unproductivity, Intel was loco enough to renew my contract. I almost fell out of my chair when Lorraine broke it to me. Unreal! Parole wasn’t in the cards ... yet. </p>
<p>Then I got my back up and made one last stand against fictionalization, pushing Anne over the brink. She’d just informed me in no uncertain terms that something like the third projected milestone for localization had come and gone. Anger and despair were written all over her face. Some of it had to blow off and, sure enough, debris came flying my way. I’ll spare you all but the last line: </p>
<p>“Yew in sub awe donut!” </p>
<p>Guilty as charged. </p>
<p>The next morning, there was no sign of Anne. Strange. I wondered if she was in a more peaceful place, sedated in a straight jacket. She didn’t roll in till after lunch, which wasn’t like her at all. When she trudged in, her maniacal side was nowhere to be found; in fact, she seemed like a broken woman. I remembered that at one point early in our relationship, it seemed like we might actually be friends. She was so girlish when she was rhapsodizing about her new car, the joy of her life. Speaking of which … </p>
<p>“What happened?” I ventured. </p>
<p>Anne actually shed tears. </p>
<p>“I c-c-c-crashed my car. It’s in the b-b-body shop!” Crocodile tears. Those were the last words I’d ever hear her speak. </p>
<p>These days I’m a lot better at being nonjudgmental. Back then: serves you right, sucka! The mental anguish she was willing to mete out to customers confounded by repeated attempts to make sense out of fabricated documentation didn’t faze her in the least, but that crimson mass of mangled Swedish steel—tragedy! </p>
<p>Anne recovered her equilibrium in time to do what she had to do. Later that afternoon, security dropped by to escort me and a cardboard box full of purloined treasures, including a dozen Intel Bunny People, off the premises. Hooray! Yes! Free, free at last! </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/1d645c06b469d0035ab8dec6139247fc857a97c4/original/bp2.jpg/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" />After an extended pit stop in Boulder, I couldn’t wait to get back to Arroyo Seco. Miraculously, my beloved adobe casita was available and waiting for me. To make a long backstory short, Steven and I spent the rest of the winter and the following spring working our derrieres off till we put <em>Dairy Aire</em> to bed. With all the time in the world to experiment, the productions grew bolder and more elaborate. The same innate compulsion that had never been called upon at any of my highly-compensated tech writing stops came out in force. Instead of coasting through the day, never using more than two percent of my brain, I was laser-focused, operating at two hundred percent brainpower. Having my own "project studio" was liberating—no wasted energy staring at a clock while you’re coughing up $125/hr. For once, I was living life to the fullest. </p>
<p>Thanks to the inadvertent largesse of Intel Corporation, I could afford to have Larry mix and master the whole shebang, not to mention the sizable travel expenses—like staying at the way cool Austin Motel across from the iconic Congress Club. Winding up with that 13-song recording —which holds up just as well today and is without any doubt the high water mark of my life from 1995- 2015—is a more than fair tradeoff for the many hundreds of hours my physical body hibernated in a Salt Lake City cubicle. <img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/be1572e0bd96b2e8307bd19c0f3b924daef17606/original/texas-austin-25-1024x683.jpg/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" />Back in 2000, when <em>Dairy Aire</em> was a freshly minted product in CD form, I'd fire up a big juicy doob and just let it loop, taking in the uplifting high desert terrain extending a hundred miles past the Gorge. Bighorn sheep pranced around out there. Slackers on shrooms were out there, too, soaking their cares away in any number of natural hot springs gurgling out of the earthy depths. And so all was right with the world, or it was until once again I heard the distant drums of headhunters … </p>
<p> </p>
<p><span style="color:#d35400;"><strong>Medsite—The Grand Finale</strong></span><br>From coast to coast, fireworks departments cap their Fourth of July skyshows by shooting off every Screaming Spider, Crackling Horsetail, and Chrysanthemum they have left in a prolonged burst of explosions that leaves no one wanting more. That was me after my last big-time tech writing gig—I had nothing left, and I didn’t want any more. People have a hard time comprehending how an authority on how to succeed in business without really trying, given carte blanche to make money for nothing, just walked away from the privilege. The answer, in a word, is Medsite—the grand finale of my tech writing career. But I’m getting ahead of myself.</p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/4424f9f5b19cffefe0494e14923f8a169fa07b82/original/fireworks-over-nyc-new-years-eve.jpg/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" />When headhunters came for me again, in late spring of 2001, I steeled myself to sing for my supper like everyone else. How could the law of averages not kick in? How many times could outwardly successful companies, that ought to know better, pay a guy, handsomely, not to write? And how could my next gig possibly match, much less exceed, the toxic levels of dysfunction I’d already measured at the likes of Qwest, IBM, and Intel? As usual, I underestimated American ingenuity—those were just the warm-up acts! </p>
<p>The aforementioned big-name big-deal corporations were “the establishment.” A succession of startup “dotcoms” was coming for them, financed by a slew of deep-pocketed venture capitalists looking for and betting big on the next big Fortune 100 company. </p>
<p>Medsite, an ambitious brick and mortar medical supply house out Newark, NJ, with designs on establishing an online outpost, had everything they were looking for. Sure, I’d been around the block, but I hadn’t yet had the, um, valuable life experience of not working (but getting paid like I was) for a dotcom. Nor had I seen up close and personal examples of the Silicon Valley “work hard play hard” ethos, galaxies away from anything eyewitnessed in Colorado or Utah—that is, until my indoctrination into The Medsite Way.</p>
<p>Flush with VC cash, Medsite engaged Cybersource, a dotcom in its own right that specialized in developing e-commerce portals, to assemble a team of high-level programmers, database jockeys, software testers, network engineers, and project managers to whip its portal into shape before another online supplier could sneak in and corner the market on gauze, tongue depressors, and lubricating jelly. The recruiting firm had already rounded up over a hundred high tech Hessians tasked with fast-tracking the project to completion. </p>
<p>In their haste to add a tech writer to its starting lineup, not only had the IT pros at Cybersource acquiesced to my request to telecommute from Colorado to New York’s Financial district—where its cavalry scouts were already preparing the ground for online commerce—they'd also agreed to my latest tranche of ergonomic demands: no funky office chairs, no flickering monitors, and no fluorescent lights, just in case I had to make the odd cameo appearance at the job site in Lower Manhattan. </p>
<p>Negotiations concluded, Cybersource flew me out to its San Jose, CA command post for orientation. They’d also slotted me in to make a brief appearance in The Big Apple, to get to know the players there. I'd be lying if l told you that I foresaw myself becoming a jet-setting tech writer—on an expense account no less—when I first sucked it up and trained to become a PC Support Specialist at the advanced age of 40. I tried out my new economic clout that first night in San Jose, gorging myself at a local raw bar. Getting into the swing of things, I washed down the groggery’s coveted Stellar Bar and Malpeque Bay oysters with a Muscadet Sèvre-et-Maine Sure Lie highly recommended by a clique of Sonoman viniculturists padding their own expense accounts. <em>Pas mal!</em> The following day I presented myself chez Cybersource, a stone’s throw away from the stately Winchester Mansion; the turreted Victorian painted lady was an odd sight juxtaposed next to a concrete ‘n glass office park. Odder sights were moments away. </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/ab9e6757a1054b629a6c78ff36cf9255dc9c8398/original/winchester-9.jpg/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" />The Cybersource hive was a hotbed of unusual-to-me-at-least activity. I was taken aback by the sight of jury-rigged computer stations crammed into every available nook and cranny of hallways and conference rooms; it wouldn’t have been surprised me if a half dozen contract workers weren’t plugging away at makeshift desks hastily thrown together in the lavatories. Notice that I omitted any mention of the techies sitting at these workstations? That’s because only half of them were—every other one was curled up under their desks, fast asleep. Had someone slipped Owsley acid into my morning latte? Was I hallucinating? </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/a028a556cf1dad6e1a5c5eb603a0c9da4eb2a19b/original/sleeping-under-desk.jpg/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p>A scant few hours later, after an unforgettable display of "play hard,” Silicon Valley style, interrupted the superlative examples of "work hard" I was already straining to process, I knew I was. It started with a quickening in the collective mood, from inertia to an increasingly animated state—techies’ antennas had picked up and passed on the communiqué that Cybersources forces had met some momentous milestone. By now, I knew all too well what those were, though I was blissfully unaware of this guideline in <em>The Dotcom Handbook</em>: “Whenever a milestone is reached, all work activities must immediately cease and a mandatory blow-out celebration must promptly commense.” Sure enough, at the stroke of 2 pm, all work abruptly ceased. Buglers blew Reveille for the sleeping drones, caterers and mobile bartenders scrambled to set up buffet tables, a DJ went right for the solar plexus.</p>
<p>I couldn’t help noticing that one of the comatose drones had, in the two-minute time frame of a 60s AM pop song like, say, Roy Orbisons "Oh Pretty Woman," metamorphosed from out like a log to rudely awakened to sprung to life to dancing the ... I wouldn't bet my life on it, but I'm pretty sure it was the cha-cha slide. For the following four hours, my assigned tasks were eating, drinking, and being merry (at $65/hr., $260 total) while commemorating a “team victory” I had no hand in winning. Things were off to a rousing start: I took home $520 for the day and consumed at least $100 worth of Roderer Cristal and crustacea. Compare this clambake with what passed for a wild celebration in Colorado: a retirement party, held in a break room with flickering fluorescents, where, for the grand occasion, the company splurged on Sprite, cold cuts and white cake from King Soopers with the poor schmo’s name spelled out in wobbly piping. </p>
<p>Orientation revealed that medsite.com site absolutely had to “go live” by the drop-dead date of August 21, 2001. To stay on track, Cybersource was authorized to go into “whatever it takes” mode; “no expense spared” mode was a subset of that. All these cyber-troops had to be deployed to Lower Manhattan, fed on expense accounts, richly rewarded for meeting milestones, and shipped back home every now and then to see if their families still recognized them. Or, should I say, <em>what was left of them</em> had to be shipped home—if the insane working hours didn’t get them, the mandatory celebrations surely would. </p>
<p>That sojourn to San Jose left me well-fortified for my forthcoming meet-the-players trip to Lower Manhattan. I couldn’t have been any more relaxed as the turbulence-free flight followed the Hudson before banking hard left over the hard-to-miss Twin Towers on its final descent to La Guardia. There was nothing to get worked up about, the visit shaped up as purely ceremonial—by prior arrangement, I was just passing through. I wouldn’t be sticking around NYC much longer than the time it takes to order a couple of chestnut-roasted pretzels and ride up to the observation deck of the Empire State Building for an eagle’s-eye view of the tri-state area.</p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/44f2420f0e2866906c030278228d072d244234b3/original/emp.jpg/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p>Reporting for active duty at a nondescript office building next to The Federal Reserve Bank on June 21, 2001, I felt immediate sympathy for all those poor suffering slobs without prior telecommuting arrangements chained to their PCs on the 17th floor. Anywhere between 125 and 150 techno-geeks toiled away up there at any one given time. Cybersource had rented the entire floor, cleared out the temporary walls and cubicles, ripped up the carpeting, removed the ceiling tiles, brought in a truckload of conference tables, and scattered networked PCs across every every last inch of available real estate. Zip-tied spaghetti strands of Cat 5 network cabling strewn here, there, and everywhere added just the right touch of chaos. From what I could tell, this sardined, sleep-deprived crew accepted the haphazard arrangements as just another day at the office. No sound absorption was no cause for concern; neither was all that electrical current humming away, night and day. Nothing Cybersource could throw at them bothered any of the fifty of so dedicated beings snoring under their desks, catching some quick Z’s. Evidently, the habit traveled well from Silicon Valley to Silicon Alley. </p>
<p>Any doubts about whether I’d be paid to write or not to write at this plum assignment vanished within seconds of reporting to the Medsite brass. When “Who are you?” “Who do you work for?” “What do you do?” and “What kind of writing is that?” are the first questions out of manager's mouths, you know your dubious record of getting paid more to write less than anyone in the history of letters will not only stand, the odds of putting it so far out of reach that it becomes untouchable—like Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak—were stacked in your favor. </p>
<p>One supervisor had the bright idea that, maybe, if I sat for a while with the software testers, I might chance upon something or other that needed to be documented. That didn't exactly ring true, but for $65/hr. I was willing to be a good soldier. Initially, my pesky human ego condemned what it saw as its diminished status, forced to sit and mingle with the lowly testers, in anything but the ideal ergonomic conditions I'd bargained for. I was overthinking; the crack corps of Indians, Vietnamese, and Russians turned out to be an affable enough crowd to hang with—and imitate.</p>
<p>The way it worked was that each time a new version of the beta site software was ready for release, a couple dozen testers seated around four big conference tables, arranged in a square so that they could all see each other, waited for a manager's count down. Once they heard "Go!" they'd hammer away at their keyboards in a determined effort to “break” the software. That’s how the lead programmers determined whether or not the database was “scalable,” i.e. could thousands of doctors and medical assistants from all over the globe order supplies at once without the server melting down once medsite.com went live for real. These tests would continue for weeks, or until the software was deemed robust enough to sustain that type of pounding. Testers recorded the bugs and error messages they encountered, managers logged them, then programmers huddled together to review the notes and mull over the most efficacious ways to squash the bugs and smooth out the user experience. </p>
<p>So much for any guilt I might have harbored over not working; I was stringing several sentences together every few hours, wasn’t I? I <em>was </em>working! Based on prior usage rates, jotting down a few stilted sentences every four hours was uncharted territory for me. Maybe I'd have the honor of putting in the world’s first online order for an oxygen tank? In any event, I was now under the aegis of "Ding" Duong, a very driven and very intense Vietnamese testing manager—someone who took his role as drill sergeant to heart. As per his movement orders, we had to man our battle stations <em>every </em>four hours, <em>every </em>day; in other words, we had to answer the bell <em>six times a day</em>. That’s why, for a lot of these worker bees, sleeping under their desks was a lot more practical from a logistical standpoint than getting all comfy in their posh hotel rooms, then dragging themselves back to the office. </p>
<p>Speaking of posh hotel rooms, I had to hand it to the classy Cybersource requisitions squad. My swank 15th floor pied-à-terre at a boutique Bank Street hotel offered superb views of New York City Hall, the resplendently deco Woolworth Building, and the familiar Manhattan skyline as seen from an unfamiliar angle. This is where I’d be ensconced, lounging in the lap of luxury, before heading back to Colorado after my meet-the-players week was up. But right now, the only place I was heading back to was the 17th floor, for another software test. </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/86dc8094620efd1219f8615913c9ebe4045a690d/original/wool.jpg/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><span class="font_small"><em>The Woolworth Building</em></span></p>
<p>While I'd gotten past the stuck-up notion that I was too good for the testers, the anti-ergonomic conditions remained a cause for alarm. I mean my chair had only two possible adjustment points, not the six or seven it took to dial in optimal spinal alignment; seriously, how was I supposed to not work in conditions like that? </p>
<p>After performing a few calculations while I waited for another countdown to begin, the upside to accepting the harsh (to me, spoiled rotten by deep-pocketed entities who could afford to) conditions was inescapable. It didn’t take a database jockey, like the Brainiacs I was surrounded by, to estimate that I’d be taking home roughly $6,370 a week to file a dozen shorthand sentences a day, that maybe one programmer would glance at, then immediately file in the trash. I was well aware that’s more than most writers make in their entire lifetimes. Guiltily, I offered to edit the bug reports the international testers scratched out in halting English. A supervisor put the kibosh on that: “No, we can’t possibly waste Lory on stuff like that.” </p>
<p>More pressing matters took precedence—like straightening out my love life. Alex Guznov, the personable tester I sat next to, insisted that what I really needed was a Russian wife. Mrs. Khrushchev, a daughter of The Revolution who did not appear to be centerfold material as photographed with her mischievous husband Nikita when the happy couple toured the John Deere plant in Iowa in 1959, sprang to mind. Said imagery was immediately dispelled after russianwives.com eventually loaded (back then, sites with lots of pictures took forever to load, if they ever did). Ah. Now I understood why venture capitalists were salivating over this newfangled internet thang. I was staring at a glamorous array of behind-the-iron-curtain babes, in all their airbrushed glory, who, the site intimated, couldn’t wait to escape the clutches of the drunken local misogynists they were currently <em>schtupping</em>. In between tests, Alex and I evaluated Russian wives from Odessa to Vladivostock. </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/f5a97061048b73ab7cfa387092fbda91de121b20/original/mrsk.jpg/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><span class="font_small"><em>Guess the Russian wife?</em></span></p>
<p>When I wasn’t testing e-commerce databases or ogling Russian wives, my hunting and gathering forays began diverging from lower Manhattan—which shut down tight at 5 PM, after the financial district closed—to Tribeca, Soho, and eventually all the way up to the East Village. There was some awfully good grub available in The City That Never Sleeps. Dean and DeLuca was within walking distance, if you were determined. Taking in a little theatre along the Great White Way was also high on my list of new and different ways to ply an expense account in one of the most expensive cities on Earth. I’d seen theatergoers queuing up to snatch half-price sameday Broadway show tickets at the busy 2 World Trade Center Plaza TKTS booth.</p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/d85d5847cc5c4888beeb8f6282fd211af411d2f9/original/plaza-2011-09-14-z.jpg/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" />I’d grab a sandwich and join them; the bustling commons, a block and a half away, was a prime people-watching roost. Japanese tourists photographing each other, dwarfed by the world’s tallest edifices, blended with a constant infusion of commuters emerging from the teeming PATH station. This grand-scale variation on ye olde public square was ideal for killing time during what were quickly turning into my customary three-hour lunch breaks. Thirteen hundred feet overhead, on the 107th floor of the North Tower, was Windows of the World—arguably the most spectacular restaurant in a metropolis full of them. I’d leap at any chance to strap on the old feedbag there.</p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/777e0d07f88362f15c4639df80964be7b2d3489b/original/windows-of-the-world.jpg/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" />That wish was granted in no time flat. Wouldn't you know it, 17th floor was buzzing that yet another milestone had been reached (Cybersource smashing the record for the most people sleeping under their desks at one time on one floor, perhaps?). The entire 100+ member crew was ordered to immediately report to WOW en masse for another mandatory blowout celebration. OMG, I can only imagine the bill those poor venture capitalists had to foot: well over a hundred people, an open bar, everyone ordering everything on the menu at a ritzy tourist trap. Over the next months, as “we” achieved milestone after milestone, not only did the Cybersource brigade take over clubs and rack up epic charges there, we took our esprit de corps back to WOW for two more bacchanalias on the corporate dime. Medsite was really going to have to carry on a brisk trade in crutches, canes, and butterfly bandages to recoup the kazillions these insatiables racked up on recreational expenses. </p>
<p>Three weeks into my one-week visit to New York, the defining moment of this tour of duty came to pass. I needed to have my time sheet signed by Duong, the Vietnamese test manager—who was anything but a pushover. I was really squirming over submitting a bill for <em>196 hours for a two-week time period</em>—a staggering number that just happened to be <em>101 more hours than I’d ever billed bi-weekly!</em> Sheepishly, I handed the form in. This Southeast Asian taskmaster gawked at it intently, looking concerned, as in <em>very </em>concerned. </p>
<p>“<em>One hundred and ninety-six hours</em>?” he enunciated, slowly and quizzically, dragging it out, staring at the slip of paper, hard, as if that could the change the numbers to ones more to his liking. </p>
<p>Uh-oh. My heart sank. It was too good to be true. I’d been found out. </p>
<p>“<em>Is that all you worked</em>?” </p>
<p>What?!?!?! </p>
<p>“You worked less hours than anyone in here!” </p>
<p>Oh. 99% of the America work force had just clocked the same old same old 80 hours the past two weeks. I’d just handed in a timesheet for two and a half times that—and here I'd been called on the carpet for malingering. Consider me reprogrammed! I'd never let that happen again. </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/7bf5689b474f59c88536a983c02647b387612f98/original/man-painting-the-twin-towers.jpg/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W1sic2l6ZSIsIm1lZGl1bSJdXQ==.jpg" class="size_m justify_center border_none" alt="" />You’d suppose that, after being vested with what amounted to a license to steal, maybe I’d stop obsessing about telecommuting from Colorado? Nope. I convinced Cybersource to fly me back there, as per the original agreement, couching it as request for a long weekend’s leave to visit my daughter. I really had no intention of returning. Well, after I got what I wished for, I found I wasn’t nearly as comfy not writing in my cushy home as I'd imagined I'd be. A few vexatious questions had arisen, not the least of which were, “How am I going to telecommute and do my job?” and, more aptly, “Just what <em>is </em>my job?” </p>
<p>It took a while, but it finally dawned on me that <em>the real job was figuring out what the job was</em>. </p>
<p>That was going to take some doing 2,000 miles away from the action. In the midst of these deliberations, the eye-catching sum of $12,870 for two weeks non-work had been direct-deposited into my checking account. For unfathomable reasons, Cybersource wanted me back in New York. So much for my telecommuting obsession and my non-negotiable ergonomic demands—those had been chucked out the window now. I began packing anyway. </p>
<p>Speaking with the Cybersource concierge handling travel arrangements, I learned that my former pied-à-terre in lower Manhattan, conveniently located a block away from the job site, was full. Where would I be staying now? The answer, as implausible as it seems, was the Mayflower Hotel on W. 81st St, incredibly inconveniently located a whopping 120 blocks north—or <em>closer to Connecticut than Brooklyn</em>. The same brain trust, which thought nothing about dropping $75,000 at Soho hotspots for milestone celebrations, had a strict policy of not paying a penny more than $250 a night for our techno-nests. The Mayflower was the only available hotel in Manhattan with vacancies offering a corporate rate of $249. I could only imagine what sort of rundown rat and cockroach-infested fleabag that was and what breed of settlers stayed there. </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/d78f337d68c1426cb2c8763145fab8ea0c6a52b5/original/whaminnewyork02.jpg/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" />Cabbing in from La Guardia, taking in the nighttime sights and sounds around the Museum of Natural History, I couldn't help noticing that this vibrant Upper West Side hood boasted an exemplary selection of fine eateries to fuel me and any number of haberdasheries to cloak me. Sure enough, I’d finagle a way to charge my spree at NYC landmark Harry’s Shoes—a pricey pair of Ecco boots and an even more precious pair of Mephisto sandals—to my expense account, justifying the purchase as a “medical expense.” After all, I needed comfortable walking shoes, since I’d broken a toe stubbing it on a suitcase in the middle of the night, because, I successfully petitioned, “I was disoriented from overwork." </p>
<p>We pulled up to the hotel on W. 81st. Before I could form an impression, my attention was arrested by an extraterrestrial object, which hadn’t been there the last time I went museum hopping, that had materialized across the street. It was impossible to gaze upon the newly-constructed Rose Center For Earth and Space without doing a double take. A five-story glass cube encased a giant sun, around which revolved nine planets replete with lifelike rings, moons, and craters. You don’t see that many of those. In the off chance you might otherwise miss it, glass cube and model solar system were bathed in an ethereal violet glow that really drew you in. My fifth-floor digs fit for a king offered an unobstructed view of this Ninth Wonder of the World and the nocturnal cityscape beyond. The only rat in residence was me, though this paid-not to-write rodent was, as usual, ready, willing, and able to nibble away at any urgent requests for documentaiton, should any of them unexpectedly materialize, à la the Hayden Sphere. </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/c726a0d13a4901fc09ef38e93fec5624c2186853/original/rose-center1.jpg/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" />There remained the small matter of translocating my physical body from an Upper West Side hotel to a Lower Manhattan jobsite. For the first week, I cabbed it each way. When accounting saw that each cab ride cost $25, they strongly suggested that I “economize” by calling a limo. The limo only cost $20 each way, so, being chauffeured theoretically “saved the company money.” Who was I to bitch? Now I was on an expense account in Manhattan, being limoed to not write. </p>
<p>Logical minds—like the ones presumably belonging to the venture capitalists' accountants—might do the math and wonder why they were good with shelling out $289 for a hotel and two limo rides when they balked at paying, say $254, for a hotel closer to the job site from whence I could have walked to not work. That doesn’t even take into consideration the two hours they’d pay me to commute each way through standstill rush-hour traffic—which cost them an additional $130 ($65/hr. x 2 = $130). So, their effort to “save” five dollars or so a day cost my employers an extra $170 per diem ($130 for two hours “work” + 2 x $20 for limos rides = $170) over the next six weeks—or a grand a total of $7140 (42 days x $170 = $7140; there were no weekends on this watch). In case anyone’s still uncertain, the question “what killed the dotcoms?” requires less conjecture than “what killed the dinosaurs?”</p>
<p>Back on the bustling 17th floor, if I hoped to preserve my place in this high-tech Hieronymous Bosch tableaux, I needed something to write about. Pronto. There was a possible lead; a casual conversation with the Medsite owner ’s wife had put something in my ear about the existence of customer service reps who clocked in at the company’s supply warehouse across the Hudson, in Newark, NJ. From what little she could tell me, I gathered that these reps had been taking phone orders, since time immemorial, from doctors ordering off hard-copy catalogs in traditional, pre-e-commerce fashion. The same reps were slated to be cross-trained to support the massive e-commerce portal now code-named <em>Optimus</em>. Bingo! I smelled a mission—writing a training manual for CSRs. </p>
<p>But just who were these beings? What made them tick? What did they resonate with? The thing to do was take the Holland Tunnel to Newark and find out. I somehow doubt that “Jungle Avenue in Boogieland,” as the limo driver not so affectionately dubbed the roadway he left me off on, was in any danger of being designated by The United States Department of Transportation as a scenic byway; the six “intrinsic qualities” it looks for in a landscape don’t presently include gigantic cylindrical smokestacks spewing noxious clouds of who-knows-what, chemical plants, oil refineries, abandoned factories, urban blight, or the world’s largest neon Budweiser sign affixed atop its industrial brewery. </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/fff3d16480e60c79c65976bf72f260ee8bcc7caf/original/bud2.jpg/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" />Ironically enough, I actually had prior experience working on “Jungle Avenue in Boogieland;” Belmont Avenue in Newark to be exact. I kid you not. My dad, Henry Kohn, commuted daily to I. Lehrhoff and Co., a small appliance (electric shavers, Mr. Coffees, toaster-ovens, etc.) warehouse in Newark from River Vale, our lily-white neo-colonial suburb tucked away off Exit 172 in NJ's more New Englandy northeast corner. He was the “advertising man” who put Lehrhoff ‘s catalog together. Maybe I inherited my innate ability to set world records in obscure accomplishments from Dad—he’d been dropping quarters in the coin receptacles at four Garden State Parkway toll plazas each way, six days a week, for thirty-five years. That’s a lot of coin and a hard record to top. After being an iron man like that, by all rights the New Jersey Turnpike Authority should have commemorated his achievement by naming a Henry Kohn Toll Plaza after him. </p>
<p>My job description at I. Lehrhoff & Co. was “Christmas help,” picking, packing, and shipping orders on the lower floors beneath the showroom. I discovered, to my great surprise, that Dad was beloved in the warehouse. That was curious; he was a phantom at home. “Oh, you’re Henry’s son!” Brutus, one of the pickers, gushed appreciatively. There was a practical benefit to being Henry’s son; under Brutus’ protection, the skinny long-haired suburban hippy kid was a lot more likely to make it back from the five-block lunchtime walk to White Castle in one piece. </p>
<p>After spending much of my adult life in Colorado working for concerns like Marijuana, Inc., I could scarcely believe I was retracing my steps to work at another warehouse in Newark, <em>some thirty-five years later</em>. My salary, $25,000 month, was in a different league than the two dollars an hour I made at Lehrhoff’s. On the other hand, Medsite could have been a parallel universe—a bunch of prosperous suburban Jews running warehouses full of retail goods staffed by inner city blacks. </p>
<p>Before I take you inside the Medsite CSR Department, I probably ought to mention that in the unlikely event an African-American person is spotted in Boulder, Colorado, it’s probably because a tornado carried them there from someplace else, someone was nodding off in the guard tower, or they were a CU football player. The few Afro-Americans roaming the streets wisely dialed back the ethnicity. </p>
<p>Not so in the customer service department at Medsite! I was startled by luminous variations on couture, hair weaves, makeup, and nail care that I’d been missing out on in Colorado. A Xeroxed sign reading “You Say I’m a Bitch Like That’s Something Bad!” reflected the inner-city perspective. By and large, these examples of the feminine divine were “built for comfort, not for speed.” As of August 1, 2001, not a single one of them could tell me what the internet was. Naturally, I assumed someone had already broken it to them that they were being transitioned into web support, but hearing it from me was a news flash to them. Their collective reaction in a word: <em>dread</em>.<img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/35aac615c759d346ddd9275c7792b6b07ee498c9/original/img-2173.jpg/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" />So this was the target audience Silicon Valley-based Cybersource was lavishing $65/hr. on me to reach—inner city, African-American, internet-challenged urban goddesses, the least <em>Wired </em>humans I’d ever laid eyes on! But, hey, the CSRs were my people now, and I was their user advocate. I’d have the backs of these Big-Mama-Jamas, just like Brutus had mine, as I took them by the hand and escorted them through the virtual mean streets of cyberspace. </p>
<p>The only problem was, these alien creatures were currently charged with taking phone orders, not interfacing with the likes of me. According to LaToya—she of the robin's egg blue acrylic claws accentuated with faux diamonds and matching eye shadow I'd been observing—only Harold, the dynamic department manager, who was a real go-getter but wasn’t around, could possibly be in the know about the in-progress e-commerce portal. This cultural anthropology-rich reconnaissance mission concluded with a promise that Harold would get back to me Monday morning. </p>
<p>Harold didn't get back to me Monday morning. Or the rest of Monday. Or Tuesday. I was growing stir crazy waiting around on the 17th floor. I had to make a break for it. Then I was loose on the narrow, cobblestoned 19th century streets. I’d been wanting to more closely inspect "The Cathedral of Capitalism," the Woolworth Building, and took a poke around. Its numerous Beaux Arts flourishes—barrel vault mosaics, brass salamanders, and plaster grotesques—didn't disappoint. I hadn't had much chance to check out Battery Park, where the ferries embarked for Liberty Island. I lingered there for a while, watching tourists feeding fragments of Wonder Bread to the pigeons.</p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/030eafd03f1bcfc2eb358163e7b7465127276829/original/batt.jfif/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.jfif" class="size_l justify_center border_" />Growing more emboldened, I perambulated around the southern tip of Manhattan till I stopped to tour a 19th century schooner docked on the East River. Exploring the wooden whaler put me in a seafood mood, indulged with Little Neck clams, served in a thick chowder with a packet of oyster crackers, at a vibey, musket and pistol-themed Revolutionary War-era tavern. Momentarily satiated, I meandered past the pastiche of electronics shops, luggage stores, delis, bagelries, Korean flower shops, Chinese restaurants, and Army-Navy stores comprising the cityscape of Lower Manhattan. Breathing in the scents of freedom—wafting aromas of soot, sauerkraut and Sabrett hot dogs—I popped into Barney’s (formerly Barney’s Boys' Town) to model classic Armani suits and more flamboyant Jean-Paul Gauthier prêt-à-porter. I spent hours in there, trying on everything in the racks. </p>
<p>Give or take four hours after I set off on my jaunt, I doubled back to the Medsite encampment. Same as it ever was. With a definable mission, my presence was no longer required at the testers' tables six times a day. I plopped down at my old place there anyway, to find out what Alex had been up to. We’d already scoured Russia, Lithuania, and Ukraine in our exhaustive search for a Russian bride; he reported making some headway scouting potential soulmates from The Republic of Kazistan. </p>
<p>“These ease thee goy-ill for you to marry, Lo-ree. I have peeked her oat for a you.” ("This is the girl for you to marry, Lory. I have picker her out for you.)</p>
<p>The chosen one was Marian, a twenty-something blonde with some roots showing holding a living accourtrement—an orange and white cat. She, or her translator, had a way with evocative imagery: </p>
<p><em>Time flies like arrows, but I’m sure that you’ll manage to find me <br>My hobbies include parapsychology <br>I adore quiet evenings, and I like traveling by sea <br>Someday I will find him—I’m looking for you my one and only!</em> </p>
<p>Fifteen years later, those lyrics found their way into “Marian From Kazistan.” I’d been producing it in the back of my mind the whole time. </p>
<p>Now it was midweek and there was still no hide nor hair of Howard. Fortunately, Alex and his fellow “Russkie” testers came up with the ultimate diversion: going uptown for "Russian Wives Live," at the opulent Russian Samovar on 52nd St.</p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/cad64aadf6454d7b747f69e19f603941a9f2bbf6/original/tea.jpg/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" />And then there they were, a cluster of them at the bar, looking refined, well-coiffed, haute-coutured, and, dare I say, available. After a fourth or fifth shot of garlic Vodka—anywhere past two is unchartered territory for me—I worked up the courage to chat one up. In my inebriated state, I presumed she'd been encouraging me. Things seemed to be progressing, or they were, till I felt an insistent tap on my shoulder. </p>
<p>“Lo-ree, dose are za holy gark lay-dees, ewe butter com buck to our tay-bull now.” Translation: “Lory, those are the oligarchs' ladies, you better come back to our table now.” Oh. Live and learn! </p>
<p>Howard finally took like my 86th call toward the end of the week, after which another expedition to darkest Newark was in the works. Some guys have all the luck! In the seventies, Howard would have been one of the life-forms that inspired Nina Simone to write "Young, Gifted, and Black." He had the intellectual good looks of a Malcom X; his choice of designer eyewear definitely had homage to the former devotee of the Honorable Elijah Mohammed written all over it. Over the next week, in a grueling process reminiscent of dentistry in the 18th century, I managed to extract enough somethingness from Howard and les demoiselles de Medsite to take a crack at faking a Customer Service manual. </p>
<p>I even got the okay to finish it in Boulder. One day I was at the Trident Café, daughter in tow, when I ran into famed beat poet Anne Waldman. She used to live on the same floor as me at the Hotel Boulderado. Making conversation, I asked her what she was up to. </p>
<p> “I’ve become tenured faculty at Naropa. I just got back from readings in Dublin, Copenhagen, and Prague. My latest book of poems is out, published by City Lights Books. I was just named Outstanding Woman Poet and I won the Heavyweight Poetry Slam. And you?” </p>
<p>“I’m writing <em>CSR Training for Optimus</em>,” I replied weakly. </p>
<p>Have I mentioned how unsettling my inside-out life had become? Unhelpful thoughts—like <em>CSR Training for Optimus</em> was going to make me more money in ten weeks than the entire faculty at Naropa’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodies Poetics took home in a year—were hard to shake.</p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/0ed092eca9c0655cc49167a07568f0958e68da51/original/naropa-option-1.jpg/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" />Conflicted or not, I was still “a pro.” Employing advanced tech writing stratagems to stretch the thimbleful of data I’d collected into an authoritative-looking thirty-page manual, I broke paragraphs into bullet items and numbered lists, enlarged the charts and graphics twice as large as they needed to be, chose 14-pt. body type, blew up all the heads and subheads, shrunk the margins, and, by hook or crook, wound up with a vaguely presentable manual. We’re many pages into a saga about technical writing, yet it occurs to me that I haven’t provided a single sample. Looking for a surefire cure for insomnia? This less-than-scintillating excerpt from the <em>Optimus </em>opus will always be there for you: </p>
<hr><p><strong>Intro</strong> </p>
<p>On August 21, 2001, medsite.com launched Medsite Supplies, a web-based supply store. Medsite had previously offered a small online store now replaced by Medsite Supplies. </p>
<p>For the first time, customers have the option of ordering a full line of medical supplies online. Some customers will prefer phoning or faxing in orders the traditional way. These options will still be available. </p>
<p>The website offers a new way of doing business. However, you will continue to use the customer service skills and extensive product knowledge you developed using the old (MDS) system. This is an opportunity to learn about emerging technologies as you help customers conduct business on the web. </p>
<p><strong>What is Optimus?</strong> </p>
<p>Optimus is the name of the new computer system that supports medsite.com. </p>
<p>A development team from Cybersource is working with Medsite to design and refine the Optimus system. You’ll probably meet some of the Cybersource developers over the next few weeks. In addition, you'll be interacting with members of the Medsite/THP Supply Store Product Management team. </p>
<p>This document provides an overview of the new site with an emphasis on the Customer Service module you’ll use to manage accounts. It describes many of the new tasks and processes Customer Service Representative (CSRs) will be called on to perform. </p>
<p>If you haven’t already taken a look at the site, now would be a good time to do it! </p>
<hr><p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/0f2a78d99ae7169a9524a02352ada44d6f49dd7c/original/csr2.png/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W1sic2l6ZSIsIm1lZGl1bSJdXQ==.png" class="size_m justify_left border_none" alt="" /></p>
<p>OK, so it wasn’t <em>Ulysses</em>. But it probably made me more in ten weeks than Joyce made off <em>Ulysses </em>in ten years! Oops. I was doing it again! </p>
<p>Back in Manhattan, I handed <em>CSR Training For Optimus</em> in on August 28, 2001. What kind of feedback did I get? The <em>none </em>kind. I didn’t hear word one about it until I came up for review, on September 7th. The reaction was basically: “Hey, great manual, good job, you’re a fine fellow, thanks for playing, have a nice life.” Sigh. All things must pass, right? </p>
<p>I spent a couple of days decompressing with my parents in Toms River, NJ. On September 10, 2001, Connie and Henry Kohn dropped me off at Newark Airport. Wouldn’t you know it, our flight path followed the Hudson River again, where I took one last look at the classic Manhattan skyline with its twin towers kissing the sky. I thought about Philippe Petit, the French high-wire artist who gained fame for his unauthorized walk between the twin towers. The whole flight home, I couldn’t get those images of Philippe, having a ball dancing on the tightrope 110 stories up from street level, out of my mind. </p>
<p>The next morning, September 11, 2001, back in Boulder, my friend Steve from Ft. Lee, NJ called. Sounding shaky, he told me to turn on the TV.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><span style="color:#d35400;"><strong>Safeco Insurance Company</strong></span><br><em>Supine on a poorly lit crosswalk, still clutching a Whole Foods bag of Weruva cat food, lashed by the freezing February rain, surrounded by firemen who’d immobilized me and looky-loos, I hadn’t felt this optimistic in a decade. Maybe I’d walk again and maybe I wouldn’t, but, from the look of things, an as-yet unidentified insurance company had just underwritten Songlab—the magnum opus I'd been pining to record for as long as I could remember</em>.</p>
<p>When I tell people that in 2013 I was struck by a car and suffered a compound fracture of my right tibia and fibula, a separated shoulder, and assorted bumps and bruises in a pedestrian accident, the inevitable reaction is “That’s terrible!” They’re shocked when I respond that <em>getting hit by a car was the best thing that ever happened to me!</em> If I’d made it through that crosswalk unscathed, I would have spent the rest of my life feeling like I'd underperformed—instead of feeling like an artistic success who’d fulfilled my creative potential—a huge psychological difference. </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/1526cf498211c6cba7ae11f9f1c294b1b79fa154/original/lory-kohn-expecting-to-fly-950x1024.jpg/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" />You’d be surprised how many brainwaves can flash across your mental screen in the brief amount of time it takes to topple from walking upright to lying motionless on a busy four-lane thoroughfare: </p>
<ul> <li>It was a chilly night in the Mile High City; strangely, it was raining, hard, not snowing. </li> <li>That Whole Foods had only been open a week; drivers weren't expecting foot traffic at this intersection. </li> <li>I’d been proceeding across BelIeview Avenue on a clearly marked crosswalk. </li> <li>I had a Walk sign. </li> <li>There were witnesses. </li> <li>I was aware that a car had just sideswiped me; I probably didn’t have a head injury. </li> <li>I wasn’t feeling any pain; I could be paralyzed. </li> <li>Uninsured motorists don’t drive new Lexus ES-350s; the well-heeled Asian woman I caught a quick glimpse of behind the wheel hadn’t hit and run. </li> <li>If I hadn’t paused in the crosswalk for a split second when I was unsure if a Chevy Tahoe streaking up to the traffic light saw me and was going to stop, I wouldn’t be typing this; the Lexus turning left that clipped my leg would have caught me flush. </li> <li>My subconscious mind had just intervened to solve a major problem, the best way it could, that had stumped my conscious mind for 13 interminably long years. </li>
</ul>
