Art: What We Bring to the Table

Recent movies and commercials have highlighted our tendency to mishear lyrics, especially those by Bernie Taupin, who penned Elton John’s “Rocket Man” and “Bennie and the Jets”:

But sometimes the lyrics we think we hear are more revealing than the words actually sung.

My favorite mishearing of a lyric is Paul Simon’s “Song About the Moon” from his Hearts and Bones album.  I was certain Simon sang the words, “You really can’t remember what you can’t replace” and thought it yet another example of Simon’s artistry.  A more careful inspection revealed that the lyric is in fact, “Think about the photograph that you really can’t remember but you can’t erase,” a fine lyric, but to me far less compelling.  So I did what any songwriter would do – I stole the line I originally attributed to Simon and used it as my own on the first song of my first album.  In “A Fine Place to Start”  I sing (and, ironically, in the line prior I reference the aforementioned “Rocket Man”):

               “Rocket Man” is sent to me

               By tantalizing frequencies

               It sets my tempo at the right pace

               It reminds me of a girl I used to know

               I wonder why I let her go

               But I really can’t remember what I can’t replace

A Fine Place To Start

Paul Heinz

Recently, I read a lyric on-line of Yes’s song, “Your Move,” and was convinced that it was incorrect because I own an old biography of Yes in which Jon Anderson quotes the line: “Cuz his time is time in time with your time and his move is captured.”  It’s not a meaningful lyric, but it’s kind of cool, and even makes a little sense to me.  His time is in time with your time.  Has a nice ring to it.

Well, I was wrong.  I rechecked the line in the book (my memory be damned), and it’s the same as on all the various lyric websites.  “Cuz it’s time it’s time in time with your time and his news is captured…”

Not nearly as good, I think, and now I wish I’d never have looked the lyric up!

In the liner notes of Seal’s second album, he writes:

One of the most popular questions people seem to ask is “why don’t you print your lyrics on the album?”  Well, the answer in that is that quite often, my songs mean one thing to me and another to the listener.  But that’s OK because I think it’s the general vibe of what I’m saying that is important and not the exact literal translation.  How many times have you fallen in love with a lyric that you thought went, “Show me a day with Holda Ogden and I’ll despair” only to find that it went “Show me a way to solve your problems and I’ll be there.”  I guess what I’m saying is that the song is always larger in the listener’s mind because with it they attach imagery which is relative to ther own personal experience.  So it is your perception of what I’m saying rather than what I actually say that is the key.

Nicely done, Seal.  I couldn’t agree more. 

What we bring to the table is really what makes art work in the first place.  I see a painting that means one thing to me, another thing to you, and something completely different for the artist.

My friend recently played Oscar Wilde in a play, and although he researched the author in preparation for his role, he told me he didn’t find it particularly helpful when it came to acting the part.  “That had to come from me,” he said.  An actor has to pull from his own experiences to imbue a role with emotion.

It reminds me of a story about the playwright Harold Pinter.  It’s said that a director once asked Pinter about what the characters were up to before they enter the stage, thinking it might help him stage the scene.  Pinter replied, “Mind your own fucking business.”

Which only goes to show that Pinter’s demeanor was as poor as some of his plays.

But it also hits upon the point that what each of us brings to the table is what feeds the art.  It’s what makes Yo Yo Ma’s interpretation of a Bach concerto different than Emmanuel Feuermann’s.  Or, if we want to stick to the Elton John theme, what makes his version of “Pinball Wizard” distinctive from The Who’s original.  It’s what makes one staging of Macbeth unique from another production of the same play in the same town, but by a different theater group.

In this sense, we are all creators of art.  We extend the life of and shape the meaning of a work of art by fusing it with our own life experiences.

