As I may have mentioned in a previous blog post, my father and mother each told me (separately) that when I was an infant, I would always cry when they sang “Good Night, Irene” to me as a lullaby.
If that is true, I’m not sure why they kept singing it to me (maybe to see if — yet again — it would move me to tears?)
I recorded it with pianist Doug Hammer when we were working on a show called “Songs About Parents and Children.”
I used to think that it was written by Rodgers & Hammerstein, but it turns out — as you may already know — that it was written by Richard Rodgers after Oscar had died (from stomach cancer on August 23, 1950 at his beloved Bucks County farm in Pennsylvania).
They are a well-known songwriting team based in New York City, and they have crafted a bunch of stand-alone songs — along with entire musicals — which are beloved by performers.
A few of their NYC-area hits include “I Like Them (Bald),” “Alto’s Lament,” and “Taylor, The Latte Boy.”
Jinny Sagorin and I recorded their song “There’s Nothing I Wouldn’t Do” with pianist Doug Hammer a few years ago.
Originally from South Africa, Jinny has lived in the Boston area for the past two decades.
In recent years Jinny has expanded beyond musical theater and cabaret to becoming a cantor.
We both share a sense that music can be very sacred (as well as silly, sexy, heartfelt, and open-minded).
Will (with broken elbow), Jinny and Doug — Photo by Jeremy Schmahmann
And performing in a synagogue, library, church or retirement community can be just as satisfying as performing in a bar or club — although we have both done plenty of that, too!
I first met Jinny when I was co-hosting an open mic at The Cambridge Center For Adult Education in Harvard Square (where I also was employed as an events manager and PR person).
Eventually we put together an entire program of songs called LIFE MATTERS.
Jinny also invited me to perform as a special guest when she debuted her solo CD, IT’S FOR YOU, to a sold-out crowd at Scullers Jazz Club in Boston.
And she has performed many of my original songs when I have done showcases of my own work.
In addition to being a performing artist, Jinny is also a visual artist.
Here’s an example of a work of art she created for an annual show called ART/Word in which she is a regular participant.
Thank you to Marcy and Zina for writing this song.
Thank you to Jinny and Doug for recording it with me.
PS: If you feel like streaming this song on your favorite digital music platform, please click here for links.
PPS: I haven’t mentioned the current challenges here on planet earth (wars, heat waves, forest fires, floods, spreading diseases, rising costs, lack of food/fertilizer/fuel, political upheaval, etc.) in recent blog posts.
But I remain vividly aware of them.
And I continue to find inspiration and hope from the courageous candidates and hard-working GOTV (get out the vote) organizations at work around the USA.
As you are probably well aware, there are a bunch of very inspiring human beings stepping up at the local, state and national levels these days.
Let’s support them — with tiny donations of time and/or money— as much as we are able.
So far we’ve had some extreme heat, some drought, some wildfire smoke (drifting hundreds of miles from Canada), some drenching rain, some very windy weather, and some beautiful 70-degree days here in the northeast United States.
Deep breath in.
Deep breath out.
My heart goes out to the humans, deer, woodchucks, trees, foxes, turkeys, cardinals, bushes, bears, bees, woodpeckers and all of the other animal and plant species affected by these extreme weather events.
Another deep breath in.
And deep breath out.
Very few media people pause to honor the havoc wreaked on wildlife by a flood or a wildfire.
There was some footage from the recent floods in Texas which showed a deer up to its neck in swirling waters…
But that’s all I saw about our non-human fellow species here on planet earth.
Thank you to the generous photographers at Pixabay for these gorgeous photos of blooming lupines.
I have planted lupines — along with iris, echinacea and columbines — in front of our house.
But someone keeps nibbling them…
None of the plants are dead, but many of them are hanging on with only a few functional leaves.
Hopefully — as the song “The Lord Of The Dance” proclaims — they will eventually leap up high after having been cut down by woodchucks or deer or rabbits!
Lupine (uncredited) from Pixabay
Until then I will keep watering (and weeding) them as needed.
Thank you to everyone who keeps showing up to read — and listen to — my blog posts.
I love how respectful the WordPress community continues to be with each other.