<p>Which major problem? Finding the time and money to record another legacy-cementing album after Intel Corporation inadvertently financed <em>Dairy Aire</em> in 2000. But wait—what happened to all the loot I'd socked away prior to that explosive Medsite grand finale? The Big D, divorce, happened to those riches, the same twist of fate that also befell my mostly-paid-for million dollar ranch in East Boulder and a curated artwork collection. I was about to get all-too-familiar with another D for Devastation term: Downward spiral. By 2004, I was in survival mode—exchanging empty cat food cans for new ones at Whole Foods because “my cat didn’t like it” (the grocery chain had an incredibly liberal return policy before it was acquired by Amazon). Or I’d comb through my CD collection for disks that weren’t too jacked up to sell at Twist and Shout, hoping against hope I'd scrounge up enough single-digit dollars to eat somewhere inexpensive, but decent, like Wahoo Fish Taco on Colorado Blvd. </p>
<p>And what about all those windfalls that had paved the way for so many previous escapades, the ones I'd become conditioned to believe would keep coming around, like clockwork? Disappeared—without a trace. Hey, some years, twisters touch down and tear through the Kansas grasslands while others … there’s barely enough breeze to keep the turbine blades spinning. </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/220a8e2e0c1c66b87c977a3550dc74c1c01334fd/original/tornado-may24-2016.jpg/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" />Why not just get another tech writing job? Well, when I cavalierly swore off Corporate America in 2001, little did I suspect that, just a few short years later, the Fortune 100 companies and venture capitalists I unintentionally fleeced would return the favor by revoking my backstage pass privileges. Truth be told, I was so broke in 2005 that I would have gladly licked my way across I-70 to land another $65/hr. tech writing gig. But things had changed—drastically. Previously, I only had to beat out three or four tongue-tied dweebs to get the job; now I’d had to have to fend off three or four hundred equally-qualified candidates who knew how to play the interview game, too. With so much competition, hourly rates shrank to a third of what they’d been. As for the very specific skillsets employers were now seeking, well, try this analogy: you’re a sportswriter, you’ve done a perfectly good job of covering the New England Patriots, whose colors are red, white, and blue. You apply for a job covering the New York Jets, whose colors are green and white. You get the word—just because you proved that you can cover a red, white, and blue team, that doesn’t mean you can cover a green and white team. You’re too much of a risk. Sorry, Charlie! </p>
<p>So, the doors to the corporate world had slammed shut, at least for the high-paying gigs I used to land in my sleep. Reduced to taking a sales job at CompUSA in Boulder, at least I'd home-rolled my own PCs, used Apple products extensively, earned PC support and network certifications, and stalked the hallways of capitalism's finest, so there wasn’t a whole lot I didn’t know about hardware and software. Aside from the fact that management was allergic to sharing profits with the sales force, CompUSA was actually a great setup for me. Drawing on my sales experience at Marijuana, Inc., in no time flat I became the star of the sales floor. I was even named Douchebag, I mean Employee of the Month, for which I was awarded a wooden plaque worth a wooden nickel. That’s not quite the sort of acclaim I was seeking at that stage of my life; on the other hand, now I could afford to splurge on cat food by the case. But rents were climbing in Boulder, my daughter Isabelle was approaching college age and I was staring at out-of-state tuition, and even hitting it out of the park at a big box store was still only good for a subsistence living. </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/245c3b8f62535fb05d12b5ba6270c6be9bcbd604/original/duqvgs0wwaakyrh.jpg/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p>Now that I’d demonstrated an ability to "sell, sell, sell" in a retail environment, if I wanted to make "real money" in an industry that took just about anyone in, the thing to do was become a car salesman—or an anti-car salesman, as I played the role—despite having a long list of conscientious objections to anything and everything having to do with the petrochemical industry and its proclivity for turning pristine ecosystems into superfund sites. That tree-hugger mentality actually came in handy, when I found myself selling Toyotas in 2006. I could barely sell the Corollas and Camrys that flew off the lot for other salemen, but I was a whiz at selling Priuses, Highlanders, and other hybrids. Selling hybrids in a state filled with environmentalists had its advantages; I led Colorado in hybrid sales, taking home another corny plaque in the process. </p>
<p>OK, so now I was a “highly decorated” car and computer sales grunt, which may have been preferable to folding myself into a square glass box for gratuities as a street performer on the Boulder Mall, but working a retail sales floor really wasn’t any more “me” than twiddling my thumbs for eight hours in a cubicle. “Me” was The Milkmen, the love-of-my-life band that had remained on life support since 2000. My preoccupation with the Men of Milk beat on in my heart of hearts, that heartbeat was strong enough to shatter a stethoscope—and we had plenty of unfinished business. </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/afd952fecf8ed4412e811ea7d2029384f02e715e/original/mm.png/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.png" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p>While we’d outwritten and outrecorded some of the music biz's best and brightest at various times (not always, but often enough), we’ve done it largely in a vacuum. I wanted to think that, although it was late in the game, our body of work would somehow attract the attention of musicologists who’d pore over it like the Dead Sea Scrolls and validate it worthiness. That’s what, by all rights, it deserved—according to my fragile human ego, which, though admittedly prejudiced, wasn't necessarily “wrong.” In 2000 AD, Dairy Aire replenished our “Silo of Hits” with irrefutable proof that The Milkmen weren’t just legends in our own minds; there just wasn’t quite enough of it that we could get away with resting on our laurels from that point on. By 2013, it had already been high time to restock for a decade. Our inability to do that, over time, especially when I felt like our udders had so much more milk left to give, eventually began to gnaw at me. And it gnawed at me and gnawed at me, as the years rolled inexorably by. Oh, how I yearned to slice that first syllable off “unfinished” business, to crank up the milk-making machinery again, to take on the ultimate challenge—recording a 30-song, 2-CD magnum opus that pushed us to the outer limits of creativity and beyond—the studio equivalent of summitting Mt. Everest.</p>
<p>On a more optimistic note, during those 13 windfall-less years, even as I turned 52, 54, 56, and 58, with the probability of ever milking again slowly ebbing away, I hadn't noticed any appreciable drop-off in my ability to come up with A-material that could be relentlessly honed into A-plus-material. Retaining the ability to summon the muse as I approached my seventh decade came as a pleasant surprise, debunking the conventional wisdom that you write your best stuff in your twenties, then you just regurgitate your past hits in Las Vegas or on Rock Legends cruises from there on out. Constantly dreaming up ingenious ways to arrange and produce the ideas swirling in my head to maximum effect, I remained convinced that my best work lay ahead of me— whatever my chronological age might be. </p>
<p>Another saving grace that kept me motivated, even as time marched on, was discovering that I appeared to have all the traits of what gerontologists call a <em>superager</em>—someone with the mental faculties of a person twenty years younger. Longevity ran in my family. I self-hypnotized myself to stay ready, to remain vital, in case something miraculous happened and the opportunity to set off on a milk crusade for the ages somehow presented itself. </p>
<p>All that positivism was well and good, but it still left me two precious commodities shy of turning visualization into actualization: time and money. I didn’t have the latter, which meant I didn’t have the former, either. It just wasn’t happening, or even close to happening, at any point between 2000 and 2013. I felt utterly powerless. Not only couldn’t I figure out how to record, I couldn’t even figure out how to get the hell out of Littleton, the satanic suburb I’d reluctantly moved to after getting priced out of the rental market, first in Boulder, then Denver. </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/d0787c292a9f09b475d0b9378cafa414dbb3000d/original/19660-39580.jpg/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><em><span class="font_small">The Columbine Memorial</span></em></p>
<p>Upshots of the American-dream-turned-nightmare littered Denver’s most right-wing outskirts: </p>
<ul> <li>Wadsworth Boulevard, the main drag, was home to every Big Box retailer under the sun. What marked the 10-block stretch closest to me as particularly despicable were the capacious parking lots, constructed when the rise of American consumerism was at is peak and it looked for all the world as if every day was going to be Christmas Day. Post-2007 recession, those expansive parking lots were are maybe 1/10 full on any given non-December day. That stench of rampant consumerism, symbolic of the prevailing, “you are what you buy” mindset, was a real bringdown. </li> <li>When I became Littleton’s newest resident, I found a nearby trail that encircled a lake. I was exploring the reeds and the bird life, seeing where things led, when I came upon a man-made artifact giving off some heavy energy. It had a name that stopped me in my tracks: The Columbine Memorial. It was freaky seeing the obituaries parents had written in honor of their slain teens, chiseled in stone for posterity. There were pictures of President Clinton speaking at the dedication ceremony. You could walk up a little hill to a shrine, which afforded a great view of … yup, Columbine High School, the scene of the crime. If the energy on Wadsworth Boulevard a few blocks away wasn’t oppressive enough … </li> <li>Michael Moore had just come out with his latest documentary, <em>Bowling For Columbine</em>. One of the more memorable scenes takes place in the cavernous lobby of the Lockheed Martin Corporation, situated in the Littleton foothills. Moore and a company spokesperson are standing in front of a 50-yard long Minuteman III Intercontinental Ballistic Missile. The documentary maker asks the munitions man if he has any idea at all why some countries consider the United States a threat, and the guy, standing five feet in front of a warhead capable of reducing Rhode Island to rubble, draws a blank. </li>
</ul>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/44b3c117dc55ad9bd2ca8618afadf3688e490c7f/original/lm.png/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.png" class="size_l justify_center border_" />Man, I wanted to blow that town! But all wasn’t lost; only a few short exits away, via the 6th Avenue freeway, a long overdue development had the aptly named Mile High City abuzz: marijuana legalization, and the sudden proliferation of retail shops dispensing "the devil's weed" in its many solid and liquid forms. That 2011 bolt out of the blue brought back warm and fuzzy memories of my productive stint at Marijuana Inc. I saw how the nascent cannabis industry was a boon to communities, providing a profusion of jobs <em>people actually wanted</em> and a tax bonanza for the city, county and state. The former cow town had reimagined itself as the most progressive city in the USA.</p>
<p>While all those colorfully named and aromatic cannabis strains—Grape Ape, Sour Diesel, Kosher Kush—really popped in retail settings, to the delight of aficionados—I couldn't help noticing that conventional reporters and economists had a hard time wrapping their heads around the unique commodity. What I knew about it they failed to realize was that people responded to it entirely differently than they did to unregulated commodities like pork bellies, cotton No. 2, and tangelos; they didn't just sorta like it, they considered it God's gift. Academics, who wrote supposed learned treatises about it, viewed the versatile plant as nothing more than a subject in a study; few of them had ever tried it, fewer if any were connoisseurs, and basically none of them had ever sold so much as a gram of it —whereas I, on the other hand, knew all too well that proponents viewed as nothing less than the linchpin that held their very lives together. That disconnect called for an entirely new breed of economist, a <em>poteconomist</em>, if you will, who could account for the pungent herb’s vastly underestimated earning power. There aren’t too many substances that get you high that you can build a house out of. </p>
<p>I'd never spent one second of my life dwelling on economics before, but there was a lot to weigh in on, so I followed my feelings and launched an expert site, <em>Cannabis Commerce</em>. Now I had a forum to pontificate on all aspects of the business, including “cannatax.” The same soul who was paid a small fortune to sit in a cubicle and not write for months on end banged out something like 60 features in 18 months. I also sold ads for the site, and picked up some decent change as a copywriter for all the new firms jumping in on “the green rush.” If that wasn't enough, I worked as a trimmer; those commercial grows I rotated around, which had taken over every available square foot of commercial real estate in the former Queen City of the Plains, were a botanist’s wet dream. That had to be the trippiest part-time job in America. </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/cb6bc5c9bb2154680af9d66ceec7d4aac565d942/original/cc.png/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.png" class="size_l justify_center border_" /><em>Cannabis Commerce</em> kept my mind occupied and my phsical self out of trouble, even as I turned 60, then 62. I was getting by, things weren’t as dire as they’d been, I was finally breaking out of a long downward spiral—but no closer to living out my recording dreams. I really, <em>really</em>, REALLY wanted that next siege of recording—but I just couldn’t have it—no matter how determinedly I tried to will it into being.</p>
<p>Of course I’d been trying to solve a longstanding problem with the same conscious mind that had been stymied at every turn. Sick and tired of waiting around for it to come through, my subconscious mind had seen quite enough. Saving my dairy dreams from extinction required drastic action; sure, that stunt it pulled was a little, er, messy, seeing as how it required years of physical therapy to completely recover from—but I’d become one with Belleview Avenue again, gladly, if that’s what it took to milk again. </p>
<p><em>One shrouded figure ignoring the freak rainstorm drew closer, bending down to inspect the damage as if he knew what he was looking for. I had to ask: “Does it look like I’ll be able to walk again?” “Your bones are sticking out your lower leg at a right angle, but I’ve seen a lot of those on the ski slopes. It’s repairable. They’ll put a titanium rod in it and you’ll be good to go again.” This fellow seemed to know what he talking about. Maybe he was a medic at a ski resort? As much as I wanted to believe him, I hadn’t actually seen the snapped-off bones (probably a good thing or I wouldn’t have been so calm), I couldn’t take that diagnosis to the bank. </em></p>
<p><em>An ambulance rushed onto the scene. The paramedics threw me with a choice of hospitals: Saint Joseph’s or Swedish. Hmm. A choice like that had massive repercussions. Picturing Catholic priests hovering over me waving crucifixes was unappealing, which put me off Saint Joseph’s. I remembered liking the goofy Bob Hope movie, I’ll Take Sweden, and its ditzy theme song “I’ll take Sweden ya ya ya,” when I was 12. So I took Swedish, ya ya ya. Score one for my long-suffering conscious mind—that’s the best decision it made in a decade. </em></p>
<p>Open wound injuries like mine get you VIP treatment at emergency rooms, to keep infection from setting in. The Swedish ER docs poked around for a while, waiting for the on-call surgeon to arrive. Enter the man of the hour, Dr. Craig Davis, and his reassuring bedside manner. The compound fracture, this unassuming yet confident looking fellow informed me as I lay on a gurney waiting to be wheeled into surgery, was no big deal, he was going to “fix” it, which would “only take an hour or so,” at which point I’d be on the road to recovery and he'd be on the way home to polish off the dinner I'd interrupted. The word “fix” sounded awfully optimistic, as did the time estimate— considering he’d have to clean out the wound, put the bones back in place, measure and install a titanium rod, sew up the wounds, prepare and put on a cast, and clean up the mess, but, darned if many hours of intensive physical therapy later, he wasn’t proven right on all counts. </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/367df893fe810fcea9ed83f25810044f5bd10581/original/lory-in-cast-827x1024.jpg/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" />A colleague from Dr. Davis’ orthopedic practice dropped by my room on his rounds the next day. This bone man spent an inordinate amount of time staring at my chart. </p>
<p>“How much pain are you in on the 1-10 scale?” he finally spoke. I sensed, from his tone of voice, he was anticipating a response in the 8-10 range. </p>
<p>“Zero.” </p>
<p>He looked at me askance. The he checked the chart again. Something didn’t compute. </p>
<p>“<em>Craig </em>did your operation? He’s the upper extremities guy at our practice.” He made it sound like “Craig” was too much of a doofus to name the leg bones, or if the operation had been performed by a crossing guard. </p>
<p>Upper extremity or lower extremity specialist, it's safe to say that Dr. Davis absolutely nailed (well, <em>screwed</em>, there are eight of them, four around the ankle, four around the knee) the repair. After so many years wandering in the wilderness, the lucky breaks didn’t begin and end with my right tibia and fibula; now they were coming at me in flurries. </p>
<p>Try this “top ten” list: </p>
<ol> <li>Choosing Swedish Hospital drew Dr. Davis in the luck of the draw. No one could have performed the surgical procedure any better than he did.</li> <li> While I was clearly discombobulated, I wasn’t in a world of pain. After the anesthesia wore off, I refused heavy medication, even though the staff kept offering it, not to be a hero, but because for whatever reason, I just didn’t need it. I think I took two Percocets total. </li> <li>Due to my reduced financial circumstances, I was on State of Colorado Medicaid. The operation, the week at the hospital, the follow-up visits, and the physical therapy would be covered. </li> <li>I lived on the third floor of an elevatorless building. Swedish couldn’t even release me until I found someplace to recover with wheelchair access. Who came to the resuce but my ex and her best friend, someone who’d always been standoffish toward me in the past, but, in my hour of need, offered her townhouse in South Boulder with its ground-level entrance that I could roll right in and out of. She even cooked for me for six weeks! </li> <li>Sports medicine clinics in Boulder and Littleton (six weeks later, when I could drag myself back up the stairs) really came through for me with some world-class physical therapy; Colorado is one of the most active states; its physical therapists don't lack for experience. Colorado is also home to the most Rolfers in America; if you’re not familiar with deep tissue structural work, and you've been hit by a car and have to learn how to walk again, you might want to be! </li> <li>As much as I ragged on it and couldn’t wait to leave it, unbeknownst to me, the City of Littleton had just installed Earth’s biggest and best hot water therapy pool in its sprawling new Rec Center in the foothills, minutes away from my house. I really made progress in all that buoyant, soothing warmth. </li> <li>One day I showed up at the therapy pool, only to find a water aerobics class had taken it over. As I stood there, looking puzzled, the instructor motioned me to come on in. What, me join a class full of old biddies who could barely stay afloat? Well, the instructor invited me again, a little more insistently, then the ladies themselves implored me to try it out. Oh! Those water-resistance exercises turbocharged my recovery. </li> <li>Hiring the Ramos Law firm to handle the ambulance chasing. What “should” have been a slam dunk settlement turned into a psychodrama requiring advanced people skills to resolve—they were up to the task. </li> <li>Steven Solomon, my longstanding co-writer and Milkmen co-founder, who hadn’t talked to me in five years, took the opportunity to reconnect.</li> <li>Reconnection was followed by Steven's committment to go all-in on the <a contents="Songlab " data-link-label="Songlab (2018)" data-link-type="page" href="/songlab-2018" target="_blank"><em>Songlab </em></a>project and give it his mightiest effort. </li>
</ol>
<p>While things were copacetic on the therapy front, the “slam dunk” insurance claim had all the eamarks of a long, drawn-out affair. It took weeks just to confirm from that the driver was insured, period, and even longer to identify Safeco as the actual insurer. Then Safeco took its sweet time divulging the driver’s coverage limits, a telltale sign that any hope I had for a quick pay-out was a pipe dream. Someone from Ramos Law had attended the driver's hearing, describing her as "a real piece of work" because, among other things, she'd worn a short, clingy, leopard-print dress to court with a matching cap.</p>
<p>Swedish Hospital and Medicaid would also have a say in whether there’d be anything left over, above and beyond the medical fees. I could possibly walk away with as much as $200,000; or I might find myself shut out entirely, marooned in a healthcare black hole, in a country where hospitals get away with charging like $50,000 for a box of Kleenex. It was impossible to predict how it was all going to shake out. </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/e4710f61169b3e9d81ce1e3a73fbcf8a8aec5dea/original/wf2.png/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.png" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p>For reasons hard to pinpoint— possibly related to how the settlement date and amount affected a court's perception of the leopard woman's criminal case—Safeco dragged out the inevitable. The Safeco adjuster's most dastardly delay tactic was maintaining that since I wore all-black on a black night and was walking across blacktop, his company somehow wasn't libel. That defense was never going to hold up, but it effectively slowed the wheels of justice. </p>
<p>Despite enocuntering stiff resistance from Safeco, Brian from Ramos Law stuck to his a “you catch more flies with honey than vinegar” approach. After what seemed like an interminable amount of back and forth, his tactful strategy ultimately paid off; the insurer caved, Swedish took the high road, Medicaid showed the quality of mercy. Lo and behold, a manna from heaven six-figure settlement—affording me the freedom to do whatever I wanted with the next three or four years of my life—was mine! </p>
<p>On the off chance you couldn’t guess, “anything I wanted” included all the gear I’d need to record a world class album. It also paid for renting dream homes in uplifting locales—like the one I stumbled into in Manitou Springs (next to Colorado Springs) with picture perfect views of Garden of the Gods, the Manitou Incline, Cave of The Winds, and the Manitou Cliff Dwellings. Seeing those four natural and man-made wonders out your picture windows has a way of easing the strain of staring at a computer screen for the thousands of hours it takes to systematically write, arrange, perform, and record 30 songs to the nth degree of perfection.</p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/2b3dd864eadd48426c45e8cd8d5f42c3b806e2ba/original/garden-of-the-gods-with-foothills-header.jpg/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><span class="font_small"><em>Garden of the Gods: what I saw out my picture window while I was recording Songlab! Nice!</em></span></p>
<p>Getting to record <em>Songlab </em>exactly the way I wanted to, in the most favorable conditions possible (well, until my dad died and I had to schlep all the gear to New Jersey for a year; the <em>Songlab </em>backstory deserves its own memoir), negated the accumulated pain of losing my wife, losing my home, becoming financially devastation, exchanging opened cat food cans to keep my cats alive, wearing a red Comp USA shirt, squirming through Saturday morning sales meetings at Mountain States Toyota, and living in a satanic suburb. </p>
<p><em>Songlab</em>, The Milkmen’s magnum opus and my greatest individual achievement, wouldn't exist without the (unwitting) "kindness" (ha!) of Safeco Insurance Company. No matter what vicissitudes life has in store for us, The Milkmen will always have <em>Songlab ...</em> and we wouldn't have <em>Songlab </em>without Safeco. </p>
<p> </p>
<p><span style="color:#d35400;"><strong>The United States Treasury Department by order of The United States Department of Labor through an act of Congress</strong></span><br>The conglomerate of improbables that became the seventh unsuspecting entity to foster the artistic exploits of Lory Kohn and The Milkmen—The United States Treasury Department (USDT) by order of The United States Department of Labor (DOL) through an act of Congress—stands out as both a mouthful and our least likely champion. That elongated name is actually truncated; as we’ll see, other government agencies got in on the act, too. </p>
<p>The backstory boils down to a tale of two songs: “Love Won’t Listen,” financed by Marijuana, Inc., which was included on the soundtrack of <em>Revenge of the Nerds, Pt. II, Nerds in Paradise</em> released in 1987, and “Vote Them Out,” envisioned as a "rallying cry," which foresaw a “big blue wave” breaking over the 2020 elections. The latter—a triumph by any sound recording metric—went virtually unnoticed. </p>
<p>Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but those major productions, which demanded and were allotted heaping helpings of time and focus by yours truly, didn’t have the look of contenders about to bring home commensurate amounts of compensation—the polar opposite all those windfalls I’ve recounted, the ones that had seemingly materialized out of the ether, yet had rewarded me, richly— despite receiving minute apportionments of those same commodities.</p>
<p>The same lingering questions I had about this state of affairs in 1987 persisted in 2020: Was it really so terrible that I’d been well-compensated for my demonstrated songwriting excellence in roundabout fashion? Would I be better served to quit resisting "what is" and just accept it? Would I ever bring home the bacon for my advanced songsmithing skills through conventional means—say through ASCAP, the performing rights organization that distributes royalties to other deserving songwriters and music publishers—and sever my dependence on the accidental largesse of Fortune 100 companies, venture capitalists, and insurance underwriters, once and for all? </p>
<p>Let’s take a closer look at the ASCAP royalties. In 2018, after assiduously working my way through the ASCAP Board of Review’s protest process, the organization agreed with me that I should have been collecting royalties from penning "Love Won't Listen" for the past 30-odd years. They’d been mistakenly paying Lory Kohn's split to another writer named, get this—LeRoy Kohn—<em>even when the guy was dead!</em> What sort of do-re-mi are we talking about? Oh, some $33,000 for my one-third share (even though I wrote all the music and lyrics, another story). Great, right? Wrong. ASCAP’s bylaws state that even when you prove a point like that so convincingly that they’ll admit you’re right, they still only have to back-pay you for the past six quarters—which you’re welcome to fight, that is, if you want to go toe-to-toe with their battery of killer attorneys, ultra-experienced at squashing just such claims. Basically, they’re saying, “What took you so long to notice that?” In my case, the miserable excuses were <em>ignorance </em>and <em>stupidity</em>—songwriters from the hinterlands rarely know there is a music publishing game, much less how to play it.</p>
<p>But better late than never; as we'll see, it was extremely fortuitous that I noticed that my career earnings were $33,000 short at all! The takeaway from all that jousting with ASACP: my 2019 tax return showed that quarterly royalties I'd collected on "Love Won't Listen" totaled a whopping $153 for the fiscal year 2018. Hold that thought! </p>
<p>In 2020, I was hardly the only baby boomer who considered the removal of Donald Trump and his Republican cronies from office a life-and-death imperative. I was, however, one of the few ex-hippies, now in our late sixties, capable of producing a modern protest song that encapsulated the feelings of a majority of Americans in a catchy, singalong rocker. While it’s true that I was <em>capable </em>of penning an uplifting anthem for our phantasmagoric times, I’d have to dig deep, <em>really </em>deep. Why? What I thought I'd be doing at this stage of my life, pre-pandemic, was getting out and about, a guy and an acoustic guitar, performing stripped-down versions of my greatest misses at discriminating listening rooms from Asheville to Big Sur. Tackling an epic studio production—with a political theme, no less—was about the furthest thing from my mind. I’d recorded a few basic demos here and there, to capture song ideas, but I hadn’t taken a crack at serious recording since <em>Songlab </em>wrapped in 2017. I was out of practice at every aspect of songwriting and recording I could be: composing music, writing lyrics, arrangement, production, performance, singing, tracking, editing, faking instruments, et al. </p>
<p>One big reason I’d taken such a long break was—don’t laugh—I’d developed “audio editing PTSD,” from infusing <em>Songlab </em>with megadoses of compulsion. Fortunately, for the end result (not my mental health), I’d learned to compensate for unnoticeable-to-most-people-but-there timing and tuning fluctuations. I'll spare you the minutiae; let’s just say that I’d tacked together a “makeup kit” consisting of various time-consuming editing techniques I could resort to anytime a need arose to “put my face on”—the one I wanted the world-at-large to see. </p>
<p>Why would I go to such great lengths that others would call overkill? Well, while I may have a good sense of rhythm for a normal human being, every one of the studio cats who plays on <em>Songlab </em>with me has abnormal—read <em>perfect</em>—timing, which has the effect of making my good timing seem wayward in comparison. Ditto for staying on pitch; mine’s decent for your average homo sapien, but it doesn't hold a candle to an elite backup singer like David Steele, who’s sung on a half-dozen #1 hits. Since I did so much of the playing and singing on 30 mission-critical productions, there were plenty of blemishes to touch up. Mine's not a methodology I'd wish on my worst enemy, but, if you're forced to wait and wait and wait for as long as I did between major recordings, you just suck it up and do what you have to do—that is, if you happen to be obsessive about creating timeless recordings. As the saying goes, “it takes a lot of hard work to make it seem like it took no work at all.” </p>
<p>PTSD or not, these were extraordinary times. I was weary of standing idly by, feeling powerless, while racist misogynist creeps tore the country apart. Things came to a head in June of 2020, when, under a COVID-19 stay-at-home order, I had plenty of time on my hands to watch all those souls marching in the streets for Black Lives Matter. I never thought I'd see that kind of activism again in my lifetime. There was always some kind of music playing in the background —although none of it was purpose-built. It occurred to me that the dump-Trump movement could use a "rallying cry," if you will, that supporters could sing along to at massive indoor and outdoor rallies in the lead-up to the November elections. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, I had the music for a song with a strong Native American "pow wow" beat in my back pocket. It cried out for a big production, but I hadn't come up with just the right thematic spark to spur me into action. One day, I turned on MSNBC, just in time to catch pranksters merrily painting “BLACK LIVES MATTER” on a city street in 35-foot high yellow letters—clearly, I wasn’t the only citizen with an urge to do something demonstrative with my emotions, rather than just sitting around stewing. The network cut to a field reporter interviewing a black Democratic congresswoman. The first question was, "What can people do to express their frustrations with all these do-nothing Republican lawmakers?" “Vote them out,” the Congresswoman replied, for which she received a smattering of applause. Then she responded more forcefully, “We <em>will </em>vote them out this fall!” and got a resounding response.</p>
<p>That was it!</p>
<p>I was in business, with an ideal subject for the times, one that could conceivably kill <em>three </em>birds with one stone: 1) Provide a dynamic, timely subject for my unfinished song; 2) Give me an outlet to work through the feelings of helplessness and despair that anyone with a shred of compassion had to endure under an increasingly autocratic administration; and 3) Offer me a real shot at collecting music licensing fees from some obvious players. </p>
<p>I’ll name those obvious players in a moment, but, before I do, I have a confession to make. Hint: it concerns my previous marketing efforts. I’m aware what some of you who’ve made it this far must be thinking: “So, you say you’re disappointed that you didn’t get the renumeration or appreciation you wished you did and feel you deserved from putting all that sweat equity into your productions. But, while you’ve talked repeatedly about how much effort you've devoted to the creative process, how much energy have you really put into <em>selling </em>the fruits of your labor? Perhaps if your determination to sell your existent work equaled your drive to create new work, maybe you'd have cashed in through conventional means, as so many other artists have somehow managed to do. Then you wouldn’t be lamenting that your financial life has somehow been inverted by unknowable forces.”</p>
<p>Um ... what can I say? That <em>is </em>valid criticism and <em>I can’t dismiss it</em>. I haven’t been as strong at letting rejection roll off my back as I could have been. There, I said it. I’m guilty, guilty of having inordinate faith that if I crafted a tune until it was as immaculate and soulful as it could possibly be ... it would just sell itself. Well, as I sit here in March of 2022 with a "Silo of Hits" that isn't, with the aforementioned exception, producing residual income, I know now that’s <em>not </em>the way it works. No matter how great a song is, someone still has to sell it. I could raise a few salient points in my defense; instead, I’ll just cop to the truth—I haven’t prized commercial success nearly as highly as artistic success—much to my own detriment. </p>
<p>That deceptively simple-sounding concept finally permeated my thick skull; consequently, this licensor took a proactive approach, jotting down a list of promising licensees, while "Vote Them Out " was still in the early stages of production: </p>
<ul> <li>The Democratic National Committee</li> <li>The Lincoln Project </li> <li>Network TV, in particular MSNBC and CNN </li> <li>Documentary makers </li>
</ul>
<p>Those were all hittable targets—provided I could fire at them while they remained in range. Easier said than done! In the normal course of events, if I haven't recorded seriously for a while, I start off with more basic productions, then work my way up to more demanding ones. But it was already late June of an election year; there was no time to dilly-dally around. I'd have to go for it right away—whether I was in top form or not.</p>
<p>When I finally set to work in earnest, the self-imposed pressure was ... <em>nerve-wracking</em>. The more I tried to push things along, the less I accomplished; when you’re playing most of the parts yourself, changing just one of them more often than not means that you have to go back in and change all of them. Alter one lyric, and you have to re-record the six voices in the chorus. And so on. Trying to rush things had become counterproductive. I’d have to revert to my usual snail-like pace—which is what it is, thanks to a longstanding tendency to keep auditioning different approaches until I settle on the one I feel is most likely to stand the test of time. </p>
<p>By August, I was making significant progress; unfortunately, so was the COVID-19 virus. That forced me to face the music—this presidential election was going to take place entirely in the virtual realm. Ugh! Candidates were not going to be appearing at the usual election year whistle stops and rallies I pictured back when all that BLM footage called me to action. No rallies meant no pressing need for a “rallying cry.” I could cross my #1 prospect, the Democratic National Committee, off the list. </p>
<p>While that was damaging to my licensing prospects, which I couldn’t completely control, something else weighed on me that I could: the concern that “Vote Them Out” might be my last major production. That was hardly paranoia; I <em>was </em>turning 69 in a month! At some point, destiny was bound to replace me with another plaything. In case it happened sooner than later, I was going out with a bang. </p>
<p>After struggling mightily for a good two months—hardly the first time I’d spent that long refining one song—I caught fire toward the end. The various song elements congealed, Marcus Cliffe's mix blew everybody away, and arguably the best production I’ve ever been associated with was completed in the nick of time, a scant seven weeks before election day. </p>
<p>Sticking to my pledge to market the tune as planned, I emailed everyone associated with The Lincoln Project, a group of ex-Republican and pro-democracy campaign advisors and talking heads who’d cranked out a fierce series of anti-authoritarianism videos that had gotten under Trump’s skin and rattled him—drawing a lot of attention to themselves and their website in the process. In addition to linking themselves with a certain patriot whose likeness is chiseled on Mt. Rushmore, the site doubled as a conduit to process a flood of donations streaming in from the group’s celebrity and small-fry admirers. I had every confidence this media savvy lot could cook up a viral video, rolling a montage of telling images over the impassioned strains of “Vote Them Out.” But I couldn’t have picked a worse time to come calling—The Lincoln Project was about to become a disgraced group of ex-Republican pundits and prognosticators. </p>
<p>It had come out, to the delight of the same opposition politicians they’d satirized, that a) their hierarchy set aside a suspicious amount of the donations they received for "administrative expenses"— which was really just a euphemism for the slush fund they used to enrich themselves to the tune of tens of millions of dollars apiece, and b) their male leader was in the habit of forcing himself on their male interns, and, what's more, had been predatory for some time. The rest of the staff knew about these transgressions, yet had looked the other way—to hush things up, lest the disclosure gave all those outraged libs pause and their tyrant deposition-sized gifts stopped pouring in. In any event, I never heard back from any of The Lincoln Project's newly-minted millionaires. That meant I could also scratch my second-best prospect off my list. I fared no better with my other prospects; try as I may, my attempts to engage major networks and documentary makers at this late juncture revealed that their dance cards were already full. I had the sinking feeling that I was going to be shut out, again. Or was I? </p>
<p>Not so fast! On a parallel track, I'd spoken to a friend in Taos, Burton, a singer-songwriter who was on food stamps, had health concerns, and could never seem to find the money he needed to buy silver and gemstones to keep his jewelry business going. He surprised me with the revelation that he’d just received an infusion of government money—enough to buy silver in bulk, afford a medical procedure he’d been putting off, and relieve any worries he'd have to sell his house. What obscure government program could have bailed him out of all those exigencies? Burton couldn’t tell me, he said, because his nephew was the one who told him about it, had filled out all the paperwork, and kept up-to-date filing claims on his behalf. Hmm. </p>
<p>Then I ran across online testimony from another musician, whose tax return only showed a few hundred dollars of reportable income, but had nonetheless qualified for a nice chunk of government change as well. Were we talking about the same program? Genuflecting before the Google altar, I found that, in addition to passing the CARES Act—which authorized USTD to issue $1200 stimulus checks to every taxpayer—Congress had also directed state unemployment divisions, through the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance Act (PUA), to ramp up their creaking legacy systems to allow persons who were out of work because of COVID-19 to start receiving weekly benefits. </p>
<p>That’s where DOL comes in; it administers unemployment insurance programs for all 50 states. Traditionally, the New Mexico Department of Workforce Solutions (NMDWS) needed to see a certain amount of reportable W2 income in order to qualify someone for benefits. At Congress' urging, DOL decreed that if you didn’t have any in a pandemic, you weren’t necessarily SOL. If you were out of work for any of eight possible COVID-19-related reasons—perhaps you were a caregiver for someone who had it or your business was shuttered because of it— you qualified, even if you were an independent contractor or self-employed, which was new and different. It would have been swell if any of those eight original reasons applied to my situation; none did. DOL added two more qualifying scenarios; those didn’t apply to me, either. I pretty much gave up on PUA, or I did until I checked the qualifying requirements one last time a few weeks later and and came across this encouraging development: </p>
<p><span class="font_small">The Secretary of Labor has also provided guidance for an eleventh reason: </span></p>
<p><span class="font_small">11. An individual who works as an independent contractor with reportable income may also qualify for PUA benefits if he or she is unemployed, partially employed, or unable or unavailable to work because the COVID-19 public health emergency has severely limited his or her ability to continue performing his or her customary work activities and has caused the individual to suspend such activities. </span></p>
<p>Aha! Was I an independent contractor? Check. Did I have reportable income? Check, albeit it was only that $153 in ASCAP income—enough for one tank of gas on the day I’m typing this, 3/25/2022—which I had a great deal of difficulty believing qualified me for entrée in this club. Did the COVID-19 public health emergency … severely limit … performing customary work activities … and cause me to suspend such activities? Well, this is how I phrased my response on the application, tailoring it to the ASCAP songwriting and music publishing income shown on the 1099 tax return I was required to submit: “COVID-19 has made it impossible to interact with others in the course of performing customary musical activities like co-writing, working out full-band arrangements, performing, recording, and producing—especially since I've been placed under a stay-at-home directive.” Check!</p>
<p>What’s key here is what’s<em> </em>not here: an <em>amount </em>of reportable income required to qualify—as in <em>there’s no minimum amount</em>. Was USTD, under the guidance of DOL, actually going to start paying me some $679 a week because of “Love Won’t Listen,” a song written some 40 years ago, that ASCAP had finally gotten around to grudgingly paying me royalties on? </p>
<p>Why yes, they were! And not only was Congress>DOL>USDT>PUA>NMDWS (excuse the acronym salad; did you really want me to spell that out?) going to start paying me some $679 per week, they made it retroactive (unlike ASCAP) for the six months that I’d been eligible without knowing it! My eyeballs almost popped out of my head when I discovered, a few days later, that some $18,000 had been direct-deposited into my checking account!!! WTF?!?!?!</p>
<p>Now, If I ruled the world, the Democratic National Committee would have cut me a $25,000 check for the rights to use "Vote Them Out" to their heart’s content in the dwindling days preceding the election. Ten weeks of regular $679 weekly payments later (round it off to $7,000), PUA had basically just paid me that same $25,000 ($18,000 + $7,000 = $25,000)! The result was the same as if I'd sold the song. Miracle! I'd been compensated fairly for my heroic effort, albeit in what had become my trademark roundabout way.</p>
<p>But the munificence didn’t end there. Even after the weekly PUA benefit was slashed to $429/week, when all was said and done, I was the lucky recipient of another $20,000 in unemployment benefits before the PUA program was discontinued in September of 2021. If I squint a little, I can see that figure covered a hefty portion of the royalties I never saw from licensing “Love Won’t Listen.” And here I’d been thinking that <em>I’d taken a beating </em>in my battle with ASCAP, that I’d never recoup any of the lost royalties dating back to the 80s when HBO and Showtime kept airing <em>Revenge of the Nerds Pt. II </em>round the clock Thank God I kept fighting the good fight long enough to eke out that $153 in royalties for my contribution to the camp classic … which had just providentially morphed into some $45,000. </p>
<p>A nimble mind could also look at this windfall from another angle: The International Karma Commission had paid me in full for “Love Won’t Listen” ($33,000) and had also seen to it that I was taken care of, with $12,000 in accounts receivable, to ease my pain for “Vote Them Out.” If the DNC had offered that figure, with only double-digit days left to exploit the tune before Election Day, especially, well, there's every chance I would have grabbed it ($33,000 + $12,000 = $45,000! </p>
<p>And that, friends, is how an acronym salad of government bureaucracies became inadvertent sponsor of Lory Kohn and The Milkmen #7. Milkmates and milkmaids on five continents salute you!</p>
<p style="text-align: center;">to be continued... </p>The Milkmentag:themilkmen.space,2005:Post/67360072021-09-04T13:27:27-06:002021-10-11T14:20:03-06:00Old School Critiques of YouTube Videos: #3, XTC, "Earn Enough For Us"<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe class="justify_inline" data-video-type="youtube" data-video-id="U1YCcgQjYnA" data-video-thumb-url="https://img.youtube.com/vi/U1YCcgQjYnA/mqdefault.jpg" type="text/html" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/U1YCcgQjYnA?rel=0&wmode=transparent&enablejsapi=1" frameborder="0" height="360" width="640" allowfullscreen="true"></iframe></p>