World Series Start Times: MLB's Shortsighted Gamble

Woe to the child sports fan who has the misfortune of living in the Eastern Time Zone.  The 2013 World Series is only two games old, and I doubt there’s a kid on the East Coast under the age of 16 who’s watched beyond the 8^th inning of either game.  Both games began at 8:07PM EST and lasted in excess of 3 hours.  These start times are slightly earlier than the 2008 series, when games didn’t start until 8:29 and 8:37, but the MLB and FOX ought to look at more dramatic changes if the health of baseball is to be considered over immediate financial gains.

In 2009, Bud Selig said, “Our goal is to schedule games to allow the largest number of people to watch.”  With a country as vast as the U.S., this goal is unquestionably a tricky balancing act.

The approximate makeup of the United States by time zone is as follows:

Eastern.......................47.0%

Central........................32.9%

Mountain.......................5.4%

Pacific.........................14.1%

Alaska and Hawaii........0.6 %

Assuming children are distributed in the same proportions as the overall population, this means that 80 percent of kids would have had to stay up after 10PM to finish games one and two of this year’s World Series, with nearly half having to stay up after 11PM.  Couple this with the fact that this year’s representative cities are located in the Central and Eastern time zones, and it’s easy to see that the goal of scheduling “games to allow the largest number of people to watch” probably isn’t being achieved, especially among young fans.

All this is in light of recent evidence that baseball’s popularity is decreasing among our youth.  Google the phrase “popularity of baseball kids decreasing” and see what comes up.  It’s doubtful that a child who doesn’t care about baseball today is going to start investing time and money into the sport as an adult, so why not make it easier for kids to actually watch the games right now?

World Series games used to be held in the daytime, also not an ideal scenario for kids since many of these games were played during school hours.  But in the 70s and early 80s, there seemed to be a nice balance: weekday games took place during the evening (albeit a little too late at times), and weekend games were often played during the day. 

In 1982, when the Milwaukee Brewers made the series, I was fourteen years-old, and I watched every game in its entirety, even attending game five (without parents!).  Start times were as follows (all times CST)

Game 1, Tuesday, 7:30

Game 2, Wednesday, 7:20

Game 3, Friday, 7:30

Game 4, Saturday, 12:20

Game 5, Sunday, 3:45

Game 6, Tuesday, 7:20

Game 7, Wednesday, 7:20

Push the weekday start times to 7PM CST for the East Coast fans, and I’d say that’s a pretty perfect schedule.  As it was, both teams were from the Central Time Zone, so the start times were ideal for the most interested fans.  Unfortunately, short-term greed changed things, and the last day game played in a World Series was game 6 of 1987.

In light of the recent downturn in popularity, Major League Baseball should consider the following:

1)      Incorporate flexibility in the schedule so that start times can be adjusted based on who’s playing in the series.  In 2008, two East Coast teams played each other, and games didn’t start until around 8:30 EST – absolutely ridiculous.  Games could easily have started an hour to an hour and a half earlier while still attracting the primary audience.  Last year’s series between San Francisco and Detroit was perhaps best served with the 8:00 EST.

2)      If flexibility is impossible, schedule start times that favor the Central and Eastern time zones, since these zones not only comprise 80% of the country’s population, but 73% of Major League Baseball teams.  It’s true that a West Coast series like in 1989 could make things challenging.  But I argue that even a 7:30 EST start time wouldn’t be catastrophic for this scenario.   Networks would still get to attract most of the country’s population, and a 4:30 local start time in the West isn’t as debilitating as it might have been years ago.  Internet access could allow working people to follow the games for the first few innings before returning home, kids would already be out of school, and most working adults could tune in live by the third inning or so.  TiVo and the like could be employed as well, and although fast-forwarding through commercials isn’t what Fox wants, it’s probably better than losing the East Coast entirely.

3)      Start weekend games earlier.  Why not take a cue from football and start the games at 6:30 EST like in recent Super Bowls?  True, the World Series isn’t the event that the Super Bowl is, but starting games an hour and half later certainly isn’t going to help turn it into one.

Folks who disagree with me will likely talk demographics, and how advertising dollars need to target the right audience.  I get this.  But will there even be an audience in 15 years if today’s children haven’t the ability to watch the games?