Even though we may not agree about many things, I have never seen any snarky, mean-spirited, or combative comments following one of my — or anyone else’s — blog posts.
Today I have been inspired by the aphorism “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
You may have seen it on posters, coffee mugs, etc. — attributed to Albert Einstein.
But according to an online search, there is little evidence that Einstein ever said it.
Instead I learned that a writer — Rita Mae Brown — created this quotation and attributed it to a fictional character in her 1983 book Sudden Death.
Thank you, Ms. Brown!
I think about this aphorism when I am reminded that one is supposed to budget an equal amount of money to market/promote/advertise one’s product as one has spent creating it in the first place.
Yikes!
I have never done this.
Other than maintaining my website, pitching a few songs to music bloggers, and writing this blog, I have spent very little money to promote my music.
However, this particular piece of marketing advice comes up fairly often when I am reading books/articles and watching videos about how to navigate the business of making music in the 21st century.
Now I must pause for a moment for a digression…
Over the past thirty years, I have observed that the music business — like life itself — is always changing and evolving.
So it is virtually impossible to do the same thing over and over again for more than a year or two.
And as a result of personal computers entering our daily lives, we have to keep endlessly learning the latest versions of many different programs/applications — as well as updating our hardware and software.
So as much as I would love to be able to do the same thing over and over again — while drafting new songs using Apple’s GarageBand or making videos using Apple’s iMovie, for example — I am forced to learn the latest updates (and alleged improvements) in order to continue making music.
Deep breath in.
Deep breath out.
This has always seemed to me to be a huge waste of time AND money in order to make a few tech company owners, tech company employees and tech company stockholders rich.
Graphic Design by Stephen C. Fischer
I keep hoping to find a research study which would document the billions of hours which we human beings have wasted in the process of learning — and re-learning…and learning yet again — how to use various computer programs.
I would also like to find studies which explore the cumulative toll on our mental health due to the Sisyphean frustration of having to update and re-learn so many basic tasks/skills on an ongoing basis.
Another deep breath in.
And deep breath out.
So I am happy to report that my friends Molly Ruggles, Ellen Epstein, Michael Cicone and I went in a pre-industrial — and some might even say late-Paleolithic — direction with our most recent song release which we recorded a cappella.
A couple of years ago singer/songwriter/pianist Molly Ruggles took my original version, added an entirely new section of music + lyrics, and then arranged it for four voices to perform a cappella.
Our new version is in the player at the beginning of this blog post.
You may recognize Molly as a vital part of my trio recordings with Carole Bundy.
Molly, Ellen, Will & Michael (Photo by Doug Hammer)
I have known the other two singers on this recording — Ellen and Michael — for decades.
If you are a fan of contemporary folk music, you may be familiar with them as part of a musical trio with singer/songwriter/guitarist Cindy Kallet for forty-five years.
Ellen and Michael have released three beloved CDs of music with Cindy as well as appearing on many of her solo recording projects.
So I feel very honored and excited that they agreed to be part of this recording!
Now I will circle back to the aphorism that “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
Molly and I are doing something new with this recording.
We have hired a fellow singer-songwriter, Erik Balkey, to help us promote it to folk radio programs/stations around the USA.
Erik puts together compilation CDs of new recordings every two months and sends them to a couple hundred folk DJs and program directors.
We were surprised — and pleased — to learn that he chose “My Sweet Honeydew (A Cappella)” to lead off the second CD in his July/August promotional compilation.
If you happen to listen to a folk program in your neighborhood — or maybe far away from your neighborhood via an internet radio station — please let me know.
Then I will check and see if Erik sent his July/August promotional CDs — including “My Sweet Honeydew (A Cappella)” — to your favorite station/program.
It will be interesting to see what does — or doesn’t — unfold regarding airplay for our song this summer…
Another deep breath in.
And deep breath out.
Thank you to Erik Balkey for his radio outreach.
Thank you to Doug Hammer for his collaborative production skills (and spontaneous photographic impulses).
One of the pleasures of doing a Throwback Thursday blog post — as you may well know — is rediscovering something one once wrote (which one may have completely forgotten!)
In the case of this Throwback Thursday, I also rediscovered a song by Stephen Sondheim called “Everybody Says Don’t” which I had forgotten I’d recorded.
