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Oversold

In my town we have a consumer reporter named Elliot Davis. He’s a caricature of a journalist. Elliot has made a long and successful career asking local politicians the following question:

Elliott Davis

“How can you spend money on [INSERT GOOD THING] in your town when there is [UNRELATED BAD THING] in your town?”

“Mr. Mayor, how can you open a subsidized daycare facility when Papin Avenue is crumbling and ridden with potholes?”

“Ms. Councilman, how could you vote to have a new ‘Welcome to Creve Couer’ sign erected at the Highway 270 interchange when the Parkway School District had to lay off three teachers’ aids last month?”

“Mr. Superintendent, how could you spend $120 a night for a hotel at the ‘Better School Districts of America’ Conference when some of the text books used in your middle schools are twenty years old?”

“Mrs. Director of a non-profit Social Services support center, how can you buy a new freezer for your food pantry when you haven’t distributed any grant money to help poor people with their utility bills since April?”

How dare anyone enjoy a nice thing if there is a bad thing anywhere in the world.  You see this a lot in modern political rhetoric. This particular fallacy of logic deserves its own Latin label. Guiltis ad Ellidiotus. Elliot is a flaming idiot. But he’s made a good living for a long time being a flaming idiot, so Mozeltov.

Elliot doesn’t really want an answer to his question. He wants you to punch him in the mouth. For the month KTVI plays that punch on a loop at every promo break Elliot might seem like a credible journo.

I worked in Corporate Television all over town in my youth. Commercial studios. Financial institutions that had their own internal television networks. At every place I worked, some PA would coach the talent to “Do the Elliot Davis walk.”  Ergo, march to a predetermined taped X on the floor while delivering your lines, and come to a stop on the mark with all the subtlety of a the Howard University Marching Band prancing to an end coda downbeat halt. Every local in the industry knows he’s a tool.

Me? I’m a Libertarian. It’s your money, Cochese. Elliot’s tag line: “Just remember… You paid for it.” Nope. No you didn’t. You paid your taxes and you also elected somebody you trust to manage those monies. It’s not my money after April 15th. It’s a Comptroller’s money. It’s an accountant’s money. And telling cash-strapped, non-profit social service organizations how to spend the donations they collect? Damn, Elliot. How do you pull a pair of pants over balls that big?

Once a welfare recipient receives their check, it’s their money, not mine. I don’t care if they spend it on diapers, steaks, or outcall prostitutes.

Don’t tell me how to spend my money. I won’t tell you how to spend your money.

Now…

That said…

Charter Spectrum has a relentless ad buy in our town for the most irritating commercial I’ve ever seen. This commercial runs three times an hour on all five networks, 24-7.

They have drilled this commercial into our psyches. Over and over. And over. And over. It’s ubiquitous.

Yes, it’s Charter Communications’ money, but…

With the money Charter dropped on that ad buy we certainly could have found a cure for stupidity in our lifetime. Maybe I do have a Socialist bone somewhere deep within me.

My brain is wired that I can only consume the same entertainment so many times before I burn out on it and have to move on. I don’t want to see the same movie twice, unless it is rife with big themes I didn’t completely process on the first viewing. I have no patience for the Classic Rock format on radio. Or, as I call it, “Beatles Beatles Eagles Beatles Eagles Beatles.”  People, come on! Newsflash: A couple of semi-talented folks have written a song or two in the past 48 years folks! Get over the damn Beatles. Is there a Beatles song you haven’t heard more than a thousand times before? And you want to hear it again? Gah.

mike

I was an ardent Billy Joel fan for a long time. He was my first real concert when I was 16. I saw Billy Joel in concert six times, the best of which was the Bridge tour at the Chicago Rosemont Horizon on Halloween, 1986. That was one for the ages. I grew up in the era where I could take Billy Joel for granted. He dropped a new album every eighteen months. No two albums were thematically the same. He was always evolving. Always trying something different.  And then he was done; retired from writing and recording. “These are the Last Words that I Have to Say.”  Cool. Thanks for the ride. Thank you for a catalog of music where the deep cuts and B-sides were as meticulously crafted as the hits.

I moved on. I’m not paying $200 a ticket to watch a dark spec on a distant stage in the middle of a stadium, not even if the dark spec shares the stage with a shiny and reflective spec that is supposed to be Elton John. I still respect Billy Joel, but somebody else is still making good music somewhere. Pardon me while I go try to find them.