Sometimes a short-term loss is a long-term gain.

MLB and NFL Parity

As the MLB playoffs roll on with the usual suspects, I’ve pondered what has often been passed for conventional wisdom when comparing professional baseball to professional football.  For years, the argument went like this: parity in NFL football allows for more teams to have a chance to win a Super Bowl, therefore generating greater fan interest, while MLB baseball has too many teams that are eliminated from a World Series hunt before the first ball is pitched in April.  I remember spouting this argument myself in the 1990s as my lowly Brewers were relegated to a perennial loser.  But a review of the champions and runners up of baseball and football since 1966 – the season of the first Super Bowl – tells a different story. 

Out of 30 MLB teams, 10 haven’t won a World Series since 1966, and of those, six are franchises that weren’t around that year (though all have been in existence for at least fifteen years):

Washington (1969, formerly called the Montreal Expos)

San Diego (1969)

Milwaukee (1969, formerly called the Seattle Pilots)

Seattle (1977)

Colorado (1993)

Tampa Bay (1998)

The other four teams are the Chicago Cubs, Cleveland, Houston and Texas.

Although some recent teams haven’t yet won a World Series, many winners since 1966 have been from franchises that started after that year:  Kansas City in 1985, Florida in 1997 and 2003, Toronto in 1992 and 1993, and Arizona in 2001.

Of the ten teams who’ve not won a World Series since 1966, 7 have at least appeared in an October Classic.  The only three teams that have been excluded entirely from the World Series are the Chicago Cubs, Seattle and the Washington Nationals/Montreal Expos franchise.

Compare that to the NFL.  Of thirty current NFL teams, 14 have never won a Super Bowl.  Of those, six weren’t around in 1966, though all are now at least eleven years old:

Carolina (1995)

Cincinnati (1968)

Houston (2002)

Jacksonville (1995)

Seattle (1976)

Cleveland (1999) – note: for the purposes of this analysis, I’m considering Cleveland an expansion team from 1999 even though they kept the franchise statistics from the Browns team that moved to Baltimore in 1996.

The other teams are Minnesota, Detroit, Atlanta, Arizona (formerly the St. Louis Cardinals), Philadelphia, Buffalo, Tennessee (formerly the Houston Oilers) and San Diego.

Only one team that didn’t exist in 1966 has won a Super Bowl – the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2003.  Again, I’m not including the Ravens’ victories of 2000 and 2013 since they inherited the players from the Cleveland Browns in 1996, and therefore aren’t a true expansion team.

Of the fourteen teams who’ve not won a Super Bowl since 1966, all but four have at least appeared in a Super Bowl.  Those that have been excluded entirely are Cleveland, Jacksonville, Detroit, and the Houston Texans.  It should be noted that three of those four teams are relatively recent introductions in the NFL if you include Cleveland as an expansion team in 1999.

The following summarizes the above statistics:

SINCE 1966
	MLB	NFL
% of teams not winning a championship	33%	47%
% of teams not appearing in a championship	10%	13%

Couple these stats with the fact that new franchises are more likely to win a World Series than a Super Bowl, and it might be tempting to disagree with the usual argument about parity between the leagues.  The World Series has actually been more inclusive than the Super Bowl.

What if we focus on the last 20 years?  After all, profit sharing and free agency changed dramatically since 1966, potentially affecting championships.  Let’s look at the same statistics for 1995 to 2012 (I’m choosing these years since there was no World Series in 1994.  Also, revenue sharing was first introduced to baseball in 1996).

SINCE 1995
	MLB	NFL
% of teams not winning a championship	67%	60%
% of teams not appearing in a championship	40%	30%

Counter-intuitively, here the stats change to favor the NFL, though not dramatically.  If we shorten the timeline further and take into account only the past decade, which also coincides with the 2002 baseball negotiations when revenue sharing was fine-tuned, the MLB has 7 different winners plus an additional 5 who've appeared in a World Series  – a total of 12 teams out of a potential 20.  The NFL has 7 different winners plus an additional 6 teams who've appeared in a Super Bowl  –  a total of 13 out of a potential 20.