A new biography of Mr. Sondheim came out earlier this year which my sister gave me for my birthday.
I just finished reading it and — not surprisingly — come away with renewed respect and gratitude for the wealth of songs and shows he helped to create over the course of a 50+ year career…
If you are not very familiar with his work, he wrote the lyrics for two blockbuster Broadway favorites — WEST SIDE STORY and GYPSY.
But what he really wanted to do is create both music and lyrics — which is what he finally got to do with A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM, A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC, COMPANY, SWEENEY TODD, INTO THE WOODS, ASSASSINS, PASSION and other shows.
Mr. Sondheim experienced a few flops along the way, including ANYONE CAN WHISTLE and MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG.
But he continued to work on the latter show for decades until he (and various collaborators) finally arrived at a version which was one of the hottest tickets on Broadway — starring, among other talented human beings, Daniel Radcliffe (the original Harry Potter) — during 2023-2024.
A version of this production was filmed and can be watched via various streaming platforms.
And I learned from Wikipedia that Richard Linklater is filming his own version of it over many years (as he has done with other creative projects). Sounds like we may have to wait for a decade or more to see THAT version…
Mr. Sondheim did not have many of his songs become big pop hits, although Judy Collins recorded a lovely version of “Send In The Clowns” from A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC.
He crafted his songs to advance the plot of each show and often wrote them for particular actors to perform.
This specificity may have made it more challenging for pop musicians like Frank Sinatra or Barbra Streisand to pluck one of this songs out of the context of a particular show to become a more generic pop hit — although Ms. Streisand DID include many of his compositions in her two albums devoted specifically to Broadway songs.
And Mr. Sondheim, bless him, did agree to write additional lyrics for Ms. Streisand’s version of “Send In The Clowns” so that it made more sense for her to sing it (out of the context of the original show).
I think I may have featured photos of hydrangeas in a previous blog post, but they are what is blooming right now in my neighborhood as summer officially gets underway in the Greater Boston area…
And I LOVE them.
Happy summer to any and all readers in the northern hemisphere of planet earth!
Mr. Warren and Mr. Freed wrote “This Heart Of Mine” for a 1944 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) musical called the ZIEGFELD FOLLIES which starred Fred Astaire.
I think I first heard it sung by Judy Garland, who recorded it the following year for Decca Records.
Arthur Freed also wrote the lyrics for a bunch of other hit songs — such as “Singing In The Rain,” “You Are My Lucky Star,” and “Make ‘Em Laugh.”
I haven’t read any biographies about him (yet) but according to Wikipedia, he lived a fascinating life.
Composite Images of Arthur Freed by Diane Yoder
He was born in South Carolina in 1894, and ended up attending a very prestigious prep school in New Hampshire — Phillips Exeter Academy. I am guessing he was probably one of very few Jewish students on campus — and according to Wikipedia, he became interested in writing poetry there.
After prep school Mr. Freed ended up in Chicago and performed with early versions of the Marx Brothers act (!!!) in vaudeville.
He also wrote special material for them, which led to co-writing enough successful songs that Hollywood beckoned…and he was hired to write songs for early MGM musicals.
After many years at MGM, Freed transitioned from songwriter to producer, working (as an uncredited associate producer ) on THE WIZARD OF OZ and then officially producing his first movie, BABES IN ARMS.
Both of these films, as you probably know, starred Judy Garland.
Mr. Freed went on to produce many more of Garland’s movies including LITTLE NELLIE KELLY, FOR ME AND MY GAL, THE CLOCK, and MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS — which is where she met her second husband, the director Vincente Minnelli, whom Freed had brought from New York City to work at MGM.
According to Wikipedia, Freed hired great talent and then gave them free rein to do their thing — whether it was choreography, costumes, set design, songwriting, direction, etc.
He also gave himself free rein to do some very odd and abusive things, such as exposing his penis to a young Shirley Temple when she came for a visit to discuss doing a movie at MGM — and making sexual advances towards her mother as well.
Temple wrote about this incident in her autobiography — and apparently Mr. Freed experienced no censure as a result of his horrible behavior…
Spring has finally arrived — in fits and starts — here in the northeast United States.
And we have two days of (much-needed) rain forecast to start later this morning!
