Category Archives: Music

The Whackjobs Are Making the Rest of Us Crazy People Look Bad

Music, Religion, Social Networking, Writing, , , , , , , , , , ,
The Shania in all Her Wonderfulness

Most people who know me also know that I am a big fan of Shania Twain and her music. At one point, in my numerous writings and articles, I wrote a joke story about how I created a religion completely around Shania Twain, calling in Shaniaism. Since then, I’ve often joked about how I’m obsessed with Shania Twain and she won’t return any of my calls, even though I’ve maintained a collection of all of her restraining orders out on me. For the record, I’ve never contacted Shania Twain ever, nor would I ever, but it was today that I actually found out Ms. Twain actually has a stalker who has been trying to get close to her, sending her flowers and even showing up at engagements trying to get close to her. It kind of makes joking about such things not as funny, and obviously I’ll probably have to stop this line of humor, even though I have great respect for the Goddess Shania and all things that her religion entails. Oh, sorry. Kind of went off the deep end there again.

The point of this post is to address the fact that it’s getting to the point where people are starting to have to actually be very scared of each other. In the era of Twitter, Facebook and blogs, celebrities are now very much out in the public, trying to maintain their celebrity status while appearing to be very accessible to that same public as well. This has introduced a huge problem that I don’t think was ever intended, but we now have a public out there that thinks it’s actually worthy of interacting with those of celebrity, even to the point of misunderstanding the personal nature of celebrity contact with actual beliefs that an invitation has been offered, when obviously none has ever been suggested or imagined.

We should have probably realized this was the direction where we were leading back when some nutcase killed John Lennon for no other reason than he was obsessed with the musician. Over the years there have been people overly obsessed with famous people, who have gone and done some really ridiculous things, all in the name of believing that somehow they are living a part of that celebrity’s life, convinced that if that star or starlett just got a chance to know them, everything would work out smashingly. That’s always been a part of the joke of my Shaniaism, which in case you haven’t figured out was more a criticism of organized religions than an actual worship of the Great Shania Herself. Years ago, I thought of actually sending a copy of my published article (it was originally a newspaper article) to Shania Twain herself but then decided against it, realizing that if I was a star and some unknown person sent me something that indicated that person saw me as some kind of deity, I might not understand it’s a joke or analogy, and it might freak her the hell out. So I never sent it to her, figuring that she probably had enough on her mind as it was without having to worry that some professor across the country was going to show up on her doorstop hoping to worship her in person. Unfortunately, she’s already got an alleged nutcase that’s doing that already (and he’s supposedly some well-to-do person himself, which brings me to realize that these antics aren’t limited to crazed loners who live in their parents’ basement).

So, I guess my point that I want to make is that we really need to be cognizant of the fact that there are these people out there who have a limited grasp on reality. And because our communication mechanisms these days are designed more about bringing the celebrity closer to the audience, we have to realize that some of these audience members are probably going to think that the star is actually talking directly to him or her. You see this sort of thing in strip joints a lot, which should probably have scholars studying them nonstop, if it wasn’t for the fact that I suspect scholars would gladly do so but then actually not do any academic work while visiting strip joints on university dimes. But the point I was going to make is that quite often audience members will actually think that these women working in these places are dancing specifically for them, thinking that they actually have a chance at hitting it off with the attractive woman who is really there for the sole purpose of earning a living. This often leads to a lot of antisocial behavior, and quite often it leads to a lot of misunderstandings as well. But it is so easy to see how this same type of behavior is exactly the same kind of behavior that is taking place between celebrities and their audiences. It doesn’t matter if the celebrity is in front of them, on television, on the Internet or even in a magazine. The dangerous fact is that a lot of these audience members see themselves as the direct recipient in the funnel of communication, not realizing that the funnel broadcasts to numerous audience members instead of just the one person who sees himself/herself as the sole recipient.

Unfortunately, I don’t really know the solution to this problem as I believe the problem is only going to get worse as we develop more and more technologies that put us closer and closer to our celebrities. Perhaps the interaction will eventually create a back and forth conversation between an avatar that is disassociated from the original celebrity (thus being more of an android-like participant), but that still leaves the audience member believing that he or she is sharing an intimate encounter with the celebrity. We see this similar action with music quite often, when a musician plays a tune, and the listener feels that he or she has shared an experience with the musician, even though the experience may have been a recording or an encounter where the two entities are not even in the same location. Because the recipient has experienced an emotion with the deliverer of the message, there is a sense in that recipient that both shared the encounter, leaving a potentially awkward future encounter should the two ever meet in person, as the deliverer of the message never experienced the initial feedback to understand how a shared experience could have taken place.

So, I’ll break with that, figuring that the future will probably fill in a lot of the detail that I do not yet have to share. Perhaps the Goddess Shania might bring me the answers in my sleep. After all, she is all great and holy and all that. Isn’t that how those things are supposed to happen?