<p>The opening scene of <em>Gilmore Girls</em> Season 1 Episode 12 parlays Britpop 'n pop tarts as hot thirtysomething mom Lorelai and teenage babe-spawn Rory ready themselves for work and school. The punchy, psychedelic-tinged soundtrack that practically leapt out of my speakers was vaguely familiar—though I couldn't quite place it. The mystery band I should have recognized was XTC; the tune was “Earn Enough For Us,” from their <em>Skylarking </em>album. </p>
<p>How did I stumble upon this one? Having exhausted the supply of manlier binge-watching fare in the earlier stages of what's now a twenty-months-long pandemic, I’d turned to the girly TV series for pre-sleep escapism. Two months and 153 episodes later, I can't complain about the level of escapism on tap; all those the dialog-heavy scripts delivered by an eccentric cast of characters kept me coming back for more. I’m less thrilled with the music direction; this is the only song out of the 600 or so spread over seven seasons that really made me perk up and pay attention. </p>
<p>The only available YouTube video is the abbreviated one embedded above. The full version sounds stellar in this remastered mix:</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe class="justify_inline" data-video-type="youtube" data-video-id="EKoiCKaMU6A" data-video-thumb-url="https://img.youtube.com/vi/EKoiCKaMU6A/mqdefault.jpg" type="text/html" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/EKoiCKaMU6A?rel=0&wmode=transparent&enablejsapi=1" frameborder="0" height="360" width="640" allowfullscreen="true"></iframe></p>
<p><span style="color:#d35400;"><strong>First Impressions</strong></span> <br>If you recognize "ear candy" when you hear it, the intro’s sixties-ish guitar hook, reminiscent of the jangly riff that jumpstarts Jackie DeShannon's "When You Walk In The Room," may be your kind of confection. Producer Todd Rundgren knows a little something about power pop, a noble if neglected genre he helped pioneer with his classic, “Couldn’t I just Tell You,” a powerhouse <em>tour de force</em> that hangs with overlooked masterpieces like the Raspberries’ “Tonight.”</p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/8ff2fca48e99f760129db0bb197b67707f617e73/original/tr.jpg/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W1sic2l6ZSIsIm1lZGl1bSJdXQ==.jpg" class="size_m justify_center border_none" alt="" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><span class="font_small"><em>I can think of worse guys than Todd Rundgren to produce your psychedelic power-pop tune. </em></span></p>
<p>That opening riff gives way to the kind of well-crafted melody which used to be acclaimed as “catchy” or “cheery,” archaic qualities once considered desirable in more innocent times, specifically the swinging sixties. It’s remarkable that "Earn Enough" retains a light and optimistic feel, even as red-flag words like "praying," "humiliation," and "hurtful" permeate its verses and choruses. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, cameras strategically placed around the underused Gilmore kitchen capture the girls’ reverence for coffee, their penchant for replacing plates with paper towels, and their disdain for forms of cooking reliant on appliances any more complex than the common toaster. </p>
<p>I was initially drawn into the girls’ <em>arabica </em>fixation after noting that their Braun Aromaster coffeemaker from 2001 is the exact same model as the one percolating on my present kitchen's Formica counter in 2021. The show asks us to suspend our disbelief that once-rebellious Lorelai, who popped out Rory at age sixteen, is actually the best mom in the mystical New England hamlet of Star's Hollow— a contention hardly confirmed by countless scenes of Lorelai egging on her fourteen-year old's eight jolts of joe a day habit—but I digress. </p>
<p>This is as good a place as any to slip in my preconceptions about XTC. Whenever I think about them, and I've thought of them often cause I had a girlfriend who played them incessantly, two adjectives spring to mind: quirky, and ... wait for it ... <em>asexual</em>. That's asexual lyrically, a trait you wouldn't necessarily pick up on after listening to a single song, but becomes glaringly obvious the more tracks you hear, or as soon as you switch to a profoundly sexual British band like, say, T-Rex.</p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/fbaa85bc638d3d4443a6401dfc4243d5d1699764/original/xtc-pilgrim.jpg/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><span class="font_small"><em>In case you've never heard XTC called "asexual" before, I offer the self-image of themselves they chose to promote their Skylarking album. I rest my case!</em></span></p>
<p>XTC's asexuality stems from the fact that face-of-the-band Andy Partridge is just not sexy in any traditional rockstar sense. What about in a non-traditional sense? Intelligence can be sexy, right? Well, Partridge is certainly that, but he's also a rather frail human caught in a cross-fire of neuroses—which effectively cancels out the "intelligence can be sexy" angle. No evidence suggests that his he or his brainchild were even the tiniest bit influenced by American R&B records like "I'm a King Bee," "Little Red Rooster," or "I'm a Man," the racy and raunchy mother lode which influenced so many British contemporaries who later went on to become rock royalty. As a result, I can't name a single XTC track that can be classified as "ballsy." </p>
<p>"But wait," you say, "XTC wasn't really competing with cock rock bands like Whitesnake, AC/DC, or Van Halen, their rivals were fellow art-rockers like Talking Heads, Blondie, and Devo." Yeah, sorta, except I can guarantee that in the eyes of the Warner Bros executives who hired Todd Rundgren, XTC was competing directly with <em>every </em>band on FM radio and MTV, and the aforementioned contenders were orders of magnitude sexier. </p>
<p>Settling into a niche that's more cerebral than seminal isn't necessarily a good thing or a bad thing in and of itself. On the other hand, when it comes to niceties like getting your songs licensed by a TV series which prides itself on peppering its scripts with relatively obscure cultural references, raking in huge publishing bucks in the process, having a storehouse of heady material that differentiates you as part of the intelligentsia is a tremendous asset. The odd old school rock critic might brand you asexual, but thanks to the current Netflix boost, you get to laugh all the way to the bank—<em>Gilmore Girls</em> synched at least four XTC tunes during its long and successful run, albeit never pairing song and scene quite as effectively again. </p>
<p>One reason "Earn Enough" goes with the footage like crumpets and doilies is that, in a roundabout way, XTC's cerebral tendencies align perfectly with <em>Gilmore Girls</em>’ imperfectly drawn Rory character. We learn that the young miss has devoured the sum total of the world's sexiest literature—Henry Miller's <em>Tropic Of Cancer, </em>Kerouac's <em>On The Road</em>, the complete works of Marcel Proust, and Nabokov’s later romps like <em>Lolita </em>and <em>Ada </em>—by the age of fourteen, yet we're somehow supposed to believe that the foxy Mensa maiden remains pure as the driven snow for four full seasons (87 episodes!), or until she finally gives it up at age nineteen to a married hunk during the Season 4 finale. Really? What happened to art imitates life and life imitates art?</p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/2bcaf4b2caa1c9cf878c62da704ccfc814ceb46f/original/gilmore-girls-outfits-3.jpg/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W1sic2l6ZSIsIm1lZGl1bSJdXQ==.jpg" class="size_m justify_center border_none" alt="" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><em><span class="font_small">We're supposed to believe that Rory Gilmore chose study over studly 87 episodes in a row ... even though every night she curls up with a pile of once-banned books. That's more disbelief than some of us are willing to suspend!</span></em></p>
<p>So we've got a band that goes years without writing anything rawer than "so she talks about diseases, and which sex position pleases best her old man," and a TV series that keeps its audience hanging for years until its costar finally comes of age. Bingo! A match made in heaven!</p>
<p><span style="color:#d35400;"><strong>The Music</strong></span><br>OK then, If I'm so convinced XTC's asexual while sexuality has always made the music world go round, how do I explain their enduring cult status? Easy. Their vibrant musical side compensates for their wildly creative yet G-rated lyrical side.</p>
<p>"Earn Enough For Us" could serve as a case study showcasing at least ten successful stratagems they and their various production teams regularly employ:</p>
<ul> <li>Colin Moulding's bass playing is lively, vital, and about as close to Paul McCartney at his best in "Rain" as it gets. </li> <li>Their various studio drummers over the years—two of whom have also appeared on Milkmen recordings, Pat Mastellotto and Chuck Sabo—are also all fantastic and very lively. Prairie Prince, formerly with the late great San Francisco art rock band The Tubes (their big hits were produced by Todd Rundgren), does the honors on this one. </li> <li>The fact that XTC tunes invariably have snappy rhythm tracks makes the band members seem less like brains in a bottle than they actually are. </li> <li>They’re very strong at coming up with hummable melodies and compelling harmonies. </li> <li>They excel at inserting seldom-used but inventive guitar chords and wish-I'd-thought-of-that chord progressions into their arrangements. In this one, the guitars-only arrangement changes just enough here and there to keep internet copycats seeking to reproduce it constantly guessing. </li> <li>They come up with some great hooks, like the one Dave Gregory kicked this song off with at the urging of Todd Rundgren. </li> <li>They're expert at getting in and out of clever bridges. </li> <li>They recognize the importance of beginnings and endings; the ending to this one is an ingenious final burst of psychedelia as tight as any I’ve heard. </li> <li>Their producers are all fantastic and know how to liven up G-rated material. Quite a few of their productions are Peter Gabriel-level great. </li> <li>Their engineers are also all fantastic and know how to liven up G-rated material. The studio treatment of individual instruments and the collective whole is just sterling; the "in your face" mix holds up forty years later. </li>
</ul>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/c672c9b75472f1301a3425947a993c2dadcd8647/original/rory-gilmore-gilmore-girls-34512-766-1024.jpg/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W1sic2l6ZSIsIm1lZGl1bSJdXQ==.jpg" class="size_m justify_center border_none" alt="" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><span class="font_small"><em>Foxy Mensa maiden Rory Gilmore. </em></span></p>
<p><span style="color:#d35400;"><strong>The lyrics</strong></span><br>I'm afraid I've come up with a laundry list of reservations that go well beyond it's impossible to top the "Mr. Ed Theme" lyrics I rhapsodized about last installment. </p>
<p><em>I've been praying all the week through <br>At home, at work and on the bus <br>I've been praying I can keep you <br>And to earn enough for us</em></p>
<p>When the title of your song is "Earn Enough For Us," it's pretty much a given that one of the rhymes is going to be "us/bus." Wasting no time, Partridge throws it right into the fire. </p>
<p>Points for the intelligent double-rhyme of "week through" with "keep you." "Week" and "keep" are soft as opposed to hard rhymes ("seek" would be an example of a hard rhyme for "week"), but they're close enough. The presence of double-rhymes is a giveaway that a highly-skilled wordsmith's at work. </p>
<p>But two "prayings" in the first four lines? “The first, “praying all the week through” assumes that listeners subscribe to the same Church of England ethos you do. The second, “praying I can keep you” indicates a need to let the rest of the world know which side of the master-slave relationship you come down on. While there's nothing inherently wrong with being a Protestant or a sub, that's an awful lot of veneration for verse one.</p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/6a9de218a267c2761bf00034750a71a58756d88b/original/ap2.jpg/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><span class="font_small"><em>Genius and douchebag aren't mutually exclusive. What's with this guy and idiotic hats? Is thinning hair really so reprehensible?</em></span></p>
<p><em>I can take humiliation <br>And hurtful comments from the boss <br>I'm just praying by the weekend <br>I can earn enough for us</em></p>
<p>If there was any doubt XTC is quirky, as in really quirky, verse two erases it. Here we encounter the foreshadowed appearance of "humiliation" and "hurtful" in the context of a pop song. The singer already confessed his subservient tendencies; now he's reveling in self-sacrifice to boot. </p>
<p>Another appearance of "praying?" That's <em>three of them in the first eight lines</em>, in case you’re keeping score, which is even more questionable when you stop and consider that "Dear God," the big hit from the same <em>Skylarking </em>album, ruffled a lot of feathers for promoting atheism. So which is it? </p>
<p>Verse one's 1-3, 2-4 rhyme scheme is summarily discontinued in verse two. Unlike "through" and "you," "humiliation" and "weekend" are a no-go. </p>
<p>Since Partridge already burned the obvious "bus"/us" rhyme, he's forced to scramble for ones that are more of a stretch, like "boss/us." Given the limited options, it's a sensible choice, especially considering that having a boss and riding a bus directly relates to the singer's lot in life further explored in the bridge:</p>
<p><em>Found a house that won't repair itself <br>With it's windows cracking <br>And a roof held together with holes <br>Just because we're on the bottom of the ladder <br>We shouldn't be sadder <br>Than others like us <br>Who have goals for the betterment of life <br>Glad that you want to be my wife, but honest</em> </p>
<p>This little vignette, encompassing time-honored British literary motifs like class struggle and lower class aspirations, is quintessential XTC. </p>
<p>The line about having "goals for the betterment of life" is distinctive, as is the inclusion of specific details like "the windows cracking" and "a roof held together with holes;" they bring the picture into sharper focus. </p>
<p>Regarding the subject of matrimony, well, anyone volunteering to enter that state with the human who wrote this better have a degree in clinical psychology.</p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/92b3f7819ede8c0af1d0bf3700f55f5bb9195970/original/andypartridg525b2.jpg/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><span class="font_small"><em>Mr. Partridge, as The New York Times would refer to him, in plaid Sherlock Holmes jacket.</em></span></p>
<p><em>I've been praying all the week through <br>At home at work and on the bus <br>I've been praying I can keep you <br>And to earn enough for us</em></p>
<p>Repeating what initially seemed like verse one, but might actually be the chorus, works well enough in this spot, save for the vexatious fourth mention of "praying." Dear god, indeed!</p>
<p>Now we come to a reprise of the likeable bridge section, only, surprise, the lyrics have changed:</p>
<p><em>So you're saying that we're going to be three <br>Now, a father's what I'll be <br>Don't get me wrong, I'm so proud <br>But the belt's already tight <br>I'll get another job at night, but honest</em></p>
<p>Displaying a willingness to slave away at a second job may resonate with diehard fans of the Protestant work ethic, but, let’s face it, the demographic of people who choose songs about working your life away (The Animals' "We Gotta Get Outta This Place" is one of the best ones) over songs about fucking your brains out is sparse. </p>
<p>Oh, it seems that the local mistress our protagonist worships is in the family way. Introducing an unexpected pregnancy when things bog down is a surefire plot device authors have employed since time immemorial to amp up the drama quotient in any form of storytelling—however, placing it in a three-minute pop song, as opposed to a thirty-minute soap opera, comes with a price.</p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/82891ce2bb34fe7cec1401c2101ce6711aace280/original/tr3.jpg/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><span class="font_small"><em>Earn enough for us, indeed! There's a much better selection of candid Todd Rundgren pix than uptight XTC promo poses. Here he is with lady love Bebe Buell and a one-foot long Liv Tyler, which is a whole other story.</em></span></p>
<p>What price is that? Altering the lyrics to a bridge section we've just heard and liked as it was is an iffy proposition because, for one thing, it makes the song harder to sing along to, and, for another, it adds an element of confusion, as in why did Partridge choose to switch those lyrics but elect to reprise the same, excuse the pun, <em>sub-optimal</em> spiel about supplication which follows directly afterwards? </p>
<p><em>I can take humiliation <br>And hurtful comments from the boss <br>I'm just praying by the weekend <br>I can earn enough for us <br>Just because we're at the bottom of the ladder <br>We shouldn't be sadder <br>Than others like us <br>Who have goals for the betterment of life <br>Glad that you want to be my wife, but honest </em></p>
<p><em>I can take humiliation <br>And hurtful comments from the boss <br>I'm just praying by the weekend <br>I can earn enough for us <br>I can earn enough for us</em></p>
<p>Yikes—the red flag words are really piling up! The final tally is four mentions of "humiliation" and "hurtful" and five of "praying" in one pop song. Sheesh! Paging the poem doctor! </p>
<p>You'd think the inclusion of all those show-stoppers might automatically rule out "Earn Enough's" chances of being an endearing pop song. Miraculously enough, they don't. Those musical strengths I listed earlier are powerful enough to counterbalance any and all perceived lyrical deficiencies. Then there's ...</p>
<p><span style="color:#d35400;"><strong>The singing</strong></span><br>Suffice it to say I have nothing but praise for the vocal performances. For someone too neurotic to perform live, it would appear Mr. Partridge never had any problem hamming it up in the studio. He draws out the key vowel sounds, like the "e" in "all the weeeeeeeeeeeek through" and the "a" in "humiliaaaaaaation," playfully oscillates his volume and pitch, and tosses some spirited "oh oh oh oh oh oh oh ohs" into the bridge for good measure. Microphones are so much kinder to him than cameras. </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/89d5448e2b84bf913225a683262a6ff0789eee54/original/lor.jpg/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><span class="font_small"><em>Lorelai Gilmore's big singing moment, a stirring karaoke rendition of the Dolly Parton classic.</em></span></p>
<p>Backup singer Colin Moulding's adept at mimicking Partridge's charismatic inflections. Blending both voices and adding in a sprinkling of "magic fairy dust"—aka the judicious use of studio stalwarts like equalizers, compressors, delay lines, and limiters—dials in the signature XTC sound. </p>
<p>There are basically two types of great singers. The first type is exemplified by someone like Rod Stewart, who's impressive whether he’s belting out his own material or interpreting other people's songs. The second type won't necessarily knock your socks off covering other people's material, but in all likelihood there’s no one else who could put their own material across quite as well. Partridge is a prime example of the second type. I doubt anyone would want to hear his rendition of "Hoochie Coochie Man," yet he stands and delivers that grab bag of red flag words as if he were born to do it. <br><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/a432a5b71070fa18adca4a9f00faf9b8f0a19274/original/xtc-singing.jpg/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><span class="font_small"><em>Skylarking producer Todd Rundgren raising his voice in song with XTC's Moulding and Partridge despite the well-documented friction between them space and time preclude rehashing, .</em></span></p>
<p><span style="color:#d35400;"><strong>One-Sentence Summary</strong></span><br>Nothing I've kvetched about dissuaded me from playing "Earn Enough For You" over and over again, which is, after all, the biggest compliment I can pay it. </p>
<p><span style="color:#d35400;"><strong>Last Licks</strong></span><br>I mentioned that The Milkmen have two drummers in common with XTC. </p>
<p>Pat Mastellotto guest-starred on these <em>Dairy Aire</em> tunes <a contents="found on this playlist" data-link-label="Dairy Aire (2000)" data-link-type="page" href="/dairy-aire-2000" target="_blank">found on this playlist</a>:</p>
<p>"Dairy Aire"<br>"Find The Time"<br>"Time To Move O"n<br>"Dick Darling"<br>"On The Rebound"<br>"Someday Came Too Soon"<br>"Tide To Turn"</p>
<p>Chuck Sabo pounded the skins on "Head and Heart" <a contents="available on this&nbsp;playlist" data-link-label="Songlab (2018)" data-link-type="page" href="/songlab-2018" target="_blank">available on this playlist</a>. </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>The Milkmentag:themilkmen.space,2005:Post/65809592021-03-24T12:24:06-06:002021-07-26T12:22:31-06:00Old School Critiques of YouTube Videos: #2, Jay Livingston and Mr. Ed, "The Mr. Ed Theme"<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe class="justify_inline" data-video-type="youtube" data-video-id="tkksL5KYC_c" data-video-thumb-url="https://img.youtube.com/vi/tkksL5KYC_c/mqdefault.jpg" type="text/html" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/tkksL5KYC_c?rel=0&wmode=transparent&enablejsapi=1" frameborder="0" height="360" width="640" allowfullscreen="true"></iframe></p>
<p>Sixty years later, the goofy "The Mr. Ed Theme," crooned by by a talking horse stabled inside a suburban barn and a song pitcher, remains indelibly etched in the collective unconscious. "A horse is a horse of course of course" indeed!</p>
<p>Anyone surprised I've reviewed the song stylings of a talking horse shouldn't be. I signed up to evaluate anything on YouTube that grabs me—talking and singing quadrupeds always have. A hunky golden palomino raising his voice in song to a melody that may outlast the pyramids is perfect fodder for another installment of <em>Old School Critiques</em>. </p>
<p>You may be wondering why in March of 2021 someone with intellectual leanings has spent countless hours binge watching <em>Mr. Ed</em>—whose four-legged star is regularly derided by certain cast members as<em> </em>a "dumb animal."<em> </em>Well, I've got a beastly side, too, but the main attraction is that there's infinitely more intelligence in that show's scripts than what passes for it in Congress today. After four years of keeping up with the politics of a bitterly divided nation, given a choice between more of that or working my way through two hundred fantasy-world episodes of <em>Mr. Ed</em>, I'll take the sitcom, thanks! <img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/39e8b5459416069f10978ac94339def8497f3a22/original/ed-tophat.jpg/!!/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><em><span class="font_small">"I now pronounce you Mr. and Mrs. Ed. You may nuzzle the bride."</span></em></p>
<p><span style="color:#d35400;"><strong>First Impressions</strong></span><br><span style="color:#000000;">Ah, black and white = more innocent times. Western motif logo</span>—yessiree!<span style="color:#000000;"> Love the atomic-age titles. Alan Young as Ed's confidante Wilbur Post has the exact sort of face a horse would talk to. Connie Hines, as the wife unit, is a babe-and-a-half who divides her time on the show either stomping off in a huff, jealous of all the attention Wilbur gives Mr. Ed, or arranging herself on Wilbur's lap in the shared comfort of their overstuffed tufted armchair. </span><span style="color:#000000;">What's noteworthy about "Produced and Directed by </span>Arthur Lubin" is that same Hollywood visionary also produced and directed the unforgettable <em>Francis The Talking Mule</em> movie series. Any man <a contents="who made&nbsp;talking quadrupeds&nbsp;his life's work" data-link-label="Bovine Serenade" data-link-type="page" href="/bovine-serenade" target="_blank">who made talking quadrupeds his life's work</a> is a man after my own heart. </p>
<p>One initial impression I'm hesitant to disclose, but will anyway cause I can't shake it, is that certain verse forms written in the late fifties and early sixties strike me as having a superhuman quality, as if they couldn't have come into existence without an assist from certain stimulants, most likely Benzedrine. Now Alan Ginsburg would still have been a great poet even if didn't have any chemical help when he wrote <em>Howl</em>, and Bob Dylan still would have been a great songwriter even if he didn't have extra pep in his step as he finessed fifteen-verse epics like "It's All Right Ma" into shape. I'm not insinuating that taking advantage of any brain-enriching substance is cheating; artists use the tools they have at their disposal. Do I know for a fact that "bennies" were involved in the creation of the aforementioned works, or "The Mr. Ed Theme, for that matter?" In a word: no. But it wouldn't surprise me a bit—that stuff seems just too preternaturally good for a primate to concoct without brain boosters. </p>
<p>Take this sample from Ginsburg's <em>Howl </em>(which is like 1% of the poem, by the way) for example:</p>
<p><em><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/12ca98a98a8751fe085f3b13f558d72ccace53a2/original/ginsburg.jpg" class="size_orig justify_right border_none" alt="" style="margin-right: 30px; margin-left: 30px;" />Peyote solidities of halls, backyard green tree cemetery dawns, wine drunkenness over the rooftops, storefront boroughs of teahead joyride neon blinking traffic light, sun and moon and tree vibrations in the roaring winter dusks of Brooklyn, ashcan rantings and kind king light of mind, </em></p>
<p><em>who chained themselves to subways for the endless ride from Battery to holy Bronx on benzedrine until the noise of wheels and children brought them down shuddering mouth-wracked and battered bleak of brain all drained of brilliance in the drear light of Zoo,</em></p>
<p>Are you catching my drift? </p>
<p>The Dylan stuff is a little more earthbound, but still seems supercharged: </p>
<p><em><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/83d83ba7ee88b3499f086d2885b78e2a930a2f5c/original/bd.jpg/!!/undefined/b:W1sic2l6ZSIsIm1lZGl1bSJdXQ==.jpg" class="size_m justify_left border_none" alt="" style="margin-right: 15px; margin-left: 15px;" />Old lady judges watch people in pairs <br>Limited in sex, they dare <br>To push fake morals, insult and stare <br>While money doesn't talk, it swears <br>Obscenity, who really cares <br>Propaganda, all is phony </em></p>
<p><em>While them that defend what they cannot see <br>With a killer's pride, security <br>It blows the minds most bitterly <br>For them that think death's honesty <br>Won't fall upon them naturally <br>Life sometimes must get lonely </em></p>
<p><em>My eyes collide head-on with stuffed graveyards <br>False gods, I scuff <br>At pettiness which plays so rough <br>Walk upside-down inside handcuffs <br>Kick my legs to crash it off <br>Say okay, I have had enough <br>What else can you show me </em></p>
<p><em>And if my thought-dreams could be seen <br>They'd probably put my head in a guillotine <br>But it's alright, Ma, it's life, and life only</em></p>
<p>If uppers helped those long, serious themes hit even heavier, couldn't they also help a short, happy theme feel even lighter? </p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/89a4e300e4e1c178252f462e56922d8eefa6f306/original/clint-ed.jpg/!!/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" /><span class="font_small"><em>Dirty Harry dances the rumba for Connie Hines while Mr. Ed patiently awaits his next take.</em></span></p>
<p><span style="color:#d35400;"><strong>The lyrics</strong></span> <br>I can rattle off several other TV themes with lyrics that have shown real staying power over the test of time: "Hey Hey We're The Monkees" and "Rawhide" spring to mind. </p>
<p>A fair amount of people still appreciate, "hey hey we're the Monkees, people say we like to monkey around" or "rollin' rollin' rollin', keep them doggies rollin; rawhide." But that number pales with the amount of people who still can't get "The Mr. Ed Theme" that one Jay Livingston cooked up in 1961 out of their heads. </p>
<p>The video starts off with a handsome horsehead peering out from behind his stall's shutters, about to intone in his signature <em>basso profundo</em>:</p>
<p><em>Hello, I'm Mr. Ed.</em></p>
<p>At which point Livingston takes the reins from the show's namesake and begins incanting: </p>
<p><em>A horse is a horse, of course of course <br>And no one can talk to a horse of course <br>That is, of course, unless the horse is the famous Mr. Ed!</em> </p>
<p>Right out of the gate, those lyrics are galloping along! There's so much to unpack in three quick lines: </p>
<ul> <li>Look how balanced that first line is—horse and horse, course and course. Rhyming the same words twice in the same line is pure, unadulterated genius! I'm consumed with admiration! I've never used so many exclamation points!</li> <li>The words "horse" and "course" also appear in line two. As the human brain is attuned to hearing different words rhyme, it might be disconcerting that both the first two lines end in "course." In theory it's a problem, in reality it's a winner—this stanza has such a lilt to it, it just whizzes right by.</li> <li>Inserting "and no one can talk to a horse" in the second line sets us up for the illusion-shattering third line ... </li> <li>With "... unless the horse is the famous Mr. Ed," Livingston has summarized the show's <em>raison d'etre</em> in one brief verse. Bravo! He didn't have to throw in "the famous" before "Mr. Ed," things would still be cantering along at a brisk clip, but doing so serves dual purposes: dazzling the crewcutted and pigtailed fifties kids tuning in to the show, while simultaneously assuring them they're doing what all the popular kids are doing.</li> <li>"That is" may be the key phrase of the song, cause the writer throws in just enough syllables to keep the cadence flowing. The third line contains another "of course" which we're still not remotely tired of, despite its appearance in three consecutive lines!</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: center;"><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/0e83e753799ae10ed3744a781bc8b46a6691ebcf/original/sandy-2.jpg/!!/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" /><span class="font_small"><em>OMG my boyhood idol, Dodgers great Sandy Koufax, schmoozing with one of the beings I most most admire.</em></span></p>
<p><em>Go right to the source and ask the horse <br>He'll give you the answer that you'll endorse <br>He's always on a steady course, talk to Mr. Ed</em> </p>
<ul> <li>Livingston had to work some other rhymes into verse two. "Source" and "endorse" are optimal choices. Wilbur knows from past experience what a valuable source of knowledge Ed (who can read) is. Ed is undoubtedly the superior problem solver, his brainstorms help Wilbur escape one jam after another—that's why Wilbur makes a habit of endorsing his ingenious solutions—then unabashedly takes credit for them himself! </li> <li>Verse two offers yet another appearance of the word "course," this time in conjunction with the adjective "steady"—and it still isn't boring. It's true that Ed's a lot steadier than the show's easily triggered bipeds who constantly fly off the handle. </li> <li>Putting a talking horse on prime time was an inspired concept in and of itself, but the real masterstroke was portraying Mr. Ed as both smarter and more sensible than the human cast or guest stars.</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: center;"><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/1f4759055cfd43ba315bd284d56bcfc4b7ff6a49/original/1962-studebaker-mr-ed-color.jpg/!!/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" /><span class="font_small"><em>Mr. Ed in Technicolor: red barn, turquoise Studebaker Lark, Golden Palomino, brown suited Wilbur, pink wife unit</em></span></p>
<p><em>People yakkity yak a streak and waste your time of day <br>But Mister Ed will never speak unless he has something to say </em></p>
<ul> <li>Those two lines are, of course, (sorry) a bridge; you may not recognize them since the theme song is abbreviated during the opening credits; the full version rolls over the end credits. </li> <li>"Yakkity yak a streak" harkens back to my previous scribblings about the possible influence of "bennies." Hey, I'd pop some too if it helped me come up with stuff like that! 999 out of 1,000 writers would have settled for "talk a streak." Too bad Benzedrine was so good it was <em>too good</em>; the FDA banned it around 1970! </li>
</ul>
<p><em>A horse is a horse, of course, of course <br>And this one'll talk 'til his voice is hoarse <br>You never heard of a talking horse? </em></p>
<p><em>Well listen to this ... </em></p>
<p><em>I am Mister Ed </em></p>
<ul> <li>Livingstone reprises the first sentence of verse one, but then ... </li> <li>He throws in a homophone, (two words that sound pretty much the same but have slightly different meanings and spellings) "horse/hoarse," to end the second and third lines. Can we call that a "homophonic (not homophobic!) rhyme?" </li> <li>True about "this one'll talk himself hoarse;" the loquacious steed launches into extended monologues and soliloquoys, , flaunting his storehouse of horse sense as he expounds on any number of subjects. I like the seldom-seen contraction, "one'll."</li> <li>In line three, Livingstone indulges in his own horseplay, addressing viewers directly as "you," drawing them further in, before posing a frolicsome question. He's having a little fun with the show's absurdist premise, a giveaway that the producers don't take themselves too seriously. </li> <li>With "well listen to this" our theme song's about to take a little twist ... </li> <li>"... I am Mister Ed!" It's the deep hick voice of the golden palomino himself, reappearing. He can sing, too! What viewer would be nutty enough to "turn the dial" (quotes cause anyone with zero gray hair has never experienced the joy of turning a dial to change a channel) now?"</li>
</ul>
<p>I'm blown away! The only other theme song intoned by an animal character I can think of with lyrics that can remotely hold a candle to this <em>pièce de résistance</em> is "The Wonderful Thing About Tiggers," from children's classic <em>Winnie the Pooh</em> (speaking of theme songs most likely written under the influence of something-or-other):</p>
<p><em>The wonderful thing about tiggers </em><br><em>Is tiggers are wonderful things! <br>Their tops are made out of rubber <br>Their bottoms are made out of springs! <br>They're bouncy, trouncy, flouncy, pouncy <br>Fun, fun, fun, fun, fun! <br>But the most wonderful thing about tiggers is <br>I'm the only one</em></p>
<p>Only as great as that one is—and it's not just a little great, it's a lot great—"Tiggers" lacks the universal appeal of an all-time blockbuster like "The Mr. Ed Theme." One reason I snuck in that tidbit of semi-useful information in is that Rolling Stones founder Brian Jones, oft-mentioned in the initial installment of this series, bought Cotsworth Manor and the swimming pool he was found doing the dead man's float in from the estate of Pooh author A..A. Milne!</p>
<p><span style="color:#d35400;"><strong>The music</strong></span> <br>If the buoyant strains were any less corny or any more hip, Mr. Ed wouldn't have caught fire with the public like it did. Those of you not on Medicare are unlikely to have a plenteous supply of Broadway show tunes, all the rage in the fifties and sixties, stored in your memory banks. The reason I bring them up here is that the same brass, string sections, and a percussionist or two adept at performing both showstoppers ("Oklahoma") and sillier songs ("I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Out Of My Hair") in theaters and music halls around the nation often picked up a few extra bucks as session musicians, performing incidental music and the odd theme song for TV shows. That's very likely what we have here, conducted by a musical director practiced at swiftly coming up with bits of sympathetic orchestration—just the thing for classing up low-budget TV dramas and comedies. </p>
<p>My favorite musical bit comes in right at 0:13, leading into verse one: it's the percussive chime of two horseshoes clanging together! Brilliant!</p>
<p><span style="color:#d35400;"><strong>The singing</strong></span><br>The Jay Livingston as main vocalist backstory is that the show's producers auditioned any number of accomplished session singers they anticipated would add a pro glow to his immortal verse; only none of them sounded anywhere near wacky enough to match the show's slapstick <em>schtick</em>. So they stuck with Jay's demo version, reluctantly at first, until the tremendously positive response forced them to rethink ever replacing it. That noble effort's been embraced by Mr. Ed's cavalry of fans ever since.</p>
<p>It may have crossed your mind that producer Lubin and the great comic George Burns, the show's main financial backer and also the guy who supervised the show's writers (and the guy who made a fortune from the show's syndication), missed a trick by not assigning Ed a heavier share of the theme song's workload. </p>
<p>Well, it turns out that trick wasn't missed at all, it was just delayed till they sprung Mr. Ed, lead singer, on an unsuspecting public in <em>Ed the Songwriter</em>, Episode 12 of Season 1. The brother of next door neighbor Mrs. Addison, a song publisher, overhears Wilbur humming a ditty that Ed composed in his stall, "Pretty Little Filly" (With the Ponytail). Of course Wilbur has to stand in front of Ed and pretend to sing it, cause of course horses can't speak (unless it's to Wilbur). Space prohibits a detailed probe into Sheldon Allman's inspired mini opus, but let's just say I can't imagine anyone coming up with a better song for the occasion! I've posted the entire episode below (the finished song begins at 21:54):</p>
<p><iframe class="justify_inline" data-video-type="youtube" data-video-id="FBWhPFp4E7M" data-video-thumb-url="https://img.youtube.com/vi/FBWhPFp4E7M/mqdefault.jpg" type="text/html" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/FBWhPFp4E7M?rel=0&wmode=transparent&enablejsapi=1" frameborder="0" height="360" width="640" allowfullscreen="true"></iframe></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><span class="font_small"><em>For all you trivia buffs out there, Mrs. Roger Addison in Mr. Ed was also Mrs. Cosmo Topper in Topper!</em></span></p>
<p>I especially dig the mock Beatnik trio faking the suitably zany accompaniment!</p>
<p>{{<strong>Note:</strong> Bummer, blocked by MGM! I'll try and hunt down another version}}</p>
<p>In <em>Mister Ed's Blues</em>, Episode 8 of Season 2, the show's brain trust once again turned to the Post family's stable of hitmakers (okay, maybe Sheldon Allman had a hoof in it, too). Kay Addison's brother reappears, desperate for another can't miss chart-topper to keep his floundering publishing company above water. Blues is all the rage, so Wilbur (via Ed) is tasked with coming up with with appropriately bluesy words and music. Once again Ed's up to the task, tapping into his natural affinity for roots and grains with "The Empty Feed Bag Blues." </p>
<p><iframe class="justify_inline" data-video-type="youtube" data-video-id="gGZwmelwnBU" data-video-thumb-url="https://img.youtube.com/vi/gGZwmelwnBU/mqdefault.jpg" type="text/html" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/gGZwmelwnBU?rel=0&wmode=transparent&enablejsapi=1" frameborder="0" height="360" width="640" allowfullscreen="true"></iframe></p>
<p><span style="color:#d35400;"><strong>Last Licks</strong></span><br><em>Mr. Ed</em> has been just what the horse doctor ordered for surviving the tail end of a pandemic. I never saw it the first time around, when it originally aired on CBS Sunday nights at 7 PM EST, before <em>Lassie </em>(a sentimental series featuring a heroic Scotch Collie) and <em>The Ed Sullivan Show</em>. That slot was dinner time in the Kohn household, we were still polishing off our rations of instant potatoes with instant gravy and canned vegetables before assuming our TV-watching positions for <em>Lassie</em>, so I never realized what I was missing. </p>
<p>After thrilling to this holy trinity of Mr. Ed hits, I don't envy the next biped writer/performer up for my next foray into <em>Old School Critiques.</em> Talk about a hard act to follow—it's gonna take something really special for any two-legged contender to exceed the lofty standards set by a superstar quadruped, the one and only Mr. Ed.</p>The Milkmentag:themilkmen.space,2005:Post/65661492021-03-05T18:25:46-07:002021-07-26T12:01:30-06:00Old School Critiques of YouTube Videos: #1, The Rolling Stones, "Nineteenth Nervous Breakdown"<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe class="justify_inline" data-video-type="youtube" data-video-id="FoNSFFhyEi8" data-video-thumb-url="https://img.youtube.com/vi/FoNSFFhyEi8/mqdefault.jpg" type="text/html" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/FoNSFFhyEi8?rel=0&wmode=transparent&enablejsapi=1" frameborder="0" height="360" width="640" allowfullscreen="true"></iframe></p>
<p>"Nineteenth Nervous Breakdown" never really flipped me when it came out in 1966. Apparently, it just needed a little time—a mere fifty-five years is all it took—to grow on me.</p>
<p><span style="color:#d35400;"><strong>First Impressions</strong></span><br>Here we have a pro shoot of the sixties Stones at the top of their game, performing live on a bare studio soundstage, bathed in cool blue light. Mysteriously, clicking Show More brings up zero information about where and when the video was shot. The camera never cuts to an audience, though the mics pick up its hysterical screams; in a weird way, that might be what drew me in. </p>
<p>I'm immediately transported back to a moment in time when Brian Jones was still a highly-functioning musician. After <em>Stoned</em>, the Jones biopic, the tendency is to think of him more as a dead body floating in the swimming pool of his country estate than as <a contents="an unusually inventive multi-instrumentalist for The Rolling Stones" data-link-label="" data-link-type="url" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flSmiIne-4k" target="_blank">an unusually inventive multi-instrumentalist for The Rolling Stones</a>. </p>
<p>A tenth of a second into the video, it's obvious that these guys were God's gift to the tailoring profession. Guitars serve double duty as instruments and fashion accessories—note how the white pickguard on Jones' Gibson Reverse Firebird matches a snow-white turtleneck, completing his trendy ensemble. A reluctance to transition from copying blues numbers to originating pop tunes is often cited as a major reason why Jones fell out with the band. He also spent so many hours on Carnaby Street, indulging his hankering for sartorial splendor, that maybe there just wasn't any time left for less gratifying pursuits like composing, recording, and performing. </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/3429bb83dee580a9e51a69a566e8f60865d00872/original/bj1.jpg/!!/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><span class="font_small"><em>"Peacock, parading down the block, wearing the latest fashion ..."</em></span></p>
<p>One curious visual element is that the three band members positioned stage left and stage right, Bill Wyman, Jones, and Keith Richards, wore monochromatic outfits, while Mick Jagger and Charlie Watts, in center stage, rock brown tones. Watts has also signed up for the turtleneck brigade; his is more of a mustard hue.</p>
<p>Anyone aware of his later legal difficulties may find the decision to station lecherous Bill Wyman closer to the audience, the better to leer at the impressionable jailbait, than Jones, the fairest Stone of all. Jones smiles for the camera from time to time, Richards does as well, but for the entire four minutes they never even look at each other. It's hard to imagine the two of them sitting down together and working out the meticulous two-guitar arrangements they're famous for, but those tightly-woven parts couldn't have written themselves. </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/b508dbd677722e623abde95dd2320b6f4cc7c4a3/original/keith-and-brian-2.png/!!/b:W10=.png" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p>Jagger's looking dapper in a pinstriped, wide-lapel jacket, mugging for the camera and crowd, tossing in some borrowed-from-James-Brown dance moves, deftly manipulating what's now a retro mic to emphasize various inflection points.</p>
<p><span style="color:#d35400;"><strong>The music</strong></span><br><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/d7ef62b61e1b8308a019a110e6c1d6be838697ca/original/bj3.jpg/!!/undefined/b:W1sic2l6ZSIsIm1lZGl1bSJdXQ==.jpg" class="size_m justify_left border_none" alt="" />A hypnotic Brian Jones riff runs throughout the song. <em>Bum bum bum bum, bum bum bum bum bum</em>, it repeats over the I-IV-V chord progression. Many guitarists would have dismissed a part this elementary as beneath them and thrown in some amount of embellishment to convince us of their brilliance. Not Jones, who, for a while at least, was content coming up with simple yet memorable riffs to dress up a variety of Stones originals like "The Last Time." Alas, he began finding the exercise tiresome shortly thereafter. </p>
<p>On the Richards side, we find one of the best rhythm guitarists of all time in peak form, previewing some of the ground-breaking chord work that appeared in so many memorable Stones productions from <em>Beggars Banquet</em> to <em>Exile On Main Street</em>. The first chords he comes in with have a chimey quality that's distinct from the tried and true Chuck Berry chords the Stones made a name for themselves recycling. Richards' ongoing quest for more ear-catching chords, which eventually led to his discovery of open tunings, began right here. </p>
<p>Ever notice how cameras inevitably shy away from bass players in rock videos, no matter how good they are? How many times have you seen a camera show more than a passing interest in John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin or John Deacon of Queen? Like never, right? Well, as far as this video's producer was concerned, Bill Wyman was as captivating as any other Stone. It actually starts off framing Wyman and an oddball Framus bass he wields in a unique horizontal position, as if it were a standup bass. The video even ends with a closeup of Wyman playing the ascending glissando that's arguably his all-time best bass lick. With this opportunity to study Wyman in action came the realization just how primal this bass part is and appreciation for how well it meshes with the synchronized guitars.</p>