I’ve been sitting on this blog post for weeks because I want my posts to be uplifting.
Yet so much of what is happening here on planet earth continues to be the opposite.
I find myself returning to recent elections in Hungary for hope.
If I understand correctly, Hungarians had a president/dictator for 16 years who did his best to hamstring/contaminate/eliminate their democratic institutions such as freedom of the press and judicial independence.
And yet, after MUCH courageous struggle, their president/dictator was defeated in April with a record 80% voter turnout.
Hurrah!
Deep breath in.
Deep breath out.
I wrote the song included at the beginning of this blog post several years ago.
One of my favorite signs of spring is the hopeful sound of horny. peeper frogs who are looking for a mate and establishing their personal breeding territories.
In fact, I like this sound so much that I included it at the beginning and ending of “Boil A Frog Slowly.”
As readers of my blog are well aware, one of my main musical allies is pianist/composer/producer Doug Hammer, who lives with his beautiful French artist/graphic designer wife in a ranch-style dwelling on a suburban street in a city north of Boston.
Hidden in his basement is a recording studio with an impeccably maintained Schimmel grand piano and all sorts of recording equipment which Doug is constantly upgrading and updating, bless him.
And hidden behind his house is a little wetland which still manages to exist even though is has been surrounded by houses over the past few decades.
In the spring, melting snow and falling rain fill up the wetlands so that geese, ducks — including two wood ducks this year! —and other water-loving animals can do their thing.
And at a certain point, the peepers emerge from the earth/mud and start peeping!
It is such a lively sound — kind of like the aural equivalent of fireflies blinking on a summer night…
I spent a week in upstate NY last month, and most evenings I went for a long walk on country roads wearing a safety vest with ever-changing, multi-colored lights on it.
Whenever I passed a damp area — a pond or a stream or a drainage ditch — the sound of peepers filled the night air!
Somehow they manage to survive a changing mix of sun, rain, snow and hail with temperatures fluctuating from the 20s (overnight) to the 60s (during the day).
Peepers “prefer permanent ponds due to (their) advantage in avoiding predation; however, (they are) very adaptable with respect to the habitat (they) can live in.”
I was happy to read that they are not currently considered to be an endangered species — perhaps due in part to their adaptable natures (mentioned above).
I also learned that “in northern regions, the frog is able to endure below freezing temperatures due to the capacity of its liver to exude and flush the bloodstream with a glucose cryoprotectant which acts both as an anti-freeze in its blood, and allows organs like the heart to enter into a state of protected dormancy.”
Wow!
That certainly helps to explain their resiliency during our weather/temperature swings.
Wikipedia continues: “The peeper earns its name from its chirping call, which marks the beginning of spring.”
And its formal name, Pseudacris crucifer, “is derived from the Latin root meaning “cross-bearing”— a reference to the cross-like pattern on the spring peeper’s (back).”
Their “chirping calls are significant for communication…as females choose their mates based on the frequency and volume associated with them.”
Yes, indeed… the passionate songs of spring.
Chirp, peepers, chirp!
I released “Boil A Frog Slowly” two springs ago, and I have been collecting information since then about how out of balance, out of touch, and out of control our billionaire class —what some are now calling “The Epstein Class”— has become.
For example, the Americans For Tax Fairness Action Fund recently reminded me that:
“The United States was founded on a rejection of monarchy ie: no tiny elite ruling over everyone else. However, our current president “has embraced a governing philosophy that rewards extreme wealth and concentrates power in the hands of the richest people in the country: America’s roughly 1,000 billionaires” — which includes himself as well as many of his friends and family members.
Deep breath in.
Deep breath out.
This statistic is particularly shocking to me: “During (our current president’s) first year back in office, U.S. billionaires increased their wealth by an astonishing $1.5 trillion, pushing their combined fortunes to more than $8.2 trillion.“
As I am sure most of us are well aware, billionaires and giant corporations hold enormous influence over our economy AND over our political system…
It was this emerging realization which inspired me to write this song.
But now as I listen to it, I am also reminded about our ongoing climate challenges which our current president plus all of the greedy and cowardly media/entertainment conglomerates (which continue to provide an awful ot of people with theira daily dose of “news”) are now downplaying and/or ignoring even more than in recent years.