What conclusions can be drawn from this?  Perhaps nothing definitive, as you could continue to crunch numbers that help fine-tune or perhaps even contradict some of what the above reveals, but I think you can say that under current rules, parity within the leagues is about the same in the MLB as it is in the NFL.  What was surprising to me is how historically the MLB wasn’t as lopsidedly in favor of the big market teams as I originally thought, even before revenue sharing and playoff expansion.  Outside of the Yankees’ run in the 90s, there has been a good deal of turnover in the World Series, and expansion teams have had success, sometimes fairly quickly.

The Music of 1995

Last month my friend Kevin summarized his feelings for the music of 1995.  He wrote:

1995 music finally crushed me.  Off with the makeup.  Cut the hair.  Get clothes in a color other than black.  Trade in boots for loafers and quit Bartz's Party Store and start work at Fleet Mortgage/Washington Mutual for next 15 years.  95 didn't scare me straight, it frustrated me into society, and I owe it all to …… Coolio??

I decided it was my mission to prove him wrong, because my memories of the music of 1995 were quite positive, so I spent a month gathering music from this forgotten year.  What I found in my own collection was enough to make a strong case, but I went out and gleaned another dozen or so bands to feature – some I’d never even heard of before – and then my friend John hopped onto the theme, making an even stronger case.  Last Saturday, four of us got together in Wisconsin to do nothing but play and discuss music.  Here’s what we came up with for 1995.  For me, the first three albums along justify the entire year:

“High and Dry” and “Planet Telex” from The Bends – Radiohead

“Jackson Cannery” from Ben Folds Five – Ben Folds Five

“Common People” from Different Class – Pulp

“Honey White” from Yes – Morphine

“Universal Heartbeat” from Only Everything – Juliana Hatfield

“Downtown” from Mirror Ball – Neil Young

“Not My Idea” from Garbage – Garbage

“Summerland” from Sparkle and Fade – Everclear

“Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me” from Batman Forever Soundtrack – U2

“Somebody’s Crying” from Forever Blue – Chris Isaak

“You Could Make a Killing” from I’m With Stupid – Aimee Mann

“The Universal” from The Great Escape – Blur

"Just Like Anyone" from Let Your Dim Light Shine - Soul Asylum

“Don’t Look Back in Anger” from (What’s the Story) Morning Glory – Oasis

“Hometown Blues” from Train a Comin’ – Steve Earle

“Radio King” from Down by the old Mainstream – Golden Smog

“That Was Another Country” from Glow – Innocence Mission

“Sandman” and “A Happy Ending” from Faust – Randy Newman

“You Must Go” from Walk On – John Hiatt

“In the Meantime” from Resident Alien – Spacehog

“Brain Stew” from Insomniac – Green Day

“You’ll See” from Something to Remember – Madonna

“Blue” from Tomorrow the Green Grass – Jayhawks

“Awake” from Wholesale Meats and Fish – Letters to Cleo

“My Friends” from One Hot Minute – Red Hot Chili Peppers

“This is a Call” from Foo Fighters – Foo Fighters

“Loose String” from Trace – Sun Volt

“All I Really Want” from Jagged Little Pill – Alanis Morissette

“Every Poet Wants to Murder Shakespeare” from Kisses 50 Cents – Bad Examples

“In the Blood” from Deluxe – Better Than Ezra

“Casino Queen” from A.M. – Wilco

And that’s only what we had time for.  There were many other band represented in 1995 that might have been worthy of our time: Big Country, Emmylou Harris, Smashing Pumpkins, Lloyd Cole, Graham Parker, Collective Soul, Del Amitri, Little Feat, Indigo Girls, Alice in Chains, Goo Goo Dolls, Dishwalla, Bruce Springsteen, Urge Overkill, Prince, Bar Scott, Semisonic, Vigilantes of Love, etc., not to mention jazz, hip-hop and other genres that we didn’t focus on but that undoubtedly had something to offer.

