Good morning! Hey there! What’ shakin? How are you? I am doing pretty good, thanks for asking. Just back from the grocery shopping. Went fine. No $2 buckets on sale. No grey planters. No herbs or vegetable plants at all, actually, which is really weird: WalMart has a big garden section, but this year they just didn’t bother with having any herbs or vegetable plants. It’s all flowers. This is a first. I assume pandemic related, but I’ve no idea why or how. There’s a centralized Kit Kat spot now, which is nice. Figured out where they’ve been hiding the dark chocolate ones. Got a few of those and apple pie. Passed on the key lime pie.
More depressingly, they were playing music really loud in the parking lot. They’ve been playing music in the parking lot for a little over a year. Installed a system just before the pandemic. For a while they were trying this “Walmart Radio” type thing with DJs and stuff and it was so lame. Now it’s just music. But today someone had obviously bumped the knob or something because it was about 300% louder than usual. And, you know, the setup is your basic horn-tweeter-mounted-to-the-wall sort of thing. Were not talking, like, the immersive outdoor sound systems of Disneyland or something, with their super strong bass. No, it’s tinny and the louder it gets, the more it hurts.
Making matters worse, they were playing Big Country. Don’t get me wrong, Big Country is great, but I get super depressed whenever I listen to Big Country, because of how the lead singer Stuart Adamson died: estranged from his wife, who had just filed for divorce that day, facing a court hearing for driving under the influence, ordered to go to AA, ran away to Honolulu and committed suicide while drunk in a room at the Best Western. And not an ocean view room.
Now, knowing that story, go listen to the lyrics of Big Country:
I thought that pain and truth were things that really mattered
You can’t.
I remember vividly hearing about it on the news. It was five days after we started Barbarian Group, which sounds happy but it was also a month after 9/11 and I can’t say I was in the best place emotionally, nor was I an especially sober human being. I was broke and my relationships were not super healthy. It hit me.
Anyway, as you may know, my wife plays XM First Wave a whole lot, so Big Country the song comes on a lot, so, you know, I have certain defense mechanisms now. But hearing it at 7AM in an empty WalMart parking lot, painfully loud, on this perfect morning. It was… just a bit much.
I didn’t get a copy of my own newsletter yesterday, it was really weird. And of course it sent me down this rabbit hole of trying to figure out why, trying to find it in Mail.app spam, in Gmail spam, couldn’t find it anywhere. I hope you got it. I know people did. I hope I was the only one. I added a second email to the list yesterday to be sure. The email is where I copy and paste my entry from in order to place it into the Scrivener pandemic-book file. It’s the best place from whence to copy in order to maintain the proper formatting and imagery.
Oh right. Imagery! I promised you a photo of Emma’s new design for our living room. Here you go:
It’s nice, huh? That ball has a color control we should probably change it to gold. We didn’t discuss the black-and-gold color combination beforehand, but I like it. I like it’s allusion to Sex Dwarf by Soft Cell.
The IRS lost its case against Michael Jackson’s estate about the value of Michael Jackson’s name and likeness at the time of his death. The estate said it was worth basically zero, the IRS said it was worth more than $100 million. It’s an interesting case, because they were both right. At the time of his death, was the nadir of Michael Jackson’s fame and reputation, and the calculation is supposed to be at the time of the individual’s death. But of course we all know that when someone dies, everyone goes out and buys their music and there’s a big comeback, etc. etc. But that’s after they die. But it’s not unimaginable that some music-financialization firm like Hipgnosis would know this, and offer to buy the catalog before they died, knowing it would go up in value. That would make it more valuable before they died. But, then, no one did. But, then, the family and rights holders have done a phenomenal job turning things around and making a shit ton of money off of that accused pedophile. But, then, there was no guarantee they were going to pull it off. The IRS did manage to increase the size of the entire estate by about $100 million, though nowhere near the $300+ million they were looking for. I’ve seen people framing this as a loss for the IRS and a harbinger of the pointlessness of Biden’s increased funding for them, but given the tax rate at $100 million estate tax, we’re looking at more than $40 million recouped by the government, and I doubt they spent that much on the case. So, probably worth it. And, of course, even if they spent exactly $40 million on the case, it’d probably have a positive value showing other rich people that the IRS was willing to make the fight.