That’s harder than it sounds.

Six years ago, I could listen to The Daily Source Code podcast and on any given day I’d hear three new (to me) artists who prioritized their brand awareness before their pocket and released royalty free songs, many of which kicked ass and most of which are still in rotation on my iTunes.

Lately I’ve been listening to NPR’s “All Songs Considered” podcast. Bob Boilen and Robin Hilton drop six or seven songs every week from bands I’ve never heard of.  Bob and Robin are eyes deep in the DELMARVA indie scene, so they present the songs from the new Diabetic Rum Monkeys album with the same reverence that the mainstream press greets the latest from U2. And “band” is a relative term. “Artist” is a relative term. Some of the artists featured on “All Songs” are merely somebody Bob or Robin saw standing behind a mic in a bar somewhere in DC. The threshold for “artist” on “All Songs” is anyone with ProTools and a healthy self-esteem.

Sometimes I can go five or six podcasts without hearing a single song or new artist I connect with. Pickens are Slim. [PUN!] My antiquated insistance that songs have a melody and comprehensibly arranged lyrics make me an outlier to the New Age of Hipsterdom.  But not Bob and Robin, nyeeeeew. Every single punk rock distortion roux and every single warbling torch singer accompanying herself with the Sousaphone pressed against her own anus gets a slathering critical spotlight from Bob and Robin that assures the listener – in trademark NPR Delicious Dish earnestness – that they are so lucky because they are about to hear the song that knocks “Over the Rainbow” off its tryhard Song of the Century perch. Every song. Every fucking song.

Cue Shawn’s expression when they finally stop selling me on the song, press the button, and play electronica that sounds like a pod of Sperm Whales crashing a frat party.

Hey, as Elliot Davis will be the first to tell you, “Remember. It’s your money. You paid for it.” If the weird stuff rustles your jimmies, go with God. Buy it. Enjoy.

Every four-or-so shows Bob and Robin introduce me to a gem, and so I listen. I wait. I follow the Saturday Night Live rule: Any band that plays SNL, any genre, I’ll give them sixty seconds to hook me before my thumb slides to the TiVo skip button. I need new music. I crave new music. I want to like you, New Artist. Please, please, don’t suck!

Looking at my recent iTunes purchases, I see the contributions from “All Songs.” The Be Good Tanyas. Immigrant Union. Lily and Madeline. One unfortunate purchase of Fence’s Arrows featuring Macklemore where I momentarily confused cringeworthy hiphop syntax for lyrical intrigue. Sufjan Stevens. The Tuneyards.

I continue to sift the silt from the pan, my ears peeled for the glint of something precious and enduring.

I’m exhausted at being oversold on crap. I’m desperate to find another Gaylene Gallagher. Gayle is a longtime friend who is A. Adventurous in seeking out new tunes and B. Has musical tastes that align with mine. If Gayle emailed me and said, “Shawn, have you ever heard of a punk band called Mitt Romney and His One Percenters? They rock!”  I would buy that album off iTunes without even previewing a song. I implicitly trust that her tastes align with mine.  People like that are rare and they are precious.

My son is such a trusted ear. Obviously, I warped the genetic code of his brain by playing CDs in the truck too loud when he was a wee lad and we made our long daily commutes to his school or his mom’s house. The basis for familiar taste is there. And he’s current on trends that I would otherwise miss out on. He brought Modest Mouse into my playlist. Swamp Goats. The Decemberists. Jonathan Coulton. The Shins. Spoon. Jeeze I love me some Spoon.

Such judgers of horses are rare as hens’ teeth.

If only I could reprogram Elliot Davis to ask, “Joe Sixpack, why are you buying another Bob Seger Best-Of album filled with tunes that are already burned into your synaptic cortex when there are Richard Shindell tracks you’ve never heard?”

Help me out. Who are some up-and-coming artists I need to know about? Be my Gayle Gallagher. Genre isn’t important, but it must have a melody and it can’t repeat the same lyrical stanza more than three times in a row.

Bring it! You don’t have to sell me. I’ll give it sixty seconds. After all, I’m the one who will pay for it.


1 comment

  • Gayle

    February 8, 2015 at 12:31 pm

    Clockwork is one of my current favorites.
    I know their previous album inside and out, but have not listened to this one as much yet… but I dig their style!
    http://clockworkmusic.net/music/