Now There’s A Guy Who Lost His Job

I wrote that line back in 1994 as a response to the then current downsizing of GM. Ten years later, that ended up on What A Wonderful World, one of the most popular songs from Superpower.

The guy who screams:

“I’m fifty one years old… Are you gonna pay these bills?”

Is my best family friend of that era. He worked at Clark Street (Cadillac) in Detroit and although he himself did not lose his job (well… at least not until he got leukemia) he was fifty one years old and it was easy to channel the proper emotions from his experience (and those of many Detroiters; the air literally reaked with the smell of a dying era.)

As the auto industry continues to die in America, I’m struck by how even more poignant the lyric is today. Sorry if that sounds conceited, but that was the right song at the wrong time. The thing I’ve noticed about that song is that it was never as popular with Detroit crowds as, say, an audience in Santa Fe, New Mexico. There is something about Detroiters that is inherently optimistic… or at least… doesn’t want to hear anything that sounds like someone’s running down the city or it’s centrepiece industries.

That ‘pride’ (for lack of a better word) prevented the people from seeing the writing on the wall and doing something to re-make the city. There was always a lot of blaming and a lot of grand initiatives to kick-start (pun intended) the car companies but not even the workers could listen to a song like this and say, ‘Yeah, the car companies are crap. We must demand change. Part of it, of course, is that the workers were sucking from the same gas-guzzling teat as the politicians who screamed for ‘reform!’ so no one really wanted ‘change’. Actually, that was the last thing people wanted. What they wanted was a return to the good ol’ days of 70% market shares.

I have seen sailors exhaust themselves trying to bail a sinking boat. Seriously. When the smart thing to do would’ve been to abandon ship and swim for shore. But when you work so hard on something that can’t be saved you make it impossible to live to fight another day. And that’s how I now see Detroit. And perhaps…

The irony for me is that, in many ways, I now am the fifty one year old guy in What A Wonderful World. It’s been over two years since my hand-breaking-experience and I have probably played ten gigs since then; each one a little less nimble than the one before it. As I’ve commented before, people now illegally download my songs by an order of magnitude greater than they actually buy ‘em. I’m sure it’s the same for everybody out there. In the new razor and blades world of the music biz, one gives away the ‘content’ (razor) and makes money off of the performances (blades). Those of us who either cannot or will not subscribe to the new order of things are, in my current depressed view, a bit like Detroiters who are simply fighting a sinking boat and digging an ever deeper hole by so doing.

What to do, you ask? For Detroit… I really haven’t got a clue. If you’re above a certain age, you just milk what’s left. If you’re not, you tend to get out and thus make it harder for the next guy who’s left. Which means that those who are left are often those least able to do anything to better the situation.

For myself? I also don’t at this point, have a clue. I suppose the first thing to do is to stop trying to bail. Like those Elves in Lord Of The Rings, just grieve for the end of an age and get mentally prepared to move on. But where to? The guy in What A Wonderful World, blows his brains out in his garage (for some reason I envisioned this on the hood of a ’78 Trans Am with the full flame paint job; you know the one I’m talking about.) No thanks, pal. (Note to self, maybe ,that’s why the song never hit it big with audiences.) But unlike the Elves, I don’t have a Valinor to go off to as a respite from the woes of Middle Earth. I gotta figure out how to get back in the black right here, without the aids of CGI and a really cool British accent.

The question is: Is there a reasonable way to leverage what I’ve already done into a creative career that fits the current zeitgeist and makes some decent coin? GM thinks that it has what it takes to re-make itself as the company that makes Chevrolet Volts. If a company that has made as much pure crap as GM can do it? Hit it, Judy…

Why… oh… why… can’t… I?

Why I Like Opera But Not Metallica

…even though both are quite ‘operatic’.

When I was in school (way back in aught ’75) we all had to learn something about ‘opera’. But of course, it was all a big joke. I mean seriously: fat people trying to play ‘cinderella’; screaming in a way that no ‘normal’ person sings; with plots so ridiculous even Harlequin Romances wouldn’t publish ‘em. And they’re in… wait for it… eye-talian to boot!