Recently I watched a weather report on the CBS morning news/entertainment show.
As part of their reporting of record-breaking levels of heat in the west and southwest of the USA, there was NO mention of steps each and every one of us could take to decrease our carbon footprints.
Instead there were many segments on things to buy, places to fly (the most carbon-intensive way to travel) and ways to continue to consume more than our fair share of the natural resources on this amazing little planet which we all call home.
The message seemed to be “Keep living your consumerist lives exactly as you have been doing for the past few generations” — which, of course, is how we have ended up in our current terrifying environmental disaster situation.
Yet another deep breath in.
And deep breath out.
But back to the billionaires…
As I wrote above, I do not want my blog posts to increase anyone’s daily burden of hopelessness.
So I will end with two bits of positive news.
In 2022 Massachusetts voters — of which I was one — approved a “millionaire’s tax,” and since then it has added more than a billion dollars per year to our state budget.
Revenue from this surtax is mandated to go toward education and transportation initiatives — including more free lunch programs, implementing “clean energy” in schools, making community college free for students 25 and older, and increasing the number of child care slots for low-income families.
And rather than decreasing the number of millionaires and billionaires wanting to live in MA — as nay-sayers and their lobbyists had warned — that number continues to rise..
Adding an extra 4% tax on annual income exceeding one million dollars CAN be accomplished!
And in New York City, newly elected mayor Zohran Mamdani — along with governor Kathy Hochul — has recently proposed a pied-à-terre tax which would target luxury secondary homes worth over $5 million which are NOT primary residences.
This annual surcharge would raise $500 million annually to fund public services and bridge budget gaps.
And it would also begin to chip away at our much-lobbied tax code which currently allows super rich individuals and corporations to pay few — or no! — taxes while using all sorts of public services such as public education, drivable roads, tunnels and bridges.
Although “Boil A Frog Slowly” was written from a place of concern and despair, I do find ways to experience little patches of hope and optimism these days (such as the recent election in Hungary mentioned above).
The most recent “No Kings” day lifted my spirits and reminded me that there are millions of other human beings in the USA — and abroad — who are stepping up to help tip the balance of power/life back in a more healthy direction.
And the smaller political races around the country — in which Democratic candidates continue to over perform when compared with our most recent presidential election results — also give me hope.
People ARE daring to step up!
May each of us continue to find (and re-find) a healthy balance of active engagement — demonstrating in person, writing postcards/letters, giving money, volunteering on phone banks, etc. etc. etc. — with restful, rejuvenating, joyful activities.
And may the resiliency of the spring peepers give us hope and inspiration!
Thank you for reading this blog post.
We’ll see if I can increase the frequency — and upbeat tone — of them in the weeks/months to come.
Although I have not been very active as a writer, I DO continue to read many of my fellow bloggers’ posts.
And people continue to visit my site in increasing numbers — although my rising traffic statistics may be the result of bots having invaded WordPress?
If you have time/energy/willingness to play “Boil A Frog Slowly” on your favorite music platform — and then “like” it — that will help increase the likelihood of it being shared with new listeners by the mysterious algorithms which influence/control more and more of our online lives.
Greetings from East Arlington, MA — just outside of Boston in the USA!
Today I am featuring a beautiful song with lyrics by Lorenz Hart and music by Richard Rodgers.
As this TIME Magazine cover attests, they were a very potent musical and cultural force in the early-middle 20th century.
And I am very happy that a recent movie — BLUE MOON (made by the wonderful director Richard Linklater and starring Ethan Hawke as Larry Hart) — has renewed interest in Hart’s life and musical legacy.
It turns out that BLUE MOON was a decade-long labor of love which was filmed on a beautifully re-created version of Sardi’s — a famous bar/restaurant in Manhattan’s theatre district.
And I once wrote a blog post about two of his and Rodgers’ hit songs — “You Took Advantage Of Me” and “I Could Write A Book” — which you can read by clicking here.
Not mentioned in the BLUE MOON movie is how devoted Hart was to his mother — with whom he lived his entire life.
Hart’s mother died around the same time that OKLAHOMA (the first musical his decades-long collaborator Rodgers created with another lyricist — their mutual friend Oscar Hammerstein II) opened on Broadway.
