My First Mac

The Year . . .

I shit you not . . .

1986.

Orwell was wrong.

(which is a joke you would get if you were alive then and got to see the Macintosh commercial)

We had sold our dust collecting grand piano and bought a Macintosh Plus. Along with an Imagewriter II printer and so much pirated programming that I'm almost ashamed to admit it.

Almost.

I remember building the desk for it. It was the first thing I ever assembled of such magnitude. It required reading instructions, using tools, and carefully applying little wood colored stickers over the screw holes. That desk lived for the next 18 years. It was moved and reassembled 10 times from apartments to houses to apartments to houses to a garage to storage to an apartment to the dump.

During its long and beautiful life, it was the showcase for two Macintosh computers. The Macintosh Plus and the first iMac. Red.

No PCs.

It was at the Macintosh Plus that  I first learned to write. Where I first learned to use swear words. It was the computer I was sitting at during the earthquake of 89, it was the computer I used to write my first college essay.

Think about that. I did my fifth grade homework on the same computer I used to write deconstructions of Shakespeare's sonnets.

The Imagewriter II, a dot matrix printer, was still operable in 2009 when my mother finally had to toss it because there isn't a single computer interface that uses the cable.

The Macintosh Plus had 1k of memory.

1 fucking k

That's one Kilobyte of memory.

Imagine this. Download a song from iTunes. Say you have a hankering for Ozzie and you just need to hear Crazy Train. That's 9.8 MEGABYTES of information. If you do the math, and I know you won't, maybe Matt will, but he doesn't really need to, it would take 9,800 Macintosh Plus' to store Crazy Train.

We only had one.

We were poor.

But that computer lasted over 10 years.

In perfect working condition.

In contrast the only PC I've ever owned lasted three years and nearly destroyed my first album.

In over twenty years of having a personal computer in my house, I've had four Macs. The first taught my brother to read. The Second introduced me to the internet. The third got me through college, helped me write a musical, recorded an album, made my wedding video, and the one I have now has only begun the work that I want it to do.

Steve Jobs died today.

Younger than my dad.

With children young enough to still play soccer.

And in all the blogs you're gonna read, you're  most likely gonna hear about his brilliance with innovation. A brilliance I can attest to since right now I am sitting at my desk with my iMac, iPad, iPhone surrounding me.

Cause I have to write, take phone calls, and check my fantasy football status, all at the same time.

I would have my iPod too, but I only use it now when I am jogging.

So Yeah, you're gonna hear a lot about how innovative the man was.

But here's my favorite story:

The CEO of Nike is in an elevator with Steve Jobs.

Thinking it's kinda cool to have this kind of access to the great innovator, he asks Mr. Jobs what he should do with his company.

And Steve Jobs replays:

"You make a lot of good stuff.

and you make a lot of crap.

get rid of the crap"

end quote.

This is how I want to best remember a great American whose life was cut tragically short.

Here's what I want you to think about every day of your life. Here's what I want you to think about when you write that next paper, when you choreograph that next dance, when you write that next song, when you go to work feeling as if you have no control over your life at all. Because innovation is really neat, brilliance is fine and dandy. But if you want to really make a difference in your life and all of the lives around you, think about this:

We do a lot of good.

We do a lot of crap.

Do less crap.

Moves Like Jagger

Me: I'm starting to really hate that new Maroon 5 single.

Taylor: "Moves Like Jagger" . . .  why?

Me: Cause he doesn't.

Taylor: Oh

That was kind of a conversation killer on the way to drop my son off at the dorms. Taylor doesn't do idle chit chat unless its 1:15am and there's a world wide web involved.

I was thinking about this at the beginning of our drive after reading an article on the 20th anniversary of the release of "Nevermind" and the Nirvana/grunge explosion. 

I was younger then than he is now.

We stood in our combat boots with multiple layers of clothing. Long sleeve flannel shirts and army surplus jackets.

Here we are now. Entertain us.