<p>Charlie Watts keeps things so simple on drums just about any sentient, semi-coordinated humanoid could grab some sticks and fake the part in ten minutes flat. Is that necessarily a bad thing? Not at all. Would other drummers have been sorely tempted to throw in a whole lot more? In all likelihood, but they're forgotten old geezers now, he's Charlie Watts, and he's still selling out 300,000-seat football stadiums in Argentina. </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/e06088f5f1609e9a080997b7574ae7e88b30767b/original/tea-ladies.jpg/!!/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><span class="font_small"><em>"Could I interest you in something along the lines of a floral, lightly oxidised High Mountain Oolong?"</em></span></p>
<p><span style="color:#d35400;"><strong>The lyrics</strong></span><br>This video compelled me to focus on the lyrics, because: </p>
<ul> <li>Mick works the mic from one spot, as opposed to prancing all over a huge stage or charging out into the audience on a catwalk as was his wont once The Stones began headlining arenas and stadiums. Being in constant motion on an elaborate set diverts attention away from the lyrics and onto the choreography and costumes, while toeing a mark on a bare set brings them to the fore.</li> <li>Lyrics are also thrust into an even more prominent role when there's no soloing and nothing significant is added to or subtracted from the musical arrangement—the case here.</li> <li>No crowd reaction shots is one less distraction as well. </li>
</ul>
<p>It's also worth mentioning that although "Mr. Jagger" (as The New York Times refers to him) has been a media darling for over a half century, he remains chronically underrated as a lyricist. He's a lot more renowned for just <em>Being Mick</em> (the title of a 2001 TV doc which follows Mick and his pink suit around as he makes the rounds of places to see and be seen like Ascot Racetrack), for his well-publicized dalliances with actresses and supermodels from Texas to Nicaragua, for being an occasional cult film star (<em>Performance, The Man From Elysian Fields</em>), for being a soulful R&B singer, for his longevity as a performer, and so on. All that magnifies Jagger's legend even as it obscures the fact that more celebrated wordsmiths like John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Jim Morrison, Bob Dylan, and Ray Davies have nothing on him.</p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/e7e0a9a298e4f695ca00418a0a6c5238dcfb4b2b/original/mj-1.jpg/!!/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><span class="font_small"><em>"There's a world where I can go and tell my secrets to, in my room, in my room."</em></span></p>
<p>Earlier in 1966, after "Satisfaction" skyrocketed to the top of the charts, an emboldened Jagger discovered that writing about subjects that would have previously been considered way too out there could be richly rewarding. "Nineteenth Nervous Breakdown," the followup, sold almost as well as "Satisfaction." </p>
<p>The catchy title had a lot to do with it. Would I be writing about this song fifty-five years later if the title was "Thirteenth Nervous Breakdown?" That doesn't quite have the same ring to it, does it? How about "Thirty-ninth Nervous Breakdown?" No again. It just had to be the <em>nineteenth </em>nervous breakdown for the song to take off and endure for as long as it has. </p>
<p>The first thing that jumps off the lyric sheet is all those rhymes within rhymes. There's one in the very first line: </p>
<p><em>You're the kind of person you meet at certain dismal dull affairs</em> </p>
<p>"Person" and "certain" are the rhymes within a rhyme. Not a whole lot of lyricists would pair "person" with "certain," but this one did, and they add a certain bounciness that wouldn't be there otherwise. "Dismal dull affairs" gets my attention, too—the future Sir Mick had started moving in high society circles, right around the time the press began dubbing particularly successful pop stars "rock royalty."</p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/b0e8cf3d75b6f7547ba83b9474a25bebd19a90d5/original/pm.png/!!/b:W10=.png" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><span class="font_small"><em>"What could that dashing longhair have possibly meant by 'you're a lashing, smashing hunk of man, your sweat shines sweet and strong, your organ's working perfectly, but there's a part that's not screwed on?'"</em></span></p>
<p>There's the small matter of a misplaced pronoun, you can't really meet yourself, can you, but I'm not the word police and those screaming girls were there to get as far away from reading, writing, and arithmetic as they could. There's only a millisecond to ponder why one of the world's biggest pop stars keeps finding himself at tiresome soirées in swinging London before the next line is upon us:</p>
<p><em>Center of a crowd talking much too loud, running up and down the stairs</em> </p>
<p>Another rhyme within a rhyme, "loud" and "crowd," appears in line two. "Affairs" and "stairs," the main rhyme, sounds fresh, too. </p>
<p><em>Well it seems to me that you have seen too much in too few years</em> </p>
<p>I really like this line! The narrator fleshes out the nervous breakdown theme with this shrink-speak. Did Jagger read that line somewhere, then adopt it as inspiration for the song? "Me" and "seen" is not a direct rhyme, it's what's known in the trade as a "soft rhyme." Close enough—the shared "e" sounds keep it kosher. </p>
<p><em>And though you've tried you just can't hide your eyes are edged with tears</em> </p>
<p>"Edged with tears" is downright Shakespearean. Has the verb "edged" ever been used in a song before or after? The hard (exact) "tried" and "hide" rhyme within a rhyme leaves no doubt. The main rhyme, "years" and "tears," we've heard before, but no matter, the best songs combine the fresh with the familiar. </p>
<p>Here's the first chorus:</p>
<p><em>You better stop, look around <br>Here it comes, here it comes, here it comes, here it comes <br>Here comes your nineteenth nervous breakdown</em></p>
<p>The repeated "here it comes" really build, setting up the punchline.</p>
<p>Well, just a verse and a chorus into it, it's obvious that Jagger is feeling his oats. "Satisfaction" was even better, cause it addressed the totality of the human condition, but it would have been extremely difficult, if not outright impossible, to top that. Better to address the perceived flaws of one high maintenance female, a songwriting formula that worked well enough for Bob Dylan in "Positively 4th Street." </p>
<p>On to verse two:</p>
<p><em>When you were a child you were treated kind but you were never brought up right </em></p>
<p>"Child" and "kind" (as opposed to, say "wild") are definitely semi-rhymes, but still in the acceptable realm thanks to the common "i" sound. </p>
<p><em>You were always spoiled with a thousand toys but still you cried all night</em> </p>
<p>"Spoiled" and "toys" are even farther off, yet the "oy" sounds relate.</p>
<p><em>Your mother who rejected you owes a million dollars tax <br>And your father's still perfecting ways of making sealing wax</em></p>
<p>Provocative! A few reactions: </p>
<ul> <li>I'm guessing these tidbits of family history came directly from the lips of some society babe Jagger was banging. Whether that's true or not, what remarkable lines to hear coming out of a clock radio in 1966!</li> <li>I was unaware that sealing wax was a thriving trade in twentieth century England, especially to the extent that anyone's mother could rack up a million dollar tax bill. In a similar vein, I don't recall the constitutional monarchy briefly switching currencies from pounds to dollars in the mid-sixties. Perhaps I'm taking these lines too literally, lol? </li> <li>"Who/you" continues the pattern of inserting rhymes within rhymes, while the second line breaks it completely: "father" and "ways" are a no go, but the <em>horizontal rhyme</em> (yes, I'm making these terms up on the fly) of "perfecting" with "rejected" directly above it (or the "perfect" and "reject" syllables within the full words, to be specific) makes up for it. </li>
</ul>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/d27f48bec55622dfa6cbac14585128847801ae59/original/19th-pop-chart.jpg/!!/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><span class="font_small"><em> Reaching #1 in Italy means you're likely leading la dolce vita!</em></span></p>
<p>After another rousing chorus, we come to the first bridge: </p>
<p><em>Oh who's to blame, that girl's just insane <br>Well nothing I do don't seem to work <br>It only seems to make matters worse <br>Oh please</em></p>
<ul> <li>Ah—"work" and "worse" are a <em>homophone </em>(two words that sound alike or close to alike with different meanings) employed as a rhyme. Since there doesn't seem to be a term for that, let's call it an <em>alliterative rhyme</em>. In any event, it's a rare sighting!</li> <li>Rhyming "blame" and "insane" is soft but effective. </li> <li>The bluesy slang of "nothing I do don't seem to work" is a nice counterpoint to the patrician-speak which preceded it ("dismal dull affairs," "a million dollars tax," brought up right").</li>
</ul>
<p>Continuing on to verse three: </p>
<p><em>You were still in school when you had that fool who really messed your mind</em> </p>
<p>Demonstrating that you can nail the hard rhymes within rhymes like "school/fool" makes the softer ones glide by unnoticed. The best rhymes within rhymes keep the story moving along as if they weren't there. They're never expected, people aren't exactly clamoring for them, but planting them is an indication that you intend your song to stand the test of time. Maybe, just maybe, some wise guy fifty-five years later will pick up on your dedication to craft. </p>
<p><em>And after that you turned your back on treating people kind</em> </p>
<p>Jagger flits back to soft with "that" and "back," concealed within the "mind/kind" main hard rhyme. </p>
<p><em>On our first trip I tried so hard to rearrange your mind <br>But after a while I realized you were disparaging mine</em> </p>
<p>Great imagery! In those two lines alone: </p>
<ul> <li>The word "first" is a giveaway that this couple has tripped together more than once, suggesting that the narrator actually has a thing for a chick he's diagnosed as "insane." Why else would he keep coming back for more, even if he can't resist psychoanalyzing her for the entire song? </li> <li>There's another break in the pattern of inserting rhymes within rhymes— no matter how hard you stare at "trip" and "hard," there's no connection. Listeners won't miss it cause they're too busy picturing this couple on LSD (or recalling one of their own psychedelic experiences). </li> <li>We get another horizontal rhyme, the pairing of "rearrange" and "disparage." You don't get the feeling that Jagger struggled to come up with this playful verbiage, it feels like it just flowed out of him. The alliteration makes it doubly clever. </li> <li>The very soft "while" with "realized" rhyme capitalizes on "i" sounds. </li> <li>We get a second alliterative rhyme pairing of homophones, "mind" and "mine," a rare sighting. </li> <li>But wait—Jagger's already used "mind" twice in the same verse: "messed your mind" and "rearrange your mind"—which means three of the four lines in verse three end in mind, mind, and mine! </li>
</ul>
<p>Look at all four lines together: </p>
<p><em>You were still in school when you had that fool who really messed your mind <br>And after that you turned your back on treating people kind <br>On our first trip I tried so hard to rearrange your mind <br>But after a while I realized you were disparranging mine</em></p>
<p>Sure, that's a little convoluted, which would be a bad thing if it detracted from the storytelling in any appreciable way. It doesn't. The third chorus comes in so fast you don't have time to pay it much, er, <em>mind</em>. </p>
<p>After throwing in a second bridge, this really-long-for-the-times four minutes plus song adds a verse four, which turns out to be, of all things, a carbon copy of verse two! The classic move would have been to reprise verse one, or, failing that, verse three. Who repeats verse two of a three-verse song? Someone secure enough to make his own rules, who understood that verse three wasn't as good as the first two, and realized that the lines about the million dollars tax and the sealing wax are timeless. Eccentric or not, like every other aspect of this song, verse four works whether it "should" or not. </p>
<p><strong><span style="color:#d35400;">The singing </span></strong><br>The recited verses in "Nineteenth Nervous Breakdown" have a singsong quality, which give way to the more held-out choruses. For someone not known for his vocal gymnastics, Jagger's always had a knack for coming up with melodies that showcase his favorable qualities—pleasing tone, theatricality, conviction—and stand up against ones written by much showier singers. </p>
<p>The Stones never put a fraction of the energy that The Beatles, The Hollies, The Searchers, and The Dave Clark Five, to name just a few, poured into their vocal arrangements. It was basically all Mick all the time, with an occasional mostly-on-key assist from Keith Richards—unsurprisingly. that's what's on tap here. Jagger's swaggering recitation gets the point across. If I break out the microscope, about the only flaw I can find with this performance is that he runs a little short of air on "oh plea-ee-ee-ease" at the end of the bridges. In fairness, this is almost a mirror image of his studio performance, only there an engineer "cheats" by riding the volume fader, disguising it. </p>
<p>Richard's backup singing adds to the mirth here and there. It's enthusiastic, but don't listen too hard—if you had to choose between Richards, Graham Nash, Robin Gibb, or Paul McCartney as the main backup singer for your pop/rock group well, let's face it, Richards is the last guy you'd go with. But the little bits and pieces he offers conspire to keep The Stones as viable as bands stacked with great singers. </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/6429db1ea3b88769b7bfa5b06f08e6868d835fc4/original/stones-singing.png/!!/b:W10=.png" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p><span style="color:#d35400;"><strong>Last licks</strong></span><br>Heading for home, the Stones shift gears: after pausing for two measures of the hypnotic Brian Jones riff, the band kicks back in, skipping the "here it comes" buildup, repeating the "here comes your nineteenth nervous breakdown" line the song goes out on. Slick! </p>
<p>"Nineteenth Nervous Breakdown" may not be The Stones' greatest sixties song, but this particular video might be the best one to place in a time capsule as a sterling example of their original lineup in fabulous form.</p>
<p><span style="color:#d35400;"><strong>Update 3/9/2021</strong></span><br>I just figured out the shoot has to be from one of the Stones' appearances on the Ed Sullivan show. Below I've posted a similar video which includes his signature introduction. They launch into "Satisfaction" on what appears to be the exact the same set, viewed through the exact same camera angles, exhibiting the producer's identical fascination with Bill Wyman. Some of the stage clothes are switched, the lighting has changed to a flame color, but these two videos had to have been shot at the same session. This isn't the best live rendition of "Satisfaction" I've seen on YouTube, but once again the production values are superb. </p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe class="justify_inline" data-video-type="youtube" data-video-id="5uLODx-mgLo" data-video-thumb-url="https://img.youtube.com/vi/5uLODx-mgLo/mqdefault.jpg" type="text/html" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/5uLODx-mgLo?rel=0&wmode=transparent&enablejsapi=1" frameborder="0" height="360" width="640" allowfullscreen="true"></iframe></p>The Milkmentag:themilkmen.space,2005:Post/65633052021-03-02T18:26:07-07:002021-07-26T11:49:17-06:00Old School Critiques of YouTube Videos: Series Preview<p>A lot of folks ineligible for Social Security might be astounded to learn just how much "ink" print media lavished on music reviews in the sixties and seventies. Magazine spreads ran two, three, four pages or even longer. Eagerly-anticipated albums were dissected song by song, with commentary about everything from the guitar picks to the orchestration. Cover art was praised or panned as if the cardboard should have been hung in the Louvre or tossed in the gutter. Even the song order was fair game for criticism. The scrutiny was supplied by offbeat humans who scrounged out a living as "rock critics." <img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/d3f6f3d67c4a624fc76bddcb3c2e8c0f4244df7c/original/great-stones-album.png/!!/b:W10=.png" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p>The basic prerequisites for being a rock critic were a) have a major aversion to more conventional forms of work, and b) have a burning desire to get paid for what you'd be doing anyway—getting high and getting off on record albums or the radio, maybe going out for a few hours to hear a live band, then coming home and getting high and getting off on record albums or the radio. If you could string a couple of sentences together to boot, you were on your way. </p>
<p>A would-be artiste like myself, who wrote for and edited <em>Rocky Mountain Musical Express</em> from 1975 to 1978, churning out hundreds of reviews in the process, checked both boxes. That seemed like a past life experience until last month a trove of old issues I hadn't seen for forty years resurfaced out of the blue. As I was leafing through them, memories of all that time I spent working 75-hour weeks when the record industry's hype machine was really humming along came rushing back to me.</p>
<p>Keeping the heroic mythology flowing was an all-consuming job. When stoned sleep-deprived writers face a choice of being less outrageous or more outrageous, guess which one they invariably pick? "Ah, fuck it" back in the day evokes some "did I really say that" moments today. </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/3ce21e95338eea2abf4bc0a8d6f74c13418c538b/original/rmme-full-spread-editor-listing.jpg/!!/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p>Once I recalibrated to that length of coverage and that level of outrageousness, I got to thinking: what if I had free rein to train the same powers of analysis on YouTube videos that grab my attention today? Could I recreate the same role I played in a bygone era?</p>
<p>I'm optimistic about recreating the role; as for the era, well, there was way more human interaction in the seventies. Messy as human relationships can be, they also have their romantic aspects, unlike the virtual three-way I'm presently in with YouTube, a PC setup, and a modem. </p>
<p>It's not like I'm overly nostalgic for the past. There was never anything particularly glamorous about pecking out album reviews for peanuts on failure-prone mechanical typewriters. On the other hand, a profession not known for rewarding its own had its own set of perks, like: </p>
<ul> <li>You were constantly rubbing shoulders with decadent, druggy, free-love embracing recording artists, not to mention their equally adventurous support staff and hangers-on. Those contacts took place in fantasy settings like show clubs, backstage dressing rooms, tour buses, hotel rooms, and afterparties held at exotic venues like the Playboy Club. Anything under the sun could happen at any time; think <em>Almost Famous</em>. </li> <li>Part of the gig was calling on record companies in music biz hotbeds like LA or NY. When you did, they couldn't wait to load you up with dozens and dozens of record albums in the fervent hope you'd review one or two of them. The excess vinyl you collected was valuable wampum, easily exchangeable for albums that you really wanted or legal tender at any used record shop (which there were any number of). </li> <li>You got to see how the other half lives when you have something record companies want—not the other way around. Toward that end, they'd assign foxy publicists who may have taken Led Zeppelin out on the town the night before to wine and dine you at "swinging hotspots." After all, in the pre-internet world, what rock critics wrote shaped public perception in ways unimaginable today.</li> <li>Backstage passes to the hottest live events usually came with +1 privileges; expressions of gratitude from whoever you carefully selected as your +1 took many agreeable forms. </li> <li>With print media king in pre-internet times, people stumbled across your articles anywhere and everywhere. Notice how in old movies people waiting around are always reading newspapers? That gave you a certain, ahem, <em>cachet </em>when you were out and about and ran into people who'd read your stories. </li> <li>You could assess all the elements that go into successful songwriting, recording, and live performance—valuable intelligence to have at your disposal if you ever made the fateful decision to compete with the same artists you once critiqued! </li>
</ul>
<p>Since a lot of rock critics got paid by the word, that was a pretty good reason to be expansive right there. Another motivating factor was that the longer your review ran, the happier that made the artist's record company. Happy record companies are much more likely to buy full page ads from publications that hype their artists to the hilt. That incentivized those same publications to keep the saturation coverage coming. And who best to keep the publication's starmaking machinery stoked? The same genius who wrote the review that persuaded the record company to write the check in the first place. And so the world turns. </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/03ff06dadeccb04908d3794fa33a47b8dfeda8bd/original/creem.jpg/!!/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" />Contrast the slew of in-depth music reviews from yesteryear with today's motley amount of coverage—if you can even call it that—where even the greatest stars are lucky if they rate a paragraph or two in what's left of <em>Rolling Stone</em> or doctors' office rags like <em>People</em> or <em>Us</em>. </p>
<p>What factors combined to put the in-depth music review on life support? Realities like:</p>
<ul> <li>Shorter and shorter attention spans.</li> <li>The demise of the album as an art form, replaced by increased focus on singles.</li> <li>New forms of media without copy protection that could be freely duplicated like CDs and mp3s that record companies couldn't monopolize, loosening their grip on the industry and slashing their bottom lines.</li> <li>The profound shrinkage of print publications in general—replaced by digital media and social media, mediums with a viewership intimidated by posts much longer than a tweet. </li>
</ul>
<p>Ignoring reality for the moment (reality like nineteen out of twenty people already stopped reading this post), let's get back to the question of what would it look like if an old school rock critic reacted to YouTube videos as if the year was 1977 and people couldn't wait to read everything they could get their hands on about rock music? Well, now you don't have to wonder—they tell me <a contents="the first installment is already up" data-link-label="" data-link-type="url" href="https://themilkmen.space/blog/blog/old-school-rock-critic-reviews-youtube-vids-1-the-rolling-stones-nineteenth-nervous-breakdown" target="_blank">the first installment of Old School Critiques of YouTube Videos is already up</a>! </p>
<p>Curious which of the 786 zillion YouTube videos I chose to kick off the series? Hint: it's a 1966 live video from a British rock band which didn't put much emphasis on ensemble singing, but lasted twenty times longer than contemporaries who did!</p>
<p>—Lory Kohn</p>
<p><strong><span style="color:#d35400;">Update 4/11/2021 </span></strong> I just came across a new documentary, <a contents="Ticket To Write" data-link-label="" data-link-type="url" href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07YBLSXFG?psc=1&pf_rd_p=0341f622-1508-4712-8614-4588a55d8cf4&pf_rd_r=26MQ0MY4WNTR8C5YYE5B&pd_rd_wg=2hZeG&pd_rd_i=B07YBLSXFG&pd_rd_w=6FyRD&pd_rd_r=fbd94508-6fb5-4320-8986-8663aaf10dfe&ref_=pd_luc_rh_ci_mcx_mr_huc_d_03_01_t_img_lh" target="_blank">Ticket To Write</a>, about "the golden age of rock journalism." You'll need an Amazon Prime membership, which quite a few of you already have, to view it. Enjoy! —LK</p>The Milkmentag:themilkmen.space,2005:Post/64297182020-09-09T22:55:16-06:002024-02-11T13:24:39-07:00MM dig deep to save the free world, drop "Vote Them Out!"<p>With other accomplished songsmiths content to regurgitate past glories from their stay-at-home digs, the task of penning an uplifting anthem for our phantasmagoric times fell to the all-but-forgotten Men of Milk. With nothing less than the future of the free world at stake, could they deliver once more?</p><div class="video-container size_null justify_inline" style=""><iframe data-video-type="youtube" data-video-id="Gr-zJf7hJhs" data-video-thumb-url="" type="text/html" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Gr-zJf7hJhs?rel=0&wmode=transparent&enablejsapi=1" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="true"></iframe></div><p>According to main milker Lory Kohn, they could and did, <i>but</i>: "I had to dig <i>really </i>deep. At this stage, turning 69 next month, I thought I'd be getting out and about, one guy and one guitar, performing solo acoustic versions of my greatest misses at discriminating listening rooms from Asheville to Big Sur. Hah! About the last thing on my mind was tackling an epic studio production—with a political theme, no less."</p><p>Well . . . what pulled the sexagenarian super-ager back in?</p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/7d9fe9e1fbc0e7336b329bf592786563dd3fb1da/original/blue-suit-full.png/!!/undefined/b:W1sic2l6ZSIsIm1lZGl1bSJdXQ==.png" class="size_m justify_left border_" /><p>"Having time on my hands during a pandemic to watch all those people marching in the streets for Black Lives Matter. I never thought I'd see that kind of activism again in my lifetime. I took note that there was always some kind of music playing at those televised marches and rallies taking place all over the country—although none of it was purpose built. It seemed like the anti-Trumpism movement could use a "rallying cry," if you will, which addressed the immediate task at hand.</p><p>Oh? Just what was the immediate task at hand?</p><p>"Once it became readily apparent that no matter how many high-profile protests there were neither the executive branch or the Republican-controlled Senate was ever going to acknowledge that black lives matter—or lift a finger to release the thousands of Latino children they separated from their parents and locked in cages—the task I'm talking about was <i>voting every single last Republican out</i>. </p><p>How did "Vote Them Out!" go from idea to finished production?</p><p>"I had the music for a song with a strong Native American "pow wow" beat in my back pocket. But I hadn't come up with anything thematically to go along with it that I could really sink my teeth into. Then the "we will vote them out this fall" lyrics and melody popped into my head. It was so catchy and so simple that it was easy to visualize masses of people singing along to it. Once I saw that in my mind, there was no choice but to commit to the long, arduous process of writing, refining, and recording "Vote Them Out!" in, shall we say, <i>less than ideal</i> times and conditions. On the other hand, those less than ideal times and conditions were much easier to handle now that I was on a mission. Having an outlet to work through the feelings of helplessness and despair that anyone with an shred of compassion has had to endure under the Trump administration made me feel like I wasn't entirely powerless. Being fully engaged in a constructive project, instead of sitting idly by and stewing about what I couldn't control, made me feel one with time and space."</p><p>But work on "Vote Them Out!" got underway a mere three months before the election. What was it like trying to pull off an epic production with the clock ticking?</p><p>"Nervewracking! In the normal course of events, if I haven't done any serious recording for a while, I start off with the simplest productions, then work my way up to ever more demanding ones. Except that there wasn't any time to dilly-dally around with the election coming up right around the corner. There was no choice—I had to go for it right away, whether I was in top form or not. Unfortunately, things began going nowhere fast. At some point, I realized that trying to rush things was counterproductive. I had to take a step back and revert to my usual snail-like pace, which is what it is because I tend to try out a lot of different things until I figure out the the parts I feel will stand the test of time." </p><p>Speaking of songs that have stood the test of time, "Vote Them Out" seems to channel certain beloved Neil Young classics from a bygone era. </p><p>"Guilty! The intention was to capture the vibe of Neil's early 70s classics like "Cinnamon Girl," "When You Dance," and "Ohio." For you guitar players out there, that means drawing from his pioneering compositions in double-drop D tuning—a mode which made them stand out from the crowd in 1970 and keeps them fresh-sounding to this day. I had concerns that, some fifty years later, listeners might find that style a little dated . . . until <a class="no-pjax" href="https://www.marcuscliffe.com/bio" target="_blank" data-link-type="url" contents="Marcus Cliffe">Marcus Cliffe</a>, the mix engineer who consistently intuited exactly what the song needed, pointed out that twentysomethings seem to love those songs just as much today as they did fifty years ago. Timeless is timeless . . . so I just forgot about what year it was, embraced those type of chords and that type of guitar sound, and went with it."</p><p>Where did that pounding pow wow beat and the war cries come from? </p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/5788ec4b19a41e486b28f0584d8966f21150e641/original/pueblo-2.jpg/!!/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" /><p style="text-align:center;"><span class="text-small"><i>Lory has spent years living in a Taos casita overlooking sacred Indian land. That's where the pow wow beat comes from. </i></span> </p><p>"Without reprising the entire horrific history of racial injustice in the United States, there were two groups who experienced it the most. One of them I've already mentioned, and the other, Native Americans, we don't think about as much for the simple reason that most of them have been exterminated. The ones who haven't been are exiled in out-of-the-way reservations where they're largely out-of-sight and out-of-mind. There's one notable exception: the Taos Pueblo Indians are the only Indians who got their land back. Their corner of God's green earth is one of the most awe-inspiring spots on the planet. I'm lucky enough to live right next to it, close enough to hear them drumming away for days on end at gatherings of the tribes. That's how and why a pow wow beat found its way into the production and why it's such a crucial element."</p><div class="video-container size_null justify_center" style=""><iframe data-video-type="youtube" data-video-id="G6lCFBSA6WE" data-video-thumb-url="" type="text/html" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/G6lCFBSA6WE?rel=0&wmode=transparent&enablejsapi=1" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="true"></iframe></div><p style="text-align:center;"><i>Lory performing on the rooftop of his Taos casita overlooking sacred Indian land.</i> </p><p>"Vote Them Out!" has received a much-appreciated plug from musicologist and Twist and Shout Records owner Paul Epstein; Paul is also Co-Chair of the Colorado Music Hall of Fame. Here's what he wrote in the latest issue of the Denver institution's newsletter:</p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/s:bzglfiles/u/262866/7bb2388bebdf44e676b49d40c7c67d9226e8b166/original/t-s.png/!!/meta:eyJzcmNCdWNrZXQiOiJiemdsZmlsZXMifQ==" class="size_l justify_center border_" /><p>In an ideal world "Vote Them Out! would have been released a lot sooner than six weeks before the 2020 election. Yet there's still time to pitch in, pass it on, and uplift fellow liberty-lovers before the most consequential election of our lives.</p><p>A download of "Vote Them Out!" is available to purchase <a class="no-pjax" href="/vote-them-out-2020" target="_blank" data-link-type="page" data-link-label="Vote Them Out 2020" contents="here">here</a>.</p><p><br><span style="color:#ff6500;"><strong>{Update 2/09/2024}</strong></span> <span>I messed up in 2020. Well, after a lot of experimentation, I actually succeeded at creating my best production ever that's also probably our best mix ever … only it took so much time and effort that “Vote Them Out” wasn't mixed and mastered till the middle of September 2020. That left no time to market it with every potentially interested party already in a frenzy over getting Orange Face Man evicted from the White House. So, yeah, on that account I messed up. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p><span>It would have sucked to go to all that effort and have nothing to show for it, but, bless its black heart, MAGA forgot to go away after its Dear Leader was voted out. He's somehow back for another spanking, ten times more pyscho than he was four years earlier, which takes some doing. His minions have transformed the House of Representatives into an insane asylum. The existential need to vote every last one of them—like every Republican legislator or anyone running to be one—out (and keep the dictator in waiting on the outside looking in) in 2024 is even more urgent than it was last presidential election year. The MAGA Cruelty Show isn't going to stop running anytime between now and November. There are going to be dozens and dozens of times you'll yearn for a mental reset and “Vote Them Out” is going to be there for you to uplift you at the exact moments you're going to desperately need positive visualization. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p><span style="color:#ff6500;"><span><strong>There's another cause well worth mentioning</strong></span></span><span>. Anyone who's lurked here knows I've given away the entire Milkmen 100+-song Silo of Hits for free after spending endless hours and who knows how many dollars recording all those tunes. I'd resigned myself that 2018's </span><i><span>Songlab, </span></i><span>which included every song I'd been itching to produce for a decade, would be the last major Milkmen recording. It wasn't; “Vote Them Out” popped out in 2020. Strangely enough, in the succeeding four years, I don't seem to have grown dim-witted or become uncreative. It appears I have one last major recording left effort in me. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p><span>That's why I and democracy itself would greatly appreciate everyone</span><a class="no-pjax" href="/vote-them-out-2024"><span> buying “Vote Them Out”</span></a><span> </span><i><span>for a whopping two dollars </span></i><span>and spreading the word amongst your friends to do the same to fund one last round of milkmania. I'm envisioning kind of a digital chain letter that you send to ten of your friends, they send it to ten of their friends, and so on. </span></p><p><span>You may have also noticed that I've provided hours and hours of entertaining reading material in this blog and in </span><a class="no-pjax" href="/lk-prose"><span>the LK Prose tab</span></a><span>—which I've spent inordinate amounts of time writing and editing to brighten your days. I only wish I just spat it out and, presto, it reads like that. If only! </span></p><p><span>So, yeah, </span><i><span>for the first time in the five years this site's been up</span></i><span> I'm asking </span><i><span>you </span></i><span>for a donation. I'm not asking you to buy a $40 t-shirt or a $25 mug or even to send me five hard-earned bucks. Contributing $1.99—</span><i><span>less than half the price of a pourover coffee</span></i><span>—and getting “Vote Them Out” in return gives you something to lift your spirits as MAGA finds newer and more inventive ways to go lower and lower and me the wherewithall to keep depositing the assorted milk stuffs you know and love in your virtual milk boxes. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p><span>I want to save democracy just as much as you do. So, please, let's help each other out. Thanks for listening and good milking to all! —Lory<o:p></o:p></span></p>The Milkmentag:themilkmen.space,2005:Post/62784572020-04-11T10:13:52-06:002022-09-04T18:20:35-06:00That Time I Met Peter Townshend<p style="text-align: center;"><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/38d90087d9c64ae15b54ebef20a344590fbe7186/original/townshen.jpg/!!/undefined/b:W1sic2l6ZSIsIm1lZGl1bSJdXQ==.jpg" class="size_m justify_center border_" /></p>
<p>On a cloudy June night in 1970, with the hippy era in full swing, Jon Cells and I found ourselves waiting for our guitars and backpacks at a baggage carousel in the Mile High City. Air travel was beyond the means of most teenage longhairs. Until we departed Tucson, we hadn't taken a single flight in the month we'd been bumming around the country. </p>
<p>I glanced around the terminal. In their kaleidoscopic space-age getups, a bevy of Braniff air hostesses toting color-coordinated carry-ons breezed toward Ground Transportation. Nice scenery—I was liking what I'd seen of this part of the country so far! To my right, a businessman in a gray sharkskin suit used two fingers of his left hand to expertly flick the lid of his brass Zippo lighter open, slid his thumb down on the wheel igniting the wick, lit the Cuban cigar he held in his right hand, then used his forefinger to knock the the lid back in place; Zippo lighter tricks were commonplace thirty years before smoking was banned in airport terminals. Next, my attention was drawn to a figure slumped in a molded fiberglass chair, also waiting for something, alongside three other fatigued-looking souls. There was something about him I couldn't quite place. He looked vaguely familiar. When his identity clicked, I did a double-take—out of 3.75 billion human beings on Earth, the one I most wanted to meet was seated twenty feet away! In the past year, I'd seen him in concert seven times, I'd worn out his records, and I'd spent umpteen hours trying to figure his guitar parts out. </p>
<p>How was it that on a planet with a surface area of 510,072,000 square kilometers our paths just happened to cross at that exact intersection of time and space? For starters, something had to set us in motion. Physics 101 tells us that when a force acts on an object, it often makes it move in a different direction. In this case, the force was a burning desire to escape a stifling New Jersey suburb, the objects were us, and that different direction was due west. </p>
<p><span style="color:#e67e22;"><strong>1 The Music Mecca</strong></span> <br>Until we grabbed our guitars—my Epiphone Eldorado and John's sunburst Gibson B-45 12-string—and boarded a Greyhound bus bound for Nashville, the only direction worth traveling in the tri-state area was (Fillmore) East—the music mecca was an easy forty-five-minute ride away. A typical night at the evocative theater, blocks away from the fabled 2nd Avenue Deli in the bustling East Village, was three immortal bands, state-of-the-art acoustics, and the trippy Joshua Light Show—yours for the princely sum of 3$, $4, or $5. When impresario Billy Graham had the audacity to hike ticket prices up to $3.50, $4.50, and $5.50—to see a typical lineup like B.B. King, Ten Years After, and Janis Joplin—well, irate concertgoers lost their minds and Graham gained an adjective and a noun: "capitalist pig." To some extent he was, but he also brought one great act after another to an ideally sized and situated venue. Between the faded glory of the theater itself, the star attractions, and the light show's shape-shifting blobs, it was hard to imagine an audiovisual experience could get any better. </p>
<p>Hard for most people, but easy enough for Fritz Postlewaite, my roommate for the 1969 spring semester at Southampton College, who imagined the audiovisual experience could get <em>a whole lot better</em> if The Who played there. If I was really after the ultimate rock experience, he assured me, that's the band that I absolutely had to see. But I <em>had </em>seen them, on film anyway, in <em>Monterey Pop</em>. I remembered their appearance more for their guitarist smashing a Fender Stratocaster to smithereens—that's smashing a Fender Stratocaster to smithereens while wearing a frilly poet shirt, to be specific—than for their musical prowess.</p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/f36bf12967e9a81ee8f723ac6f693c2be1322570/original/pt-throw.jpg/!!/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><span class="font_small"><em>You sort of have to play with it a while, before you kill it, it's a cat and mouse kinda thing. First you throw it so high that no one would ever think you could throw it any higher, and then . . .</em></span></p>
<p><span class="font_small"><em><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/ce2044f7f561a446873266d7df66f1241a5c10b0/original/throw-guitar-high.jpg/!!/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></em></span></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><span class="font_small"><em>. . . you prove them wrong. </em></span></p>
<p>So it was hard for me to take this runty, towheaded Hoosier kid seriously, especially since my roommate the previous semester had flipped out after one too many acid trips and dropped out of school. I realized I'd probably seen the last of Fred Rider after I returned from winter break, keyed open my dorm room door, then discovered my path blocked by an elaborate, floor-to-ceiling fort he'd fabricated out of cardboard moving boxes. Depraved ramblings and vivid psychedelic imagery were crayoned all over them. </p>
<p>Turned out this Fritz, who strolled in like five minutes later and didn't exactly have to wrack his brain figuring out why this particular room had a vacancy, had lots of stories to tell. There was one in particular he went on and on about, how in the previous summer of '68, he'd hooked up with The Who after they played Bloomington, his hometown. He'd made it backstage, somehow, his tale went, and developed such incredible rapport with "Pete," "Roger," "Keith," and "John" that they invited him to join their road crew. According to his account, he was their most dependable worker, his value was obvious, and they put him in charge of scaffolding construction at the state fairs, race tracks, and stadiums they played throughout the heartland. He knew all there was to know about positioning PA horns and lighting rigs on scaffolding <em>just so</em>, he claimed. This yarn about being fast-tracked from wide-eyed fan to Chief Roadie, Scaffolding Division, seemed kinda fanciful, as did his never-ending gush-fest over one band and one band alone. OMG, he praised them up and down—they were the greatest thing ever, there was no band like them. I just had to see them, I wouldn't believe it, I'd never be the same.</p>
<p>Maybe, but they were in anything but regular rotation on US radio. I don't think any of their "power pop" singles got any play in the USA before "Happy Jack," an oddball track that was likable enough. Sure, it had a bouncy riff, strange but endearing lyrics, and some unusually spirited drumming. On the other hand, it didn't have anywhere near the, ahem, <em>gravitas </em>of, say, Led Zeppelin's "Good Times Bad Times," which practically leaped out of even the cheapest speakers and screamed "awesome recording." "I Can See For Miles" wasn't too shabby a way to spend four minutes, either, although deejays were disinclined to do it—they didn't spin The Who anywhere near as religiously as Jimi Hendrix, Zeppelin, or even the likes of Grand Funk Railroad. Nice work, but life altering? Fritz played me their latest album, <em>The Who Sell Out</em>, which wasn't without its good points—like its striking cover depicting singer Roger Daltrey wallowing in a basin of Heinz baked beans. The image combined art and commerce, in an obvious nod to Andy Warhol; clearly Decca Records hoped to replicate his success photo-silkscreening a Campbell's Soup can and selling it for a million bucks.</p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/dee3c0ba3a032f84d05dd8732409bf6bab549d6c/original/bb.jpg/!!/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" />The enclosed vinyl went one step further, alternating satiric radio ads for underarm deodorant and pimple cream with album tracks. Clever, but questionable: a lot of strong efforts got lost between the ads. If you wanted the songs, you were basically forced to put up with the ads, that is, unless you were willing to stand next to a turntable, wait for a song to finish, then position the needle onto a visible blank space past the offending ad. Most people just opted to play another album. There was also the reality that Townshend's guitar parts, never lacking in the imagination department, seemed to be missing some key sonic ingredient—like the "magic fairy dust" that engineer Eddie Kramer sprinkled all over Page and Hendrix parts. Fritz's take was, yeah, well, their records were alright, but their live act was their thing. He followed that assertion with yet another recitation of his mantra: <em>I just had to see them, I wouldn't believe it, I'd never be the same</em>. </p>
<p>It was beginning to look like this theory would never be put to the test. Then, wouldn't you know it, toward the end of the semester, we discovered that the Fillmore East had added four Who shows in May! With finals looming, we bought tickets for the early show the first night. Word was they'd be debuting <em>Tommy</em>, a "rock opera," whatever that was. </p>
<p>The weeks flew by, the big day came, then Fritz and I were listening to a conductor tick off Long Island Railroad stops from Southampton to Speonk to Babylon to Penn Station, where we hopped the A Train down to the Village. Killing a few hours before showtime, we amused ourselves at Limbo, a "happening" clothes boutique on St. Marks Place, showing— in addition to its impressive stockpile of abstract expressionist objects d'art—“See Thru Clothing," "Mob Suits," and "Rope Pants for Stud Bands." A head shop next door filled a different void: it carried rolling trays, adorned with iridescent Blue Morpho butterfly carcasses, pressed under glass, guaranteed to please the most discriminating pothead.</p>
<p>As we wound our way over to the music mecca, we succumbed to the enticing aromas of chicken noodle, mushroom barley, and borscht wafting out of B&H Dairy Restaurant, which had operated out of the same narrow storefront forever. We sat down at the counter, loading up on soup and chunks of the world's best challah bread. Then we were mixing with the usual crowd of Manhattan "elites," and presumably lower caste "bridge and tunnel" people milling around outside the storied theater. Self-professed music aficionados—like us, for example— were swapping "I was there" war stories about all the legendary shows we'd seen . . . take a wild guess whose tales were most grandiose of all.<img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/c2df97ccfbf82eb894d21a08c94eb187f859c153/original/fillmore-out.jpg/!!/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><em><span class="font_small">A bird's-eye view of a typical crowd lining up to see three immortal bands at the Fillmore East</span></em>. </p>
