Wednesday, February 14, 2007

The Celebrity Weapon

Joe Hill was the closest thing to a people’s troubadour that I can think of. He was a member of the Industrial Workers Of the World – the Wobblies – and he wrote and sang songs that the workers could use as weapons in their strikes and organizing efforts. Many of those songs are still sung today. He was executed by firing squad in Utah in 1919. The state said he killed somebody but most everybody else figured is was a frame-up. They had to stop him, those songs of his just caused too much trouble.

Now, suppose somebody wanted to engineer a self-policing society where no one would ever get that far in the first place - by using some sort of mechanism whereby success led to failure, tricking people into feeding the hand that bites, so to speak. What would that look like? Well, it might look very much like our modern celebrity system. Let’s just tilt things a little bit and look at them that way for a while and see what happens when celebrity becomes a weapon…

Eugene Debs, probably the most honorable man ever to run for President – and from prison, at that – said, “When I rise it will be with the ranks, and not from the ranks.” Now, that’s a good attitude to have. Prince, on the other hand – the artist formerly known as *@! – said “pop life, everybody can’t be on top.” See the difference? Prince was, of course, putting himself up there on the top and singing down to us commoners, saying it’s okay, we can’t all be great like him. But hey, love me, I’m your pop star. That’s why I don’t own any Prince records.

Now, everybody knows that in order to have an effect as an artist you need to achieve a certain level of visibility. A certain stature. So what they did (“they” being the architect generals of the music industry) was to invade, colonize, and in fact own that level of artistic existence. To get there you have to go through them. Most people approach them asking for approval: “Please make me a star, oh great ones.” If the applicant is willing and the raw putty of their talent is moldable something might happen and a one-hit wonder may be born. But sometimes an independent figure appears, gathering meat and muscle on their own road, owing to none. This one has to be cut off at the pass: a billionaire steps into the road, with an enormous Congratulations! and a fat wad of cash and says something like, “You made it, welcome to the Wonder Dome,” and shoves the cash wad directly into the applicant’s mouth. Hard to sing straight with a mouth full of money.

Oh, I can hear it already, “Come on Page, that’s a bit of stretch.” Yeah, well, I told you we were going to tilt things for a while. We’re almost done… Not everybody gets caught, but enough do to make it pay for the money-bag bankers of music row. And enough to warp a lot of the young impressionables who watch those award ceremonies, seeing all those glittering gold trinkets and flash bulbs, those rock stars and heart throbs.

And that’s the end of any future Joe Hill. That does it more effectively than any firing squad. Because once he’s got that medal, once he’s joined that club, once he’s made that pact with that billionaire, its all over, the system owns him. Or her. Or it. And that’s the way it’s done. As long as “they” own the terms of success, the puppet is King.

But so far they don’t own the street. Whose streets? Our streets, that’s whose! And success out there is measured in interpersonal immediacy, with no middle man. Like the whispered rumblings of a mass movement about to happen, a million unencumbered tongues sing us into the 21st century. We should listen.

Wednesday, February 07, 2007

Airplanes and Cameras

“Modern armed forces continue to be structured for large-scale war, but advanced societies whose small families lack expendable children have a very low tolerance for casualties.” - from an article called ‘Dead End’ by Edward N. Luttwak, in Harper’s Magazine, Feb 2007.

I figure that speaks for a lot of us, doesn’t it? “Low tolerance for casualties,” indeed. There oughtta be a way to get those desk-bellied bureaucrats to do their own fighting. Like they say, maybe if they had to fight we wouldn’t have these wars. But that’s turning the world right side up and that takes a lot of time and a lot of effort. It’ll get done but not right away. Give it time.

I just got back from the UK. I think the travel took about 30 hours. It was a long one! First of all, I was staying on the opposite side of London from the airport and it was an 8:30 flight. That meant that I had to take the first subway train which was at 5:30. And, because the house where I was staying was a good twenty minute walk from the station – without any luggage – I wanted to leave at a quarter to 5 at the latest just to be sure. And that meant that I had to be up at 4. But of course I couldn’t sleep so I was up at 3. For some stupid reason I thought the subway ride would take about 40 minutes. Uh-uh, it was almost an hour and a half. I was sweating buckets. And then I was told that I couldn’t carry my guitar on board. What?! I would have to check it! Okay, I said, I’ll check the guitar to Amsterdam – my first leg – and the suitcase all the way to Seattle. Can’t do that, they said, the system won’t allow it. There’s that system thing again – more tenacious than the cockroach. Okay, so I checked them both to Amsterdam. Which meant that I had to go through passport check and customs in the Netherlands, only to turn around and go through passport and customs again to board a flight for Washington, DC. And here’s the fun part. Everybody getting on that plane to DC was interviewed. I thought it was because I had made a snide comment about the “no outside water bottles” ruling, but no – everybody was singled out and questioned by anal security officers before being allowed into the loading area. There were three podiums and three questioners. Mine was seriously over pronouncing her words and I over pronounced right back. I though maybe that was her language. I stood on one side of the podium while she stood on the other. The questions were all the usual that you’ve heard for years – did you pack your bags yourself, and so on. After a few of these I just answered them all at once. I don’t know what she thought of me but she let me go through.

