My Bio

  

Brian’s career has taken many detours. He says it’s like him – erratic and confusing. 

 

After graduating from the College of Journalism and Communications at the University of Florida, Brian began his professional life as a sportswriter, but found that too restricting. He also found he did not like sportswriters. 

 

He then sold advertising for a rock radio station which somehow led him to start a concert promotion business that eventually did somewhere between 400 and 500 shows (he lost count). 

 

After spending a year searching for cheap but palatable wines in dozens of Washington D.C.-area restaurants, he became an ADDY Award-winning​ copywriter and producer for radio commercials and brand music. He also won CUNA Diamond and NWCUA Spectrum awards in the advertising world for creative campaigns and marketing communications for credit unions. 

 

For twelve years, he has been the host of the Short Attention Span Storytelling Hour, a monthly literary open mic presented by the Writers of Central Florida or Thereabouts in Winter Park. 

 

He has been a featured presenter at writing festivals, workshops, art exhibit openings, funerals, and farmer's markets. He is currently working on a historical fiction story and a rom-com screenplay while also aimlessly collecting content for his unplanned memoir. 

 

On the days when he remembers to set his alarm, he teaches online classes in the Entertainment and Music Business bachelor’s degree program at the Los Angeles Film School. 

 

Tedious and outdated samples of his writing can be found at LowBrowIntellectual.com.

Sub-Tropical Cocktails

 

There was a place on the coast where I used to go quite often. I won't say the name of the place – or the people - because all of this is true. I’d sit and soak up the sunsets and the rum, trying to remember a day when I enjoyed being alive. Some memories fade faster than others.

 

At first, I went to drown my sorrows but sorrows are better swimmers than I had imagined. I’d sit under the faded brown fronds of the old tiki hut and watch the bartenders pour and the liquid swirl from the colored bottles. 

 

“Lift the glass,” I said to myself. “Your mouth will burn. You’ll burn.”

 

But an interesting thing happened before I could attend my own funeral pyre. Strange faces became familiar. People who had once looked past me as though trying to see around me began nodding and even smiling when I arrived to sit on my usual stool. I was a regular, accepted among the other regulars. And we were quite a crew.

 

The bartenders I knew best were Will and Hannah.

            Hannah was an Army brat. She had moved around a lot and learned to be comfortable with almost anyone. You could tell she had older brothers. She could handle herself even with the roughest of regulars. She was talkative and loud, but not blustery. There were times you could see she was observing and processing.

 

One night, she said to me, “Everything you wear is black or blue.”

 

“Yeah,” I said. “Occasionally I throw in some purple. They're my favorites. The colors of a bruise.”

 

            She chuckled a bit but held my eye for a second and gave a little nod as she went by, knowing that I had shared with her a little secret.

 

Will was a cracker through and through. He liked his Friday nights off so he could go gigging gators or catching fish out in the boonies. He was all airboats and four-wheelers, shotguns and catfish rods.

 

He had no trouble keeping up with the Saturday crowds – tourists and outliers mixed with the locals. “Slanging dranks” as he called it. He would pour heavy for the regulars. And we appreciated it.

 

On Sundays, he had the opening shift. He always looked like hell as did any of the regulars who made their way back in the morning, but he was fully functional. He carried boxes of bottles from the main restaurant to the tiki bar to restock the wells.

 

            “Damn,” he would say almost every Sunday. “You know we had a good night last night when there's no rum left in the building.”

 

            He would look at me with a mocking accusatory eye, knowing I had had my share.

 

Among the regulars, there was Adams. I couldn’t tell if it was his first name or his last. He claimed he had worked for the government in the Caribbean, eventually settling in a hillside house in St. Thomas with a pool and a view. One night he described to me how Hurricane Hugo had changed his life trajectory. He sat on his bathroom floor, leaning over the toilet, hugging the bowl with his legs wrapped around the bottom, while his house blew away around him.

 

It was never clear to me what happened in the intervening years, but somehow, he had ended up as a regular at this place and had become the main source of weed for all the other regulars. Once he got to know me, he would try to drag me out to the parking lot to sit in his car.

 

“You gotta try this shit. It’s great shit,” he’d say. 

 

I’d laugh and shake my head. 

 

“I’m sure it is, but I don’t smoke. I just veg out. It turns me into a moron. Well, more of a moron.”

 

“Oh man, I’ll get you next time. I’m getting some really good shit.”

 

He was always good for a story or a chat. And he always seemed coherent even when his eyes looked like red stained glass.

 

There was Len. He’s dead now. He was there every day. Every day. He would stroll down from the marina where he kept his sailboat and sit in the same place each time, facing away from the sun splashing on the sparkling bay. He was not there to have his day brightened. The booze wasn't to warm him but to numb him. Though I suppose we were all guilty of that.

 

I had assumed he was a respected elder, but I found out few people liked him. He wore the same thing every day, a light blue button-down oxford, tan shorts and leather deck shoes. As time went by, it accumulated stains and smells. He never washed or changed.  