Now its skinny jeans, V-Neck T-shirts, 

OMG. LMFAO

We both, however, are stupid . . . and contagious.

As we drove in silence, Taylor flipped through his radio presets.

I counted eight Pop radio stations he flipped through, and I am not shitting you, we only heard four songs the entire drive.

1. Friday Night - Katie Perry - The joke with this one is that the first time I heard it I could have sworn it was a cheap Katie Perry knockoff. I thought it was lame and dirty and didn't have the wink and nod of her earlier work. So how red faced was I discovering that it was actually Katie Perry and how sad to see a cute little pop star becoming a knockoff of herself.

2. Drink to That - Rhianna - Lame, but at least the auto-tune kept her usual chalkboard scratching flatness at bay. And then there was the Avril Lavigne sample in the chorus that made me wonder if bubble gum pop has gotten so bored with everything else its decided to start sampling itself. It may one day become so self contained that producers and artists will just start releasing their iTunes playlists instead of albums. 

3. Someone Like You - Adele - Good song, Well produced. Heard four times during a 45 minute drive.

4. Moves Like Jagger - Maroon 5 - After making my little quip Taylor scrolled through his presets until he found a station playing it. Not sure if it was serendipity, but there might be a conspiracy here. Maybe radio stations only play the top five hits so that new songs are as accessible on the radio as their are on Youtube.

Find the song you want and ignore the advertising.

Here we are.

Now.

Give us what we want.

Or someone else will.

So when we get to a song such as "Moves Like Jagger" I start to become an old fuddy-duddy.

Cause he doesn't.

Not only does Adam Levine of Maroon 5 NOT move like Jagger, I'm sort of confused as to why that would be something to openly discuss.

And not kinda creepy.

Telling another person that you have the moves like Jagger should illicit a furrowed brow, a soft tilt to the head, and a look of the eyes that clearly says "Please, you will have no chance of getting laid again if you even begin to think its a good idea to stand up and demonstrate."

Jagger is, and should be, the only person who can get laid moving like Jagger.

Maybe our dear Adam woke up on the floor of his hotel room using a V-Tshirt as a blanket and a pair of leather pants as a pillow and thought to himself "Hmmm. This makes me think of Mick Jagger. I must write a song about him. And use his last name for a lyric. A lyric that won't sit very well in the melody line."

And he continued:

"What is it about Jagger that makes him worthy of homage? Is it his lyric writing? No that can't be, he's not evening singing words. Is it his dynamic vocal range? Nope. If he's ever spread out an entire octave it was only because he fell off the stage and hurt himself. But Jagger wouldn't do that. Nobody moves like Jagger. I wish I could move like Jagger. Then I'd get laid. Chicks dig Jagger for how he moves. And for his V-Neck T-Shirts and leather pants. What's that awful taste in my mouth?"

I could tell him what that taste was. Its the taste of a bad idea that turns into an obsession.

I know that taste because I've had lots of songs like that.

Thankfully I'm not a pop star. Because I would be horrified to have to sing some of those bad idea songs for the rest of my life.

If the devil were to tell me that I could have a wonderfully successful career, and that he wouldn't take my soul, but that he would insist that twenty years from now I would find myself in a Carson City casino singing "Moves Like Jagger" night after night,

I might have to ask him if he would reconsider the soul.

So as Taylor and I finished unpacking the car and loading all his shit into his dorm room I was just about to  place my arm around his and give him some advice.

Son, I would say. You will be here for at least nine months. If you have any chance at all of getting laid, do not, under any circumstances, tell someone that you move like Jagger.

But just then two incredibly cute girls rushed into the room screaming his name and gave him full body hugs, and causally invited themselves to lunch with him.

So,

I'm thinking,

maybe he'll do just fine.

The Pantheon

Cole Porter. John Lennon. Amadeus. Leonard Cohen.

These are the people I'd like to meet in heaven.

Will they be in the same room?

Will they be in the Pantheon of songwriters?

Will I be allowed into the room?

