POP CULTURE
Vignettes & Vague Optimisms While the Star Machine Marches On - Part OneTHE DEEP SOUTH 21 September 2009 |
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The engineer leaned back in his seat, shades on in a cold dark room, still very Cali though he'd been in Nashville well over a year. He worked awhile with Rubin and some other big dogs before most of the industry dried up or moved to Music City.
"Yo, you're a Beastie fan huh?" he asked me.
"Oh yeah, sure."
"Check this out," he said, easing up the slider marked vol til weak beats and sub-par Fatboys style raps thumped clumsily around the room.
"This," the engineer informed me, "is the demo that got them a deal with Def Jam."
Sadly I shook my head. He smiled and nodded along to the wack track. "Where it all began."
*
The venue was small but the promoter had high hopes for his struggling young act. He tugged at my sleeve and narrowed his eyes into mine. "Now just be honest with me."
A puny fellow with no presence raked his guitar and warbled out cookie-cutter cliched odes to good love lost and ice cold beer.
"Well," I began, searching for charitable words. "He's got a long way to go."
The promoter gave a little laugh, undeterred. "We've got great backing, he's willing to work and we're going to work him."
That young man has now moved nearly five million CDs. I saw him not long ago. He covers his bald spot and someone told me certain parts of his anatomy are now less than authentic. He still looks like some dude who sprays your house for ants, just in hipper clothes. He sang a solo with his acoustic guitar and it wasn't much better than before. On the radio though, he sounds like a million bucks. His management and promotion are excellent. Some of his songs I really like.
**
A man from our church writes very successful self-help books. He has a house in the country and a condo midtown. He's a nice enough guy, though one who walks a bit too briskly and gives excess attention to the status of his Blackberry. A few months back he showed me his new manuscript before it went to the publisher. It wasn't very good.
"Of course it hasn't been to the editor yet," he reasoned, ogling text as it slid across his screen. "But of all I've written this one came out closest to done."
"Sure enough?" I replied.
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Original Comments Thread Below:
45 Comments »
Comment by James Michael Blaine
2009-09-21 08:54:46
Figured it was time for a short lighthearted post.
Part two in a week or so.
Is this lighthearted?
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Comment by Dawn Corrigan
2009-09-21 09:26:14
Ha! Sure it is.
Well, not really, but at least it’s gossipy, and that can never be too heavy.
I’ve tried to resist before, but now I just want to know who the guy is. Tell us. Tell us!
Is it Kenny Chesney? (Is that how you spell his name?)
I’m just flailing wildly here, to try and provoke you.
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Comment by Dawn Corrigan
2009-09-21 09:27:31
P.S. Tell us.
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Comment by James Michael Blaine
2009-09-21 09:50:39
Music City Rule One:
Never name names.
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Comment by Marni Grossman
2009-09-21 21:15:21
Who knew Nashville was also an outpost of Fight Club-
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Comment by James Michael Blaine
2009-09-21 09:54:19
Ok Ok.
Here he is.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asU27FaVvBM&feature=related
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Comment by Dawn Corrigan
2009-09-21 10:35:59
Heh. Wow they really do wonders in those studios, don’t they?
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Comment by Irene Zion
2009-09-21 11:07:20
James Michael Blaine,
I guess it’s lucky that you aren’t a music agent, eh?
This is pretty strange.
How did the book come out? Best seller?
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Comment by Irene Zion
2009-09-21 11:28:47
This SO isn’t like you.
I don’t even know how to react.
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Comment by James Michael Blaine
2009-09-21 11:47:28
Irene,
I needed something different. It’s been lighthearted lately.
Is it not me?
Is it me?
Do I contradict myself?
Probably so. I am internally large and obtuse.
Practically confabulous. (per Dawn)
PS: His book did well.
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Comment by Ducky
2009-10-07 06:24:10
It is you because you wrote it.
I was in the music biz for many years and you took me back.
Thanks.
(Now going to watch that youtube clip.)
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Comment by Irene Zion
2009-09-21 12:17:14
jmb!
You are the anti-critic!
You could probably get paid a lot for that ability to predict.
You just have to say the opposite of what you think.
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Comment by James Michael Blaine
2009-09-21 12:29:12
Fret not
psychotic poetry
coming soon
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Comment by Megan Power
2009-09-21 13:24:47
“Lighthearted” for you.
I liked this - this particular Nashville-insider vignette, this side of your life, this variety in tone. I enjoy variety. I enjoy you. Not in the Biblical sense of course.
So yeah, now give us our figgy pudding: psychotic poetry!