The Music Industry Just Doesn’t Get It…They Lied to Us

Economics, Music, , , , , , , , , ,

You would think with the amount of money that goes into music studios that they would have actually hired someone who is capable of telling the executives what is really going on. Instead, we have a bunch of studio heads that are so convinced they understand the pulse of the consuming public that they don’t have to listen to anyone, and for some reason they’re losing more and more money every year.

The problem emerged in the beginning when music went from albums to CDs and then online. The old paradigm consisted of music studios finding talent, packaging it and then filtering it out to radio stations that then opened the doors for people to rush to record stores to purchase the brand new content. Well, somewhere down the line that model fell apart, mainly because a few little promises made never came through, and then the industry changed overnight as a result.

What I’m talking about was a promise that the music industry made to consumers when albums were on the out and CDs were coming in. The simple promise was that CDs, which were cheaper to make than albums, were going to be cheaper for customers. This was the selling point to get people to give up their vinyl albums and welcome CDs. The promise was that CDs would cost $9.99 all of the time. Well, when CDs first came out, that WAS the price, and then quickly they started to increase to $13.99 and other such prices. Now, if you’re lucky, a CD can be found “on sale” for $9.99 off of the retail price of much more.

We were lied to. Oh, the naysayers will claim such a promise was never made, but for those of us who were paying close attention back then, the promise definitely was made. Instead of following the plan, executives realized that consumers are stupid, or so they thought, so they just went back on their word and sold CDs for what they figured they could get, rather than for how much it was promised.

A funny thing happened right after that. The Internet showed up. You see, if that never happened, the music industry would still be the major entity it was a few decades ago. But no one anticipated that a couple of geeks at universities wanting to talk to each other would lead to something so powerful and so overwhelming. But the Internet happened, and the music industry was in the wrong place at the right time.

The consumer population was kind of pissed at the music industry at this time because of the whole lie thing, and then when the next generation realized that it could get all of this expensive technology for free, they jumped on it. So two things happened at once. The music industry cheated the older customers by lying to them while the younger customers grew up with a new paradigm where they got everything for free. You see, if the music industry hadn’t lied to the older generation, they might have actually had powerful allies on their side. Instead, they had a bunch of pissed off customers who decided to just let the music industry fend for itself. Where these people could have been the “moral” guides to the younger generation, who wants to be the moral guides to people who are doing something you figure the bad guys deserve anyway?

Well, the music industry sat it out, thinking things would fall back in place, but their real ally, musicians jumped ship on them as well. Oh sure, the established musicians were in their corner, but consumers are a fickle sort, dumping old artists for new ones because music really doesn’t have standards that are controlled by executives. Music is music and people will seek it wherever it can be found.

And a lot of future musicians realized that if they wanted to make it in the industry, there was a new direction to take, one that required they take their music directly to the people. This opened up the industry to everyone, and as more and more independent artists showed up, the music industry had less and less control over the content.

That’s kind of where we are today. The music industry is trying to save itself by reestablishing the controls, but no one really cares anymore. There was an attempt to force streaming content under draconian rules, but music executives are starting to realize that this isn’t leading to sales. What the music industry never realized was that the future was going to be somewhat of a free for all because if you can’t trust the industry to do what they promise, then you look elsewhere for results.

Recently, I bought a CD for the first time in about a year. Yeah, it’s been that long. I’m still pissed. It was Taylor Swift’s new album, and it was on sale for $9.99. Imagine that. Anyway, it’s a great CD, but it’s probably the only one I’ll buy for at least another year. I’m one of their solid customers, and it’s taken a long time to bring me back to the market. Before I stopped buying music, I used to buy three or four albums a week. They’ll never regain the market share they had before. It’s just not going to happen.

Like I said, the music industry lied back when it needed to win over its customer base. So, hopefully as these executives find new jobs mowing lawns, or whatever it is unemployed music executives are capable of doing, they’ll remember it was really their fault. And they should keep in mind that if they promise to mow someone’s lawn and then go back on their promise, they’re probably not going to get paid. The real world is kind of mean that way.

Grandpa Alex and “The Bologna Song”

Memoirs, Music, , , , , , , , , ,

My grandfather was a brilliant musician. While he couldn’t handle his liquor, he lived one step below a state of perpetual poverty, and he died way too early for someone of his passion and age, he had a gift for music like no other I’ve met in my limited lifetime. His instrument of favor was the mandolin, but he was the kind of man who could pick up a musical instrument, turn it over in his hands a few times, blow into it (or run his fingers against the strings, or bang on its surface) and he would have that device mastered in minutes. I’m not kidding about this. I handed him my violin as a child, watched him look at the bow curiously, pluck a few notes on the strings, run the bow across its surface a few times and then managed to actually start playing a novice tune. In an hour, he was composing music on it. After a few hours, you would have sworn he studied under several master violinists for years.