Will I have to show my ID? Will I have to display a lexicon of my work in orderer to enter or will I be allowed to glide in like Jay Zee at the hottest night club in Manhattan?

Or will I be standing out in the cold waiting for a look of encouragement from some heavenly bouncer?

I'm not sure.

I'm thinking about the greatest tragedy of life.

The tragedy of never being able to prove oneself.

Will my work ever be able to stand up to the rest of the Lexicon, or will it merely be a footnote of some family tree of which I am a single branch?

Will my son ever venture into my lexicon?

Or will he be so bored of Daddy's dreams that it will be placed kindly into a box and left on some shelf in the garage only to be shuffled into the garbage pile that my grandchildren have made?

When my great grandfather died, I was nothing.

When my grandfather died I was in my mid twenties, and there was nothing left of him to give me but a few anecdotes and a pile of motorcycle parts.

When my father dies, I have recordings, memories written in ink, memories written in  cyberspace. Pictures and items of great personal worth.

My son will at least have those when I too die.

But what will become of them?

What will my grandchildren know of me?

Most likely every little.

And their children even less.

Unless.

One day. By pure miracle.

My work trancends my family and friends and finds a home among the pop culture for which it was written and to which it belongs.

But that is a dream.

A dream which can never be fulfilled, but a dream which sustains me none the less.

I believe I can hang with that crew.

the Pantheon of great songwriters.

And not feel myself the foolish man I feel myself today.

Because when everything is stacked against me.

when Life shreds its secret and tells me that I am just a small bit of material in a vast universe of matter,

I still dream.

So dream. Everyone.

dream.

What does "Please" mean?

So Calvin asked me this question:

What does Please mean?

Its a polite way of asking someone for something.

Cause really? What the hell does "Please" mean?

But then I had to put my thinking cap on because he gave me that insolent little look the proves he knows I was giving him a non answer.

The kind of answer that ranks right up there with "Cause I said so."

Well Calvin . . .

I breathed.

To Please some one means to make them happy.

So when you say Please, you are really saying, "Would you do this thing for me in order to make me happy?".

So how come its magic?

Cause I said so.

And this developed into a long conversation over what my role is as a parent. Apparently, Calvin is of the view that my job as a parent is to make him happy all the time cost be damned.

And I had the fortuneate task of informing him that it is my job to make sure that he has food and a place to live.

The gap between our understanding of my role was far too wide for him to comprehend.

So then is it mommy's job to make me happy?

No sweetie. it is mommy's job to make sure you have food, and a place to live, and that that place is clean.

Is mommy's job harder?

Yes.

Is it because she loves me more?

Yes.

I love the fact that Calvin keeps a running tab on all the nice things Joann does for him, and a secondary list of all the things that I force him to do against his will.

When is mommy coming home?

Not for a few more hours.

That's too long. I want mommy.

Why?

Cause she loves me more.

Does she take you swimming?

She would if she were home more.

Can't argue with that.

And here's the thing: Our relationship has become adversarial. I am the dragon. He is the princess. And Joann is the knight in shining armor. Except in this little teleplay the princess has a homemade Katana and has no fear of swacking at the dragon until the knight arrives.

And to push the metaphor even further, let us say that the dragon is also an artist and falling head first into a very complicated project and simply doesn't have the patience he normally would, to devote his attention to the needs of the princess.

And this makes the princess very angry.

And since the princess has spent the entire summer locked in the tower with nothing but video games and swimming pools, its become quite the shock for the little princess to suddenly be thrust into six hours of school each day.

The princess is not happy with the dragon.

The knight's not much help either.

And when the knight and the dragon talk all they can talk about is how much easier it will be when the princess's older brother has gone off to college and the princess has finally accepted that there is no alternative to school.

In the mean time, the dragon's got major rehearsing and recording schedules to manage. His money job is dependent on the Holiday Season, so he has to gear up for that, and the lawn is yet again in desperate need of mowing.

Not to mention that both the knight and the dragon have to lose another 11 pounds.

Dieting makes even fantasy characters a wee bit more cranky than usual.