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Comment by James Michael Blaine
2009-09-21 13:56:38
First I have to post part two.
We have a mutual enjoyment society friend.
I giggle at your Biblical sense.
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Comment by josie
2009-09-21 17:15:00
I agree, this is very different post for you. Anxious to see part two. Do you sell a book and an album in it?
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Comment by jmb
2009-09-21 19:35:30
Its a lecture series on four LPs or nine 8-track cassette tapes.
Act now and for a limited time offer you’ll get not one but two 11:59 cuckoo clock refrigerator magnet miracle grow sponges.
But wait there’s more:
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Comment by Rich Ferguson
2009-09-21 17:56:26
Wonderful post, sir. At first, when you were talking about the country music guy, I thought you might’ve been referring to Dwight. But then I realized that that guy can sing. And he has chops. And songs.
As for the guy you really meant, woof, that was pretty funny. I would’ve never thought of him in a million years. Until I saw the video, that is.
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Comment by jmb
2009-09-21 19:45:00
Dwight D. Eisenhower?
I don’t know about the currency you guys got in Cali
but here in Tennessee his bald spot is bright and shiny.
Cat sure can rock a dime though.
That vid I posted was almost too slick,
this is the one where they really sex things up.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZYcqlEZxGQ&feature=related
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Comment by Jim
2009-09-21 20:16:47
He looks absolutely stoned off his tits in that one. Classic. I also like some of his songs.
I’ve been through Nashville many times — and as recently as last week on the way to and from burying my mother-in-law in Indiana — but never stopped. Maybe I should; seems so lighthearted. Beautiful, actually.
I eagerly await part two and the miracle grow sponges.
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Comment by jmb
2009-09-22 06:38:51
Nashville is indeed a beautiful city
and I’m glad to call it home.
I dont know about lighthearted - like LA or NYC there’s a whole lot of people
here trying to make their dream come true and very few succeeding
and many discovering just how difficult - not just to make things happen
but even to navigate the course - obstacles strewn out in the dark …
So I guess that’s what this is about. The Machine.
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Comment by reno
2009-09-23 10:57:22
reno loves him some nashville and nashville loves some reno. i’ve had many, many, beers on those neon streets. good times. git er done.
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Comment by Marni Grossman
2009-09-21 21:21:24
This is not so different from your other posts. In all situations, you exhibit tact and grace. Even in the face of bad country music and shitty self-help books.
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Comment by jmb
2009-09-22 06:44:57
Well thanks.
I guess that’s the limits of having a shadowy persona who speaks in rhymes and darkisms.
People dont quite expect you to be normal.
I’ve lived in Music City quite a while and flitter about the entertainment business a good bit.
Its fascinating the way the machine works.
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Comment by David S. Wills
2009-09-21 22:44:31
I’d have read and enjoyed that if it had gone on for pages and pages…
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Comment by jmb
2009-09-22 06:47:03
It could have that’s for sure.
I hated not to do the whole thing but I know people read in small spurts.
Part Two will make it make more sense.
I could write a whole book on the mysteries of the machine.
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Comment by Erika Rae
2009-09-22 01:43:20
I like this post. It makes me feel…well, OK, a bit incensed at the injustice of a world which puts out remedial writers and singers and then backs them all the way to fame when there are people like you, me and a whole slew of authors we know who sit here at the starting line just revving our engines. BUT. I still like it. Why?
Because it makes me want to write psychotic poetry. That’s why.
[uncontrollable eye tweaking ensues]
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Comment by jmb
2009-09-22 06:52:44
Yeah that’s the message - that the machine has rarely been about talent - it takes a lot more than talent and talent isnt even the most important component in the stew.
Money - lots of it, charm, good handlers, all-pro editors and producers and perhaps most of all a very keen sense of business and marketing.
Maybe living in Nashville is what makes me write psychotic poetry
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Comment by Zara Potts
2009-09-22 22:53:42
JMB
Whether they are lighthearted or sad or psychotic - I smile whenever I see your words.
Cookie-cutter-cliche is a great description that I have now added to my vocab. Thank you, sir.
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Comment by jmb
2009-09-23 07:32:26
Back in the day at the skating rink they used to call those little booty shorts
cookie cutters.
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Comment by tip robin
2009-09-23 06:22:42
As Pony said, it’s lighthearted for you, and it most certainly isn’t wading even knee-deeply in contorted layers of interpretation and word play: psychotic poetry.
That said, I like the way you are in this but not overtly so. I honestly think this is the reason any good story, journalistic or otherwise, works, because it draws us in enough to make us feel like WE are there via YOU. If the “you” is too much, we’ll (er, I’ll) sort of pull back and wonder who the thing is about.
