So despite all this Johnny Cash died on Friday... the best I can say is that I will miss him and his utterly human stature in his later years. To me, Johnny was bigger than Elvis, bigger than Sinatra, Dylan, he was tantamount. Maybe John Wayne himself might have been the only person who was his equal. But there was such a dignity in the last years of his life, each album, each song, each verse showing a man exposed... a man who wanted to portray himself as the toughest guy on the planet, and with the set of his eyes, his postures, you might have believed him... Like a bird on a wire, like a drunk ina midnight choir, I have tried in my way to be free. These were Leonard Cohen's words of course, but a deep sincerity looms around them when Johnny sings them. So much apology, so much amendment, that I can't help but believe these last ten years were devoted to repentance, much in the same way the Jews flog themselves and beat their breast at the death of a loved one... like that baggage just had to be dropped... I realize how much life I have left to live through that man, that I haven't even begun to live, as if everything up until now was the dress rehearsal... that somehow to live you tend have to make mistakes and that somewhere there are heartaches innumerable, unfathomable. Not out of necessity, but part of the human condition. But Johnny wore it well, he turned it into something like integrity, admirable despite anything anyone could ever drudge up against him... God rest his soul, God grant him the entrance to the pearly gates of heaven... long live his spirit, here & ever after...
Posted by: Greg / 10:38 PM

Basically, if you think about it, music would seem like worth so much more if I didn't know a bunch of other people weren't getting the same canned preformatted item, frames and all. Basically, when I buy a work of art (if I buy a work of art) I would know that I am carrying the original, which could not be reproduced. Therefore, for the privilege of having seen the piece, having been attracted to it, and then knowing that the artist prodiuced only one like it, I would be willing to pay above $100 for that item. But knowing that 100 other people will pay 16 or 17 bucks for a CD, doesn't the artist already get his money back for the production of it. That's a liberal sum too. No, wait, the record company needs their cut too, huh? Man, those guys seem to be leaving something out aren't they? Man msuicians consider themsleves lucky that they don't really have to work striaght jobs that they make a living doing what they love to do. I'm still scraping for $9.37 an hour to make ends meet and I have reams of poems just dying on the vine and I have that sneaky feeling I'll never really be doing what I love to do. May not ever. Makes me want to quit writing all together actually. I mean hey, I freaking idolize these people you know, I truly do. But I decided that it was enough to pay $40 once to see Bob Dylan ... $20 an hour per person when you have about three or four thousand on one given night. Sorry, Bob but the times they are a-changin', keep trying to get heaven before they close the door. You can probably buy your way if you ask nicely. Actually, I bet true musicians think it's cool if their stuff is getting heard by people who can't afford to buy every one of their albums. Even the dead ones, you know. I mean if you're so shallow that you're in it for the money, and that's it, you're shit is probably not worth hearing anyway, and it'll be only so long before you could only hope people are still dowloading your shit illegally.
Posted by: Greg / 12:41 AM
Lastly, for now, I am incredibly disturbed by the lawsuits for the file-sharers. I am waiting for the hammer to drop here. I mean yeah, I download music but that's it. I listen to it while I'm doing stuff on the computer. I personally have just bought this Bruce album and one by the White Stripes as a direct result of being able to listen to songs on the albums before hand. The file share allows me to listen to hear music that blows me away, and actually, I'm more apt to buy albums because of it. As far as the Record Industry deciding to slap the suits on personally individuals, I have sympthy for people. Maybe they are just shocked that this things actually going down. And I don't blame them. I wonder if I've shared files in the capacity they are scrutinizing. But my major problem with the record industry's stance is that they could begin using the kind of discs that everybody buys in 5-packs for 3.99 at Walmart. Insead, they've used a medium which is pretty cost-efficient for them. They sell one million of them, in some places at mark-ups of $17 or $18; when I used to buy tapes for $10 or $11. No -- places like Border's and even the independent record stores said about cassettes,CD is the wave of the future, everything well be on cd before you know it. And they were right. BUT what about the couple hundreds of dollars I've spent trying to upgrade to better systems, so I can listen to my cd's. Currently, I have about two hundred cd's which I own...so take that and multiply it by 16 or 17 and you have a good three thousand dollars of my money. And I rarely ever batted an eye at it. Sure, I try to get albums on sale, but I ahve spent that money for the pleasure of hearing the music I want. Now let's forget the number of cds and tapes originals that I've sold over the years at only 25% of their initial worth. Because they're lost to me now,, either because I didn't listen to them enough to warrant lugging them wherever I may move. Or maybe I was hard up for cash and thought I could eek out 30 or 40 bucks from some shylock record seller. I have strongly supported the record industry over the years because I had to have the new album... BUT what do I care about a record industry that really doesn't care about musicians, talent, originality, individuality, creativity or the music that comes through it. Right now, I am listening to Wilco Yankee Hotel Foxtrot or whatever and don't think I don't know how they made a killing on this album. Cool story about screwing the record industry over and getting to make an individual record. I still paid $15 for the album. Soooo, question, is it the music that seems worth the money or the package it comes in.... I know it is. David Fricke said once that the packaging is just an artifact, a siginifer of the signified which is what is what is contained on the 6 inches of platinum waves" so how do we get past the frivolity of the package and get that treasure we're really after...download!!! Totally. So sue me. I'll pay you in platinum and plastic... I'll give you back all the damn stuff you charged me for... and by the way, I'll make sure I download it all onto my computer first... and I expect to be reimbursed for the price of additional memory it take to do that...