So we are all on edge.

Except of course the princess's older brother, who at 2:00pm, is still in bed.

Does the dragon want to stay in bed till 2:00pm?

Yes, please.

It is a small world after all is said and done.

Yeah. That never would have made a good lyric, but contract a few words, discard the ending, and you've got the title of one of the most maligned verse/chorus songs of all time.

I was on that ride on Wednesday. Much to the immediate displeasure of Calvin, who whined and complained all through the line and then closed his eyes and covered his ears as we made that joyously air-conditioned boat ride through pure gleeish schmaltz.

Disneyland is no place for children.

At least my children.

I've had an easier time getting him to eat broccoli then I did making have fun at Disneyland.

Next vacation will be an asparagus festival.

But as we rounded the second or third bend, I stopped being frustrated and turned my thought towards the music. At first I found it fascinating that each section was almost seamlessly integrated between the sections. It occurred to me that each section had a different recording of the same song, in the same key, at the same tempo and yet they were all vastly different stylistically and as you passed from village to mountainside, each recording flowed into the next.

How much equipment was needed in the sixties to make that possible? Remember this was an era where the Beatle could record an entire album with just four tracks.

And then I started to listen to the craft of the song. How perfectly clever they were. Not a lyrical line missed or extended. The melody flowed perfectly. How the second part of the verse makes a perfect little dance around the circle of fifths. How the key was selected at exactly the right place for the limited range of a children's choir.

(My biggest pet peeve of children's theatre is how badly keyed it is for children's voices. Twelve year olds should not be doing Sondheim, I don't care how fucking cute "Into the Woods" is.)

I was mesmerized. Fascinated by the craft. I did a quick little google search to see who had written the song and I came across something surprising.

"Its a Small World." was written by the Sherman Brothers. One of the most prolific songwriting teams in movie and television history. Their father Al Sherman was a writer in the Tin Pan Alley days and encouraged them to write.

I won't bore you with their biography. Besides, I was looking at wikipedia and some of it has to be wrong, but it was extensive. And it really got me to thinking about how the day of the pure song writer is over. How the craft slips ever further from substance into style.

Sure we can't replicate those perfect rhymes any longer. They've become cliches. But Rockstars did something to the craft that is irrevocable. They discovered that money is in copyright. And if they didn't write their own songs, they were loosing out.

Teenage angst pays off well.

So sang Kurt Cobain.

Good line. Lame lyric.

And I've said it before. I'd much rather be a master of the craft than a Rockstar.

"Here Lady Gaga, record this, trust me, they'll love it"

I had a conversation once with another songwriter who was talking about vetting offers from a recording company.

"I couldn't take anything less than a million dollars. Anything else wouldn't be enough to risk my job."

To which her boyfriend leaned over and said,

"You're talking to Josh. He would sell a song for a turkey sandwich."

And he's right.

Let me illustrate:

Recently an old boyfriend of my wife's has made it into the tabloids. I won't bother you with his name but lets just say he's a fifty one year old actor who has had a few big successes, and pops up here and there.

Well this fifty one year old actor has just gotten married to a sixteen year old girl.

A sixteen year old girl with a website showcasing her talents as a singer. A pop singer with breast implants and enough auto-tune to correct scoliosis.

And my first thought wasn't "How Obscene!"

My first though was "Yeah, she's gonna need a real songwriter, and I wonder if my wife still has his email somewhere."

Cause I'm a pig. And a bit of a whore.

And I could really use a turkey sandwich right now.

And it turns out that this fifty one year old ex-boyfriend of my wife, has his own production company.

I'm starting to feel a little momentum.

I know a girl, who knows a guy, who married a girl, who will never be a pop star, but obviously has some money, and could open the kind of doors that lead to real pop stars. The kind of pop stars that have no problem paying for a song with a turkey sandwich.

Notice how I didn't wake my wife up at this point to show her the news.

I wanted to get a little deeper into the story.

On further review of the You Tube videos I recognized a canned drum beat from GarageBand.