 

I'd been impressed that he lived on a sailboat but discovered it had long ago been pulled from the water and propped on keel stands in the marina. He couldn't afford the rent for the slip or the cost of keeping the boat in sailing shape, so he slept in the wreckage. 

 

He wasn’t an idiot, but the flame of his intellect had gone out due to lack of kindling. One day he told me he had children. I can’t remember if it was three or five, but he described them to me, collectively, as “assholes.” It was hard to imagine any decent person saying that about his children, certainly not all of them. I mostly avoided him thereafter.

 

There was the Kite Girls – Mary and Molly. I called them that because they flew expensive kites whenever they went to the nearby seashore. These weren’t just any kites. They had steering handles and a harness that fastened around their torsos.  Molly's kite costs $600.00. I'm not sure about Mary's.

 

They were very cool. I liked them. Adams liked them too. They were always good for a trip to the parking lot.

 

There were other regulars, of course. But these are the ones I remember most.

 

It was a while before I become friends with Forrest. I assume he’d had hippie parents. You don't meet many people named Forrest. He was a cab driver. But he was a people watcher and a laugher. And a chain smoker. Which meant every bout of laughter produced a subsequent fit of coughing.

 

One night two older ladies who had motored in from a sailboat anchored in the bay had overstayed. It was a hoot to watch as they struggled down the wooden stairway to the dock where their dinghy was tied. They stumbled and giggled. 

 

The real problem arose when they reached the end of the dock and couldn't figure out how to get into their boat without falling into the water. They tested the left foot first. Then the right. Each time the little rubber beast rocked and they nearly fell. And they laughed hysterically. 

 

Finally, one of them pulled the boat close, laid down flat, and rolled off the dock into it. It worked! The other lady did the same thing. They started the motor and scooted off and left us all howling.

 

One night I was sitting with Forrest and an older couple stood at the bar next to me, wondering what to order. The guy eyed my delicious-looking drink.

 

“What’s that?” he says.

 

Me: “A rum runner.”

 

Him: “What’s in it?”

 

Me: (trying to remember) “Lots of rum… and… some other shit.”

 

Him: (laughing) “OK, that’s what I want.”

 

Hannah made him a good one. He took a sip, raised his glass to me, and wandered off with the woman I assumed was his wife.

 

I cringed and shivered. Forrest asked what was wrong. I told him I had just pictured a troublesome image of them having squishy old people sex.

 

Forrest laughed. And coughed. And lit another cigarette.

 

“You ain’t right,” he would say, not knowing how right he was.

 

He had been dating this woman named Anna on and off. You could tell they cared for each other but it just wasn't working. They called it quits officially, but it was tough. It didn't help that she was also a regular at this place.

 

One night a strange thing happened. He started talking to me. About her. About him. You know… feelings. It was not a conversation I normally had with… anyone, but certainly not men. That happened a few more times, sincere discussions about how we felt and what was going on in our lives. 

 

And it made me wonder how many things I had left unsaid, how many times I had wanted to be warm but ended up being numb.

 

Several months later I watched the weather forecast and feared the worst. It was a few days before I could make it back to my place, my little subtropical paradise. 

 

The hurricane had taken it. 

 

Things changed. I changed. I moved. I never saw any of those people again. 

 

One day I traveled back to sit by the splintered timbers of the dock and the jumbled concrete pier. I don't often write or think in verse. But that day I did.

 

Remember me.

 

I whispered to you once.

 

I meant it then. I mean it now. 

 

The memories of us...

 

Forgive me...

 

For the memories of us.

 

I smiled then. I cry now.

 

There’s nothing but dust.

 

 

 

 

The Weight of a Soul

 

Part I

 

She didn’t know the man who killed her. But she lived long enough to describe her assailant to police. He was caught, tried, and convicted. Court-appointed psychiatrists said he was “easily confused” and had “little control over his emotions,” but no reason for the assault was ever given.

 

Her name was Kathryn Oliveros. She was twenty-three years old when she died, in October of 1965. Her face slashed, stabbed in the chest by a man she’d never met, until a chance confrontation upstairs at the Old College Inn, across the street from the Murphree Area dorms at the University of Florida in Gainesville.

 

Although family and friends mourned Kathryn, she would have been lost to history, except for one thing...

 

She wouldn’t leave.

 

When I was promoting concert events in the early 2000’s, one of the club-sized venues I used was called the Blowhole – part of the world famous party complex known as the Purple Porpoise. It was in the same building that had been the Old College Inn.

 

Many of the employees had stories about upended chairs falling off tables or televisions turning themselves on and off after hours – when there was no one else around. They’d get chills in the otherwise stifling hallway on the second floor that was now mostly used for storage. Some of them eventually refused to go upstairs.

 

They said it was because of Kathryn.

 

I used a couple of rooms off that upstairs hallway as a green room, dressing room and restroom for the headlining bands.