That gift was supposed to pass down to me. My mom was his only child, which meant she was supposed to inherit the talent, but she suffered a little too much in life to ever have the time or discipline to master a musical instrument. She died early, after a life of pain and suffering. Therefore, it was left to me to somehow be the prodigy that should have followed her musical genius of a father.

So I ended up learning how to play the violin. It was never my favorite instrument, and I was always looking for ways to take short cuts with it. My passion was the drums, but in my upbringing, you didn’t really get a choice of what you wanted to learn; you were given a musical instrument and then told “that’s the one you’re learning.”

I was never really good at the violin. I kept breaking from the music sheets and performing what I wanted to perform instead of what was on the paper. The director really didn’t like that. He never liked hearing something that wasn’t what he was expecting from the band. After a number of years of never really making him comfortable with my musical discipline, I sort of fell off the band wagon, for lack of better words, and I lost my interest.

Instead, I managed to end up in a choir instead. At six years old, my mom snuck me into the Santa Monica Boys’ Club (you had to be seven), mainly because she needed some kind of day care so she could work full time, and she couldn’t afford anything other than letting me run free until she returned home from work. The Boys’ Club was her answer. And within my first few days, I found a niche I didn’t realize I was seeking.

It happened on one of my first days when I was playing table soccer in the main room of the place with one of my friends from the place. One of the managers of the place announced that try outs were now being held for the Boys Choir. Not really interested in something like that, I found myself interested when that manager grabbed me and practically dragged me screaming up the stairs to where try outs were taking place. It turned out that they were “recruiting” everyone that was there at the time.

The director of the boys choir was a well known music industry man named David Forrester who was volunteering his time to create this new “event” at the Boys Club. Each one of the kids was required to sing a quick part of a song as part of the try out, and when it came time for me to do so, I wasn’t really expecting much, but as I blurt out the words to whatever song it was they had us singing, Forrester stopped the piano player and had me repeat what I had just sung. So I did. Then there was a bit of a commotion, and Mr. Forrester pulled me aside into another room and had me run through a scale of notes (although I didn’t know that’s what he was doing at the time). He then spoke to one of the managers, and I was allowed to go back downstairs and play table soccer some more.

I figured I had failed the try out, and that was that.

A few days later, my mom took me to a place in Culver City where this guy’s office was.  His office was extremely intimidating as he had pictures of himself with extremely famous music and movie stars, like Elvis, Sammy Davis, Jr., Frank Sinatra, and Martin Dean. At the time, I had no idea who any of these people were, but my mom was extremely impressed as she walked around the room.

When he entered the room, he spent some time trying to convince my mom to allow me to take private lessons with him to develop my voice. I remember my mom turning him down, explaining that we just didn’t have that kind of money. He told her it wouldn’t cost us anything, that he really wanted to do this because he had heard something he hadn’t heard in a long time. After some time, she relented.

For the next few weeks, I attended singing lessons with him, and I was, as would happen with any six year old, convinced that this was some kind of punishment. I wanted to be in the regular choir with the rest of the kids, and he was telling me that I wasn’t ready yet. I wondered how come all of those other kids were able to get to start without having to take singing lessons.

When the training was over, I started up in the choir, and soon after that I ended up becoming the soloist for the group. And it was a thrilling experience that continued until we made a few records, and let’s just say that it was a life-changing set of events.

But I had been talking about my grandfather, because during this time, he was really the one encouraging me to embrace this part of my education. All of this time, I kept thinking that I wasn’t a real musician because I hadn’t been actually playing an instrument. I was just singing. And even though I was getting a lot of attention, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I wasn’t really doing what was possible, considering my heritage.

So, during these years, my grandfather bought me a really cheap guitar, and I started playing with him while he would sit in the park, entertaining everyone who walked by. Unlike other park musicians, he never had an open case to ask for money; he played just because he liked to entertain people. And at the age of about seven and eight, I played right along side him with my little guitar, even though to this day I’m not sure I was playing it correctly.

One of the songs he used to play was an old classical tune from Chopin that he added lyrics to and called “My Bologna Song.” For years, I thought he invented that song all by himself, and then I was at a fancy shindig while at West Point, and the classical version of the song started playing on cello and violin. And all I could think to myself was, Grandpa’s version was so much better. Why did that Chopin guy have to steal his song?

Remembered lyrics to Grandpa Alex Romanuk’s “The Bologna Song”:

Just because you think I’m bologna

I’ll always be with you

Just because you think I’m bologna

I’m still in love with you

Everybody thinks I’m bologna

You know it’s all for you

Everybody thinks I’m bologna

As long as I have you

That’s all I remember of the song, but every time I hear the music play on a radio or in some movie, it’s always The Bologna Song to me.