Wait, I said. This wasn't a money production. This was someone trying to break out of the porn industry with a three year old MacBook Pro, and a 16 year old girl.

And then I raced to the website of the production company.

Maybe there's some money there.

It's mission statement: "To let artists dream . . . "

Ouch.

And it got worse.

Current projects included (I shit you not) a series of children's books based on the adventures of his chihuahua.

So there's no real opportunity. Even when the songwriter knows a girl, who knows a guy, who has probably reached the tail end of his fame with a slapdash marriage to a sixteen year old girl at a Vegas hot spot.

I wish them love and luck all the same.

And as I clicked out of all the different websites and was about to clean my browser, I saw a little picture of Ringo Starr and the bottom of one of the articles.

A connection to Ringo Starr singing one of his first hits after the break up of the Beatles.

"You're 16."

If you're unfamiliar with the tune, do as I did, look it up on you Tube. It contains the lyric "You're Sixteen, You're Beautiful, and You're Mine."

And there's three points I'd like to make about the song "You're 16."

First, it was a hit by several singers going back to the sixties. Which kind of solidifies the fascination that famous grown men have for girls at that age. (I find them mostly vapid, but I'm not famous)

Second, Ringo Starr's recording of the song is actually the only hit song in recorded history to feature a Kazoo solo.

And Lastly,

you guessed it,

It was written by the Sherman Brothers.

Man in Transition

I stare at the face in the mirror. The one everyone else sees, but I can only glance at. The skin once smooth now creased with a million smiles and a thousand furrowed brows. There is very little boy left in that face. The boy exists now only in the gleam of the eyes and the tilt of the head.

This man is still as angry as the boy. Still as confused. Still burning with the fury he felt ten twenty years ago. Still as insulted by cruelty and injustice. Still yearning for peace. Still embarrassed by his clumsiness, his awkwardness, his narcissism, his laziness, his procrastination, his unmet potential.

The man dreams the same dreams as the boy.

He still fears the same fears.

He still doesn't like dogs.

But there are dogs he likes.

He wonders as he stares at this face if the face is the only thing that separates the man from the boy.

Is the only difference between that face and this face time?

Hmm?

His wife says the man is much sexier than the boy.

He tells her to prove it.

But she's tired.

The girl is a woman. And a woman needs rest.

But the man is better than the boy. He's not as fast. He's not as strong. But he's quicker with a joke. He's better with a song or with a tale. He can look a girl in the eyes and tell her what's on his mind. And he knows exactly when that's not appropriate.

He doesn't panic as much as the boy.

He's been places and done things. What once was daunting, is now common place. What once was impossible is now muscle memory.

And the man knows who he is. What he has become. If given a choice, the man knows who the boy would want to grow up to be.

Because he grew up to be the man.

Yet I stare at my face in the mirror with shock and horror.

Rather than with pleasure and grace.

Because the boy wasn't ready to be the man.

And then I pick up my guitar and realize I can't even play like the boy used to play. And when I sing I can't sing like the boy used to sing. And when I joke I am taken seriously. And when I speak people become solemn.

But then I look across the room.

I see that the baby is no longer a baby.

The baby is now a boy.

And the boy will never become a man.

If he has a boy for a father.

So I pick up my guitar again and realize I can still play like the boy. But better. And when I sing, even if I don't have as many notes, each note has depth. And when I joke, people laugh, unless they're still boys and girls and then they probably didn't get the reference in the first place and it makes more sense to hang out with people who do. And when I speak, people become solemn, not because of my age, but because the man exudes a power that the boy could only dream of.

And I still have the boy's dreams.

Which keep me alive.

And I still have the boy's fears.

Which give me ambition.

And I still have the boy's eyes.

Which can send a message of love across a crowded room.

As I have been writing. The baby became a boy. The boy became a man.

And the girl became a woman becoming tired.

May She Forever Let Me Know

I'm a damn good teacher.