<p>Finally, we passed through the front portals and entered a lobby lined with what would now be considered classic psychedelic-era posters advertising upcoming shows. Then boom, we were inside the theater in all its faded 1920s movie palace glory. As always, my attention was immediately drawn to the screen behind the stage, awash in The Joshua Light Show's trademark cool cobalt blue. There was something reassuring about all those stagehands scurrying about, silhouetted against it, that ratcheted up the sense of anticipation and gave you the feeling that you were about to see something special. Things always ran like clockwork at the House of Graham—staff had making fifteen minute transitions between bands down to a science. They'd place gear on rolling risers, the better to quickly move one band off the stage and the next one on. Right on the stroke of eight, Albert King opened, followed by Chuck Berry, so yeah, the crowd was plenty warmed up for whatever was coming next. The entire audience gasped as crew members wheeled a massive drum kit into position center stage, followed by formidable trios of Hi-Watt guitar and bass stacks, advancing in attack formation from each wing. </p>
<p>Bill Graham came out and introduced them, to the usual 50/50 ratio of cheers to boos, with a few "capitalist pigs" audible from the peanut gallery. Then they were off. Man, they came at you fast!</p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/d727eca413b099c4b2441130b2ac38045de716db/original/pete-leap.png/!!/b:W10=.png" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><span class="font_small"><em>"The drummer wasted no time assaulting his kit with murderous intent, the guitarist decked out in, what, a white boiler suit, went airborne higher than the tom toms."</em></span></p>
<p>The drummer wasted no time assaulting his kit with murderous intent, the guitarist decked out in, what, a white boiler suit, went airborne higher than the tom toms, the singer twirled his mic in a wide vertical arc, then flung it horizontally out over the audience, before drawing it back into his hand as easily as if it were a yo-yo. I blinked to make sure I wasn't seeing things. After a brief instrumental intro, the calm-in-comparison bass player was intoning a little number he'd written entitled, "Heaven and Hell." Aside from 14th century epic poems like <em>Dante's Inferno</em>, those two subjects are rarely addressed in verse. The compelling stanzas went a little something like this: </p>
<p><em>On top of the sky is a place where you go when you've done nothing wrong<br>When you've done nothing wrong<br>And down in the ground is a place where you go when you've been a bad boy<br>When you've been a bad boy<br>Why can't we have eternal life and never die<br>Never die</em></p>
<p><em>In this place up above, you grow feathered wings and you flap round and round<br>with a harp singing hymns<br>And down in the ground you grow horns and a tail and you carry a fork<br>And moan and wail<br>Why can't we have eternal life and never die<br>Never die </em></p>
<p>Well. That. Was. Certainly. Entertaining. On. Every. Possible. Level. Why can't we have eternal life and never die? I can't say I have an answer for that—just like I can't say I have an answer for why I haven't heard a whole lot of songs about immortality. The three-part larger-than-life chorus singing was a bit of a shocker, as was all that smart-but-not-too-smart wordplay from The Who's "other" lyricist. </p>
<p>This immensely winning song didn't so much end as, without missing a beat, segue seamlessly into a catchy pop single I vaguely recognized, although it hadn't previously registered as a classic. That might have had something to do with the fact that I'd previously heard "I Can't Explain" on a two-watt clock radio, with a three-inch speaker, 60 dB quieter than the Fillmore's best-on-planet 26-speaker, 1,100-watt sound system. At what Graham liked to call, the "White Man's Apollo," "Can't Explain" came across as the perfectly crafted pop single it was. I'd seen a bunch of "hit singles" performed by some really tight bands like The Animals and The Young Rascals at Murray the K's shows, but I'd never seen one performed anywhere near as flamboyantly—or an outfit so intent on dazzling an audience. </p>
<p>Next, they followed the medley by plowing tricks of the trade they'd picked up over five years of constant touring into a pair of covers, "Young Man Blues" and "Fortune Teller:" executing super-tight starts and stops, varying the dynamics, shifting into double-time after turning on a dime. Then it was time to slow things down with "Tattoo," a ballad buried between pimple cream and underarm deodorant on <em>The Who Sell Out</em>. It could have been a Kinks song, if Ray Davies was a little weirder. Shimmery cross-picking lured everyone in, then Daltrey went to the emotional well:</p>
<p><em>Me and my brother were talking to each other <br>About what makes a man a man <br>Is it brain or brawn or the month you were born <br>We just couldn't understand </em></p>
<p><em>My old man didn't like my appearance <br>He said that only women wear long hair </em></p>
<p><em>So me and my brother borrowed money from mother <br>We knew what we had to do <br>We went downstairs past the barber and gymnasium <br>And got our arms tattooed </em></p>
<p><em>Welcome to my life, tattoo <br>I'm a man now thanks to you <br>I expect I'll regret you <br>but my skin just won't forget you <br>You'll be there when I die <br>Tattooooo oooooo ooooo ooooo</em></p>
<p><strong><span style="color:#e67e22;">2 Individually . . .</span></strong><br>"Tattoo" was a real setup for the angelic-looking singer with the mane of permed hair <em>and </em>his southwestern fringed leather jacket—cut to reveal a toned chest 'n abs, accented with a silver surfer's cross. He'd stretch his arms at crucial moments, the fringes flew out, and now, <em>voilà</em>, he was the spitting image of a thunderbird kachina.</p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/be52c689d72a077cc3abce16cf43bdd79115a413/original/best-wingspan.jpg/!!/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><em><span class="font_small">"He'd stretch out his arms open at crucial moments, the fringes flew out, and now, voilà, he was</span></em><em><span class="font_small"> the spitting image of<span class="font_small"><em> </em></span>a thunderbird kachina."</span></em></p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/ae26769d7ecd761d26d724b6571e1eb952d505a2/original/kachina.jpg/!!/undefined/b:W1sic2l6ZSIsInNtYWxsIl1d.jpg" class="size_s justify_center border_" />Trousers were fashioned from the same fawn skin, with flowing fringe to match. Did Daltrey have quite the range of a Robert Plant? Vocally, no, sartorially, why yes—and then some! He had a commanding presence, he played many roles for a band that required many roles played, he fit in perfectly with this lot. </p>
<p>Drummer Keith Moon was, well, it's a tough call between "a freak of nature" and "a force of nature;" it would be a shame to have to choose, since he was both. He struck quite a few innocent drums and cymbals in brief windows of time. Somehow, his primal bashing never crossed the line into overplaying, even though it was a constant threat. You got the impression it was child's play for him. Frequently, he'd mouth the words in the midst of another assault. His mastery of the six basic facial expressions—disgust, sadness, happiness, fear, anger, surprise (surprise was my favorite)—was on constant display.</p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/98f9ccf521c434fec8d67dcebbed2237d18da8ac/original/moon-action.jpg/!!/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p>You want to talk power? All right then, the guy was a real woodchopper! That didn't prevent him from adding playful percussive bits to the quieter sections. There were also dexterous feats of stick twirling, drumstick illusions, and stirring stick tossing—the hickory shafts invariably descending from the rafters right on target and right in the nick of time to whop his snare. You could have easily spent the entire show just watching him—or you could have if there wasn't such heavy competition coming stage right from Townshend. </p>
<p>The one piece jumpsuit was really working for me. I wanted one. Badly. You could tell he was supremely conscious of how he looked from the audience point of view. I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out that he practiced in front of a mirror, as ballet dancers do. He instinctively knew that standing motionless, with his arms and legs extended out as far as possible, whetted people's appetites for what came next.</p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/0e7840c2c71f0dcf3d9fb5f4ed28b1a9aa5fcc7e/original/arms-out.jpg/!!/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><span class="font_small"><em>He instinctively knew that standing motionless, with his arms and legs extended out as far as possible, whetted people's appetites for whatever came next.</em></span></p>
<p>More often than not, what came next was that signature windmill windup. I observed at least three variations: 1) He'd raise his arm directly over his head with his hand pointing skyward, hold the pose, then circle his hand "anti-clockwise," as the British say, before contacting his strings—the resulting sound wave hung in the atmosphere, like the gilt chandelier above the balcony, before washing over the crowd; or 2) striking the strings with a series of two, three, or four anti-clockwise sweeps in rapid succession, like a boxer throwing a combination; or 3) windmilling while acrobatically leaping aloft, his heels level with his knees. These movements took on an other-worldly cast with the man in the bright white boiler suit spotlit against a black background. </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/895ec294920e378b1fb7a3357cb2e89c173b725c/original/pete-leap-3.png/!!/undefined/b:W1sic2l6ZSIsIm1lZGl1bSJdXQ==.png" class="size_m justify_center border_" /></p>
<p>His guitar tone, which had consistently disappointed me on record, was thrilling me now. There was something magical, if not downright <em>majestic</em>, about the way that red Gibson SG and its pair of P90 pickups combined with the trio of Hi Watt amps and six 4x12 speaker cabinets he'd trotted out for this tour. His playing seemed more <em>definite</em>, his chord selection sounded more technicolor, if you'll excuse the synesthesia, his sense of dynamics came across as nothing short of masterful. Townshend also took the high part in their three-part harmonies—which struck me as more dead-on than I remembered them from <em>Monterey Pop</em>. He took a lead vocal every now and then, a nice change of pace. </p>
<p>That leaves John Entwistle, the sturdy one impersonating a statue, seemingly content to let the others vie for Most Eye-Catching. While his feet stayed moored to a spot, his supersized hands made up for it. They were as animated as could be, his exceptionally long, nimble fingers covered an awful lot of ground as they flew up, down, and across the maple neck of a "Frankenstein" bass he put together from the remains of five smashed basses. His other hand slapped and snapped at his Rotosound strings, in a percussive style of his own devising. To watch him was to watch a virtuoso at work, that is, if virtuosos wrote songs like, "Boris The Spider." The Who needed Entwistle to mesh with a dynamo like Moon—you'd think that would take some doing. Nope, no problem for him, none at all. Entwistle, not Townshend, was their main backup singer. </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/fe324a2d0d44f58928180890e3802a335eee182a/original/skel-2.jpg/!!/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><span class="font_small"><em>To watch him was to watch a virtuoso at work, that is, if virtuosos wrote songs like, "Boris The Spider."</em></span></p>
<p>In short, they were exceptionally talented individually—you could be forgiven for locking in on any one of them at the expense of the whole, that was always a temptation—but the real takeaway was that collectively they'd forged themselves into a crack unit as disciplined as any precision drill team. There weren't there to noodle around and see what happened, like so many west coast acid rock bands. If they'd been born a decade earlier, they would have all flown in the same squadron of valiant RAF pilots who held off the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain. It goes without saying that being English was a big part of their charm. They hailed from an Isle with a longstanding theater tradition, it showed, and they'd come here, to the New World, to bring us British rock at its finest. </p>
<p><span style="color:#e67e22;"><strong>3 Tommy </strong></span><br>The time had come for Townshend, who twenty minutes into the show had already become my favorite guitar player, to announce they'd be performing his rock opera. The Who already had a "mini-opera," a suite of six short songs they'd cobbled together into "A Quick One While She's Away," under their belt. In a nutshell, a "girl guide" takes up with "an old engine driver." "My name is Ivor, I'm an engine driver," so begins part 4, with Entwistle as the beastly protagonist. The outcome is exactly what you're imagining. But six songs is a long way from twenty-two songs; could <em>Tommy </em>sustain a sophisticated New York crowd's interest for an hour or more?</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe class="justify_inline" data-video-type="youtube" data-video-id="RJv2-_--EY4" data-video-thumb-url="https://img.youtube.com/vi/RJv2-_--EY4/mqdefault.jpg" type="text/html" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/RJv2-_--EY4?rel=0&wmode=transparent&enablejsapi=1" frameborder="0" height="315" width="560" allowfullscreen="true"></iframe></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><span class="font_small"><em>The Who steal the show in the Stones' Rock and Roll Circus with "A Quick One." This clip may be the best sound and</em></span> <span class="font_small"><em>video of them available on YouTube.</em></span></p>
<p>Within the first few seconds, it became obvious the music was going to be likable. Very likable. I appreciated how they gave you a little premonition of a song in the overture, then the song, then they'd reprise a section of it later in the program. As the opera progressed, it was clear they'd rehearsed the hell out of it. The ensemble playing couldn't have been any tighter—they'd flashily end one song, then effortlessly shift into a diametrically different mood. The songs flowed into one another, some comic, some tragic, some a little perverted, some more than a little perverted, some just plain strange—all of them various degrees of engaging. </p>
<p>I could take or leave the storyline about how a deaf, dumb, and blind boy becomes a pinball-playing cult leader; instead, I chose to focus on how writing for a ready-made theme forces a songwriter to stretch out musically and lyrically. Main characters require a song or two ("It's A Boy;" "Christmas"), bit players need to announce themselves ("The Acid Queen," "Uncle Ernie"), tunes are required to advance the narrative forward ("Sensation"), other song ideas naturally present themselves along the way ("Pinball Wizard"). Tension built as the opera progressed. After twenty some excursions into previously uncharted musical territory, they reached the climactic "See Me Feel Me/Listening To You" sequence; you've probably seen it, captured for posterity, in the Woodstock film.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe class="justify_inline" data-video-type="youtube" data-video-id="m7AHblQ3_oM" data-video-thumb-url="https://img.youtube.com/vi/m7AHblQ3_oM/mqdefault.jpg" type="text/html" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/m7AHblQ3_oM?rel=0&wmode=transparent&enablejsapi=1" frameborder="0" height="315" width="560" allowfullscreen="true"></iframe></p>
<p>Well, I think you know how that turned out. Now we knew what a rock opera was. There'd been doubt that a rock band could pull one off. Not anymore. There'd been questions about whether or not Townshend was a great guitar player. Not now. </p>
<p>The Who's performance of <em>Tommy </em>was all conquest and triumph. I looked over at Fritz, smirking back at me with a self-satisfied grin. I had to admit it, he was right: <em>I did have to see them, I couldn't believe what I was seeing, and I'd never be the same again</em>. </p>
<p>The anthemic, anarchic "My Generation" remained. Their stuttering three-minute 1965 British hit single had evolved into fifteen freeform minutes of mayhem, mischief, and carnage—in stark contrast to the parade of compulsively-tight tunes that preceded it. The ritual sacrifice of a pricey guitar and and a drum set on a stage originally built for schmaltzy Yiddish burlesque was as creative as it was destructive. </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/daa80ccab96b4a3d17df7066e99d0f647eeacc3c/original/throw-drum-set.jpg/!!/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><span class="font_small"><em>"The ritual sacrifice of a pricey guitar and and a drum set on a stage originally built for schmaltzy Yiddish burlesque was as creative as it was destructive." </em></span></p>
<p>The Who had let off quite a load of steam, to put it mildly. They seemed well-pleased with their performance, and the audience's enthusiastic reaction, as they wrapped their arms around each other and took a final bow. We screamed ourselves silly as they walked off, leaving a wailing, pulverized Gibson SG feeding back into oblivion. Folks, that's show business! </p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe class="justify_inline" data-video-type="youtube" data-video-id="wuxsGrxhqEE" data-video-thumb-url="https://img.youtube.com/vi/wuxsGrxhqEE/mqdefault.jpg" type="text/html" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/wuxsGrxhqEE?rel=0&wmode=transparent&enablejsapi=1" frameborder="0" height="315" width="560" allowfullscreen="true"></iframe></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><span class="font_small"><em>An epic "My Generation," also from their peak year, 1969.</em></span></p>
<p><span style="color:#e67e22;"><strong>4 The Rest of the '69 Shows </strong></span><br>Fritz, supposedly an indispensable member of their production team a summer ago, and I were dying to finagle a way into The Who's sold-out late show. We couldn't—which didn't keep us from hearing it! We actually stood outside in the cold, ears pressed against the Fillmore's red brick exterior, for the entire show, even though we'd miss the last train back to Southampton. Luck hadn't deserted us entirely; we bought some of the last remaining seats for the next night's shows. I've never listened to any act four times in two nights before or since, but those shows were too impassioned to skip. </p>
<p>That weekend's performances went over so well that Graham brought them back again three weeks later. In some ways, knowing what was coming made it even more riveting when it did. The second show was one for the ages. The Who were well into <em>Tommy, </em>when it seemed like the slightest whiff of charcoal was in the air. Perhaps wisps of smoke were swirling in and out of the projector-beamed light as well? The hint of fire was barely perceptible at first, it became more palpable, then everyone knew they weren't imagining it when a half dozen firemen rushed in, axes in hand, frantically gesturing for everyone to get the hell out of there. Fat chance! The Who had gathered a head of steam going into <em>Tommy's </em>dramatic "see me, feel me, touch me, heal me" denouement—they were way too invested in what they were doing to stop now. Everyone loved them even more for fighting to the finish line. </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/c737cc46cc8a46621d878a6ccca6d52e09ff699c/original/fillmore-on-fire.png/!!/b:W10=.png" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p>Two months later, in August 1969, I got to see them play a spectacular outdoor venue. Correction, I got to see them play <em>two </em>spectacular outdoor venues, in quick succession, that is, if you count the thirty minutes I spent at Woodstock (a story unto itself, recounted in <a contents="DC Flashback" data-link-label="DC Flashback" data-link-type="page" href="/dc-flashback" target="_blank"><em>DC Flashback</em></a>). I was living with seven other would-be auteurs who'd signed up for summer film school at Southampton College. We got wind that The Who would be appearing at Tanglewood, the Berkshires performing arts center which was home to renowned classical conductor Arthur Feidler and the Boston Pops. My summer camp used to bus us up there every year. All those mysterious mazes, shady arbors, and secret garden spots must have been designed with making-out with chicks from other camps in mind.</p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/d158b9f11f3cca5e83ee75d440d8f12c51575bad/original/twood.jpg/!!/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><span class="font_small"><em>All those mysterious mazes, shady arbors, and secret garden spots must have been designed with making-out with up chicks from other camps in mind.</em></span></p>
<p>Six of us piled into a Dodge Dart for the five-hour drive up to Lenox, Massachusetts. Carole Zussbaum, a ravishing "older woman" of 21 (I was still only 17) sat next to me in the back seat. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised to hear that she'd also seen The Who at the Fillmore, that Keith Moon was her favorite, and how excited she was to watch him make all those adorable faces again. Duly noted. Improbably, something seemed to be developing between us. When we arrived at the romantic grounds and began walking the sprawling lawn—the same sprawling lawn where we were supposed to spread out a blanket and hear the show from a hundred yards away—I had another idea: why not take a chance and just plop ourselves down in a couple of empty seats I'd spotted second row center under the Saarinen-designed "Shed?" She didn't need any convincing, so we went for it.</p>
<p>The Jefferson Airplane opened the show. We fidgeted all through their set, waiting to be displaced any second. And waiting. Much to our shock, by the time they were done noodling around, no one had claimed the seats. We were still there! Watching roadies readying The Who's heavy artillery was sheer agony. We weren't at the Fillmore now, things weren't running like clockwork, the transition was taking an inordinate amount of time. We prayed for a miracle, holding hands, hearts racing, then, lo and behold, our prayers were answered! The Who were announced, they launched into "Heaven and Hell," and the next thing we knew, a heavily-taped Shure SM 58 mic went whizzing over our heads, abruptly reversed course, and landed safely back in Daltrey's waiting hand!</p>
<p><em>Why can't we have eternal life, and never die ... never die!</em></p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/ed33391e8ab2da9de7846a4e3f0e312bdf3c9f68/original/tanglewood.jpg/!!/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" />I even managed to sneak in one more Who show at The Fillmore East that fall, after I'd transferred to American University in DC. By dumb luck, their appearance coincided with a planned trip back to the burbs. </p>
<p><span style="color:#e67e22;"><strong>5 On The Road</strong></span><br>Right, the burbs. The same ones John Cells and I escaped from when we set off from New Jersey to "look for America" in the spring of 1970. Cells was the first person I knew who'd actually written a song. If he, a guy I beat at ping pong often enough, could do it, there was every possibility that I could, too. Maybe it would even happen on this trip. It had been eight months since that exhilarating string of Who shows. I'd been trying my best to recreate them on an acoustic guitar, with varying degrees of success, but I kept plugging away. </p>
<p>So far, our escape route had included stops in Nashville, where we tripped our brains out with a bunch of southern kids at an exact replica of the Parthenon—I thought Cream's "Tales of Brave Ulysses" would make a great soundtrack, so I faked it on the Epiphone; in St. Louis, which felt like another time warp after a muscle car junkie in a Shelby Cobra picked us up hitchhiking and showed us the sights—we couldn't get over all the Becky Thatcher types carrying their books home from school in wholesome, knee-length dresses that belonged in Mark Twain's time; in Tyler, Texas, where I asked a waitress, "Do you have any bagels?" and she replied, "What's a bago?" and in Tucson, where a girl I knew lived in what one coffee table book described as a "modern desert masterpiece." Her jet set parents were conveniently away, "doing Europe."</p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/19d6edaee9c171bd6284a615210e1b5adcaac69e/original/the-parthenon-in-nashville-tennessee.jpg/!!/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><span class="font_small"><em>"We tripped our brains out with a bunch of southern kids at an exact replica of the Parthenon." </em></span></p>
<p>My friend set John up with one of hers. Then the four of us were doing what teenagers will do in a modern desert masterpiece, given a stash of peyote buttons, a cactus studded landscape, and a swimming pool. Every night, under the stars, we'd break out the guitars and put on poolside concerts for the hallucinogenically-inclined.</p>
<p>Unbeknownst to us, at the same time we were headlining a house party, The Who were back in New York, performing at the Metropolitan Opera House, no less. At that point they were 3,450 miles from home, we were 2,400 miles from home. </p>
<p>We spent an idyllic week in the lap of luxury, romping in the land of the saguaro. A day before we were supposed to leave, we awoke at the crack of noon to a jarring turn of events: the jet-setters were coming home early, as in <em>later that same day</em>. We had to hightail it out of there in a few hours! Our next destination was still unknown—we'd planned to figure it out later that day.</p>
<p>For the moment, things were up in the air in Tucson. Coincidentally, The Who were also up in the air, over New York, on a TWA flight carrying them to their next stop. </p>
<p>Scrambling, we weighed the alternatives. Hitchhiking anywhere in 112 degrees was quickly ruled out. As spoiled as we'd been, we weren't quite feeling a Greyhound. We emptied out our pockets. Between us, we could scrounge up enough crumpled bills to take one short flight somewhere. But where? It came down to palm trees vs. pine trees, California vs. Colorado. I was all-in on California: Laurel Canyon, Marin County, it was all exotic to me. John had his heart set on Colorado <em>and </em>he had a buddy we could "crash" with in Denver—that's why he won the debate. It's also why, as fate would have it, we found ourselves waiting for our backpacks and guitars a few hours later at a Frontier Airlines baggage carousel in Stapleton Airport.</p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/1935b0c74a484c8ee253b88501bddf70d97a12ec/original/5-br-braniff-hostess-uniform-pucci-pants-9-2.jpg/!!/undefined/b:W1sic2l6ZSIsIm1lZGl1bSJdXQ==.jpg" class="size_m justify_right border_" />"Looking for America" included eyeballing my immediate surroundings in Baggage Claim. After that bevy of Braniff "hostesses" walked briskly by in their kaleidoscopic finery, and I'd watched that salesman kill time with stupid Zippo lighter tricks, my gaze was drawn to four guys, a little older than us, who appeared to be on a different plane, so to speak, than other passengers, like they'd just been through some unique experienced no one else had. They looked kinda rock and roll . . . and kinda foreign. When I realized who they were, my breathing stopped, my jaw dropped, and I got a little bug-eyed—it was none other than The Who, waiting for a limo, as it turned out. Whoa! Pete Townshend was sitting <em>right there</em>! Just then, I caught a glimpse of my guitar dropping down the conveyor belt. A line from "Tattoo" popped into my head: "I knew what I had to do." What I had to do was grab that Epiphone, march right over, and persuade him to show me some of his guitar parts—before I had a chance to chicken out.</p>
<p>My favorite guitar player was in his own world, minding his own business. </p>
<p>"Hi," I began, "I've seen you in concert like seven and a half times the past year, those were the best shows I've ever seen, and I've been trying to figure out your guitar parts ever since. I'm wondering if I could play you what I have, then maybe you could tell me if I'm close?" </p>
<p>His eyes met mine. I braced for his reaction. </p>
<p>"What was the half time?" he deadpanned. Promising. Maybe he was human? </p>
<p>"The time I had my ear pressed against the Fillmore's brick wall, all through the late show, that first night you debuted <em>Tommy</em>." </p>
<p>That got a smile out of him and he perked up. So far so good—discovering what some random American kid had come up with had to beat just sitting there, right? I took not receiving any immediate objection as a "yes," so I began unlatching my guitar case. Now I was sitting, or squirming, in a molded fiberglass chair, too, trying to find a semi-comfortable position, hoping against hope that my guitar was in tune. Close enough. Fumbling around in my pocket for a pick, I took a deep breath, steeled myself, then recreated the opening riff to "I'm Free." A chorus and a verse later, in the absence of any "stop playing" signals, I began methodically working my way through a half dozen <em>Tommy </em>variations, from "Acid Queen" to "Listening To You"—not butchering anything too badly.</p>
<p>The role reversal, with me as performer and The Who as audience, was more surreal than any Dali painting of pocket watches melting in the desert could ever be. My fairly-close renditions got Roger Daltrey's attention; he moseyed over to see what was up. Onstage, he looks about seven feet tall. In person, he's five feet tall. In all, I picked and strummed for around five minutes—an eternity when you're performing for the earthling you've most wanted to meet, <em>which was only happening because some chick's parents came home from Europe a day early a thousand miles away</em>!</p>
<p>I awaited his reaction. </p>
<p>"That's not quite it," he began, and my heart sank. Except he wasn't through. "But I like what you came up with. You really should write some of your own songs, based on those chords you made up." </p>
<p>While Fritz had sworn up and down that seeing The Who would be a life-altering event, even he couldn't have foreseen that Townshend's encouraging words would wind up altering some 50,000 hours of my earthly existence. But wait, he was reaching for my guitar! </p>
<p>"It goes a little more like this," he corrected. </p>
<p>OMG, He tossed off about a minute's worth of "Amazing Journey," demystifying the passage I'd struggled with the most. Pete Townshend had just left his fingerprints on my guitar in some 104,000 square mile territory called Colorado.</p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/944defe2f2473c55114d110e8f44a31e52f83a4e/original/harmony-sovereign-h-1260.jpg/!!/undefined/b:W1sic2l6ZSIsIm1lZGl1bSJdXQ==.jpg" class="size_m justify_left border_" />So, why wasn't this poet, singer of songs, and smasher of SGs even slightly perturbed that I'd subjected him to imperfect renditions of his own rock opera at a Baggage Claim? Well, first off, you have to remember every British rocker's fondest dream: <em>to make it big in America</em>. That's their holy grail. Giants of British rock like T-Rex never did it. Sweet never did it. Oasis never did it, and the list goes on. You've probably already heard how great you are, how great your band is, and how great your songs are, but maybe you've never had an American teenager break out his guitar and have a go at copying you before—and you're quite aware that <em>imitation is the highest form of flattery</em>. You were already beloved in England. Now American kids loved you, too, enough to add your songs to their repertoires, just like you'd added songs by Americans you loved—like Mose Allison, who you honored every time you introduced "Young Man Blues," and Eddie Cochran, who you paid tribute every time you broke out "Summertime Blues"—to your own repertoire. Your hard work touring all over heck and gosh had paid off big time—your crusade had captured the Holy Land! That explains why Pete Townshend was not even the least bit put out that I approached him. </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/60f1796cc614b2f1e64d0ef2b71d1261912e9706/original/bmw.jpg/!!/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><span class="font_small"><em>The esteemed author, looking a little fatigued himself toward the end of his hippy days. </em></span></p>
<p>In the twenty minutes we spent shooting the breeze, I learned that The Who had come to Denver to play two nights at Mammoth Gardens, they wouldn't be playing the full <em>Tommy </em>because they'd vowed never to play the whole opera again after what had been billed as the final performance at the Met, and, no, they didn't know any Fritz Postelwaite from Bloomington, Indiana. I exchanged a word or two with Roger Daltrey, nothing earthshattering. Keith Moon was ultra-shy in person. John Entwhistle was quiet, too. Their wayward limo finally arrived and promptly whisked them off into the night.</p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/47b9d3afb93a2bef056314f3b989fb9f5a0a17a2/original/moon-jester.jpg/!!/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><span style="color:#2980b9;"># # # </span> </p>
<p><span style="color:#2980b9;"><strong>Note 1:</strong></span> Why is this saga racing past that natural ending spot, with The Who riding off into the sunset?</p>
<ol> <li> <p>Living under an indefinite stay-at-home directive during a pandemic, in a time of great political upheaval, writing this memoir is one of the few things in life that I can control. It's been a much-needed distraction, one I'm in no particular hurry to dispense with.</p> </li> <li> <p>Revisiting those halcyon "love, peace, and understanding" days, characterized by a tremendous spirit of togetherness, has been uplifting for me. I daresay carrying on in the same fashion could continue to be a welcome respite for anyone who's read this far in divisive times.</p> </li> <li>It occurred to me that the serendipitous sequence of events which transpired over a 72-hour period immediately following my brush with the rock god could easily serve as the basis for an equally good narrative. Why clam up now? Since I can't think of a good reason, I'm inclined to keep things moving.</li>
</ol>
<p>So, where was I?</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><span style="color:#2980b9;"># # # </span></p>
<p><span style="color:#e67e22;"><strong>6 The Hippy Mecca, or Those Epic First 24 hours in Colorado</strong></span></p>
<p>Reluctantly, we parachuted down from Cloud Nine, alighting back upon terra firma outside Terminal A. Backpacks on shoulders, guitar cases in hand, thumbs sticking out at ninety degree angles, the two newest arrivals in the former Colorado Territory were destiny's playthings. Mercifully, the first car that spotted us pulled over. </p>
<p>"Where you guys headed?" a longhair called out from the driver's seat of a pink 1963 Rambler American. A succulent Michelle Phillips lookalike rode shotgun. </p>
<p>"Denver University!" Jon screamed, over the roar of jet engines. </p>
<p>"You don't want to go to Denver, you want to go to Boulder," the first Colorado native we encountered opined. He sounded absolutely certain about it, as if it were a simple choice between radioactive industrial sludge and fresh mountain spring water. </p>
<p>The word "Boulder" had a mythic tinge to it. It evoked idealized alpine imagery of a kind that Hollywood had indelibly stamped into the collective unconscious: the unspoiled Swiss pastureland where Heidi's grumpy grandpa grazed goats, and the long stretches of lush Austrian Alps where a rapturous Julie Andrews sang "The Sound of Music." Every man, woman, and child in America could recall these idyllic images Hmm. What to do? Here we were on the biggest adventure of our lives; were we really going to turn down a trip to geologically-rich high country inhabited by hippy couples roaming the earth in pink Rambler Americans? We looked at each other, nodded, and climbed into the back seat. </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/bc234c5c6d2de78379752d26d00b3c95ff1edfd8/original/julie.jpg/!!/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p>It was a rare cloudy night in Colorado. With no visibility to speak of, Highway 36 was indistinguishable from any other boring four-lane expressway. An hour later, we were fortifying ourselves with roast beef sandwiches all around at an illusion-shattering Arby's. I'd been picturing flocks of bluebirds flitting about wildflower-dotted meadows, not the bland confines of a chain restaurant on a major artery. The odd second thought about our change in plans entered my mind as we resumed our places in the distinctive conveyance. Then longhair and lookalike were ferrying us across what, under cloak of darkness, looked like any other college town. I noted a few Victorian "painted ladies" sprinkled in here and there amidst more nondescript residential and student housing. We kept gaining altitude until there were fewer and fewer signs of civilization. Eventually, we ran out of road by a rustic wooden sign marking the entrance to "Colorado Chautauqua National Historic Landmark." </p>
<p>Left off under dark and starless skies, we navigated past chest-high wild grasses, prickly pasture roses, and large and small examples of the town namesake our guitar cases banged up against every few steps. We happened upon a relatively clear, level spot, unrolled our sleeping bags, sucked a few bowls of the blond Lebanese hashish chunks we kept steathily taped to the insides of our guitars, and fell fast asleep. </p>
<p>At sunrise, we awoke, sat up, and took in our immediate environs: we actually were in an storybook setting, an unspoiled meadow speckled with wild iris to be precise, with these immense slabs of primordial sandstone, the Flatirons, looming behind us, and the inviting city of Boulder spread out before us! </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/d176379d9d5d26a1bd84f22fe3f3822ec6cee1d1/original/flatirons.jpeg/!!/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" />We barely had time to process landing in a natural wonderland after all when our attention was diverted by an even more astonishing sight: a caravan comprised of dozens of yellow school buses, mimicking a gigantic caterpillar, was crawling up Baseline Road. As the lumbering conveyances swung into the park, we gawked at them quizzically.</p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/153233253b7d9fc2a794f0fcaef7966101bb7894/original/hippy-caravan.jpg/!!/undefined/b:W1sic2l6ZSIsImxhcmdlIl1d.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" />Now 150 or so hardcore hippies were exiting their heavily customized buses, trailing a Christ-like figure heading our general direction. Moments later, the entire tribe had assembled not fifteen feet from our encampment in the meadow. I can't say I'd ever been to a sunrise ceremony in River Vale, New Jersey, but I was at one now. </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/0bb10608f7e47992432371b549ddc2e8e6131654/original/gaskin-preach.jpg/!!/undefined/b:W1sic2l6ZSIsIm1lZGl1bSJdXQ==.jpg" class="size_m justify_left border_" />After a pregnant pause, the Christ-like personage began preaching an eclectic sermon which ragged on "the man," guilt-tripped me about devouring animal flesh, reinforced my love for "the magical herb," extolled the virtues of getting back to the land, renounced all earthly possessions, and assailed the evils of money—which was unlikely to corrupt me anytime soon, since splurging on that flight from Tucson had deducted most of mine. Okay, so maybe I wasn't quite ready to contact a local school board to see if they wanted to renounce one of their earthly possessions—like an older bus, in need of a little TLC, that I could repurpose into a caravan-worthy vehicle. Still, the fortuitous nature of being in the exact right place at the exact right time to observe the back-to-the-earth movement in microcosm wasn't lost on me.</p>
<p>It occurred to me that in the last ten hours I'd met Peter Townshend, awakened in a mile high paradise, and was now watching a passion play from a front row seat on a pristine mountainside. But, hey, the day was just beginning. A half hour of sunrise sermonizing later, members of the congregation straggled back to their respective transports, resumed their places in caterpillar formation, and inched off from whence they came. We later learned they were "the Gaskin people," after leader Stephen Gaskin, who eventually founded an archetypal hippy commune, The Farm, in Summerhill, Tennessee. </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/3a4648478b2912a858d91e4bbf2922fc3b2c3a49/original/chautau.jpg/!!/undefined/b:W1sic2l6ZSIsIm1lZGl1bSJdXQ==.jpg" class="size_m justify_right border_" />We rolled up our sleeping bags and threw on some clothes. Some quick reconnaissance work turned up the old-timey Chautuaqua Dining Hall, a stone's throw away. We walked up some steps, admired a wraparound patio offering sweeping views of the city and the adjacent foothills, and ventured inside. Blown-up historical photos, dating back to the Gold Rush, depicted the boom times and hardships of life on the frontier. Matronly ladies, hair done up in buns, dressed in aprons and bonnets exactly like the ones the pioneer women were wearing in the photos, served breakfast. This starched set couldn't have been any nicer to us as they dished out comfort food from behind their buffet stations. "You boys look like you could use some bacon." "How about some gravy on those biscuits?" "Would you like some hot sauce on your eggs?" Time-travel was becoming a regular feature on our tour. </p>
<p>Somewhat more enlightened and decidedly more satiated, we set off for "The Hill," a section of town that other diners who mirrored our long hair, bell bottoms, and guitars told us we wouldn't want to miss. If you're suspecting we were about to land right smack dab in the middle of yet another phantasmagoric hippy scene, yup, you'd be right! On Colorado Avenue's already crowded sidewalks, enterprising hustlers, some of them dressed up like Davy Crockett in buckskin suits and coonskin caps, were hawking every mind-altering substance known to man—and doing it right out in the open. Business was booming.</p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/532606a92e4c5b536bc50b4058c47d57dfe3a92b/original/magic-music.jpg/!!/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p>"Trips!" "Shrooms!" "Hashish!" "Mescaline!" "Nickel bags!" Psilocybin!" We'd stumbled into some bizarro world reenactment of an Old West medicine show. Subsets of "trips" on offer included the following outstanding contestants for enshrinement in the Hallucinogenics Hall of Fame: Orange Sunshine, Owsley, Sandoz, Purple Haze, Windowpane. And that's not all: "Get yer Mr. Natural blotter acid right here," one freak repeated over and over, like he was a peanut vendor at a ballpark. Once more, John and I looked at each other in disbelief; it was getting to be a regular habit! </p>
<p>This Boulder place was mythic all right—it was as if the most alluring aspects of Greenwich Village had been transplanted to a Shangri-La like setting at the base of the Rockies—along with a corresponding amount of free spirits. That said, I never saw anything remotely like the kind of pharmacopeia on offer here in, say, Washington Park. Once we pinched ourselves and realized we weren't dreaming, we were ready for some horse trading. A chunk of our Lebanese Blond for a full sheet of your Mr. Natural blotter acid? Done deal! </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/39157187d4c006a52490d09e18c5fd417565cad5/original/leb.jpg/!!/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><span class="font_small"><em>A "book" of the oft-mentioned Lebanese blond.</em></span></p>
<p>Suddenly I was in less of a hurry to rush off and see The Who in Denver—the city whose very name the longhair who steered us to Boulder pronounced as contemptuously as if it were a biblical lake of fire. They were playing there tomorrow night, too, weren't they? Leaving a hippy hotspot doubling as a gateway to a spectacular wilderness, almost as soon as we'd got there, didn't strike me as a particularly brilliant move. Trying out a psychotropic tribute to R. Crumb's Zap Comix character, right then and there, seemed like the more rational decision—if opting to enter an alternative dimension can ever be considered a reasonable choice.</p>
<p>There was the small matter of figuring out where we were going to stay; we weren't going to cover a whole lot of ground lugging guitars and backpacks around the elaborate City of Boulder trail system. Some "heads" told us they were renting rooms at a frat house on The Hill (it was summer break) for five bucks a week, we'd love it, it was a great scene. Spending a week in a great scene was a pretty appealing prospect. The Sigma Mu house turned out to be nice enough and right where the action was, at 13th and Pennsylvania. We dropped off our earthly possessions, cut a few LSD-infused squares off the sheet, and placed placed them under our tongues. Then we headed for the hills. </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/ccacdb00322500121dcc31af39108b897c73c2a5/original/mr-nat.jpg/!!/undefined/b:W1sic2l6ZSIsIm1lZGl1bSJdXQ==.jpg" class="size_m justify_center border_" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><span class="font_small"><em>"Mr. Natural has strange, magical powers and possesses cosmic insight; but he is also moody, cynical, self-pitying, and suffers from various strange sexual obsessions."</em></span></p>
<p>The acid started coming on where the city streets ended and the trailheads began. Then there they all were, packs of doe-faces and antler-heads, nibbling at shoots of grass and clover leaves, bounding down mountainsides, checking us out just as curiously as we checked them out. We had entered their realm, with well-marked and well-maintained trails leading to seductive-sounding points of interest like "Royal Arch," "Eldorado Canyon," and "The Third Flatiron." Midway through the Hogback Loop Trail, we still hadn't seen a single Keep Out sign, nor would we see one the entire day; land as far as the eye could see was designated City of Boulder Open Space, protected in perpetuity for recreational use. I'm not sure the stewards of the land had recreational <em>drug </em>use in mind; but if the sheer amount of glazed eyes, goofy grins, and overdependence on the phrase "far out" was any indication, the usage rate was sky high. </p>
<p>The more the acid took hold, we more we found ourselves oohing and aahing as we clambered over one primeval rock formation after another. If we spotted an intriguing outcrop somewhere off in the distance, we found that we could just hike straight to it, even if it was miles away. Mr. Natural gave us preternatural endurance, without any accompanying edginess. Anytime we needed a breather after what would have normally been a lung-busting ascent, we'd pass joints around with other hikers, surveying the panoramic vistas. <br><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/1f56d0ae38aeb1e206a2a8eac608eac434cc56e4/original/arch.png/!!/b:W10=.png" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p>Once you slowed down and took inventory of your immediate surroundings, you had a newfound superpower: super-vision. Now you noticed things you might have missed, like all the fossils of prehistoric shells etched into the sediment. In addition to the fossilized shells, actual 3D seashells, the same swirly, cylindrical mollusk husks lying in the sand at seashores, were scattered here, there, and everywhere. Once you spotted the first one, you saw more and more of them, at which point it dawned on you that in some geological time 250 million years ago—the Permian era, perhaps—this <em>was </em>a seashore. These tremendous upthrusts had once been under water! <img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/b9610cb8c43c0b48aa975ed45d266516223be5cf/original/fossil.jpeg/!!/undefined/b:W1sic2l6ZSIsImxhcmdlIl1d.jpeg" class="size_xl justify_center border_" /></p>