And if that’s what I thought—someone who was trying to like that shi.. er ‘music’, heaven help the man in the street!

I now actually enjoy many of the classic operas, though no modern ones as of yet. And I think I’ve figured out why by watching some good ol’ Swedish Death Metal. In one phrase: alternative reality.

See what I couldn’t dig when I was 18 was that opera has to be appreciated strictly on it’s own terms. It’s an alternative world just as real as being inside ‘The Matrix’. You have to agree to it’s rules or it’s just no go. But once you do, once you stop judging it according to ‘the real world’ and surrender to life on this other plane, a different range of human experience opens up to you.

OK, now dig the average guy who goes to an average Swedish Death Metal concert. He dresses like Vincent Price on a bad day, and sings along to lyrics about exterminating… er… whatever it is they’re exterminating in that particular song. Lots of faux blood flows, many cow skulls get crushed and a good time is had by all.

Here’s the difference: The well-known operas are great art and Swedish Death Metal is crap.

See I thought opera was supposed to hit me the way it does Julia Roberts in that hooker movie… you know, she goes to her first opera and just starts bawling because there is something ‘ineffable’ about Puccini that gets to everyone with a heart. And I was wrong. Opera is not just about visceral emotion; in fact, that’s like the smallest part of it. And that’s why great opera will always be miles ahead of any entertainment that speaks only to the heart and not to the head.

Opera has to be in this alternative universe and the plots have to be what they are in order to get to a deeper truth. A Swedish Death Metal show, or for that matter any alternative reality, including video games like Quake or whatever don’t get ya there.

Why am I going on about this? Because ‘operatic’ has become synonymous with traits that are just not at the core of what opera is about; ‘operatic’ is about what people who don’t get opera think it’s about: overblown melodrama.

What turned it around for me? Ever have a thought that sticks with you for years? Well, something stuck in my head from a music history book I read way back in 1975. The anecdote was that a confused listener complained to the composer Gluck that his most current work was no good because, during an aria, the orchestra was playing an ominous theme while the soprano sang a happy melody over it. The listener demanded that since she was singing a happy song, the orchestra should also be playing a happy tune. Gluck explained it to him this way: ‘She is lying. It is the orchestra that is telling the truth!’ That stuck with me; that in opera you could have many psychological layers going on all at the same time in a way that no other art form (before film) could match. I still didn’t actually like Gluck, but the thought intrigued me and I kept trying occasionally to give a listen and then, one day, I found myself actually enjoying a bit of Pelleas Et Melisande.

The older I get the more I appreciate the message inside these pieces and how much work is incumbent on me to sample what they have to offer. It’s sort of the musical equivalent of a great mushroom hunt. Lots of work, but in the end, great reward. But first you have to learn to like mushrooms!

If you’re skeptical and new to opera, I hope you’ll check out my Links page for a couple of operas to get you started. They are not only great listening, but every one is like an advanced course in one aspect of human psychology.

Post Script: I want to touch briefly on why, for me, there has never been an modern opera in english that works. Or maybe there has been, but the ones I have heard, by Adams, Corigliano and all those minimalist guys just drive me nuts. I’m beginning to think that english is just not the language of opera. It may be that being fluent in the language prevents me from losing myself in the alternate world. Of course I’m not saying that Italians can’t appreciate Italian opera, but what I am saying is that there is something within the sound of Italian that sure helps.

I also think that, like other older art forms, opera should be left alone. Most modern operas, to me, seem like they would be far better off as Broadway Musicals. Back in the day, composers knew when to stop doing Concerti Grossi and start working on more ‘modern’ forms. Maybe it’s time to accept that shows like ‘Oklahoma’ and ‘West Side Story’ are the Twentieth Century’s great contribution to the Gesamkunstwerke and stop trying to make contemporaneous figures (eg. Nixon) sing arias like Don Giovanni.

Why am I on about ‘Opera’ at this juncture? Well there’s this little thing I’ve had in the back of my mind since I wrote the line… “I’m a guy who loves his job” back in 1994.