Posted by: Greg / 12:26 AM
So the other night I'm sitting at a neighbor hood bistro and I see a group of four (beautiful) women of Eastern European descent. I was befuddled. They were gorgeous, with dark hair and slim bodies, curvacious(?) but I couldn't quite place the origin...either Ukranian or perhaps Albanian. That had an enticing ring to it. But I couldn't stop watching them, the way they talked, their accents a mystifying beauty, hidden but enchanting. I must sound a bitr ignorant at this. They could have been from Louisiana or Saskatoon and maybe that's just it, it wouldn't have mattered. But I'd seen two of them promoting an art show for a New York artist in the Old Market sector and spoke with one of them about art. Unfortunately, the talented artists in this community are limited, as are their resources. We have galleries, sure, but it's like getting a law or medical degree in this town... you're not going to bat many eyes out east, may have some luck in the west. But it's kind of limited anyway. Anyway, I gained the impression that they were Balkan, or Slavic. I myself have primarily Slavic roots, and yet I never had seen brunettes of this stature, extremely (clearly) independent, bound by a loyalty to "family" instead of some strict sense of husbandry. I have been acquainted with Lithuanians, Sudanese, Kenyan, Cameroon, Saudis, Ukranian, Greek, and Romanian just that I can pinpoint. Apparently, the education here is cheap, as I don't understand why so many stuydents would come to Nebraska for schooling, not when you have so many prestigious universities which would get you a job just about anywhere (Columbia, Dartmouth, Stanford, Syracuse, Georgetown, Temple) But I did see an Asian woman who was speaking in her native language who dropped the needle on the whole scene. Wowee. Too bad, she looked like a freak version of a Christina Aguilera (what with the cell phone propped on her ear) I don't know hard to explain. Maybe it was the African drum circle in the parking lot of the Little King, the punk in a Scottish kilt, and the tibetan monks with traditonal red garb appearing at the same time on a Satuday night down in the Market. Wild shit.
Posted by: Greg / 12:06 AM

Omaha is still Omaha. I am listening to Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska and it is absolutely beautiful... maybe more contemplative of what's west of here... miles and miles of highway, some interste and others just good old country roads. Unfortunately, I can't seem to get it all out on paper. Susan Tedeschi at the Nebraska State Fair etc. The stretches of cornfield interlaced into the Platte River. See, I live in the city of Omaha, I'm not in anyway on the outskirts. I go to coffee shops, sometimes the bars in town, and there's little cultures in each of them. tTonight we met a guy from Columbus Ohio and he was wearing a cowboy hat. The friend I was with asked what was up with the hat, and he said "well, I just thought people out here would probably be a little bitlike the kind you normally find wearing hats." Which of course made us laugh. It's of course not like that at all. Hicks don't use meth in the reams that they seem to come out somewhere in the city limits. Where the stockyards used to be (how we got be called the Beef State long ago) they figure they can cook it up without a problem because the smell from the pens where the killing floor used to be pretty much wipes all that out. That's in South Omaha, about five miles south of where I live, and it's filled with Mexicans, Hispanics, Puerto Ricans. Apparently, that's where we got the drugs, just up from the Latin Americas. Of course, white folk have a sweet taste for what is being sold on the streets. So it all comes around. One quick note: Omaha is more global than you might guess, we have just about every nationality you could think of...
Posted by: Greg / 11:50 PM