<p>You could zoom in even finer, and tune into things going on at a microcosmic level you'd normally never pay any attention to either. Routine scenes like ladybugs hunting for aphids on an Indian Paintbrush wildflower became better drama than <em>Hamlet </em>when an insect higher on the food chain, a praying mantis, arrived ominously yet gracefully on the scene and began stalking the ladybugs. I was really getting off on his stealthy approach, and could have watched it for hours, until Jon nudged me back onto the trail. </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/f596bfc05f15bbbd94b76027e7d6a945cb75baff/original/sanitas.jpg/!!/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p>Who knows how many miles we covered before the sun ducked behind the Flatirons and the skies over Boulder started transitioning from the purest of azure into the subdued golds of twilight. Getting off on the colors, we took our places in a weed circle on the crest of Mr. Sanitas. As usual, our Lebanese Blonde quickly established itself as the belle of the ball. A couple of appreciative connoirsseurs "hipped" us that, after dark, there was going to be a celebration on the top of Flagstaff mountain, with a band and a bonfire. He said the word "celebration" like I was the kind of dude who went to every form of them imaginable, although I had a feeling my cousin Adam's bar mitzvah wasn't quite what he was envisioning. I knew it wasn't when I learned that the celebrant was the annual Perseid Meteor Shower. There was this great amphitheater up there, they had a car, we could ride up there with them. Hmm. I hadn't had much previous exposure to Druidism or Neopaganism, at sea level or at 7500 feet, but it sounded more enriching than another episode of <em>Bonanza</em>—which most of America would be glued to right around the time some high priestess put a torch to the bonfire. The day had started off celebrating getting back to the earth; why not finish it off by celebrating going off to outer space? </p>
<p>Pretty soon we were winding our way up Flagstaff Road, zig-zagging up a longish series of switchbacks, eventually arriving on top of the world. Talk about knockout 360-degree views—to the west, a succession of 14,000-foot snowcapped peaks; to the east, seemingly all the way out to Kansas; to the south, we were looking down on the Flatirons; to the north, undulating foothills continued all the way to Calgary, Alberta. I would have been sufficiently awestruck without any assistance from Mr. Natural. With it . . . that's as close as I'll ever come to seeing Earth from space. </p>
<p>I heard the strains of a Grateful Dead copy band cranking out "Driving That Train" as we negotiated the path to Sunrise Amphitheater. Then we came upon what could have been a quintessential scene in a "Woodstock generation" documentary: hundreds of Deadheads—the same freaks who'd think nothing of taking icebreakers to see the Dead play Antarctica—were ecstatically dancing around the advertised bonfire, exuding a pungent musk composed of bunkweed, hippy sweat, and patchouli oil. It was a big night for tie-dye shirts and skirts, peace-symbol necklaces and jangly ankle bracelets, headbands and leather vests—and a bad night for bras. The sociology was good, the astronomy even better. A planetarium's worth of pulsating stars were out, a prelude to the main event which either was an actual meteor shower or just an insane amount of shooting stars streaking across the cosmos. Of course the star show just happened to be peaking at the exact same time we were peaking, yet another serendipitous occurrence in a seemingly endless string of them.</p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/0bf64e28491cf2f2ba8868e7a6b27c8c3a048f2b/original/stargazing-in-boulder-864x486.jpg/!!/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p>After trying and failing for the umpteenth time to get into the music of "Captain Trips" and the rest of America's favorite jam band, I wandered off to a lookout point, with the stars as companions. As I gazed out into eternity and contemplated the vastness of space, I locked in on a door-shaped astrological pattern—which in all likelihood was not one of the eighty-eight recognized constellations. This eighty-ninth constellation had a far off sun for a doorknob— flashing more brightly and more rapidly the more intently I fixated on it. Peering into that doorway, I almost felt like I could astral travel billions of light years and whoosh right through that passageway. Then it felt like I had; my field of perception had altered. I'd entered a state of serenity. Things I was mixed up about were coming in a lot clearer. </p>
<p>Then I had an epiphany: being a teenage longhair bumming my way around the country, tripping my brains out at replicas of the Parthenon, modern desert masterpieces, and mountaintops, wasn't just crazy kid stuff—it was invaluable life experience. Said viewpoint was a bit of a departure from conventional wisdom. Caddying or lifeguarding, not tripping, were typically regarded as character builders for eighteen-year-olds in 1970. I didn't quite follow that logic. Caddying, lifeguarding, and tripping all ended in "ing," didn't they?" That means they really weren't all that different, were they? They all belonged to the totality of the universe. Therefore, I reasoned, tripping made me one with the universe. </p>
<p>Having neatly justified my existence, I ambled back to the bonfire. There were about fifteen minutes of ecstatic dancing left in me before I started to "come down." Right when I did, our ride was leaving, Then we were retracing our route down the steep, twisty road, following closely behind another vehicle that was maybe twenty yards in front of us. We'd gone around five or six bends, and come to a rare straightaway, when it hit us all at once: <em>there no longer was a car in front of us</em>. That was so unsettling that we stopped, got out, and looked back up the road—the car that had previously been in front of us was now lodged against the lone pine tree that could have possibly kept it from pinwheeling down the mountainside. It's headlights were still on. Smoke was spewing out of it. The shaken survivors were slowly staggering out of the wreckage and back up to Flagstaff road. </p>
<p>That was the grand finale—our epic first twenty-four hours in Colorful Colorado had just timed out. </p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><span style="color:#2980b9;"># # #</span></p>
<p><span style="color:#2980b9;"><strong>Note 2: </strong></span>If I wasn't still COVID-19-quarantined for who knows how long at my current residence in Pasadena, I would have called it quits a sentence ago—the second natural ending spot I've sped past—but I am. So I'm forging ahead. Again. </p>
<p style="text-align: center;"> <span style="color:#2980b9;"> # # # </span> </p>
<p><span style="color:#e67e22;"><strong>7 That Who show in Denver</strong></span></p>
<p>If "uplifting" is a word, shouldn't "downdropping" be one, too? </p>
<p>There really hasn't been a downdropping moment in this entire memoir, making it irreflective of real life, especially real life in 2020, as in the real life of 100,000 dead and climbing in the USA alone and millions upon millions of lives ruined. You're probably reading this because you wanted a reprieve from all that. That's why I've been hesitant to describe the second day I spent in Colorado, the low point of our tour—even though it included a Who concert. Is that even possible? I promised you more Who, so let's find out . . .</p>
<p>The Who's Denver appearance came directly after what many have called the greatest performance of their career two nights earlier—the farewell performance of the full <em>Tommy </em>while they were at the height of their three-piece game at the glittery Metropolitan Opera House in Manhattan. In contrast, this first post-<em>Tommy </em>performance was held in a former "ice polo" rink in the Capitol Hill section of Denver, which at the time was a mostly nondescript oil and gas hub. I wondered: was "ice polo" played on horseback or mammothback? Were the riders cavemen or homo sapiens?</p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/9a4fd00ff51ef150403188f4f491eb5b70a93740/original/mammoth.jpg/!!/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><span class="font_small"><em>Mammoth Gardens, Denver, back in the day. It operates successfully today as, ironically enough, "The Fillmore." </em></span></p>
<p>I couldn't tell you, but one thing for sure is the day of the show I was having a hell of a time getting up and out of my own cave. There was no way we could rouse ourselves till 2 PM, which put us under immediate time pressure. That was unavoidable. The day before, we'd spent an inordinate amount of time out in the hot sun, hiking way farther than either of us had ever gone, without acclimatizing to the mile high altitude. Being behind that car that drove off a cliff was a lot to process, as was the fact that we were in Boulder in the first place—when we'd been aiming for Denver. </p>
<p>Speaking of aiming for Denver, Jon was still intent on tracking his friend down at Denver University before the Who show. That ratcheted up the pressure. By the time we showered and grabbed something to eat, most of the afternoon was shot.</p>
<p>Jon's relative disinterest in The Who didn't help. His musical tastes remained mired in "the folk revival;" it would be another decade before "new wave" music made a convert out of him. So, instead of going to the show with a superfan like Fritz or Carol, now I was dragging along a being far more intent on finding his friend than in getting to Mammoth Gardens early enough to score good seats. That didn't bode well or turn out well. </p>
<p>Hitching to DU took forever. I'd chalk that up to being dazed and confused, bad directions, and having no clue which part of the city the university was in. We managed to miss the mark entirely and got let off in Commerce City—a noxious wasteland of unregulated oil refineries where gigantic smokestacks belched toxic fumes that stank to high heaven. Something tells me this dystopia was exactly what the longhair guy had in mind when he stated, "You don't want to go to Denver."</p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/2666af1a1c1944674e052c4d0eadfeaa793726be/original/commerce-city.jpg/!!/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><span class="font_small"><em>I don't think John Denver had Commerce City in mind when he wrote "Rocky Mountain High."</em></span></p>
<p>Since Commerce City wasn't exactly a hippy mecca, we had our thumbs stuck out forever. When we finally got back on course and bumbled our way to the DU area, some poking around turned up the not-all-that-thrilling revelation that Jon's friend was long gone. I'd met Peter Townshend because we'd flown to Denver to stay with someone who didn't even live there! I had ample time to contemplate the irony as we forced-marched the last thirty blocks up seedy East Colfax Avenue. By that point, not only was the show sold out, but it had already begun. We were hanging around dejectedly, or at least I was, in an alleyway behind the skating rink, when all of a sudden a pair of double doors burst open; someone had figured out an ingenious way to sneak his friends in, allowing dozens more of us who were lurking to pour in.</p>
<p>That was sort of good, cause now we were in, and sort of bad, cause I immediately felt pangs of guilt. That put a damper on things right off the bat, as did missing the opening "Heaven and Hell" into "I Can't Explain" medley, which was disorienting. The first song I caught was a new number, "Water." I'm sorry to say "Water" was the first Who song I ever heard that struck me as just a plain bad song. </p>
<p>While the prehistorically named "Mammoth Gardens" had some nice architectural flourishes and would have been the perfect place to take in, say, a Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey circus, the problem with it as a rock venue was that it was essentially a cavernous, echoey roller rink. The sound was problematical, although it improved as I worked my way closer to the stage where the pure amp tones and the drum kit came through. I was able to approach the stage because there was no seating on the main floor where the rink had been. With everyone standing, your sight lines were constantly interrupted. It was really hard, if not impossible, to concentrate.</p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/27dca790b50e46fd6bbde7fbfcf47174983960ef/original/who-black-jumpsuit.jpg/!!/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><span class="font_small"><em>Rare sighting: Townshend rocking a black boiler suit!</em></span></p>
<p>The Who just seemed a little off. Sure, there was a decent amount of energy coming off the stage; after all, they were troopers, they were hardly mailing it in. At 95%, they could still outperform all but a handful of "classic rock" bands. However, as a veteran observer, I detected the telltale signs of a letdown. That can happen when you're going from the last performance of the full <em>Tommy </em>in the media center of the universe to a new setlist in a much sleepier environment. Of course, you would have had to have been at previous shows to detect the subtle differences. I was, and these are my findings:</p>
<ul> <li>The Who were certainly into what they were doing, but I didn't get the sense they were on a life-or-death mission—like the previous year, when they still had something to prove.</li> <li>They seemed a teeny bit sloppier in comparison to previous shows; this showed in their backup vocals, which didn't seem to ring out quite as gloriously or be as strictly in tune as I recalled them.</li> <li>Townshend seemed emboldened to stretch out and play more leads, meaning that instead of smartly concealing his only weakness, he was now exposing it. That might have been empowering for him, but it contributed to a sense that things were looser than they'd been. </li> <li>But the biggest reason this show didn't quite do it for me was that they only played maybe fifteen minutes of <em>Tommy</em>—which I'd been forewarned about, though that didn't exactly ease the pain. I can certainly understand how playing the whole thing must have been exhausting for them—that's one reason it took me a few seconds to recognize them at the airport, they always looked like immortal deities onstage, it never occurred to me that they were human—although they concealed it amazingly well. While I certainly can't blame them for wanting to move on, seeing them tackle the full rock opera, when few people expected they could pull it off, was the more unique experience. Being the only great rock band that could write and perform an entire opera really set them apart; it leveled the playing field going up against bands featuring phenomenal soloists. But, hey, nothing lasts forever. I get that. </li> <li>The fact they'd suddenly changed their setlist so drastically affected the show's overall pace; transitions between songs weren't quite as smooth, confident, or tight.</li>
</ul>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/a0334cdd8f3213a68ab2a315ed27726c96e1ef23/original/the-who-kicker.jpg/!!/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><span class="font_small"><em>Not everyone agrees that The Who's Mammoth Gardens concert was slightly off the mark. Of course it's unlikely this reviewer heard The Who play the full Tommy as a three-piece seven and a half times. </em></span></p>
<p>All that said, I am aware that many of you saw The Who perform throughout the 70s and feel those experiences were just as life changing for you as the '69 performances were for me. I'm not going to try and take those away from you, and I'm not suggesting my opinion that 1969 was their absolute peak year is somehow indisputable. But that's my take. You're welcome to yours.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe class="justify_inline" data-video-type="youtube" data-video-id="7s2YDeJZdRM" data-video-thumb-url="https://img.youtube.com/vi/7s2YDeJZdRM/mqdefault.jpg" type="text/html" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/7s2YDeJZdRM?rel=0&wmode=transparent&enablejsapi=1" frameborder="0" height="360" width="640" allowfullscreen="true"></iframe><span class="font_small"><em>Don't believe me that the sound was echoey, the singing was not dead on, and Townshend played too many leads? Here ya go!</em></span></p>
<p>Well, that was pretty much it for our downdropping Day Two in Colorado. At least we caught a lift back to the frat house from some Boulderites we met after the show—sparing us any nocturnal hitchhiking misadventures.That was a big relief. As I lay abed savoring a last lungful of Lebanon's finest, I replayed my first 48 hours in Colorado. Even with the downdropping, it had been nonstop adventure so far. Now that we'd met all our Denver "obligations," we could kick back and ease into the Boulder scene. I looked forward to that. A lot. I also had the sneaking suspicion we hadn't seen the last of the random events. </p>
<p><strong><span style="color:#e67e22;">8 Another chance encounter defies all odds</span></strong><br>Sure enough, Day Three featured yet another chance encounter. This one was with someone I already knew—albeit a someone who was the last person on earth I ever expected to see again. </p>
<p>The day began with Jon sleeping in at our frat house—which normally hosted preppy brothers, with an endless thirst for keggers, but currently hosted a coed influx of "flower people," with an insatiable appetite for psychedelics—while I explored affordable breakfast options. I settled on a double ice cream cone at Swensen's, setting me back all of 45 cents. Recognizing a kindred spirit, the flower child behind the counter put some extra elbow grease into excavating scoops so massive they overlapped the sugar cone. The creative creamery, which churned out wacky flavors like "pickle" and "licorice," became my go-to AM spot</p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/0e1686555b9710fad2d5cac7b6a4f62698ec9998/original/frisbee.jpg/!!/undefined/b:W1sic2l6ZSIsIm1lZGl1bSJdXQ==.jpg" class="size_m justify_right border_" /></p>
<p>After just about everything that could have possibly gone wrong on our outing to Denver the previous day had, I was planning on taking it easy. That meant meandering in and out of shops on The Hill and checking out the CU campus. I wound up spending most of the afternoon slinging Frisbees on the Norlin Library lawn. </p>
<p>After chasing down discs all day alongside fellow peaceniks and some particularly agile canines, I'd worked up another appetite. I found that The Sink, a Hill institution right next to the frat house, served up heaping helpings of fresh-cut french fries for a whopping 25 cents. I'd sit at the bar and devour a plate or two. In the words of Pete Townshend, "I'd call that a bargain." For the next month or so, I'd also call that a "dinner." </p>
<p>By then, the sun was setting, though the streets were still alive with stoners. It was a little drizzly out, a bunch of them had already come down off the trails. Big pupils reinforced the obvious: in this town, at that time, tripping on LSD was as commonplace as sucking down a couple of Coors. I was taking in the scene with Jon, it had started to rain a little harder, we were looking for shelter. An electronics shop's awning across the street looked promising. Who do I see already standing underneath it, with his arm around an extremely "righteous" chick, but . . . you're not gonna believe this . . . Fred Rider, the roommate from Southampton College, the acid casualty who'd constructed that elaborate fort out of cardboard boxes and decorated it with a dash of, er, let's be charitable and call it <em>personal expression</em>!</p>
<p>Spotting Fred Rider resurrected six states away from the spot where he seemingly vanished from the face of the earth made it <em>four statistical anomalies in four days</em>. Let's review: </p>
<ol> <li>Running into Pete Townshend and company at a Baggage Claim in Colorado, a state that, to the best of my knowledge, neither he or I had ever set foot in, one that we had each been in for less than five minutes. I'm not Einstein, but I'd guess the odds of that happening are <em>infinitesimal at best</em>. </li> <li>Sleeping in a random field in the only half-hour window I could have possibly been there to catch the most bizarre counterculture sighting imaginable—a caravan of repurposed school buses showing up at the same park I was camping in and holding a sunrise ceremony fifteen feet from my head. The odds of that happening by itself aren't quite as infinitesimal as the odds of running into The Who at an airport, but if you combined the two exceedingly unlikely events occurring within a ten-hour period, what would the odds be then? One in a trillion,<em> at best</em>? </li> <li>Then, two days later, I bump into a someone who was the last person on earth I ever expected to see again, 2,400 miles away from the spot where we last met. Combine all three, and now we're getting into odds that are <em>incalculable even if you are Einstein</em> territory. </li> <li>And who can forget showing up on the perfect night to take in a once-a-year meteor shower, a mere 365-1 shot, that is, as long as there wasn't a cloud in the sky, hardly a given. If I threw that into the equation, I'd run out of zeroes! </li>
</ol>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/b90a5c3f287129f79622a861adb50182339fcca2/original/einstein-2.jpg/!!/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><span class="font_small"><em>"Imagination is more important than knowledge."</em></span></p>
<p>But I digress. In any event, there was my former roommate in the flesh. </p>
<p>"Fred Rider! What the hell are you doing here?" I greeted him. </p>
<p>"Um, my name's not Fred anymore. It's Warren." </p>
<p>Warren was his middle name. I reckon the acid had scrambled his names around. Other than that, he seemed no worse for wear, in fact he seemed significantly improved next to his halter-topped companion. The next stunner was him introducing her<em> </em>as his <em>wife</em>, Debbie. I was unfamiliar with what a wife was—the only ones I knew of were twice our age, like our parents, for instance I didn't know a single other person my age who had one, but, in this case, I could see how a guy could get carried away, especially a guy who tended to get carried away like Fred/Warren Rider. At least he hadn't body-painted psychedelic imagery all over the bride, which didn't prevent me from picturing myself doing it. Debbie seemed friendly enough, she invited us over for tea at their apartment, the one we were apparently standing right under. </p>
<p>No one had ever invited me over for tea before. I presumed that meant Lipton's, the only brand I knew. What appeared on the chrome dinette was a box of Celestial Seasonings <em>Red Zinger</em>, a blend of rose hips and other herbs native to and picked right in Boulder County. I was unaware that herbal tea was a food category. Whimsical packaging depicted an idealized Winnie-the-Poohish world, where lightning bolts shot out of teacups—the suggestion being the company's caffeine-free herbal bags were every bit as invigorating as caffeineated Lipton's. Be that as it may, apparently the subliminal programming had the desired effect; zesty <em>Red Zinger</em> had become the make-love-not-war crowd's beverage of choice. After tea, we escalated to another herb in bountiful supply around Boulder— "primo" reddish-gold Colombian weed. Industriously, we went about rolling the Rider household buds into big juicy doobs and firing them up one after another. While they were tastier and stronger than most, they were still no threat to the Lebanese Blonde in either department—it had a kick to it that even experienced stoners said took some getting used to.</p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/483eb81f60d7d714f3316a656ea7dd2972d03857/original/d45.jpg/!!/undefined/b:W1sic2l6ZSIsIm1lZGl1bSJdXQ==.jpg" class="size_m justify_left border_" />At this point, it was really going to take some doing for Fred, I mean Warren, to startle me any more than he already had, after rematerializing, in a state of conjugal bliss, two-thirds a continent away from the Eastern Seaboard—but he had another trick up his sleeve. With a nice buzz on, he broke out not <em>one</em>, but <em>two </em>fancy-schmancy Martin guitars: a D-35 with a three-piece Brazilian rosewood back, and an ornate, abalone-inlaid D-45. Those were unobtainium. The proud papa was showing them off to Jon; the two of them were really hitting it off. I'll take a wild guess that his loaded parents from Great Neck, Long Island, brought him the ultimate toys to distract him from tuning in, turning on, and dropping out, and to keep him out of trouble long enough to regain his place as a functional member of society—such as it was. Good plan, cause not only had he gotten married, something functional members of society tended to do, but he was laser-focused on that lustworthy pair of instruments. That was proof positive that he'd made it back to some semblance of sanity, because you'd have to be out of your mind not to appreciate that level of craftsmanship, playability, and responsiveness. Now my buddy and my roomy were jamming away, having a grand old time, leaving me to hang with the good wife, not a bad fate at all—although restraining myself from drooling on the rolling tray was the greatest challenge I'd ever faced.</p>
<p>Trying as hard as I could not to stare at Debbie, I'd glance over at, um, Warren, perched on the window sill, with his back to the street, invigorated by all that fresh Rocky Mountain air streaming in the open window, performing an original on the D-35. Jon backed him on the D-45. I was dumbfounded; the guy didn't even have a beater guitar at Southampton, much less a Martin, but he was playing away now, and artfully enough at that. I'd never once heard him raise his voice in song, but he was a big husky guy, a big husky guy with a big husky voice, and a habit of throwing his head back and grabbing massive amounts of air before reaching for the high notes. I was thinking to myself this guy is just full of surprises, and he's awfully impressive for a beginner, when I watched him throw his head <em>waaaaaay </em>back reaching for an extra high note, wobble a bit, look as if he'd just seen a ghost, then fall backwards out the window!</p>
<p>We raced to the open portal. Providentially, the electronics shop's Plexiglas awning kept him and his D-35 from crashing onto the sidewalk, which would not have been a pretty sight. We instantly saw that he was okay, if temporarily a little out of kilter lying on his back. Then, after a brief pause while we looked at each other in disbelief, the four of us cracked up, laughing ourselves silly for a solid ten minutes. You can't make this stuff up! </p>
<p><span style="color:#e67e22;"><strong>9 Flash-forward a decade</strong></span><br>By 1982, I had reconnected with Fritz a grand total of zero times. Someone named Fritz Postlewhaite was a road manager for Kiss in the 70s; it could have been him, I can't say for sure. Meanwhile, Warren and I both settled in Boulder, had lived there for a decade, and hung out hundreds of times. Go figure. Warren's singing and songwriting career had stalled, as had his long creative partnership with Jon, who now fronted a punk band called The Cells. I'd met Steven and we'd formed The Milkmen. </p>
<p>Somewhere along the line, Warren had discovered his true calling: he was a natural sound engineer. The recording studio was the perfect playground for his compulsive tendencies. He'd rocketed up the ranks and become a first-call engineer at Northstar Studios, a futuristic Boulder facility with a control room that rivaled the bridge of the Starship Enterprise. Warren had recorded just about everyone in town but us (because Mark Harmon was doing too good a job to even think about replacing him).</p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/997e28131295134e2514cf3fe6a24c318a512dda/original/tfunk-sunsetsound-14.jpg/!!/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><span class="font_small"><em>Just found out that "Wren," now on his third name after Fred and Warren, is the chief technical engineer at legendary Sunset Sound. He's the big husky guy on the left.</em></span> </p>
<p>When the time came for The Milkmen to transition from studio to stage, we needed a sound man, Warren was available, so he was the guy. I'm happy to report that Warren put the same intensity he put into fort construction a decade ago into mixing us bigger and badder than any band around. That's what he was going for, he hit the mark, and it was particularly beneficial for us since so many people came out to see us hoping that we'd fall on our faces—and got converted into fans instead. Warren's mixes had a whole lot to do with winning them over. </p>
<p>But we haven't gotten to his most outstanding contribution.</p>
<p>Warren was the guy who talked me into entering "Lolita" in the 1981 KBCO songwriting contest. In all likelihood it was the last of 6,000 entries the station received since I dropped it off minutes before the deadline for submissions closed. </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/93df70fbb684be43e75eb3a2c2aaa8c36807b76c/original/the-milkmen-lolita-dairyland-s.jpg/!!/undefined/b:W1sic2l6ZSIsIm1lZGl1bSJdXQ==.jpg" class="size_m justify_left border_" /></p>
<p>Never in a million years would I have thought to enter our naughty, power-pop brainchild, cause I never would have figured that the judges were anywhere near as "pleasantly perverted" as me. I knew "Lolita" was well-crafted, well-recorded, and had a little certain something special. But in 1981, in Boulder, Colorado, country was king. Even if "Lolita" wasn't a three-verse condensation of the controversial Nabokov novel (which I never would have attempted if not for all those pleasantly perverted early Who songs), I couldn't even imagine that a pop concoction like that would take the top prize in a town where western swing ruled. But Warren could, and he just wouldn't stop badgering me about it until I finally decided to humor him and cough up the entry fee. I submitted a battered, warped cassette that had been gathering dust on the back seat of my car for months. Well, we won the contest, meaning we overcame 6,000 to 1 odds, and all I can say is that I'm eternally grateful for that bit of foresight! Winning the KBCO contest ignited our brief-but-meaningful career.</p>
<p>We would go on to record four songs with Warren manning the controls at Paul Winger's (brother of uber-talented Winger frontman Kip Winger) Mountain Ears studio, which had taken over the same Pearl Street space behind Rudi's Bakery that Northstar Studios vacated (recounted in <a contents="Naropa" data-link-label="Naropa" data-link-type="page" href="/naropa" target="_blank">Naropa</a>). Those songs can be found in <a contents="Spilt Milk" data-link-label="Spilt Milk (MM Classics 1980-1985)" data-link-type="page" href="/spilt-milk-mm-classics-1980-1985" target="_blank">Spilt Milk</a> under the Silo of Hits tab on themilkmen.space.</p>
<p>They are: </p>
<ul> <li>"Staring Into Space" (Warren was the model for this song! He owned a toucan and an elaborate salt water aquarium!) </li> <li>"Golden Girl" </li> <li>"It's Too Complicated" </li> <li>"Chomp Chomp Chomp" </li>
</ul>
<p>As for Debbie, her marriage to Warren disintegrated after only a year—not that I was counting down the months, weeks, days, hours, seconds, and minutes or anything. The woman sexploitation director Russ Meyer wouldn't have thought twice about casting as a "supervixen" moved to London, where I reconnected with her a few years later. We took a train up to Edinburgh and points north. One highlight of the trip, or should I say one trip among the highlights, was taking pharmaceutical LSD (Sandoz) on Loch Ness. Did we see a monster? Er, no, we didn't see <em>a</em> monster, we saw <em>lots</em> of monsters . . . </p>
<p style="text-align: center;"># # #</p>
<p style="text-align: center;">—Lory Kohn</p>The Milkmentag:themilkmen.space,2005:Post/61334872020-01-22T10:50:42-07:002020-03-06T11:05:46-07:00"The Color of Hay" Marks LK's 7th Decade of Songwriting!<p>It all started in the swingin' 60s, at the height of what was being called the folk craze, with "Marijuana Smoke," a burst of juvenalia about the joys of weed that remained stashed away ... until now! Here it is, the first song Lory Kohn ever wrote, in The Year of Our Lord 1968:</p>
<p><a class="zoogle-track-widget" data-height="510" data-style="border: 1px solid #9E9E9E; max-width: 510px;" data-width="100%" href="https://bandzoogle.com/tracks/262866/1733570364/2179489.html" style="">Embed for Marijuana Smoke</a>, <script src="https://bandzoogle.com/tracks/262866/1733570364/2179489.js"></script></p>
<p>And it's continued for ... <em>some 52 odd years</em>. If you're scoring, that's four decades last millennium + three decades this millennium = seven decades. </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/ecc9bd0fa7cfe5e66378ba8b6d6c9725a9d9d06f/original/img-2665.jpg/!!/undefined/b:W1sic2l6ZSIsIm1lZGl1bSJdXQ==.jpg" class="size_m justify_center border_" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><span class="font_small"><em>Lory in approximately 1968, when he launched his songwriting career with "Marijuana Smoke."</em></span></p>
<p>This latest addition to the extensive Kohn catalog is "The Color of Hay, a catchy co-write with Bay Area fiddler John Croziat, recorded earlier this month (January 5-10, 2020) at a <a contents="Listening Room Songwriting Retreat" data-link-label="" data-link-type="url" href="http://www.listeningroomretreats.com/" target="_blank">Listening Room Songwriting Retreat</a> in Idyllwild, CA. Here's a rehearsal run-through captured with a Zoom handheld : </p>
<p><a class="zoogle-track-widget" data-height="510" data-style="border: 1px solid #9E9E9E; max-width: 510px;" data-width="100%" href="https://bandzoogle.com/tracks/262866/1279347881/2179486.html" style="">Embed for The color of hay</a><script src="https://bandzoogle.com/tracks/262866/1279347881/2179486.js"></script></p>
<p>Lory's first and last recorded songs have several things in common:</p>
<ul> <li>They're both quick and dirty duets with "bluegrass" musicians, with erstwhile Milkmen manager Victor Levine providing banjo and vocals on "Marijuana Smoke" and John Croziat adding fiddle and vocals to "The Color of Hay." That's strange because no other such stripped down duets appear anywhere in Lory's Silo of Hits stored between 1968-2020! </li> <li>These two songs came to fruition at a much brisker pace than Lory―who practically invented the word <em>compulsion</em>―customarily spends churning out new material material. "Lolita," is probably the only other song he's spent less time composing. </li>
</ul>
<p>With gems like "Color of Hay" still materializing, we have more reason to suspect that Lory's a SuperAger<em>. </em>What exactly is that? According to Emily Rogalski, Professor of Neurology at Northwestern University<i>, "</i>Scientists believe the average person's mental capacity peaks in their thirties and begins to decline thereafter. SuperAgers follow a different trajectory. Their brains seem to age much slower, and when they reach the age of 70 or above, their brains look and behave like the brains of people decades younger." In other words, there hasn't seemed to have been any detectable drop-off in Lory's creative powers since Neil Armstrong walked on the moon.</p>
<p>The song that shattered the seven-decade barrier is, of all things, an Irish/Arabic tune in 6/8 timing. Veering away from 4/4 time is a first for the versatile tunesmith. </p>
<p>"I've always wanted to write a song in waltz time," Lory confided. "Tried it in 3/4, but it seemed more urgent in 6/8." </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/b6b0d7ab79c90fe6a31c23c0a75766a876f0c7c6/original/me-and-john-crop.jpg/!!/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><span class="font_small"><em>Lory Kohn and John Croziat debut "The Color of Hay" in Idyllwild, CA.</em><strong> </strong></span> </p>
<p>"Hay" tells the tale of an Irish lass pining away for her man, the local miller, who's gone off to fight in the Crusades. The fiddle plays in an eerie yet seductive Arabic scale, conjuring up visions of the conscripted lover battling away in the Holy Land. She finds the sudden separation as inexplicable to describe as, say, the color of hay. Unable to process it, so she flashes back to happier times. The senselessness of it all leaves her somewhat tongue-tied (though not entirely). The demo version has an unusual twist: the role of the female protagonist is played by none other than Lory himself. </p>
<p>Who would be Lory's first choice to provide gender correct vocals? </p>
<p>"The Corrs sisters spring to mind; they're Irish, they're great singers, one sister's a standout fiddle player while another's the band's drummer, so they they've got great rhythmic sensibility as well. They'd be perfect." </p>
<p>What about those seven decades of tunesmithing? </p>
<p>"Well ... I didn't even realize I was on track for something like that! It's certainly not something I intentionally aimed to achieve. It just kind of happened. I guess it's been a pretty good run. I'm very fortunate that I've got to spend some of the best moments of my life doing something that I love."</p>The Milkmentag:themilkmen.space,2005:Post/59022732019-09-23T12:14:23-06:002022-06-04T11:08:42-06:00All of Naropa posted!<p>Beat poets. Tibetan Buddhists. Free love. Cults. Evocative hotels. Prophecies. Rocky mountain strongholds. Vajra Guards. 80s Saturnalias. Pure unadulterated decadence. Lovely trios. You name it, <a contents="Naropa's" data-link-label="Naropa" data-link-type="page" href="/naropa" target="_blank"><em>Naropa</em>'s</a> got it all! So why is a band site giving bandwidth to prose?</p>
<p>Ever wondered who "The World's Best Combined Songwriter and Prose Writer" is? Few have, Milkmen main writer Lory Kohn being one notable exception. Here's <a contents="a memoir he feels is a key piece" data-link-label="Naropa" data-link-type="page" href="/naropa" style="" target="_blank">the memoir he feels is a key piece</a> of evidence tilting the scales in his favor. </p>
<p>You'll find additional commentary there, and even more <a contents="here" data-link-label="" data-link-type="url" href="https://themilkmen.space/blog/blog/bring-on-the-memoirs" target="_blank">here</a>.</p>
<p>Basically, any strong songwriter laying claim to the title is going to have to come up with more than just a ghost-written autobiography to be taken seriously. As of this writing, with the passing of Leonard Cohen, the two aspirants to the crown with the most compelling credentials appear to be Lory Kohn and Patti Smith. More to follow ..</p>The Milkmentag:themilkmen.space,2005:Post/58921632019-09-14T12:39:02-06:002019-09-23T10:42:41-06:00First excerpt from "Naropa"<p><a contents="As previously threatened" data-link-label="" data-link-type="url" href="https://themilkmen.space/blog/blog/bring-on-the-memoirs" style="" target="_blank">As previously threatened</a>, here's a little taste of <em>Naropa</em>, one of my favorite memoirs. Feels like it would be right at home with the other excerpts in <em>Drinking, Smoking and Screwing: Great Writers on Great Times </em>that I just reread. I'm about ready to rubber-stamp the entire memoir finished. Initially, I anticipated it would take me roughly three hours to touch up a piece I hadn't revisited since the early 90s. Well ... revisions have been ongoing for three months! Delays are attributable to big changes in my life (exchanging an 8-foot wide dirt road in Taos, New Mexico for a maze of 18-lane freeways here in LA; more on that later), combined with the inescapable truth that compulsion is a bitch. </p>
<p>Let's quickly review the rationale behind including memoirs on a band site:</p>
<ol> <li>I care about who the World's Best Combined Songwriter and Prose Writer is. I want it to be me, and I'm pretty sure it is.</li> <li>The rest of the world could probably care less about who the World's Best Combined Songwriter and Prose Writer is, and frankly, it doesn't care whether it's me.</li> <li>I don't care that the rest of the world could probably care less about who the World's Best Combined Songwriter and Prose Writer is, and I still want it to be me.</li>
</ol>
<p>Peoples' tastes change. Who is the world's fastest human? People used to care about that, and now, if you stopped ten people on the street, I'd be surprised if one of them could answer correctly. Who is the heavyweight champion of the world? Same thing. Who is the Formula One driving champion? Ditto. Who knows, maybe someday the world will be a better and brighter place, and others will suddenly start caring about who deserves the mythical cross-platform crown. If so, the evidence trove will be here waiting.</p>
<p>And now, without further adieu, I present, for your reading pleasure, <a contents="Chapter 10 of Naropa" data-link-label="Fragments" data-link-type="page" href="/fragments" style="" target="_blank">Chapter 10 of </a><em><a contents="Chapter 10 of Naropa" data-link-label="Fragments" data-link-type="page" href="/fragments" target="_blank">Naropa</a> </em>...<br> </p>
<h2 style="text-align: center;"> </h2>The Milkmentag:themilkmen.space,2005:Post/58288212019-07-18T13:06:57-06:002019-10-28T14:22:19-06:00Bring On The Memoirs<p>If you like your lyrics "smart, but not <em>too smart</em>," Milkman Lory Kohn may be your kind of writer. If you also like your prose smart, but not<em> too smart</em>," Lory Kohn may be your kind of writer. His prose writing has always fed into his song writing and vice versa; spending inordinate amounts of time on each genre individually over the course of five decades has elevated them both collectively. </p>
<p>Why include prose writing on a "band website?" Cause very few writers excel at both English composition and song composition. And the few writers who do rarely concern themselves with an imaginary competition to determine "The Best Combination Songwriter and Prose Writer on Planet Earth." Lory Kohn would be the exception to the rule. Since the recent passing of Leonard Cohen got him thinking about it in the first place, he's been laying the groundwork for a successful assault on the imaginary crown. </p>
<p>Despite pouring consider brainpower into what others might view as a quixotic quest, the prolific wordsmith remains more nonchalant than narcissistic about his prospects. As stated elsewhere on this site, "Lory Kohn is not necessarily the best songwriter on Earth, but every so often there are days when he might be; and Lory Kohn is not necessarily the best prose writer on Earth, but every so often there are days when he might be." Over the course of five decades, the "every so often ... he might be" days tend to add up. So, is Milkman Lory Kohn actually the best combined songwriter/prose writer on Earth? Especially now that top competitor Leonard Cohen has dropped (dead) out of the running? </p>
<p>That's for the world's harshest critic—you—to determine. </p>
<p><strong>{Update 9/23/2019: direct comparisons coming soon!}</strong>.</p>
<p>We'll get the ball rolling with a few choice morsels from Lory's memoirs. <a contents="DC Flashback" data-link-label="" data-link-type="url" href="http://cannabiscommerce.org/2013/07/30/d-c-flashback/" target="_blank"><em>DC Flashback</em></a> looks back at a time when the 17 year old future milker was a sophomore at American University in Washington DC in the fall of 1969—quite possibly the craziest time to have ever been around the nation's capital. We'll follow that up with <a contents="Naropa" data-link-label="Naropa" data-link-type="page" href="/naropa" target="_blank"><em>Naropa</em></a>, in which Lory finds himself in the midst of a strange marriage between Beat poets and a cult of hedonistic Tibetan Buddhists in Boulder, Colorado, circa 1980.</p>
<p>There's plenty more to come, including detective novels and Lory's five cover stories for <em>Electronic Musician</em> magazine. Those of you who still love to read in the vast Twitterverse are in for a treat. </p>
<p>Themilkmen.space will put up the text version of <em>DC Flashback</em> shortly. For now, we'll point to the fully illustrated version available on <em>Cannabis Commerce</em>, Lory's "poteconomics" site that had been offline since 2014 -- when work on <em>Songlab </em>began in earnest—till, well, yesterday! Settle in for a good read and enjoy!</p>
<p><a contents="http://cannabiscommerce.org/2013/07/30/d-c-flashback/" data-link-label="" data-link-type="url" href="http://cannabiscommerce.org/2013/07/30/d-c-flashback/" target="_blank">http://cannabiscommerce.org/2013/07/30/d-c-flashback/</a></p>
<p>For those of you who appreciate visuals more than words, here's a few <em>Cannabis Commerce</em> classics to liven up your day:</p>
<p><a contents="http://cannabiscommerce.org/2013/06/13/shots-of-life-after-prohibition/" data-link-label="" data-link-type="url" href="http://cannabiscommerce.org/2013/06/13/shots-of-life-after-prohibition/" target="_blank">http://cannabiscommerce.org/2013/06/13/shots-of-life-after-prohibition/</a></p>
<p><a contents="http://cannabiscommerce.org/2013/06/19/postcards-from-paradise-found/" data-link-label="" data-link-type="url" href="http://cannabiscommerce.org/2013/06/19/postcards-from-paradise-found/" target="_blank">http://cannabiscommerce.org/2013/06/19/postcards-from-paradise-found/</a> </p>
<p>And of course you've already discovered <em><a contents="Bovine Serenade" data-link-label="Bovine Serenade" data-link-type="page" href="/bovine-serenade" target="_blank">Bovine Serenade</a></em>, right? That's Milkmen mascot Bessie The Cow's "first bovine" account of the bittersweet milkmania period which lasted from 1980-1984. Rumor has it Lory may have ghost written Bessie's account—but the veracity of such claims remains shrouded in mystery. </p>The Milkmentag:themilkmen.space,2005:Post/56996372019-03-29T11:57:52-06:002020-02-01T10:26:56-07:00"The Milkmen Are On Our Radar!"<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/107d5fc68fd3fa6c8edde8a7eb717069c41c456f/original/radar-2.jpg/!!/undefined/b:W1sic2l6ZSIsIm1lZGl1bSJdXQ==.jpg" class="size_m justify_center border_" /></p>
<p>A glowing, shimmering, often dazzling object has been detected nearing the crosshairs centered within the Colorado Music Hall of Fame's radar sweep. Could the mysterious blip be Songlab, the Milkmen's orbiting recording studio? They utilized the space pod to record <a contents="a 23-song tour de force" data-link-label="Songlab (2017)" data-link-type="page" href="/songlab-2017" target="_blank">a 23-song tour de force</a> named after the novel transport.</p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/28c3831aadabdf725c997ca347e8f6fc5bcef51f/original/songlab2.jpg/!!/undefined/b:W1sic2l6ZSIsIm1lZGl1bSJdXQ==.jpg" class="size_m justify_center border_" /></p>