So he was grieving this huge familial loss simultaneously with the at-least-partial loss of his friendship AND professional relationship with Rodgers.
Deep breath in.
Deep breath out.
And I had forgotten (until I re-read my blog post from ten years ago) that Mr. Hart had also begun a collaboration about underground freedom fighters in France with a composer who had recently escaped from Nazi-occupied Europe.
So, as an American-born Jew whose parents had emigrated to NYC in the late 19th century from Germany, he also may have also been feeling a significant amount of grief, rage, despair, terror, and “there but for the grace of G-d” empathy for the millions of Jews still remaining in Europe.
And let’s not forget that American Nazis were holding huge rallies at places like Madison Square Garden during this time as well!
Yet another deep breath in.
And deep breath out.
I don’t know how much it was public knowledge that LGBTQ folks were being sent to Nazi death camps, but I am guessing that theater people — such as composer Kurt Weill, who had managed to escape from Berlin to Paris to Manhattan — had plenty of heart-breaking anecdotes to share about the fates of their previous artistic partners who happened to be LGBTQ and/or Jewish and/or Roma.
All of this was also not mentioned in BLUE MOON. although Mr. Hawke and Mr. Linklater and some of the other actors such as Andrew Scott apparently did a lot of research before they began filming the movie — so I am guessing that they had most/all of this information influencing the subtexts of their acting performances.
And another deep breath in.
And deep breath out.
There are certainly some powerful parallels with what was happening leading up to Larry’s death in 1943 and what is currently unfolding here in the USA.
One thing I wrote about in my blog post from ten years ago — and which BLUE MOON does explore — is the paradox of Larry Hart (a somewhat closeted gay man) falling in love with and proposing to women.
And the song “Falling In Love With Love” may illuminate some of Hart’s thoughts and feeling on this topic/phenomenon/tendency.
What do YOU think?
Thank you to Doug Hammer for his exquisite piano playing and comprehensive production skills.
Thank you to John Childress (and his collaborator at the time named Laurel, I think…) for taking this photo many years ago when I still had plenty of hair.
Hoagy Carmichael — NBC Television, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
This month’s song is a minor hit from what is sometimes called the Great American Songbook.
Composer Hoagy Carmichael and lyricist Johnny Mercer created it for a Broadway show — I WALK WITH MUSIC — which did not prove to be a success.
But it did give us this sweet song.
I discovered it when I was putting together an hour-long program of songs by Hoagy Carmichael — who also wrote the music for standards including “Georgia on My Mind,” “Stardust,” “The Nearness of You,” and “Skylark” (another song co-written with Johnny Mercer).
Pianist/producer Doug Hammer and I had a lot of fun recording it.
I learned that — later in his life — Hoagy appeared as a songwriter character on THE FLINTSTONES animated TV show and also participated in a TV special with Fred (Mr.) Rogers.
And I was reminded that Johnny Mercer was a bit of a Jekyll/Hyde personality — beloved during the daytime and then drunk at parties saying mean things during the night — after which he would send flowers and an apology the next morning.
Johnny Mercer (from the Johnny Mercer Foundation website)
In addition to being successful songwriters, Hoagy and Johnny were also successful performers.
Later in his life, Hoagy worked as an actor in movies and TV shows, while Johnny recorded many hit singles over the years — of his own songs and as well as songs written by other people.
Johnny also was one of three men who founded and ran Capitol Records very successfully for many years.
He was mentored early in his career by Yip Harburg (the lyricist who co-wrote “Brother, Can You Spare A Dime?” “Over The Rainbow,” “How Are Things In Glocca Morra?” and “It’s Only A Paper Moon” among many other hits).
And near the end of his own life Mercer became a fan of singer-songwriter Barry Manilow.
In fact one of my favorite Johnny Mercer songs — “When October Goes” — was created after Mr. Mercer died with music by Barry Manilow and unpublished lyrics given to Mr. Manilow by Mercer’s widow, Ginger.
Both Mercer and Carmichael kept writing songs even after rock-n-roll had significantly altered the landscape of popular music — which meant that their work was less and less in demand…
Me (photo by Stephen C. Fischer)
I take inspiration from their creative perseverance as well as from the rich legacy of hit songs they left for all of us to savor.