1995 may not have been perfect, but it surely had some terrific stuff.  Sure, for some of these picks I happened to play the one really good song from an otherwise mediocre album.  But you can’t tell me that when the oldies station plays “Happy Together” by The Turtles that you’re wishing the disc jockey had picked a deep cut.  Sometimes the hit is what makes the album.

Then again, I’d put up Radiohead’s The Bends against any album of any year, and it would hold up very well.

So was Kevin persuaded to view the music of 1995 in a new light?  Impressions are tough to overcome, but I think there may be a crack in the armor.  Perhaps Kevin can post a comment below if he cares to interject.

This Business of Music

In Sunday’s Chicago Tribune, Mark Caro offers a terrific analysis of today’s music business that has artists and labels scrambling to tap into on-line sources of income.  Far too often, these sources offer a pittance, calling into question whether artists can continue to create albums and make a living.

That the big labels screwed up and screwed up big in the late 90s when they fought tooth and nail the reality of the Internet goes without saying (and it’s eerily similar to the ongoing battles between Time Warner and local network affiliates – will cable even exist ten years from now?), but it’s doubtful that anyone could have predicted that online streaming would become the primary way people listen to music. 

The very idea of owning one’s music is becoming anachronistic.  Sure, there continues to be a “vinyl revival,” with LP sales increasing almost 6-fold since 2007 (a trend that couldn’t make me happier), but on the whole album sales have reached historic lows, and digital albums aren’t exactly booming either, growing a measly 1.9% in the second quarter of 2013, and possibly declining this quarter.

Which leaves streaming: YouTube.  Pandora.  Spotify.  iHeartRadio.  Slacker.  SomaFM.  For now, these services aren’t providing musicians with the income that physical sales offer.  Rates vary, but according the article, one would need to listen to a song 200 times for an artist to earn $1 on Pandora vs. earning, say, a dollar with a few sales on iTunes.  The argument goes that once these streaming services grow, they’ll be able to pay more to artists (as Spotify has in Sweden), but that remains to be seen.

(for a positively fascinating breakdown of how one artist makes money, check out Zoe Keating's self-reported income as a musician)

More likely, to me, is that music is simply going to become disposable, worth nothing or close to nothing.  In David Byrne’s terrific book, How Music Works, the former Talking Head’s member remarks how music, in a way, has come full circle.  Over a hundred years ago, the only time people enjoyed music was while it was being played.  There was no “owning” music.  You heard it at a performance, and then it disappeared.  At the time, recorded music was something to be feared.  John Philips Sousa warned us against recorded music, saying that it would not only devalue live performance, but impede the yearning to master an instrument:

The child becomes indifferent to practice, for when music can be heard in the homes without the labor of study and close application, and without the slow process of acquiring a technique,…the tide of amateurism cannot but recede, until there will be left only the mechanical device and the professional executant…

Today, both of Sousa’s concerns appear to have been mollified.  Virtuosos are alive and well in every conceivable genre at every possible instrument.  And live performance is the one thing keeping musicians fed and audiences interested.  Performing used to be an artist’s cash cow, a necessary ingredient to spur physical sales.  Today, when access to musical recordings is ubiquitous, live performing is what’s keeping music fresh, immediate and inspiring, and audiences are willing to shell out serious cash to experience it.

In David Byrne's book, he devotes a chapter to revealing the budgets and income of two of his recent recordings.  It's enlightening, but ultimately not indicative of the average musician, since Byrne is still benefitting from the music business's past paradigm.  Things have shifted, and independent artists today aren't reeping the benefits of the 1970s business model. 

Perhaps one day the vinyl revival will really kick it into gear, and life will return to the glorious past yet again, whereby people gather in front of a turntable and take turns listening to the latest releases.  But in the meantime, an artist's bread and butter appears to be performing.  And perhaps that's the way it should have been all along.