<p>Another blip pulsating as it traverses their neon green on black screens has CMHOF radar operators equally perplexed. These watchers of the skies are taken aback by the UFO's uncanny resemblance to, of all things, a terrestrial milk carton. That's just plain weird! </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/4cea7b752e53c5a36bf2fe5225eca451702332b1/original/songlab7.jpg/!!/undefined/b:W1sic2l6ZSIsIm1lZGl1bSJdXQ==.jpg" class="size_m justify_center border_" /></p>
<p>The dual sightings could be pure coincidence—that's one possibility. Or could it be that The Milkmen have been intentionally pulling out all the stops to make their presence known? </p>
<p>Perhaps I, "<a contents="the last Milkman standing" data-link-label="Press" data-link-type="page" href="/press" target="_blank">the last Milkman standing</a>," curator of our esteemed <a contents="Silo of Hits" data-link-label="Silo of Hits" data-link-type="page" href="/silo-of-hits" target="_blank">Silo of Hits</a>, and resident hypemeister responsible for creating much of our mythology, can offer some insight into the origin of these mysterious blips. </p>
<p>Let's start with Songlab. Obviously, Songlab is an orbiting recording studio in our minds. The trick in this case is to frame it as an equally desirable destination for CMHOF board members' minds. Those minds are entrusted with a specialized mission: scanning the state of Colorado for deserving players to enshrine. Now I don't know about you, but if I heard that a certain band had an orbiting recording studio—<em>even if it was just in their minds</em>—I'd be inclined to take a serious listen to whatever tunes they managed to record there. I'd also wonder how they got there, but that's a question for another day. </p>
<p>Additionally, I might have some intimate knowledge about how and why a third mysterious object, one which suddenly began sending strong electromagnetic signals from a form factor which looks for all the world like a vintage milk box, was somehow teleported directly into CMHOF radar space. </p>
<p>Yup, a milkbox containing every song in our Silo of Hits just happened to materialize at Twist and Shout, the "record shop" and Denver landmark CMHOF Co-Chairman Paul Epstein has owned for 30+ years. Imagine that! When you think about it, it is quite a coincidence, one I oughta know something about—I'm the milkman who selected the box and its contents, then performed a service milkmen have performed since time immemorial: Delivery with a capital D as in Dairyland, where the milk box originally dematerialized from.</p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/4b13bb4713338df37a4ff0551c4845ecfdecbef1/original/twist-and-shout.jpg/!!/undefined/b:W1sic2l6ZSIsImxhcmdlIl1d.jpg" class="size_xl justify_center border_" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><span class="font_small"><em>Another busy day at Twist and Shout.</em></span> </p>
<p>Why would a mild-mannered milkman like myself go to such great lengths to ensure that the Red Rocks Shrine (the CMHOF is adjacent to the famous amphitheater) has everything they could ever want to evaluate our prospects?</p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/ae10416ab053f870a64312352cb5231818f446e7/original/cmhof-rr.jpg/!!/undefined/b:W1sic2l6ZSIsImxhcmdlIl1d.jpg" class="size_xl justify_center border_" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><span class="font_small"><em>The Colorado Music Hall of Fame has moved into the old trading post adjacent to Red Rocks Amphitheater</em></span></p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/534550298c903991ecfc98c09a6d7b1e5e82c18f/original/chrisdaniels.jpg/!!/undefined/b:W1sic2l6ZSIsImxhcmdlIl1d.jpg" class="size_xl justify_center border_" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><span class="font_small"><em>CMHOF Executive director Chris Daniels is also an inductee.</em></span></p>
<p>One major reason would be that one of our own, bassist Kevin "Chocolate Milk" Jackson, is no longer with us on this earthly plane. It would be nice to think that the rest of us have written so many great songs that we'll have eternal life and never die ... but ... well ... we fantasize a lot, but not quite to that extent. What I'm getting at is that I suspect induction for the rest of us would probably be a whole lot more satisfying <em>before it takes place posthumously.</em></p>
<p>Another reason is that it's becoming easier and easier to visualize the post-<em>Songlab </em>Milkmen being enshrined than the pre-<em>Songlab </em>Milkmen, who, minus the quintessential tunes on their <a contents="23-tune&nbsp;magnum opus" data-link-label="Songlab (2017)" data-link-type="page" href="/songlab-2017" target="_blank">23-tune <em>magnum opus</em></a>, seemed condemned to remain forever marooned on the cusp of CMHOF worthiness. </p>
<p>As it develops, CMHOF hierarchy is not exactly enforcing radio silence on the matter of The Milkmen's suitability. <em>Au contraire</em>. Executive Director Chris Daniels has already stated, "They will be inducted." And when the aforementioned Paul Epstein heralds, "The Milkmen are on our radar," you know it's well within the realms of possibility.</p>
<p>I for one will be awaiting the official announcement before I start dancing with a lampshade on my head.</p>
<p>That said, it's certainly heartening to learn that our overall body of work is being viewed favorably enough to appear on the radar of <em>the best possible organization to preserve our musical heritage</em>. </p>
<p>Zen masters tell us that it's okay to take the occasional step to solicit recognition, as long as we remain unattached to the outcome. </p>
<p>While I'm not sure I'm Buddhist enough to remain <em>completely </em>detached from the outcome, let's go ahead and examine the thought process behind the step I chose—launching a promo milk box boldly into the void and seeing what happens. </p>
<p>The milk boxes themselves—there were originally two dozen of them—were a gift from the Watts Hardy Dairy (now defunct but reincarnated as The Dairy Arts Center) which proudly served the city of Boulder and surrounding towns for a century. No less a man than the great Mr. Watts himself bestowed them on us during our epic meeting of the dairy minds in 1982. You can read my account of that momentous occasion, or should I say Bessie The Cow's account of that momentous occasion, here: <a contents="https://themilkmen.space/meet-mr-watts" data-link-label="Meet Mr. Watts" data-link-type="page" href="/meet-mr-watts" target="_blank">https://themilkmen.space/meet-mr-watts</a>. </p>
<p>Mr. Watts even arranged for us to have the boxes painted in The Middle of Nowhere, Colorado, at the same rural silkscreening shop that applied the Watts Hardy Dairy logos. </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/5df0e9c9d01d52fe48e46bc13e880278822e8341/original/wh-milk-box.jpg/!!/undefined/b:W1sic2l6ZSIsIm1lZGl1bSJdXQ==.jpg" class="size_m justify_center border_" /></p>
<p>Vintage milk boxes tend to stand out in most situations. But this one wouldn't stand out for very long if the contents weren't provocative enough in their own right. </p>
<p>Hay is not particularly provocative. It is, however, particularly evocative. It immediately takes you to some fantasy dairy world (like the parallel universe we've occupied for 40 years). So, you take a vintage milk box that's been silkscreened with the enduring Milkmen logo ...</p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/a9feba3d83741c92183923465d2155d9253a8f29/original/17-closed-milk-box.jpg/!!/undefined/b:W1sic2l6ZSIsImxhcmdlIl1d.jpg" class="size_xl justify_center border_" /></p>
<p>... and you throw in a generous amount of Taos County's finest, freshest golden yellow straw. </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/061cab44b4127f7541e653c79ffa420f02436670/original/10-hay-on-top.jpg/!!/undefined/b:W1sic2l6ZSIsImxhcmdlIl1d.jpg" class="size_xl justify_center border_" /></p>
<p>Of course your milk box is going to need some sort of cover letter to let the recipient know what in god's name you're doing sending him a milk box. You could just drop that in there somewhere, but why not ratchet up the curiosity factor by inserting it into a vintage milk bottle just so?</p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/387e18022f8de4fc1d22946f02067323d3600273/original/3-milk-bottle.jpg/!!/undefined/b:W1sic2l6ZSIsImxhcmdlIl1d.jpg" class="size_xl justify_center border_" /></p>
<p>What sort of brainwaves would a self-proclaimed "resident hypemeister" imprint in such a letter? Read the entire spiel here: </p>
<p> # # #</p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/6ad05c49f275719e5e8fb77e65e5c54cd55c7a10/original/letterhead-2.png" class="size_orig justify_center border_" /></p>
<p>Hello Paul, </p>
<p>Greetings from the Men of Milk! </p>
<p>The vintage milk box containing our entire body of work is a prop from our 1980s stage show. It's been delivered to you because your 30+ years guiding Twist and Shout makes you uniquely qualified to evaluate it. Evaluate it for what? To determine whether The Milkmen are worthy of induction into the Colorado Music Hall of Fame. </p>
<p>Chris Herbert—who's in favor of the idea—suggested that I get in touch with you as the next logical board member to convince. I think he had in mind sending you an email. Instead, we opted to go the extra mile—which is exactly what we've done on all our recordings throughout every phase of our 40-year career. </p>
<p>It stands to reason that some Colorado artist has accumulated more compelling recordings over the years than any act not currently in the HOF. It also stands to reason that whoever that act is deserves strong consideration for induction. So ... who could that possibly be? </p>
<p>If the answer isn't "The Milkmen," then some other act has really dedicated themselves to the craft of songwriting, has a decided knack for production, and has been especially industrious over the course of their recording careers. </p>
<p>And even if that studiogenic other act exists, in all likelihood they haven't put together a readily accessible career retrospective like the one that's available on themilkmen.space (that's the word "space," not the space bar). A curated site simplifies things for you and other board members to assess our suitability. </p>
<p>Until we arose from the ashes in 2017 with <em>Songlab</em>, a career-capping 23-song magnum opus, I'd say we were on the cusp of HOF worthiness as opposed to definitely worthy. Does Songlab push us over the top? Check it out here: https://themilkmen.space/songlab-2017. </p>
<p>Some points to consider: </p>
<p><strong>Longevity</strong> It's one thing to be able to go out and reproduce credible versions of songs you wrote 40 years ago when you're a senior citizen ... it's another thing altogether to produce new work that arguably surpasses your best work from the days of yore. The Milkmen became an instant sensation after winning the 1981 KBCO Songwriting Contest. They were finalists for Best Song and Best Rock Song in the 2018 New Mexico Music Awards ... 37 years later! </p>
<p><strong>Versatility</strong> In the halcyon days of "milkmania," The Milkmen were what's now known as a "classic rock" outfit. When that ran its course, free of expectations and always up for explorations, their songwriting began taking on a timeless quality. Pretty soon they were branching off into folk, bluegrass, Americana, alt-country, techno, and even bossa nova. Meanwhile, they've continued to churn out stylish rock tunes with lyrics that have been called, "smart, but not <em>too smart</em>." </p>
<p><strong>Avalanche of publicity</strong> In the pre-internet days, print media covered The Men of Milk with "an avalanche of publicity" reproduced on the band site here: <a contents="https://themilkmen.space/press" data-link-label="Press" data-link-type="page" href="/press" target="_blank">https://themilkmen.space/press</a>. </p>
<p><strong>Ric Parnell was kicked out of The Milkmen and into immortality</strong> Drummer extraordinaire Ric Parnell was kicked out of The Milkmen for passing out at too many sold-out gigs and into immortality as the exploding drummer in the cult classic, <em>This Is Spinal Tap</em>. </p>
<p><strong>Rick Wilson was kicked out of The Milkmen and immediately wrote a #1 song</strong> Bassist Rick Wilson was kicked out of The Milkmen for the heinous crime of hanging out with Ozzy Osbourne instead of us and immediately responded by writing "After The Rain" for The Nelson Brothers. </p>
<p><strong>Renowned musicians, engineers, and producers like working on Milkmen tunes</strong> Three drummers who've appeared on Milkmen recordings—Ric Parnell, Pat Mastollotto, and Chuck Sabo—have been on #1 records for the likes of Toni Basil, Mister Mister, and Natalie Merchant. Mark Muller, special guest star who is all over <em>Songlab</em>, was a mainstay in Shania Twain's band when she ruled the world 1995-2005. Larry Seyer, who engineered the <em>Dairy Aire</em> CD, has 9 Grammies. John Hug had just produced #1 hits for Marty Balin ("Hearts") and Eddie Murphy ("Party All The Time") prior to recording our "Love Won't Listen" which appears on the <em>Revenge Of The Nerds, Pt. II</em> soundtrack. That's just a sampling. </p>
<p><strong>Main writer Lory Kohn may have an unusual claim to fame</strong> While he is not necessarily the best songwriter in the world, every so often there are days when he might be. While he is not necessarily the best prose writer in the world, every so often there are days when he might be. However, if you combine the two events—like how skiing has an Alpine Combined event consisting of slalom and downhill—Lory may very well be the favorite to take home gold in an imaginary Writing Combined event. See if the first chapter of <em>Bovine Serenade</em> (<a contents="https://themilkmen.space/bovine-serenade" data-link-label="Bovine Serenade" data-link-type="page" href="/bovine-serenade" target="_blank">https://themilkmen.space/bovine-serenade</a>) doesn't draw you in. </p>
<p><strong>Lory promoted the Colorado music scene in the 70s</strong> As editor of <em>The Rocky Mountain Musical Express</em> from 1975-1978, Lory covered just about every local and touring act that came through Colorado at venues ranging from The Blue Note to Ebbets Field to McNichols Arena. He credits this experience with raising his songwriting sights. </p>
<p><strong>Colorado Connection</strong> Lory first landed in Boulder during the magical summer of 1970 and has spent most of his adult life there and in Denver. Co-founder Steven Solomon still lives in the same Denver home he's owned for 35 years. Bassist Kevin "Chocolate Milk" Jackson spent his entire life in Denver. Much of <em>Songlab </em>was arranged and recorded in Manitou Springs. </p>
<p>Life works in strange ways: had we reached the outer stratospheres of stardom many predicted for us when we first emerged on the scene, we may never have experienced the late-career resurgence that culminated in <em>Songlab</em>. For us, songwriting and recording are games we've never tired of playing. Fortunately, we've always prioritized the artistic side of things. We never hung our heads because we weren't famous enough or commercially successful enough or recognized enough; instead, we just kept plugging away, recording whenever we could for the sheer joy of it. </p>
<p>That's going to shine through as you take in the beguiling concoction of artistry, sophistication, and raw animal appeal that distinguishes our "many moos." </p>
<p>We feel that the CMHOF would be even more vibrant with us in it. Do you ... feel like we do? </p>
<p>—Lory Kohn for The Milkmen <br> # # #</p>
<p>Although full-length versions of every choice kernel from our mythical Silo of Hits are offered here on our band site, some board members might still prefer assessing Milkmen material on hard media like CDs. So you burn nearly 80 minutes worth of tunes from the various milk eras onto each of 4 disks.</p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/8e8db21296a63bb3cf0d1eb9cec0bd5908dd71a5/original/5-cd-disks.jpg/!!/undefined/b:W1sic2l6ZSIsImxhcmdlIl1d.jpg" class="size_xl justify_center border_" />You print up a list of all the different songs, fold it over the CDs, and place a rubber band around that.</p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/72f5279c3adc9129b88d372701a5460fd8628fe9/original/7-song-lists.jpg/!!/undefined/b:W1sic2l6ZSIsImxhcmdlIl1d.jpg" class="size_xl justify_center border_" /></p>
<p>You might want to highlight the fact that the main Milkmen songwriter spent over three years in the mid 70s writing stories about the Colorado music scene using his own name and employing various <em>nom de plumes</em> as editor of <em>The Rocky Mountain Musical Express</em>.</p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/d58316a0fc0f700f6210fcb9b1185446eb1ebf9d/original/rmmes.jpg/!!/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" />So you take an actual physical copy of a reasonably well-preserved issue...</p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/88fd22203af54a1c33aea89d8ac4a7f11fef0eeb/original/frampton-cover.png/!!/undefined/b:W1sic2l6ZSIsImxhcmdlIl1d.png" class="size_xl justify_center border_" />... put it inside plastic to emphasize its rarity, then place that inside the box next to the CDs.</p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/99e92a8d25e1c60be93ecf929a2ec4bfa1cd1791/original/9-hay-rmme-songlist.jpg/!!/undefined/b:W1sic2l6ZSIsImxhcmdlIl1d.jpg" class="size_xl justify_center border_" />Add the milk bottle. So now your box contains 4 CDs, a milk bottle with a cover letter, and a well-preserved copy of <em>The Rocky Mountain Musical Express</em>. </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/12eda4eb9267e7f7fedf2700be7490d7a156e6e5/original/hay-rmme-bottle-songlist.jpg/!!/undefined/b:W1sic2l6ZSIsImxhcmdlIl1d.jpg" class="size_xl justify_center border_" />That would be good enough for most people and it's certainly a great start. But wait—you notice that your milk box offers a convenient metal clasp for housewives to attach their order and/or notes for their milkman ("Please leave an extra vat of cottage cheese next week, Mr. Milkman"). The clasp seems to be crying out for something truly special to hold on to.</p>
<p>So you break out the trove of Milkmen paraphernalia you've been lugging around for 40 years. Right on the very top of the pile, you see them: two copies of your "Lolita"/"Desmond Grey Go Away" single, <em>the last two you have left</em>. Hmm. After pondering the situation for a few moments, there really is no choice: what better way to divest yourself of your last expendable single than by bequeathing it to the Colorado Music Hall of Fame? You just do it, you clamp the highly collectible single in place. </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/23e4835b45d920b31a4f980741b876b18c7dc31d/original/15-single-attached.jpg/!!/undefined/b:W1sic2l6ZSIsImxhcmdlIl1d.jpg" class="size_xl justify_center border_" />The flip side of the cover looks like this:</p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/b3092d800a86af665850c3bd0e21f58dea3ce597/original/11-lolita-guy.jpg/!!/undefined/b:W1sic2l6ZSIsImxhcmdlIl1d.jpg" class="size_xl justify_center border_" />And the vinyl A side:</p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/a5f133111c34d98320436f9fec9f0ecdd8e93613/original/13-record-label-lolita.jpg/!!/undefined/b:W1sic2l6ZSIsImxhcmdlIl1d.jpg" class="size_xl justify_center border_" />And the vinyl B side:</p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/a43cae5a5a11d74fc88f87864231aab18a9e4aab/original/14-record-label-desmond.jpg/!!/undefined/b:W1sic2l6ZSIsImxhcmdlIl1d.jpg" class="size_xl justify_center border_" />You add a final sprinkling of clean golden hay to cover the artifacts.</p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/e3271d9a387557447d8499d3561c3e6d0bd94565/original/16-single-and-hay.jpg/!!/undefined/b:W1sic2l6ZSIsImxhcmdlIl1d.jpg" class="size_xl justify_center border_" />At this point, you've mined the milking milieu to the best of your ability. The rest is up to the universe. Stay tuned!</p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/1297b3504519be66f40ca1c6b8dd0f29c976b21c/original/18-ready-for-deliver.jpg/!!/undefined/b:W1sic2l6ZSIsIm1lZGl1bSJdXQ==.jpg" class="size_m justify_center border_" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><em>another dairy dawning<br>bleary eyed I still am yawming<br>out here the milking matters<br>in the tin cans lactose splatters<br>I see my fair milk maiden<br>at her task with Guernseys waiting<br>and while the city's sleeping<br>dairy dreams are what we're keeping</em></p>
<p> </p>The Milkmentag:themilkmen.space,2005:Post/55792422019-01-03T10:04:26-07:002020-05-26T15:46:10-06:00Demystifying Dairy Aire<p>I've noticed that our newfound international fans inevitably gravitate toward <em>Songlab</em> (our latest collection from 2016-2018) or <em>Spilt Milk</em> (our earliest collection from 1980-1985). Yet hardly anyone lands on <em>Dairy Aire</em> (our equally vibrant mid-career collection from 1999-2001). </p>
<p>So ... when you hover over the Silo of Hits tab, and the drop-down menu appears, revealing all the available playlists ... are the words "Dairy Aire" just too mystifying to click on? The inescapable conclusion is <em>they must be</em>. Since I'd ideally like listeners to enjoy all the phases of our under-the-radar career, I'll take a crack at demystifying the title. </p>
<p>Just what is "dairy aire," anyway? Well ... </p>
<ul> <li>
<em>Dairy Aire</em> is the title of an album consisting of 13 songs we recorded from 1999-2001. </li> <li>"Dairy Aire" is a title song from the same album which is also <a contents="a third theme song" data-link-label="The Wholly Milk Trinity" data-link-type="page" href="/the-wholly-milk-trinity" target="_blank">our third dairy-themed song</a>, joining "Late Night Delivery" and "Making The Rounds." </li> <li>
<em>Dairy Aire</em> is the name of the only physical CD The Milkmen ever released. </li> <li>"Dairy aire" is also a pun on "derrière" That's French for "bum," "butt," ""backside," "booty," and other terms of dorsal endearment which rarely require further explanation. </li>
</ul>
<p>About that mysterious extra "e" ... it's likely that the purpose for adding the "e" to "air" was twofold. First, with it "dairy aire" looks a lot more like "derrière." Second, opting for the additional character may have been a subconscious attempt to elevate my own poetic outpourings into the same time-space continuum where old (olde?) English rhymesters like Wordsworth, Byron, and Blake reveled in wordplay. </p>
<p>About that pun ... what was unambiguous in Boulder, Colorado in 1999 is clearly not obvious worldwide in 2019. For what it's worth, twenty years ago, everyone seemed to get the play on words. Take for example <a contents="my immediate neighbors in the Hotel Boulderado" data-link-label="Naropa" data-link-type="page" href="/naropa" target="_blank">my immediate neighbors in the Hotel Boulderado</a>—notorious Beat poets William Burroughs and Alan Ginsburg. They'd spent a lot of time in Paris where I here tell French is spoken, were intimately familiar with revered old(e) English poets, and had probably at some point stumbled home in the wee hours of the morning just when a milk truck was pulling into their driveways. In the literary circles I traveled, a phrase like "dairy aire" wasn't a head-scratcher, it was strong imagery.</p>
<p>Twenty years later, things have changed. I now realize that if English isn't your native tongue, a phrase like "dairy aire" could be truly mystifying. I can also see how even native English speakers could be thrown by the what-seemed-clever-to-me-at-the-time pun, or the dairy <em>schtick</em>—not to mention the atypical commingling of old(e) English and current French terms. </p>
<p>Had I been more psychic in 1999, I may have practiced "vocabulary suppression"—avoiding the use of words or phrases that could go over peoples' heads—so there was no chance of confusing future listeners with unfamiliar lingo. I didn't do it back then because it was hard to imagine that in less than twenty years, "dashing dairymen" would become as extinct as the dodo ... or that the internet was destined to become a virtual jukebox radiating out into every nook and cranny of Planet Earth, where all sorts of non-native English speakers can and do stumble upon themilkmen.space. </p>
<p>But I wasn't sufficiently psychic back then. So what to do about the justifiable confusion over <em>Dairy Aire </em>now<em>?</em> How will I encourage people to get past their bewilderment and realize this collection is as worthwhile as our other work? </p>
<p>Changing the title would be the most drastic step. </p>
<p>Well, just as I'm not about to change a classic band name and brand name—The Milkmen—that's been around since 1979 because it doesn't play as well in the opening days of 2019 as it did back when our namesakes made the rounds, I can't quite bring myself to change the title of the only collection my milk-mates and I managed to record between 1985 and 2016 (and was my most memorable achievement during that time). </p>
<p>I have a less drastic enticement in mind. Perhaps some choice excerpts from the juicy <em>Dairy Aire</em> backstory might pique your curiosity about a "forgotten masterpiece" (or at least a piece for the masses)? If you're tempted, read on ... or just <a contents="go&nbsp;here" data-link-label="Dairy Aire (2000)" data-link-type="page" href="/dairy-aire-2000" target="_blank">go here</a> to listen to the tunes.</p>
<ul> <li>Before I even started work on <em>Dairy Aire</em>, there was a huge time gap between 1985 and 1999 when no matter how much I wanted it, yearned for it, or tried to will it into being, I just couldn't find the time or the money to properly record the dozen or so new Milkmen tunes I was hearing in my mind. So when the opportunity finally presented itself, I put the rest of my life on hold, immediately began plotting how I could take advantage of new technology that allowed musicians to make competitive recordings at home, then plunged into a recording siege which lasted the better part of two years. </li> <li>Speaking of finally finding the time and money after aching to record for so long, <em>Dairy Aire's</em> accidental sponsor was none other than the IBM Corporation—the dominant computing colossus at the height of its power. I couldn't believe that IBM had hired me as a technical writer in the first place; evidently, they'd run out of cookie cutter geeks and had to dive deep enough into the labor pool to locate me. It was mind-blowing because I used to gaze out at the foreboding IBM Boulder campus from the vantage point of nearby Coot Lake—the most notorious nudie swimming hole in the heyday of Colorado hippiedom. What happened was that while working on a one-year contract, I'd somehow managed to complete the mission—persuading IBM Corporate to part with $50 million so that its Boulder Global Services division could build the world's most ambitious data cloud—in a mere six weeks. I was shocked because in my mind I'd delivered nothing more than a preliminary draft which was a far cry from a persuasive document. Wrong! Global Services was thrilled that the barely-readable gibberish I'd turned in got them the funding they wanted so quickly. And then suddenly all was right with the world: they were only too happy to honor the 10 months plus remaining on my contract. That meant that I'd be receiving a big fat bi-weekly paycheck for a solid 10 months even though management no longer expected me to write another word and I could telecommute! Suddenly the most deep-pocketed patron of the arts imaginable was backing what was to become the <em>Dairy Aire </em>project. </li> <li>It turned out telecommuting to <em>not </em>work was destined to take place from Taos, New Mexico, not Boulder, Colorado. At the time funding from IBM came through, things were really rocky with the ex. She was intent on spending the IBM bounty on a practical kitchen remodel as opposed to an "irresponsible" dream recording. Similar remodeling ventures like the guest house and several bathrooms had already taken precedence over whatever creative <em>tour de force</em> I had in mind. We started having one too many shall we say "dramatic debates" over this point of contention. I carefully considered her position before formulating my response: "Nope! Not this time!" The only thing to do was to put some distance between us. So I did. I chose separation over capitulation, renting a fabulous adobe abode in Taos, New Mexico, the artist haven in "The Land of Enchantment" (northern New Mexico) I'd visited often that had always called to me. It turned out to be a great move. </li> <li>There was something about the earthiness of the acequia-fed ditches which fed ancestral family farms combined with the spaciness of the nightly star shows that just screamed Aliveness and Creativity. I'd sit on a rock and play acoustic guitar till I lost track of time and nothing else mattered but that moment. A whole bunch of unexpected stuff unlike anything else I'd ever written started pouring out, like "Sky Above Clouds," "Blossom In The Springtime," and "San Isidro." </li> <li>Between the seemingly inevitable marital breakup and the constantly inspiring vista—all that unspoiled Pueblo Indian land with the tribe's sacred mountain rising majestically above it and streaks of purple, crimson and tangerine brushstrokes extending out toward the Rio Grande Gorge and beyond—I now had access to a limitless supply of lyrical inspiration and musical invention. </li> <li>Something new and different had taken hold of me after exchanging a yuppie existence for a more authentic version of self. I witnessed myself channeling tunes seemingly gifted from the universe, as opposed to forcing them into existence with my conscious mind. My conscious mind was still around to make fine adjustments. </li> <li>
<em>Dairy Aire</em> began as a solo project. Then Milkmen co-founder Steven Solomon insinuated himself into the proceedings. At last! A full-fledged Milkmen reunion had been set into motion. I remember one day his own soon-to-be-ex gave him her esteemed permission to come down from Denver for one big week of recording. We had to make every day count. Well, wouldn't you know it, a freak snowstorm came along in the middle of April. Snow was blowing sideways, the wind was whipping around and howling like crazy for days, the roads were too icy to make a food run, and, to complete the picture, the rented casita's composting toilet had broken down and was stinking the joint up. We just put our heads down and kept on recording. </li> <li>Previously, I'd never attempted to produce pop/rock tunes (I'd produced the instrumental <em>Silicon Rebels</em> back in 1989), and I'd certainly never utilized a digital PC and software at a time when analog tape machines and massive mixing desks still ruled the roost. Not many "project studio" owners had back then. Turned out I was able to handle the tracking (recording parts as opposed to mixing them) and computer stuff well enough; I had more computer experience than most people since I'd trained to be a network engineer (which I truly sucked at, but it led me to tech writing, which became extremely lucrative when the dotcom craze was peaking). Being able to audition various arrangements without having to pay for studio time by the hour was empowering. As I worked my way through the songs, I began hearing more and more elaborate arrangement possibilities. Gradually these found their way into the mixes. </li> <li>Thousands of hours into the project, I could tell we were onto something really good. We'd have to identify a really great mixing engineer, preferably one who was familiar with the same Soundscape digital recording solution I'd been using, to make the project all it could be. I found Larry Seyer out of Austin, Texas on the Soundscape User Forum—yes, the 9 Grammies for engineering and production he just happened to have to his credit got my attention. That meant I'd be spending an awful lot of time in the capital of alternative country music with someone who could show me the digital recording ropes. Larry was good at every aspect of recording. But what I remember most was his fingers just flying all over his computer keyboard, because he'd assigned shortcuts to just about every task you'd want. They used to try and teach us "speed typing" in high school; Larry was undoubtedly the class king. He'd tune the vocals for a whole song in like seven minutes. </li> <li>When I went down to Austin, I'd stay at the Austin Motel in all its 1950s glory. It was situated on happening South Congress Avenue, directly across from the Continental Club which booked one great band after another. Even the free bands on Sunday night blew away the top bands I was used to hearing in Colorado and New Mexico. After recording all day, I'd drop in around 10 PM or so to unwind. I was really taken by all the Texas honeys swing dancing to twangy tunes in their embroidered twirly skirts. I immediately wished they were dancing to our swing tunes in their embroidered twirly skirts; only problem was we didn't have any. That got me to thinking: shouldn't a band named The Milkmen that celebrates life on dairy farms in idyllic country settings have some down-home tunes in their repertoire, too? <a contents="Going country every once in a while" data-link-label="Milk Country " data-link-type="page" href="/milk-country" target="_blank">Going country every once in a while</a> didn't exactly hurt The Stones' overall body of work any, did it? Before I knew it, I was taking a crack at countrified tunes like "Find The Time" and "On The Rebound" and even tackled some bluegrass with "World Without Dreams." </li> <li>It turned out Larry Seyer was really well-connected in Austin. That how Pat Mastollotto came to man our drum throne. How do you replace a Ric Parnell and a Tim Pantea? With someone who's been on at least three Number Ones: "Broken Wings" and "Kyrie" for Mister Mister, and "That's Just The Way It is, Baby" for The Rembrandts. That's how. Then there was Pat's continuing progressive rock gig with King Crimson—who are still gods in Europe and Japan. Those guys play in abstract timings like 16/7 or 14/9 just to show they can and to see if they can "fuck each other up" onstage to alleviate the boredom of being on the road. Playing in 4/4 was child's play for him. OMG he attacked his kit so hard ... he was a real woodchopper! You couldn't even be in the same room as him. Larry had a TV feed which allowed us to watch him carve his parts in stone from the safety of the control room. Larry also called a few guys from the Grammy-winning Austin Lounge Lizards to add fiddle and percussion. He played Coral Electric Sitar on "Our Little Secret" himself. The common denominator between these studio musicians was that their takes were basically over began they began. They'd hear a song once, then record a perfect take the next time through. It took all of 15 minutes from the moment they walked through the door to writing them a check. I've been using "A-list" studio cats ever since. </li> <li>Somewhere around the end of the project, it occurred to me that the then 12-song Dairy Aire project could use a lucky 13th track. I'd been toying with the idea of introducing a title track called, predictably enough, "Dairy Aire." Guess what that could possibly be about? Yep, it would be another theme song, our third one, or two more than The Monkees, whose "Hey Hey We're The Monkees" was the original inspiration ("Bad Company" by Bad Company was another). The obvious influence for the extended ending was the Eric Clapton classic, "Layla." Extending the song just when it seemed it was about to end could have been a daunting task, but with talent like Larry, Pat, and Steven around, we managed to pull it off. </li> <li>While it was heartening to find out we could take off in new and different directions, we made sure to include ample rock fare to keep fans of our classic stuff in the fold. I'm talking about the title track, "Tide To Turn," "Dick Darling," "Midnight Calling" and arguably the best of the lot, "Time To Move On." </li>
</ul>
<p>I trust including a detailed explanation and all that juicy backstory has helped demystify <em>Dairy Aire </em>at least a little? Sure hope so! To paraphrase the words of the late great John Lennon: "All we are saying . . . is give <em>Dairy Aire</em> a chance."</p>The Milkmentag:themilkmen.space,2005:Post/54116562018-09-01T12:07:46-06:002019-08-06T18:47:25-06:00The strange saga of "Love Won't Listen"<p>Imagine if one of your most fervent desires was to collect royalties from the untold thousands of hours you've spent refining the crafts of songwriting and music production—yet you'd spent decades believing you'd never earned a single penny from it. </p>
<p>That would be kind of discouraging, right? </p>
<p>Then imagine you find out 30 years after you received an initial fee for writing "Love Won't Listen," which was included in the soundtrack of <em>Revenge Of The Nerds, Part II, Nerds in Paradise</em>, that you suddenly realize that you should have been receiving royalties from placing a song in a cult classic all along ... but you never knew it! And that the royalties that you never received added up to around $30,000 worth! </p>
<p>Like many happenstances here on Planet Earth, that qualifies as strange ... but true! </p>
<p>How is it that a sentient being managed to not know he was entitled to $30,000 worth of major motion picture royalties? To answer that, I'll recount how "Love Won't Listen" came into being in the first place, which leads directly into why I've never received a penny of royalties for it even though I wrote all the words and the music. But first, for people who don't like to read, I'll offer the short explanation. </p>
<p><span style="color:#c0392b;"><strong>The short explanation</strong></span><br>In a word: ignorance. The fact is not too many songwriters understand the basics, much less the intricacies, of collecting publishing royalties. I'd like to tell you that I was the exception to the rule. The truth is I was just as dumb as anyone else seduced by the joys of romping around the country in a notorious rock band. Now, if a songwriter happens to have grown up around music biz strongholds like LA or Nashville, the odds are a lot greater that he or she might have some inkling what PROs (performing rights organizations like ASCAP or BMI) that collect and pay out royalties are all about. But here in the heartland, it's not like we're driving by billboards every ten miles along interstates reminding us to Make Sure You Check For Your Royalties in huge type. </p>
<p>So, yeah, I received a nice fee back in the 80s for placing "Love Won't Listen" in the <em>Nerds </em>flick. That was certainly a positive development. A less positive development is that no one involved ever told me that I was also entitled to collect royalties—nice quarterly checks based on how often and exactly where your song has been heard—on that placement <em>for the rest of my life</em>. And, not only that, but my heirs were in fact entitled to inherit those royalties <em>for a good chunk of their lives</em>. </p>
<p>It would have been helpful to have had a mentor around to slap some virtual sense into me about why every songwriter needs to learn the in and outs of the music biz. Alas, no such mentoring presence existed within my orbits. </p>
<p>It was only recently, when it dawned on me that I could be sitting on a potential goldmine of royalty-producing songs, that I finally took the time to demystify the process of sync licensing (giving permission for songs you wrote, published, or both to be aligned with video for use in TV shows, films, ads, etc.). And as I discovered more and more about it, a strong suspicion developed that in all likelihood I should have been collecting royalties from penning "Love Won't Listen" for over 30 years. As we'll see, ASCAP agreed with me in 2018.</p>
<p>That's the short explanation. Next, I'll tell you how the song went from a germ of an idea to a big production in one of the world's top studios to inclusion in the soundtrack of a major motion picture.</p>
<p><span style="color:#c0392b;"><strong>How "Love Won't Listen" came into existence</strong></span> <br>In the fall of 1985, I had just spent a frustrating year living in LA which saw the iffy Milkmen management team run a band with a reservoir of great material, no drug or alcohol problems, and the drive to rehearse five hours a day, six days a week into the ground. To regain some sense of equilibrium, I had moved back to the more tranquil environs of Boulder, Colorado, USA. </p>
<p>Our last recording at Paul Winger's (yup, Kip Winger of Winger fame's brother) Mountain Ears studio had not been my most shining hour. That's directly attributable to the fact that I was preoccupied attending to my lucrative pot business—the same enterprise that had financed everything from our guitar picks to our elaborate dairy set to <a contents="Bessie, our robotic cow" data-link-label="Bovine Serenade" data-link-type="page" href="/bovine-serenade" target="_blank">Bessie, our robotic cow</a>. As it developed, one of my "associates" was a huge fan of the band. She surprised me with this question: "How much would it take for your band to make it?" Translation: she was offering me unlimited funds to push the band over the top. </p>
<p>Well, that was assuredly an intriguing proposition, albeit one that was pretty hard to process on the spot. MTV was a big sensation, so spending at least some of the money to produce a video was a sensible play. Only, which of our songs had been recorded well enough to base a video around? The answer was ... probably none of them. Maybe the sound quality was just slightly shy of where we wanted it to be. That had everything to do with the fact that the songs hadn't been mastered. Back then, that was the sort of thing record companies dealt with, not bands. I know now that a great mastering engineer could have elevated those songs from pretty darned good to competitive with just about anything. But that's now. This was then.</p>
<p>Another puzzling question about an offer like that was, how much to ask for was too much? And how much wasn't enough? It's not like I had any experience answering questions like that. She was signaling that she wanted an answer right then and there and that she was ready to actually hand stacks of cash over immediately. </p>
<p>We had an under-the-radar pot business, not a flashy coke cartel, so I didn't want to be piggish about it. $10,000 was the figure that came out of my mouth. And $10,000 was the amount I was immediately gifted. In retrospect, should I have asked for more? Who knows.</p>
<p>Cutting to the chase, we decided to record two songs perfectly. Yes, folks, in 1985 you could easily spend $10,000 recording two songs back when home studios weren't even a gleam in anyone's eye and travel was involved. That's what it cost to record in "A-rooms." It's why so many bands with gold records were still broke—they were contractually obligated to repay their record companies for fronting them the hundred thousand dollars or so it took to record an album, not to mention the promotional costs which included taking rock writers like I was in the 70s out on the town to The Playboy Club or wherever. </p>
<p>We opted to re-record "Lolita" for the second time—a misguided decision, since it got less spontaneous each time we re-recorded it (also because we didn't have a handle on how mastering makes a song sound "like a record"). As for the second song, Tim Pantea, our singing drummer, really wanted to record his "Wet Weekend" and lobbied hard for it. After a bunch of back and forth, the compromise was we'd record my "Love Won't Listen" and Tim would sing it. </p>
<p>The "A room" we chose was The Record Plant Sausalito (across the bay from San Francisco). It was the favorite haunt of our producer, John Hug, who had two recent number ones to his credit: "Hearts" for former Jefferson Airplane frontman Marty Balin and "Party All The Time" for Eddie Murphy, the popular comedian. We had a love/hate relationship with Hug. At the time, we were all-in as a rock band. Hug hadn't produced much of that, so he wasn't our first choice. That said, we recognized that having someone else around—who had actually topped the charts—to referee inevitable ego clashes between Steven, Tim, and myself wasn't the worst thing in the world. </p>
<p>Now that the mission was defined, I was determined to make up for my lackluster performance at the Mountain Ears sessions. Not only did I practice guitar more seriously than I ever had, I was also envisioning blending synths into what had been an exclusively guitar-oriented attack. Toward that end, I'd splurged on an original Oberheim System, which consisted of the mythical OB8 analog synthesizer, the DMX drum machine which is heard on all sorts of 80s hits, and the DSX sequencer which predated computers being used for recording by a year. The impetus for purchasing it was that <a contents="we'd opened for Missing Persons" data-link-label="We Open For Missing Persons" data-link-type="page" href="/we-open-for-missing-persons" target="_blank">we'd opened for Missing Persons</a>, a tight outfit who definitely made an impression on me with their combined synth firepower. I couldn't think of a single reason our stated desire to "coat the continent in milky effluvium" wouldn't benefit from the addition of the same sound-sculpting capability. </p>
<p>One small matter stood between me and my designs on synth satori—I had previously shown no technical ability whatsoever. I could barely work the simple controls on my guitar amp. Furthermore, the dynamics of the band were at a point—with me living in Boulder and Tim and Steven now songwriting together in LA—that those two had begun thinking of me a visionary with a lot of good song ideas but also as someone who was not really a top notch musician like they were. There was some truth to that—they had perfect pitch and perfect timing and I didn't. But it was also true that I was a lot more relentless about improving my deficiencies than either of them realized ... and <em>desire counts for a lot</em>. So it was a crucial juncture for me. I was determined to prove that I could contribute as much musically as players who were more naturally gifted than me. </p>
<p>I began imaging a dance number inspired by one of the factory beats on the DMX. The phrase "love won't listen" popped into my head and I just ran with it. But I could only run so fast with all that new technology to absorb. The recording date in Sausalito had been booked and was coming up fast. I'd only owned the powerful system for about a week and could barely navigate my way around it. I did have some success trying out bass parts for various sections of the song, so I was hopeful the rest of it would come together. </p>
<p>Since Tim and Steven still lived in LA, along with Hug who had a cabin in Topanga Canyon, we planned to meet up at the San Francisco airport. I got there first, in time to serenade them with the hippy classic, "San Francisco" ("if you're going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair") when I met them at their gate. You could do that in the pre-TSA days! </p>
<p>The atmosphere at The Record Plant screamed "acid trip." From the outside, it looked like some wizard's house set in a eucalyptus forest. Inside, psychedelic touches were everywhere. Large mushroom-shaped stools served as chairs. A sunken area known as the pit encouraged in-between-takes debauchery. There were all sorts of wood carvings and <em>objects d'art</em> to trip out on. Apparently, some big LSD dealer had backed the venture. The house engineer, Jim Gaines, was sober in the midst of all that decadence. He was a pro all the way, just fantastic to work with. He knew the room so well that each track we recorded came out sounding virtually pre-mixed.</p>