Its why I have the job that I have. I might not be the best employee in the world. I might be a little too open about the mistakes I make, too honest about how I feel about things, but I can command a room, get people to listen to me, and have them walk away feeling as if their time was well spent. I can make a paradigm shift seem like a walk in the park, and filter details on a need to know basis.

Its really the only reason my boss likes having me around.

Wasn't something I was born with. But like cooking, its something that I wanted to do and I spared no lack of energy learning how to do it.

For as the saying goes:

Teaching like cooking like making love should be approached with reckless abandon.

Or something like that.

Ask Julia.

So, teaching a class today and my phone buzzed.

I didn't check who it was, I just casually switched the phone off so that it wouldn't buzz again and continued delivering my speech.

Usually when my phone buzzes, its my wife sending me something sweet/funny/dirty/cryptic. Those can wait for a better time.

And there's no better time than when the computers fail and we have to take a ten minute break in order to sort out the glitches.

Which happens all day.

So the computer crashes (damn you PC and your cheap fucked up alternatives to an actual working system), and I check my phone.

Instead of being from my wife, there's a string of texts from my sound engineer wanting to set a date for working on the new album.

OMG. I'm actually gonna start working on music again and the thought fills me with joy. For it has been too long since I've not only worked on the album, but too long since I actually wrote about the musical portion of my life. Its as if the context of my life has strayed from dreams and become mired in reality.

And reality is no place to live.

I'm so excited I reply right away. How about next Tuesday? Five O'clock? The answer is swift, as if he knew Microsoft was going to crash at that exact moment. See you then. And my posture takes on a whole new dimension of confidence.

For I am not a working stiff. I am pre-Rock Star and its time to show everyone in the room that this little training is far beneath my scope of life, yet I am happy to do it as long as it pays the bills. You're not getting the beaten down version of me, you're getting the pomp of a man who has strength and ambition, you're getting a performance of a man in his prime.

The training goes well. I hope they learned. I hope they trust I know what I'm doing. I dream that they could feel my air of confidence and that that air has wafted into their souls and filled them with peace. For I have given them the real me. The me who lives in many worlds.

But the me who lives in many worlds is a farce.

Its scientifically proven that there in no such thing as multitasking. What we think of when we think of multitasking is actually a physically and emotional draining skill of re-prioritisation.

You can't do two things at once.

You can't be two people at once.

You can however switch between the two quickly.

But you blow twice as much energy doing so.

So you can't do it for long.

And eventually, the two things become weak shadows of themselves and nothing is done well.

Artists know this. Which is why in every other aspect of their lives they are complete assholes. You can't be a good Husband/Father/Employee/Artist. You can only be a good artist and shitty at the rest.

I've defied this logic for as long as I can.

but my wife knows better.

Four months ago I showed her the recording schedule I had mapped out for my the new album. She immediately noticed the lines throughout April, May, and June for recording and mixing.

No, she said.

What? I replied.

Those are the months we need to help Taylor find a college, the months where we need to get him settled for graduation. There are parties to plan, weddings to go to, finances to adjust, cleaning to do, a five year old to keep busy.

No, she said.

Why? I asked.



Because I need you.



And so I stalled everything else.

I put my engineer/producer on hold.

I went from writing once a week to every other week.

I etched vacation into every work crevice I could find.

She knows I can't be everywhere. Everyone. And she knows I would have tried. But she didn't want me to try. She wanted me to be there for her, for the family, for this one moment in time when we can relish our triumph of delivering Taylor into the unknown world with the best possible foot in the door.

And I was okay with that. Because when it becomes my time, I know that she will watch my little artistic ship sail and eagerly await my return.

But when I tell her that I will be meeting with my engineer this Tuesday, she looks at me funny.

Damn,

she says.

What?

I ask.

Katie was going to come over for dinner that night.

Oh. I say. No problem, you'll just have to make dinner.

Hmm. She says. Maybe she can come over another night.



Because when it really comes down to it, my boss needs me to teach.

And my wife needs me to cook.

Unless she needs me for something else.

And hopefully,

she will forever let me know.