In short, this post says a lot about the quality of mass-produced art as commodities. Then again, (pop) country music and self-help books may not even make the final ladder rung of art, though.
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Comment by jmb
2009-09-23 07:41:13
Tip Robin,
You are one articulate further mucker.
The machine occupies my thoughts a lot.
I was early on the Lady Gaga train and love her platform.
On the VMAs I thought she was awful and gaudy and goofy
and trying too hard.
and she cannot sing. Nor dance.
Those videos though?
The debut album?
Love it. Best since Madonna hit the scene.
But actually The Fame is not her debut album.
She had another out before it.
Overall the songs were weak
and nothing memorable.
Someone saw the spark and drive though
and got her into the machine.
I think my message is dont fret too much
if you dont have all your ducks in a row.
The Machine can take your spark and make you a star
I waited until the end to say all this because I knew no one would probably read it…
part Two soon.
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Comment by reno
2009-09-23 09:37:34
11-
nice. in and out. bam. okay: i’m a long time hater of the beastie boys. i thought they were silly. sure, a hell of a lot more talented that vanilla ice but i never got it. now, i think that “sabotage” tune is nice. but i just can’t get that “brass monkey” song, or whatever it’s called out of my head. it ruined them in my eyes. plus - i hope i’m not sounding disgusting here - but i like my rap being yapped by black folk. just like i don’t want to hear japanese metal bands.
call me crazy. insular…
bald country guy? hmm. hey what about the Kings of Leon? i just found out those fuckers hail from nashville. is this true?
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Comment by jmb
2009-09-23 14:11:58
Hey It’s always OK to like what you like.
I saw Loudness once here and their singer bounced out and barked
“Nashville we rock you hard!”
Yeah man I’m afraid those Leon dudes come from here - used to live just a few miles away in fact.
They are universally reviled by Nashvillians as poseurs and lame-ass hipsters.
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Comment by anonymous
2009-09-23 10:15:14
your writing is annoying, pretentious, and worst of all, boring. You come across as an arrogant douche
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Comment by jmb
2009-09-23 14:14:47
You dont know what a relief it is to get criticism.
My old writing teacher always said unless you are getting slammed here and there you arent really saying anything.
Maybe I’ve finally arrived.
Sing it anon.
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Comment by tip robin
2009-09-23 10:35:28
how much you wanna bet that anonymous above is kenny chestnut or brad paisley or whomever this post is actually about.
to be fair, this is not annoying, because I walked away from it thinking that I was slightly entertained and a little better off for having read it.
it’s not pretentious because it really doesn’t purport to be anything other than what it is, which is a vignette on the star-making machine that is popular music, specifically nashville.
it is not boring because it provides some insight that i don’t have and find somewhat interesting.
i’ve also never found a trace of arrogance in your work. actually the opposite is true, you seem like a humble man living in the south.
the title is quite alluring, too.
so what i’d like to know is, what does anonymous define as agreeable, unconceited and exciting?
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Comment by reno
2009-09-23 10:53:24
anonymous-
hi.
always,
reno romero
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Comment by jmb
2009-09-23 14:16:13
Whoa! I have arrived!
Kenny Rogers reads my stuff.
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Comment by Reno
2009-09-23 15:08:41
you have arrived, bruda. now: can i have your autograph. make it out to reno. that’s me. the one w/ the bad breath and a bad attitude. reno. like in reno nevada…
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Comment by James Michael Blaine
2009-09-23 17:28:00
only in person my brother
we can swap.
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Comment by Simon Smithson
2009-09-24 12:47:14
OK, OK, I admit it. I was ‘Anonymous’. I was hugely upset by JMB’s slamming of the many, many, many tapes I have sent him over the months of my three-piece flugelhorn/gutbucket/fuzz guitar combo. We’re going for an alt-bebop/doom metal/Dakota hipster kinda thing.
When Zara and I win the Nashville guitar competition we entered in Los Angeles, JMB, we’ll expect you to show us around.
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Comment by jmb
2009-09-27 12:52:06
Funny I commented on this.
Where did it go?
Either way I laughed at how easily you were flushed out
and said in Nashville we steal people’s songs and that
a major Star has flugelhorn in your fuzzbucket
on hold.
C’mon down, I’ll show you around
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Comment by Erika Rae
2009-09-26 20:02:02
Whoa! You totally just got called an arrogant douche by…an anonymous person!
ooooooo.
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Comment by jmb
2009-09-27 12:50:40
Arrived at last!
I’ve been told you aren’t truly saying anything with passion until someone is pissed.
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