Landing in DC - “Our Nation’s Capitol” as we laughingly refer to it – was actually pretty painless. The passport guy made a joke about my name – “anybody ever mistake you for Jimmy Page?” Which allowed me to say, “I wish his banker would.” Which allowed him to think I was okay and I just sailed on through. Then I had three hours to wait before the final airless dose to Seattle. Like Ramblin’ Jack says, “Why do they call them airplanes? There’s no air in them.” True enough. Or food. Maybe a few peantuts or a rigid bag a pretzels. The good thing was that the cold I had picked up and attributed to the London breeding ward of the Underground had pretty much disappeared. Probably passed it onto into the stream of that greater disease factory, the winged aviation ward. The ward giveth and the ward taketh away. After 5 hours of semi sentient submergence and claustrophobial fidget we landed safe but dehydrated in Seattle. My friend Janet met me at the baggage thing – I refuse to call it a carousel, carousels are fun and filled with children, these things lose your luggage. Jim was outside in the car but hade to circle around because of our national paranoiadal security fetish. People who constantly move are good. People who stop moving are up to something. Then they very kindly brought me to my little house in the trees where we did a quick check to see if the lights were still on and then I was left to my own befuddling devices.

That was last night. A long time ago. I am in a cotton layered tunnel and I will stay here until I catch up with myself. I will happily bump into things and will feel no real need to make sense. There will be plenty of time for that.

Oh, one more. England is famous for camera surveillance. There are cameras all over the place, four or five of them at a time on the same stand. They say that the average Brit gets photographed 400 times in the course of a day. What do they do with all that? Anyway, they’ve been using cameras at the intersections to catch bad drivers – speeding, running red lights, that sort of thing. We’re starting to do that here too. Really annoying. Well, some people have been vandalizing the cameras, spraying paint over the lenses and so on. So what are they doing about it? They are installing new cameras to catch the vandals who wreck the other cameras. And the news casters reported it all with a straight face. Good for them!

Monday, February 05, 2007

Last Day In London

Last day in London. Prowling around downtown, in and out of the Underground. That great stale-aired disease factory that I love so much. I can smell 200 years worth of working humanity in that thing. The longest escalators in the world, the grittiest cave-born winds, the endless rattlings of the disappearing rails – gone worm-like into the distance. How many people take this thing to work every day? How many lives have come and gone in here? It gave me a cold yesterday, slammed right into my forehead - I sniffle and cough my way around now – but I have to go down there again. It knows my name and it will not let me rest…

It has been a great honour to get to know the Cole family. East Londoners. Pie, mash and liquor. Michael Cole has been my agent on this trip and his 26 year old son Justin has been the driver. And what a driver he is! If you see him coming you better pull aside. I have been staying at Mike’s daughter Vicky’s place, in her son’s room. Her husband Alex is the guy who met me when I first arrived way back then. They have two children, both boys. I sleep in the older brother’s bed room. The younger has a heart condition. How sad to see a beautiful baby and to know that his heart is damaged and that ten years ago he wouldn’t have lived even this long. Maybe in ten years time they will know how to fix him for real. You have to think like that. These are good people.

I played up in Devon at the Otterton Mill, a great and wonderful place attached to a mill that is actually a thousand years old. Put that in your “Original Starbucks!” The sound engineer was a guy named Ian Briggs. He’s a real good blues harmonica player and he invited us to his gig the next night in Bristol. He’s a got a band called The Supervampers. I had the night off so it seemed like a logical thing to do. That’s when my cold started to hit but I went for it anyway. I like Bristol. It’s got a real good feel to it. College town, lots of art. I did a couple of songs and felt kind of silly after what that band does. I mean all I have is an acoustic guitar… Anyway, next day was Trowbridge at the Arc Theater. Real good room, great sound, lights, the whole nine yards. I’ll be playing the Trowbridge Festival this summer so it was good to get to be in the town. Good show.

Last night was the last gig. The Plough. Awesome gig. A real English folk club. We don’t have anything like that in the states, at least not that I’ve ever seen. In the late 70s and early 80s I used to play quite a lot of them. They are a great example. As the featured performer I do 2 sets, usually 45 minutes each. Each set has a couple of warm up acts and those are local players and singers. What a great idea to give your community artists the chance to perform before an audience like that. And what an audience! Generous in their attention, more than willing to go in any direction you want to take them. A good way to end my trip.

So tomorrow I have to get up before dawn even thinks about cracking. My plane leaves at 8:20 and the first underground from Vicky’s neck of the woods leave at 5:30. That’s the one I’ll be on. Sounds like fun. Anybody want to come with me?