Emma and I were talking about this, and I was explaing to her how Hipgnosis the song fund took their name from Hipgnosis the legendary rock-and-roll graphic design firm behind the covers of Pink Floyd, Sabbath, Zeppelin, Genesis etc. (We did not get into the Psychic TV/Throbbing Gristle connection). And how the Song Fund got permission from Storm Ferguson, the founder of the design firm. Nor did we get into the Nile Rodgers connection, and how stinkin’ rich that guy must be now.
And then, like three hours later, Hipgnosis announced it was acquiring the rights to the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ catalog for $140 million. Honestly, I would have thought they were worth more.
Guess we’re gonna keep talking about music today. Probably better than sticking to the topic of male alcoholism and depression.
Yello has a 40th anniversary compilation album out. It’s 4 discs. Disc 4 is a remix disc. Most notable to me is a remix of one of my favorite Yello songs, Vicious Games, by Micha Adam and Mark Reeder. Mark Reeder is the subject and writer of the great documentary about the Berlin music scene in the 80’s we talked about a few months back. Which is a nice connection to things.
But the most interesting thing about this remix is that it has a shit-ton of additional lyrics. Like, obviously from the same, original recording session. The original Vicious Games clearly pared down the lyrics, made the song more simple. I suspect when Mark Reeder got the master tapes, he discovered all of these additional lyrics? And worked them back into the song? It is pretty exciting, really. Like I love a great new remix of some old song I love, but when the remix also makes a new, archeological discovery? So exciting.
Anyway, here’s the remix:
OMG I am just now listening to the Ralphi Rosari Big Room Vocal Remix of Oh Yeah and… same thing! Additional lyrics from the deep “Oh Yeah” voice! God, I am probably going to have to listen to this entire remix album now, huh.
Fuck it, I think we’re just gonna make this whole issue a music issue, why not.
I got my copy of the new Angel Olsen box set yesterday. Dear god, it is beautiful. Total indulgence purchase. Four pieces of vinyl, but three of them were music I already owned. Just one EP of new stuff. But I don’t care. It looks so good. It smells so good: that wonderful smell of new, thick ink on uncoated stock that takes me back to my days of designing for print.
Sounds really good, too. Very hard to get the inner sleeves into the outer sleeves: both are uncoated and there’s so much friction, tight tolerances. But I’m probably only ever going to listen to it just the once. I already have the albums (my god isn’t All Mirrors just a masterpiece?
I have a special mix for you today. It was mostly Emma’s idea, though I picked the songs. We were on our walk two days ago singing Whitney Houston songs and she was like “you need to make a mix around this.” She was more thinking an 80’s film music mix, but I decided to go with fantastic, over-the-top 80’s ballads. I also went over an hour. God. I haven’t listened to Glory of Love in years. Every time I think of it I think of slow-dancing at Love Night and I just feel too much of a lang of yearning for youth. Angel of the Morning holds a special place in my heart as well. And Alone by Heart: one of the first pop songs I learned on the piano. Actually, so is Say You Say Me. I sense a pattern here. I deeply loved every one of these songs in the 80’s. And it was just a true joy to listen to them all yesterday. We will name it in Stuart Adamson’s honor.
I added a lot of songs by these artists — and some related ones — to the other playlists that I’m working on, so you’ll be hearing a good dollop of additional 80’s schmaltz in the coming weeks. Probably.
All right. Today’s Wednesday. Busy day. Gotta water the plants, get Jane, feed her, get her downstairs all before my 10 AM meeting. OH YEAH and the 10 AM fan presale of GENESIS TICKETS. Got my individualized presale code via text last night. WISH ME LUCK.
I'm not a huge karaoke person but thank you for reminding me that Angel of the Morning is a go to song for me. It's pretty high for my range but I'm looking forward to attempting it again in a small room of unmasked (vaccinated) people in the not too distant future. -- Dorothy
i can practically smell the school gym from here!