On a personal note, I have begun attending several open mics on a regular basis, sharing my original songs while accompanying myself on ukulele.
Performing like this has been a good workout for my brain because I now have to remember both lyrics AND chords.
It has also been interesting to see how other regular open mic attendees do (and don’t) welcome one into each musical micro-community.
The key, I think, is simply continuing to show up.
Gradually we reveal ourselves to each other through our song choices and through the things we say between songs (the open mics I attend allow a person to perform 2-3 songs per night).
And trust begins to form…
Graphic Design by Stephen C. Fischer
And curiosity begins to arise…
Deep breath in.
Deep breath out.
All of the venues are also registered with ASCAP, the performing rights organization I joined several years ago.
So after each open mic, I log onto my ASCAP account and enter which of my original songs I performed.
In theory this is supposed to generate a tiny stream of income for me, but I haven’t seen anything yet…
One final thing I have been appreciating about attending open mics is that they give me a chance to fine-tune the lyrics of songs I haven’t yet recorded (but plan to record with Doug Hammer later this year).
One of my favorite bloggers is Dan Kennedy, who has worked at many different media organizations in the Boston area and is now a professor at Northeastern University.
He writes about what is happening in — and to — the media here in the USA.
My boss Diane Wortis and I created (and then produced annually for five years) a day-long conference called “Arts & The Media” which allowed us to call everyone who had anything to do with arts coverage in the Greater Boston area and invite them to participate on a panel.
This included folks from our big papers (including The Boston Globe, The Boston Herald, and The Boston Phoenix) — to folks at radio and TV stations, to folks who worked for smaller local papers and magazines.
Our conferences started happening as Mitt Romney’s private investment company Bain Capital was buying up a bunch of local daily and weekly newspapers in the greater Boston area and consolidating them into one company — which meant that the staff at all of these formerly independent papers was being slashed and lots of generic (non-town-specific) content was starting to be written which could be printed in many different papers within this new chain.
I bore witness firsthand to the degradation of media coverage as a result of large-scale, corporate consolidation.
And twenty five years later, that trend of media consolidation has only worsened.
All of this is to explain why I write near the end of this song — “May our press remain vital, always truth pursuing…”
Reading our local papers and nurturing relationships (via hundreds of hand-written thank you cards) with local arts writers and arts editors for over a decade helped me to understand how crucial the Fourth Estate is to a functioning democracy with healthy checks and balances.
Dan writes in his blog about what is going poorly (media consolidation continues, ad revenues drop…) and also where there are glimmers of hope via new models of local journalism.
And sometimes he weighs in on journalistic best practices.
He steered me to a speech Marty Baron gave at Brandeis University a few years ago which touched upon the fascinating topic of objectivity.
Mr. Baron used to be the editor of The Boston Globe and then became the editor of The Washington Post.
Here’s the heart of what Marty had to say:
“Objectivity is not neutrality.
It is not on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand journalism.
It is not false balance or both-sidesism.
It is not giving equal weight to opposing arguments when the evidence points overwhelmingly in one direction.
It does not suggest that we as journalists should engage in meticulous, thorough research only to surrender to cowardice by failing to report the facts we’ve worked so hard to discover…
The idea is to be open-minded when we begin our research and to do that work as conscientiously as possible.
It demands a willingness to listen, an eagerness to learn — and an awareness that there is much for us to know.
We don’t start with the answers.
We go seeking them, first with the already formidable challenge of asking the right questions and finally with the arduous task of verification.”
Deep breath in.
Deep breath out.
Graphic by Stephen C. Fischer
May our media in the USA stop kowtowing and collapsing… and realize that they are just as vulnerable as the rest of us to arrests in the middle of the night, arrests while we are walking from campus to our apartment, arrests while we are in a courthouse following all the rules about how to become a US citizen, arrests while we are picking vegetables, arrests while we are doing our laundry in the middle of the night.
If you might be kind enough to stream it —and maybe even “like” it and add it to one of your playlists if you are so moved — that would be very helpful to feed positive data into the various algorithms which decide whose music gets played and how often…
amusicalifeonplanetearth 