<p>We'd rented the studio all day and night for a 3-day weekend. Or, should I say, we'd rented one of its 3 well-provisioned rooms. The other patrons you may have heard of: The Jefferson Starship (formerly Jefferson Airplane) and John Fogerty. Between them, they had sold millions upon millions of records, cassettes, and probably 8-tracks. We had sold none. But there we were, about to give it our all, same as they were. </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/03779690d1a38e5c329bf5b8234d3fdda54f0770/original/jim-gaines-800x626.jpg/!!/b:W1sic2l6ZSIsImxhcmdlIl1d.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_none" alt="" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><span class="font_small"><em>Engineer Jim Gaines mans the massive console at the Record Plant Sausalito</em></span></p>
<p>When we showed up midday on Friday, producer/engineer Ron Nevison was mixing the Starship's epic, "Find Your Way Back." This track was simply one of the best recordings of the 80s. It turned out to be the reconstituted band's first smash hit. The track sounded great on Friday and continued to sound glorious as Nevison kept mixing that one song for the entire three days we were there! It was one of the first demonstrations I received on the role compulsion plays in the creative process. </p>
<p>Although their parts had already been recorded, The Starship members kept dropping by the studio to huddle over their recent lineup changes. They had replaced singer Marty Balin with Mickey Thomas, who had an absolutely phenomenal voice. They'd also added guitarist Craig Chaquico to the band who was no slouch, someone way more attuned to the hair band sound dominating MTV than founding member Paul Kantner. Grace Slick was a bit beyond her super-vixen days; she had offered to be a backup singer in the new band. We didn't really have any interaction with them as they all seemed to be adjusting to their dynamic situation. I wonder if any of them even knew that John Hug was the guy who had produced their former lead singer's #1? </p>
<p>John Fogerty was friendly enough when we dropped by his room where he was recording his comeback CD that became a big seller, <em>Centerfield</em>. FWIW, I'd freely admit that the Starship's "Find Your Way Back" and "We Built This City" are flat out better than our "Lolita" and "Love Won't Listen." I honestly can't say the same for Fogerty's "Centerfield" and "The Old Man Down The Road." </p>
<p>One sweet perk courtesy of The Record Plant was that if you booked the studio, you got to stay at the studio's band house situated in the verdant hills of Sausalito. It was simply a great pad with a pool and stunning views of The City all reflective and sparkly in the distance. So, yeah, we were enjoying life and living large. </p>
<p>Things got off to a strong start as the sessions began. Methodically we began working our way through the tracks. Everything was smooth sailing until Saturday night when it came time to tackle the bass part to "Love Won't Listen." We'd run into a major hangup. The four-minute bass part had to be programmed on my Oberheim System ... and I had never linked the various parts (verse, chorus, lead, bridge) together before. That made for a suspenseful moment as I had no idea whatsoever how to accomplish that. I was fumbling around, fighting off feelings of fear and panic. Something had to give if we wanted to stay on course. Jim Gaines put it this way: "If you get it programmed by the time we're back from dinner in an hour, we'll use it. Otherwise we'll have to go with real bass." He didn't sound too optimistic. No one else including Hug looked hopeful, either. </p>
<p>That mini crises turned into my James Bond moment. One hour to save the planet. I definitely wanted an electronic bass sound propelling the dance number forward. It was all the rage for good reason. Now I was left all by my lonesome in the cavernous studio, frantically thumbing through a stack of manuals for clues on how to link the various parts I'd already programmed into a coherent whole.</p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/15958274cb7305c86af7b54971ecd92331a654c2/original/inside-record-plant-sausalito.png/!!/b:W1sic2l6ZSIsIm1lZGl1bSJdXQ==.png" class="size_m justify_center border_" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><span class="font_small"><em>Like I said, it was cavernous in there. And so psychedelic!</em></span></p>
<p>After standing on my head for almost the entire hour, I finally hit Play and heard the song roll all the way through not ten seconds before everyone returned from dinner. </p>
<p>"OK, let's hear what you've got." Doubt turned into astonishment as four minutes later everyone else involved had to concede that the bass part was throbbing perfection. Did a humble poet like myself revel in their disbelief? Why, yes, as a matter of fact I did! </p>
<p>I didn't have long to dwell on my magnificence because apparently there was still one small hitch. Jim Gaines was requesting a bass tweak. "Can you make it any deeper?" "Um, er, sure ..." Uh-oh. Sonic tweaks require a different kind of programming, a skill no neophyte like myself would have acquired. After getting queasy from staring at dozens of the OB8's available "pilgrims hat" knobs, I somehow stumbled across the Frequency control—duh—which I rotated counter-clockwise to make the necessary adjustment. </p>
<p>Then it was time to perform all the other synth parts. These were all vaguely in my head. Emboldened by having linked the parts together and having somehow made a bass tone adjustment that was to Jim Gaines' liking, I began adding the log drum part, the strings with the pitch bends, and a few incidental touches. I could do no wrong. I'd gone from the least valuable Milkman on our last recording to the most valuable in this session. But it wasn't all me. Tim sang convincingly and did a great job playing real drums to the electronic parts—which few drummers had even attempted to that point—while Steven contributed some sensual solos to a song which had no form until that weekend.</p>
<p>When we got back to the band house, we didn't even realize it was 3 AM. We immediately began wildly celebrating and were probably pretty loud about it, since Ron Nevison had to stagger out of his lair to ask us to please keep it down. He wasn't a dick about it, so we did. Hey you gotta respect a guy dedicated enough to spend 12 hours a day mixing one song. I can't say it sounded one iota better by the time we left, but that's a moot point since it was a giant hit for them. I doubt anyone cared that an engineer took 50 hours to mix it. </p>
<p>There was still one crucial task left on my to-do list. I still hadn't come up with the lyrics for "Love Won't Listen's" bridge section—and Tim's lead vocal was the first part scheduled for the next day. It had been a problematic section I couldn't for the life of me figure out. At 4 AM in the band house in Sausalito, one recurring theme running through my head was that it appeared I had finally won over John Hug, he of the unusual last name, who I could tell had previously shared the Steven/Tim worldview that I was a pretty good idea man, but not necessarily much of a musician. I was replaying the magic moment I realized I'd finally won him over by completing the log drum part in one take. And then I was thinking, wouldn't it be poetic justice if I could somehow fit the word "hug" into the song? </p>
<p>Twenty minutes later, I had: </p>
<p>that's the way to keep me humble <br>that's the way the cookie crumbles<br>sometimes love is such a struggle<br>no one left to <em>hug </em>and cuddle me </p>
<p>"Cuddle" isn't exactly a hard rhyme with "struggle," but with the "g" in "hug" so close to it, it kind of all goes together in a way no one thinks twice about. </p>
<p>When all the parts were finished and it was time for the final mix, Jim Gaines took all of 15 minutes, then declared it done. I had no specific complaints. Neither did anyone else. Yet we'd all just watched Ron Nevison mixing the same song for 36 hours and counting. That didn't seem to compute. "Well, I'll mix it all night for you if you want me to, you've got the room booked till 6 AM, but it's not going to get any better." He was right of course, as his fifteen minute mix has certainly stood the test of time.</p>
<p><span style="color:#c0392b;"><strong>From backstory to film</strong></span><br>But all that backstory didn't get the song into the film. How that came about was that a year or so later, our first milk crusade had run its course. Everyone was looking for their next move. Tim had a lot of star quality. I knew that top-shelf management teams were looking to promote him from occasional singing drummer to Bowiesque lead singer. We remained on good terms. Then one day I heard from him that not only had he and a producer re-recorded "Love Won't Listen," but it was up for inclusion in a major movie. </p>
<p>I was presented with the choice of accepting their offer of one-third the writing credit—even though they didn't wind up changing any of the words or the melody and they recreated most of my original arrangement—or getting my back up and demanding full credit. The latter decision in all likelihood would have resulted in me not having any share of a song in a movie. That's the classic "some percentage of something is better than no percentage of nothing" rationale.</p>
<p>I didn't understand why they re-recorded virtually the same arrangement then, but I do now: the owner(s) of the "Sound Recording," meaning the exact recording as opposed to the underlying song itself, can also receive fees and royalties, same as the author(s). If it was 2018, I would have said you take the Sound Recording percentage and I'll keep the Author's, thank you very much. </p>
<p>At least there would be the nice aforementioned initial fee for my troubles. </p>
<p>Fast forwarding, a few months later the movie came out. The first <em>Revenge Of The Nerds</em> flick had been a huge hit in theaters. Alas, the sequel was pulled from theaters after barely lasting a week. Then, lo and behold, a new medium called cable TV suddenly appeared on screens all across America. Movie channels HBO and Showtime were instant sensations.</p>
<p>Now <em>Revenge of the Nerds, Pt II</em> was being aired over and over again, as in all day and all night. I mean like incessantly. That goofy picture was on its way to immortality. It's still being shown all over the world today. </p>
<p>Did I have any conception whatsoever that placement was supposed to keep paying off for me? Er, no. None at all. But I was really prospering as a pot dealer. So much so that I had no need to seek alternative means to harvest more cash. Neither Tim nor Almo Music, the publisher he was associated with, thought to tell me that perhaps it would behoove me to register with a PRO and tell them where to send the royalty checks. </p>
<p><span style="color:#c0392b;"><strong>LeRoy Kohn receives Lory Kohn's royalties</strong></span><br>Cut to the present, or six months ago to be precise. I was in the process of registering my entire life's recording output with ASCAP. This required getting a lot of ducks in a row and performing tons of research about the same music business I'd neglected to learn about my whole life. And the more times "Love Won't Listen" came up as I was looking through my old copyrights and filling out the ASCAP forms, the more suspicion I had that something was seriously wrong with this picture. </p>
<p>I contacted ASCAP about "Love Won't Listen." They said they'd look into it. Didn't hear from them for months. I began pestering them for updates. They were still working on it. Repeat two or three times. Finally, six months later, I heard that my rights had been restored ... but they could only go back something like 6 quarters to 2016 and recoup royalties for that period. The other 30 years ... I was SOL. I still didn't go away. </p>
<p>I pursued the matter with ASCAP. After bugging them quite a bit, I finally got in touch with the human who did the actual research. I was about to learn why their research had dragged on so long: they'd been trying to contact a person whose name looks and sounds like mine, one LeRoy Kohn, who was listed as one of the authors. He hadn't been getting back to them. Why? Turns out he hadn't been getting back to them because he was dead!</p>
<p>I said it was a strange saga, didn't I?</p>
<p>I also discovered that my share hadn't been paid to anyone for a long period of time after the movie came out. Then, sometime around 2006, they began paying my share for still unknown reasons to the charmed LeRoy Kohn. </p>
<p><span style="color:#c0392b;"><strong>The cue sheets</strong></span><br>Things got more interesting after ASCAP posted the <em>Revenge Of The Nerds, Pt II</em> Cue Sheets on my Works page. </p>
<p>Now, when I claim all over this site that The Milkmen are one of the greatest undiscovered bands of all time, a talented lot who slugged it out with some of the greats of the 80s, I thoroughly understand that a typical reaction is going to be something along the lines of: "Sure. You're a legend in your own mind." Understood. There's probably no perfect way to strike a balance between confidence and humility when you're attempting to communicate what can be construed as an excessively bold message to people unfamiliar with your work. All I can do is introduce the evidence and allow it to speak for itself. </p>
<p>For example, check out the following screenshots of the corrected cue sheets ASCAP posted on my Author account. In case co-writers Mark Mothersbaugh and Gerald Casale shown on Screenshot 1 don't ring any bells in 2018, here's a hint:</p>
<p>Mothersbaugh + Casale = Devo. </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/76f9530e0d20b09b0db5e9015738a7dfd59d6b17/original/ascap-screenshot-devo.png/!!/b:W10=.png" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p>As for Screenshot 2, I think most readers will recognize Pat Benatar and Bryan Adams. As accomplished as Devo and Pat Benatar are, only Bryan Adams went on to write more great songs after the 80s than The Milkmen. Don't take my word for it. The proof is in our <a contents="Silo Of Hits" data-link-label="Silo of Hits" data-link-type="page" href="/silo-of-hits" target="_blank">Silo Of Hits</a>. If you throw in the bands that were recording alongside us at The Record Plant Sausalito, Bryan Adams would still be the only one of those luminaries who has out-written and out-recorded us in this millennium. </p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/3874a0015ad5652f6f4033dc1590ef216f2e9fd7/original/ascap-screenshot-2.png/!!/b:W10=.png" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p>What happens next? It's up to me to contact a good attorney to find out what, if any, good options exist to collect from ASCAP, Almo Publishing, which represented Tim Pantea and Mark Tanner (the third credited writer and the remake's producer), or the estate of LeRoy Kohn. I can close my eyes and picture a sheriff serving papers on his grave :)</p>
<p>Whether or not I ever see any of the royalties that either simply weren't paid or were paid to the wrong person, I'm actually going to receive my first "Love Won't Listen" disbursement from ASCAP this month for my earnings from 2016-2018. </p>
<p>However that turns out, we'll always have Sausalito. </p>
<p><span style="color:#c0392b;">Update 9/22/2018</span><br>OMG, I actually received my first royalty from ASCAP yesterday! Miracle! It was less than they lead me to believe it would be, but I won't be burning the check in protest. </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>The Milkmentag:themilkmen.space,2005:Post/52228242018-05-08T10:39:40-06:002018-10-15T12:50:23-06:00Milkmen are finalists for Best Song in the 2018 New Mexico Music Awards!<p><span class="font_regular">The Milkmen won the KBCO Best Song in Colorado title for "Lolita" in ... this is not a misprint ... 1981. </span></p>
<p><span class="font_regular">Now they're finalists for Best Song in New Mexico for "Head and Heart" — <em>37 years later</em>. </span></p>
<p>The gala awards ceremony is May 20th in Albuquerque. Songwriting contest wins<span class="font_regular"> for Lory Kohn and his strangely vibrant milk-mates that far apart would be a remarkable achievement. </span></p>
<p><span class="font_regular">And, oh by the way, "Coulda Woulda Shoulda" is a finalist for Best Rock Song. Coming out on top of this category would mean that the best rock band in Colorado in 1981 is the best rock band in New Mexico in 2018 — despite the fact the still dashing dairymen have been officially rubber-stamped senior citizens. </span></p>
<p><span class="font_regular">What's equally noteworthy is that while "Lolita" is certainly a catchy pop confection from the days of yore, one could easily argue that both "Head and Heart" and "Coulda Woulda Shoulda" surpass it in every way. </span></p>
<p><span class="font_regular">What other band or writers are doing their best work 37 years after the world first took note of their existence? Um ... er ... uh ... well, if there are any, no names spring immediately to mind. </span></p>
<p><span class="font_regular">Stay tuned for the results!</span></p>
<p><a contents="http://newmexicomusicawards.com/2018-finalists/" data-link-label="" data-link-type="url" href="http://newmexicomusicawards.com/2018-finalists/" target="_blank">http://newmexicomusicawards.com/2018-finalists/</a></p>
<p><strong>Update 9/1/2018:</strong> Well, I guess you had to stay tuned for longer than I anticipated, cause I can only now bring myself to post the "news" that we didn't win. The concept of leveraging 37 years between Best Song awards was awfully alluring... which is why I've been crying in my milk these past few months. I did enjoy meeting the other finalists and hanging out in Albuquerque's North Valley with my daughter who flew in from LA for the awards ceremony. <em>Los Poblanos</em> farm-to-table compound gets our highest recommendation. </p>
<p>I broke out the shirt of doom for the occasion. They took Best Song away from me ... but no one could take away Best Shirt! Check it out!</p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/0eefe6eaf190b7236e209ac7e83d9ed9e3408143/original/nmma-1.jpg/!!/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>
<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/68dcd593112dee9c0137519315034c1d4b733fb9/original/nmma-3.jpg/!!/b:W10=.jpg" class="size_l justify_center border_" /></p>The Milkmentag:themilkmen.space,2005:Post/49991172017-12-29T14:16:52-07:002019-04-05T10:34:59-06:00 The Milkmen vs ...<p><img src="//d10j3mvrs1suex.cloudfront.net/u/262866/94536931ca2bcc12ac829ad88df035b029b12c0e/original/tim-steven-lory-great-pose.jpg/!!/b:W1sic2l6ZSIsIm1lZGl1bSJdXQ==.jpg" class="size_m justify_right border_" /></p>
<p>What if the virtually unknown Men of Milk have actually out-written and out-recorded some of the biggest names in rock history? Well, if it's true, that and $5 buys me a triple latté at Starbucks. Crazy as it sounds, it's true. </p>
<p>Does it even matter?</p>
<p>Well, sorta yes and sorta no. Sorta yes because that's what we set out to do. Sorta no because it's not exactly a burning question on everyone's lips. </p>
<p>Whether it matters or not, just for grins, let's play the game.</p>
<p>We'll take a quick glance at the evidence supporting the bold contention that the undiscovered Men of Milk have <em>sometimes </em>out-written and out-recorded some of the biggest names in pop music history. With the long-overdue appearance of themilkmen.space featuring <a contents="the entire 40 years of Milkmen recordings" data-link-label="Silo of Hits" data-link-type="page" href="/silo-of-hits" target="_blank">the entire 40 years worth of Milkmen recordings</a>, there's more than enough of it to jumpstart the conversation. </p>
<p>I'll quickly preface the analysis by guessing that you probably suspect my comments are going to be highly prejudiced, that I'll inevitably filter things toward our side of the argument. </p>
<p>Well then you'd be wrong.</p>
<p>I think you may be pleasantly surprised to find that I'm pretty impartial about our place in "rock history." If I truly had narcissistic tendencies, I wouldn't admit that I can name at least 200 and most likely 300 (but not more than 1,000) all-time recording and songwriting entities demonstrably better at the craft of songsmithing than us.</p>
<p>You read that correctly.</p>
<p>Yes, I'm claiming that our humble little outfit, The Milkmen, rank somewhere between the 300th and 1,000th best bands or recording artists of all time ... and that our material resides in roughly the same rarefied strata. </p>
<p>Are we all-time greats who belong in the VIP wing of the Rock 'N Roll Hall of Fame? No.</p>
<p>Do we belong in the conversation with these all-time greats? Yes. </p>
<p>Do all-time greats enjoy our material? Yes.</p>
<p>But I'm getting ahead of myself. I haven't even explained the various criteria we'll use to make these comparisons. I'm talking about stuff like: </p>
<p>1) How many great songs does the artist have in total?</p>
<p>2 What is the artist's "batting average?" As in out of an average of 10 songs, how many of them are great? If it's 1, they're batting .100. If it's 7, they're batting .700. </p>
<p>3) How long did they sustain their ability to write and record great material? Basically anyone can have a hot streak here and there. How many hot streaks spanning long periods of time—say over several decades—have they had?</p>
<p>4) Did they get better, worse or stay at about the same level over time?</p>
<p>OK, that's the kind of stuff we're going to be examining in order to declare a victor in each head-to-head clash. Ties go to the artist with greater commercial success; invariably that's not us.</p>
<p>You'll note that these matches feature us against artists who generally became known last millennium. That's because it makes more sense to compare us with artists who compose in essentially the same styles we do. </p>
<p>Let's get the ball rolling by taking a look at three names almost every musicologist knows: Badfinger, Roy Orbison, and Iggy Pop/The Stooges. You know them. You love them. They're legends. They're household names. They've sold zillions of vinyl, CDs, and probably a bunch of 8-tracks and cassettes. </p>
<p>But ... the question of the day is: have they actually written and recorded more great songs than the never-that-big-and-now-mostly-forgotten Milkmen? Let's dive in and find out. </p>
<p><strong>The Milkmen </strong>Well, let's start with us. We have 30 or so great songs recorded over a 38-year period from 1980 to 2017. Our batting average is .500 <em>at the very least</em>. Defying all odds, the argument can be made that we just recorded our best work <em>after we became senior citizens</em>. All our albums or collections seem like greatest hits compilations. In general our earlier stuff has more animal appeal while our recent stuff is more sophisticated and has been characterized as "smart, but not <em>too smart</em>." My singing is far better as a senior citizen than it ever was. Our productions are better now than they've ever been. We tackle more genres successfully than just about any band ever has. </p>
<p>There's a lot more to say about us. If you haven't noticed, I like talking about us and have done so all over this website:) Having set a reference point, I'll stop there and bring on the competition. </p>
<p><strong>Badfinger</strong> I've always loved Badfinger. If I had to listen to one song on endless repeat 24 hours a day for a month, "Day After Day" could be my first choice. That one features the sweet-singing band plus studio gods George Harrison (not always better than us as a solo artist) on slide and Leon Russell (who I would rate more highly than us although his legend has inexplicably waned) on piano. </p>
<p>The backstory of Badfinger's "failure" is fascinating, even more so than ours, which is a pretty good story in its own right. I'm not even remotely suggesting Badfinger shouldn't be considered immortals. </p>
<p>However, I own their Greatest Hits CD. I've listened to it over and over. Of the 20 or so songs, I'd venture to say that only 5 or 6 of them are unmistakably great. And we can eliminate one of their best efforts, "Come and Get It," cause it was written by some song stylist named Paul McCartney (not always better than us as a solo artist but we can safely assume I consider The Beatles better than The Milkmen). That means their batting average is only around .250 <em>on their greatest hits album</em>. </p>
<p>Conversely, they get extra credit for writing "Without You" which was turned into a mega-smash hit by Harry Nilsson (a well-known figure, or at least he was once, who may have <em>less </em>great material than The Milkmen although he is certainly a way better singer than me and really, really, really nailed that particular single). One Badfinger tune you probably aren't familiar with is "Take It all." As it's nearly as good as "Without You," in my opinion "Take It All" should be a timeless classic covered by other artists. </p>
<p>Yet, after you get past their top handful of tunes ... things drop off precipitously. They have a few borderline great tunes that are so drenched in strings that it's hard to give them the benefit of the doubt. In any event, their top handful of hits is clearly better than ours. That said, I'd be bold enough to say that our top 50 songs are just way more entertaining than their best songs from #6-#56. That's not so impressive from them, especially when you stop to consider that they had the entire ultra-talented and highly-monetized Beatles/Apple/Abbey Road/George Martin juggernaut behind them. </p>
<p>While Badfinger is thought of as a pop/rock band, they're really way more successful on the pop side of the equation. If you compare them to a contemporary outfit using essentially the same instrumentation like, say Free, well, Free is infinitely more rocking. It's a drummer thing. </p>
<p>The unfortunate reality that two band members committed suicide disqualifies Badfinger from any discussion about their ability to produce great material at chronological ages long past what has been typically considered to be the cutoff point for maximum creativity. </p>
<p>So, incredible job writing and recording your top handful of hits, they bring a smile to my face every time I hear them—and I've heard them countless times. But after that, that next sound you hear is the sonorous blast of me snoring. </p>
<p><strong>Roy Orbison</strong> "Pretty Woman" could very well be my favorite song of all time. Or the song I consider as perfectly conceived and crafted as a 2-minute AM pop tune could ever be. Those are different ways of saying it could be the best song of all time. There's an awful lot going on musically and lyrically on that one, with the ultimate electric guitar hook and the dramatic plot twist at the end, "But wait ... what do I see? She's walkin' back to me." </p>
<p>Then there's The Voice. The Voice that makes the rest of the Hall of Fame-only Traveling Wilburys sound like they're strangely deficient. The Voice that was ever so believable as he lit up the airwaves and the backseats of America with ballads like "Crying." </p>
<p>However ... Roy has something in common with Badfinger. For all his talent, misfit loner charisma, and deserved legendary status, well, I also own his Greatest Hits CD ... and ... there's around 40 songs on the two disks. Try as I may, I can't count more than a half dozen great songs. There is no doubt that these belong in the upper pantheon of all time emotive rock/pop performances.</p>
<p>That's the good news.</p>
<p>Alas, the other 34 songs include absolute rubbish like "Ooby Dooby." If I wrote that something that vapid, I'd hang my head in shame and never leave my house. </p>
<p>Also in common with Badfinger, I'd say that once you get to Roy Orbison's best songs #7-#57 vs. our 50 best ... I'll put ours up against them any day of the week, Voice or no Voice. In other words, his batting average was nothing to write home about. For such a talented guy, he sure had a lot of strikeouts.</p>
<p>You can't even remotely compare him to a contemporary like Chuck Berry (better than us) who basically wrote circles around Roy when it came to churning out awesome classic rock tunes in bunches with a ridiculously high batting average. </p>
<p>So ... kudos for writing arguably the best song of all time and a few more that were written, sung, and produced to the highest possible level which are as good as anything done in his era and beyond. All time singer? Why, yes. All time legend? Why, yes. All time great songwriter? Nope. Why not? Simply not enough great tunes. </p>
<p>While we can't sing with a tenth of Roy Orbison's supernatural ability, we have nonetheless surpassed him in the sheer amount of highly listenable tunes we've come up with over time. Our tough-to-beat batting average (somewhere between .500 and .750, I'm still fine tuning it) is way more impressive. And when you compare our output as older writers with his, it's a slaughter in our favor. His period of vibrancy was great while it lasted; later on in life, he merely regurgitated the same old same old. Nothing wrong with that ... although nothing right with it either, if longevity factors into the discussion. And it definitely does in this discussion.</p>
<p><strong>Iggy Pop/ The Stooges</strong> I'll start by reiterating that this imaginary competition is not about determining who the more influential artist is; I freely concede that "Mr. Pop" or "Mr. Stooge," as <em>The New York Times</em> has referred to him over the years, is a million times more influential than me. And perhaps having the cojones to smash a beer bottle and rip open your own chest with a shard onstage is even more outrageous than performing with a talking and milk-giving robotic cow. It so happens that I've personally witnessed said cutting ritual in the intimacy of Max's Kansas City sitting at a table next to David Bowie (all-time top ten talent who's better than us) and Lou Reed (another rock legend who's written <em>less </em>great songs than us) with a hippy girl I dragged to the show. No, I did not "score" that night. She never spoke to me again after I inadvertently forced her to witness the bloodletting. Ugh, sorry about that. Didn't know it was on the program!</p>
<p>Now I like the image of an uncaged gladiatorial figure known as "The Ig" entering a rock arena as much as the next guy. And while I'm a bit of an Adonis myself, I'll also admit he looks better with his shirt off prancing, posturing and pouncing around on stage. I for one won't argue that he's cemented his unique Cro-Magnon place in rock history. </p>
<p>But now we come to the question of the day: as entertaining as "Mr. Stooge" and his various co-conspirators have been, have many great songs have they amassed? </p>
<p>I count a grand total of <em>two</em>. As in "I Just Wanna Be Your Dog" and "Search and Destroy." The former is noteworthy as a primal sex chant—creating stuff like that is a vital public service in my book—while the latter doesn't exactly lack primal appeal and adds a set of apocalyptic lyrics sung over a lush landscape of power chords I wish I'd written. </p>
<p>On the downside, one of his best known songs, "China Girl," wasn't written by him, it was written by Bowie. It's neither of their best work. I enjoy Bowie's little known recording of "I Just Wanna Be Your Dog" infinitely more. "Search and Destroy" is guitarist James Williamson's moment in the sun, a supreme example of supercharged rock rhythm guitar gunslinging. But I can't even remember another song on the <em>Raw Power</em> album. Compare <em>Raw Power</em> with, say AC/DC's (better than us, at least at cock rock) <em>Back In Black</em> ... one has a batch of memorable songs whether you love the genre or not; the other just plain doesn't. And it's not that I have something against punk music; I consider <em>Never Mind The Bollocks</em> by the Sex Pistols to be full of entertaining tunes and it's great sounding to boot.</p>
<p>So, yeah, "Mr. Stooge" is deservedly a legend for being a huge presence on stage and inspiring hundreds of thousands of punk bands to get out there and express heretofore suppressed human emotions like angst. But as far as being a great writer goes ... I just don't see it. His batting average is just plain lousy, not even .100. </p>
<p>Anyhow, I could go on in this vein, but it would be more of the same. Hundreds of artists exist who have out-written and out-recorded us. It's hardly an impossible thing to do. But it is also true that lots of artists in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriter's Hall of Fame don't have as many great songs as us. That's not just my personal opinion. <a contents="It's a (now) verifiable fact." data-link-label="Silo of Hits" data-link-type="page" href="/silo-of-hits" target="_blank">It's a (now) verifiable fact.</a> That's just the way it is. </p>
<p>That and $5 still buys me the aforementioned triple latté at Starbucks. </p>
<p>Hmm. Upon reading this over, maybe I should counterbalance what I just wrote by describing a writing/recording competition where we're decidedly beaten out. All, right. Fair enough. Here ya go: </p>
<p><strong>Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers</strong> Until I saw <em>Runnin' Down A Dream</em>, the Peter Bogdanovich-directed biopic earlier this year, I always considered Tom Petty to be a little too derivative of Bob Dylan and The Byrds (who were already derivative of Dylan) to really get behind him. I wouldn't go as far as to say I was down on him; I mean I knew he had a lot of great songs and a huge following that absolutely adored him. I just wasn't really up on him.</p>
<p>I did know his band was very capable and that the quality of his recordings is impeccable. And that a bunch of tribute bands are out there touring all over heck and gosh performing his songs—which doesn't happen unless those songs are pretty damned good. </p>
<p>Back to <em>Runnin Down A Dream</em> which gets my vote for The Best Music Documentary Ever. Why? It's 4 hours long, that's why. That means instead of getting the usual 7 seconds of music followed by 20 minutes of music biz insiders kissing Petty's ass, we get actual extended concert and studio footage—more than enough to enable us to make up our own minds about whether the documentary's subject is really as fabulous as its director assumes we already believe. </p>
<p>During those 4 hours, it became apparent that Petty has plenty of originality, plenty of ideas, and plenty of longevity. The last virtue is rare and of course one I particularly admire; he was still coming up with great stuff decades after he burst onto the scene. </p>
<p>I also developed an appreciation for his voice, which really has much more range than Dylan, an obvious huge influence. Basically, he sings his verses much like Dylan, but when the inevitable singalong chorus comes around, all of a sudden he's singing higher and stronger and really putting it across.</p>
<p>What do The Milkmen do better than Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers? Well, Steven is as creative and talented as Heartbreakers guitarist Mike Campbell ... and I like the interplay of the two of us playing together better than I like Tom and Mike. I think we've taken the two guitar thing just a little further, probably cause we've been more patient and relentless at working parts out.</p>
<p>Mike Campbell goes for some more varied guitar sounds than Steven, who would always stick to his Tele if I didn't force him to use other instruments. Steven could also have been as expressive a keyboard player as Benmont Tench ... although you wouldn't know it cause our classic efforts were underproduced before it crossed my mind that I was tired of being outproduced and that our outstanding keyboard player was disguised as our outstanding guitar player. Our background vocals are just as inventive. Our drummers are at least as good as theirs. Our bass playing is as good as theirs. </p>
<p>We also successfully tackle more genres and more acoustic stuff than they do. I have a sneaking suspicion that, given the chance, Petty's audience would really enjoy what we have to offer. If The Milkmen opened for The Heartbreakers, I suspect the crowd would really believe it got its money's worth. </p>
<p>All that said, overall it's no contest—they have even more great songs than us, their batting average is at least as good as ours, their lead singing's better, their songs are recorded better, their melodies are even better than ours, their choruses are more "singalong" than ours, their songs are all in the right keys while we have occasional slipups, their production is a little better, and they score even higher than us in the longevity department. </p>
<p>So there—proof positive that I'm reasonable in my assessments and that I can and will admit it when we're beaten out.</p>
<p>What about those ties that go to the band with the most commercial success I mentioned earlier? OK, let's throw in one of those, too.</p>
<p><strong>XTC</strong> This is one the best battles I can think of in <em>The Milkmen Versus ...</em> series. They're quirky. We're quirky. They've got some inventive guitarists. We've got some inventive guitarists. They've shown vitality over decades. We've shown vitality over decades. They've got a lot of great lyrics. We've got a lot of great lyrics. Their batting average is extraordinarily high. Our batting average is extraordinarily high. They're drummers are great. Our drummers are also great — <em>especially since we share two of them</em>, skin-pounding gods Pat Mastollotto and Chuck Sabo.</p>
<p>Let's cut to the chase: they're a lot better ska band than we are. We're a lot better rock band than they are. That's a tie. They win by virtue of the tie-breaking procedure, cause actually selling records doesn't mean <em>everything </em>but it counts for <em>something</em>, everything else being equal. </p>
<p>Be that as it may, we really give them a run for their money.</p>
<p>The big advantage they have, and they earned it through their high level songwriting, is that they were given the royal record company treatment with big time studio, big time producer, big time engineers. They really had the red carpet laid out for them. Over time we were able to narrow the production gap. But they certainly got off to a huge head start in these areas. </p>
<p>XTC broke on the scene when white English bands could make a nice living playing traditional black Caribbean styles like reggae and ska. Their contemporaries, The Police (better than us, though we have plenty of songs that are better than plenty of theirs, for instance our "Lolita" vs. their "Don't Stand So Close"), were perhaps the ultimate white band at exploiting Caribbean influences.</p>
<p>Conversely, The Milkmen only have two songs which could remotely be considered Caribbean-influenced. Our "Going Through The Motions" may only be borderline great, I wouldn't file it under definitely great, but we do the reggae thing pretty darned well on that tune. Our very first bit of juvenalia (which might find it's way into our online Silo of Hits soon) is titled, "Montego Bay" and is set in some Caribbean fantasy world. But the reality is, we never set out to be a ska or reggae band, although we've shown a knack for it when we feel like attempting it. </p>
<p>On the other hand, when it comes to rock output, XTC has absolutely nothing in the vaults to compete with the likes of "Dickheads and Fuckfaces," "Late Night Delivery," or "Hideaway." They would be helpless in a rock battle against us. We would not be helpless in ska or reggae battles against them. </p>
<p>XTC's most vulnerable point in my mind is the glaring lack of sexuality in their lyrics and approach. I've heard dozens and dozens of XTC songs and the only remotely sexy lyric that sticks out in my mind is "... what sex position pleases best her old man" in (the admittedly great) "Respectable Street." The rest of their catalog is a sexual void. It's hard to tackle rock songs whilst avoiding the old in and out. </p>
<p>One thing I'll say for us is we can really put across the sexy numbers. Is "Charlotte Russe" any less sexy than the Stones' (better than us, all-time top ten writers) "Stray Cat Blues?" It is not, by any stretch of the imagination. Both songs get the point across. If aliens heard those songs for the first time, half of them would prefer our "Charlotte Russe."</p>
<p>Loathe to explore human sexuality, main writer Andy Partridge sticks to Kinks-esque social commentary ... without the Kinks-esque sexuality (I adore The Kinks and they are better than us much of the time). He is no doubt quite accomplished at offering various takes on the human condition. Although I consider "Mr. Partridge" a direct rival, I enjoy a lot of his material. I was super impressed by his lofty batting average on the early XTC albums. </p>
<p>Due to Andy Partridge's stage fright and subsequent reluctance to tour, XTC are more of a connoisseur's band than a household name, even though their writing is worthy of the latter. No, they don't deserve to be in the VIP wing of the Rock Hall of Fame either, though they certainly richly deserve their legendary status. Where they fit into the overall scheme of things is close to where I see us fitting into the overall scheme of things: not quite deserving of ultimate status, but on any given day, quite capable of competing with artists accorded ultimate status in the court of public opinion. </p>
<p>Can you handle one more really closely contested comparison?</p>
<p><strong>Big Star</strong> Aha. Now we get to the question of "Who is the greatest undiscovered band most people have never heard of?" Big Star gets a lot of votes from noteworthy critics. They've been called "the most underrated band of all time" or "the most influential band most people have never heard of." So, which act do I suppose most people would enjoy discovering more—us or them?</p>
<p>Well ... before I offer a conclusion, I'll admit to some prejudice seeping into my assessment of this head-on collision. There's no doubt the title of "Best Undiscovered Band" is one I'd dearly love to stake claim to as my own. While we're not ever going to win "Best Discovered Band of All Time," in my humble opinion we couldn't be any stronger contenders for the "Greatest <em>Undiscovered </em>Band of All Time" crown. Finalists at the very least. So it's a little harder to remain impartial ... but I'll try my best. </p>
<p>I should mention that since this capable, often charming crew basically forgot to outsell us like most equally talented or more talented bands did, they won't be getting the benefit of the doubt in case of a tie. They'll have to earn the win—if they can.</p>
<p>If Round One is their infectious pop song "September Gurls" versus our infectious pop song "Lovestruck Girls" ... guess what ... it's anything but a clear win for them ... and that's their best song. The judges are going to have a rough time scoring this round. Both these songs are intoxicating pop concoctions. It's probably as close to a draw as you could get. </p>
<p>Their biggest problem dealing with us as far as crafting last-millenium type pop songs (we'll get to the rock songs) goes is that we have "Lolita" and they don't. It's just as musical as anything they've come up with, while it just plain rocks. They exhibit plenty of musicality, which is always good; alas, more often than not, they completely fail at rocking out on songs where a steady, stylish beat is clearly called for. That's always bad. Their drummers are the culprits. Ours effortlessly serve up gobs of verve and panache, while never failing to propel the song forward. Theirs are all over the place, which constricts their flow. And therein lies the rub.</p>
<p>I can already see what determining the outcome of this dogfight is really gonna come down to, as milkmate Steven Solomon correctly pointed out immediately after the first Big Star track he heard: as good as some as their writing and studio sounds are, <em>they just plain don't rock</em>.</p>
<p>In other words, while their studio drum sounds are sonic ear candy, their drummers just can't or won't stick to the beat. They do a fabulous job of ruining what might otherwise be really impressive material. You just can't find that kind of confusion on any of our drum tracks.</p>
<p>The problem rears its ugly head straight away, on track one of their debut album <em>#1 Record</em>, "Feel." The drum performance makes absolutely no sense. It starts, it stops, it's full bore, it's half-hearted ... I mean just what is it? It sounds like they found some dude hanging around the drum room at a Guitar Center, took him right into the studio, then made him drink half a quart of Jack Daniels before recording him playing a song he never heard before. It's just godawful.</p>
<p>Now in addition to competing with the likes of us, there's another band Big Star is often compared with: Cheap Trick (better than us; they are the band I have seen more than any other, though not always on purpose). That's cause Cheap Trick covered a Big Star song, "In The Street." Fuggedaboutit. Cheap Trick has never recorded a drum track that didn't rock or wasn't spot-on. Cheap Trick didn't age well, but they were gods for several decades. That's a ridiculous comparison. </p>
<p>Well, we didn't have a Robin Zander (Cheap Trick's top ten all-time singer, the poster boy of a rock god in his youth), either, so the comparison with us is a lot more apt. But I'm already smelling an upset brewing. As I write this, I'm cruising YouTube to try and find a really rocking Big Star song. I'm not having a whole lot of luck, but hang on, I'll try again ...</p>
<p>OK, just heard "Don't Lie To Me." I'm calling this clash for The Milkmen. Here's another pyschedelic-in-a bad-way drum track spoiling what's intended to be a rocking song. This song also reveals a huge disconnect between the generic lead playing they dish out and the he-coulda-been-Jimmy-Page glory of young Steven Solomon on full display in a song like our "Late Night Delivery." No contest.</p>
<p>In Big Star's defense, I like a lot of their acoustic stuff, especially when there's little or no drums. They had a lot of good ideas, exhibited a lot of musicality, threw in some Beatles-like stuff here and there and some good singing when their top singers were in the band at the same time (not so much when they weren't). They deserve to be critics' darlings—but so do we.</p>
<p>Ultimately, they're done in by their rotten drumming. Drumming is a huge strength for us, whether it's Ric Parnell, Tim Pantea, Pat Mastollotto, Chuck Sabo, or John Reilly who's worked with us recently. We've always prioritized it; I've said time and time again the drummer is the most important guy in the band (or the studio band). Even before I got a handle on production, I never put up with iffy drum tracks on our recordings. We re-recorded every song that had mortal drummers and replaced them with immortals. Any one of the 5 aforementioned drummers would have made Big Star infinitely better. </p>
<p>While I love the story about Big Star's Alex Chilton cutting high school to go sing what would become a number one song, "The Letter," for the Box Tops when he was 14 ... that doesn't help save his hide here. </p>
<p>This competition wasn't nearly as close as I expected it to be. We won't have to worry about what happens in the event of a tie. We're just as musical, just as soulful, just as inventive, but because our drummers are world class and theirs are donkey dung, the bottom line is our little unheralded combo is just plain better than Big Star.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>The Milkmen