 

One time the lead singer of a band was trying to take a much-needed nap on the old couch in the green room. As their stage time approached, I went up the stairs to make sure the band was getting ready. In a sleepy haze the singer asked me if some woman had been walking up and down the hallway while he was trying to sleep. I assured him there had been no one. The stairway at the far end was locked. The near stairway had security posted at the door. “Wow,” he said. “That’s weird. I would have sworn there was some girl in a white dress walking up and down the hallway.”

 

Another time, a band was fresh off the tour bus for load-in and I was leading their orientation walk-through so they knew where to hang out and get ready. As I indicated the open door to a large, tiled room, one of them took a step forward but stopped with the other foot in mid-air just before he entered. “What happened in here?", he asked. I wasn’t sure what he meant. I made some joke that maybe one of the stagehands had recently taken a rancid crap. “No,” he said. “Something happened in here.” He refused to go in.

 

It was the bathroom where Kathryn had been stabbed.

 

I am not religious. I don't believe in an afterlife. Over the course of five years or so, I spent hundreds of hours in that upstairs area. I never had an experience that seemed supernatural. I never even got a chill. But I didn't know how to explain those events I had witnessed. Those band guys were not local. They would have had no way of knowing about… Kathryn.

 

Is it possible that some essence of a person is left behind in places they’ve been? In some cases, for decades? And in such a way that some people can detect that essence?

 

Part II

 

In 1907, a physician named Duncan MacDougall conducted an experiment. He selected nursing home patients who were close to death, and weighed them in the moments immediately before and after their demise. He determined there was a small, but measurable, weight loss that coincided with the moment of death. And he decided this slight difference in mass resulted from the departure of the spirit.

 

Thus, he had determined the weight of a soul.

 

Twenty-one grams.

 

That was the difference he had detected. Three quarters of an ounce. The mass that contains the essence of each of us.

 

The results of this quest have long since been debunked. But it didn’t matter. The whole affair reinforced the notion, long held by generations of believers, that the soul is a tangible thing.

 

Part III

 

Recently, a friend of mine died after a terrible illness. As people paid tribute on his Facebook page, I couldn’t decide what to write. But, I pictured him in my mind, and thought of a funny story about him, and I wrote…

 

“Your energy will continue to light the world.”

 

And then it hit me… Energy and mass and light are closely related. Isn’t that what Einstein told us?

 

Isn’t it logical that we leave a trail of atoms wherever we go? And, in some places, more than others? Skin cells, saliva, and the very air we exhale – especially when we sneeze. Or cough.

 

Or die.

 

I found a scientific journal article that calculated the number of cells in the average human at three-point-seven-two times ten to the thirteenth power. For those who are bad at math that's more than 37 trillion cells.

 

And don’t they all contain some essence of us? Some molecular thumbprint?

 

It’s an interesting question to ponder, especially when you realize no one really knows how memories work. The human brain is just a gelatinous mass of wonder, a chemical playground where things go on that we can’t even begin to understand.

 

Somewhere there is a tiny clump of neurons in my skull that knows my first-grade teacher was Mrs. Zebunka. But how does my brain retain that information, and retrieve it whenever I want it?

 

How can it conjure up an image of one of my earliest memories of my dad – him playing porpoise in the warm, shallow waters of White Lake in New Hampshire, while I rode like a papoose Poseidon on his back?

 

If someone else gained access to that clump of neurons, would they see the same thing?

 

At the moment we expire, do zillions of molecules go drifting off, and, since matter can’t be created or destroyed, do they continue to exist, carrying forth some essence of us? Something we could think of as part of our soul?

 

Did your last bite of food contain a tiny bit of Julius Caesar or Joan of Arc? Take a good, deep breath. Perhaps you’re inhaling a few molecules of Mother Theresa or Abraham Lincoln. Although, I suppose it’s equally likely you’re inhaling a bit of Genghis Kahn or Adolph Hitler.

 

Maybe some people have a different perception of those molecules that float all around. Maybe they can experience the memories contained in those cells.

 

Maybe they’ve seen Mrs. Zebunka.

 

But isn’t that really the essence of all of us? The memories and experiences that make up our existence…?

 

Could it be that some of us have the ability to decipher the code contained in these wandering bits of other people? Could it be that we all have that ability but most of us just don't do it in our conscious state?

 

That would explain many things… Weird dreams. The sensation of déjà vu. Even random ghost sightings.

 

If that’s true, we’d have to face one important, additional question… What if the ghosts are actually inside us?

 

In Memory of Brian Wilson

 

When my oldest sister was in high school, she sang in the chorus. We lived just outside of Boston then, and my father had finished off half of the basement into two bedrooms and I guess kind of a den. That's where the record player was. My sister would sit down there for hours practicing singing to certain records. Being a 9-year-old pain in the ass, of course, meant that I had to wander downstairs and bother her on occasion. 

 

When it was time to practice harmonies, she played two records in particular: Best of The Beach Boys Volume 2 and Surf’s Up. The songs were catchy, but it went deeper than that. Even my little punk ass noticed how pleasing the harmonies were. Lush and complicated. And delivered with incredible precision. 

 

I became a fan. 

 

Brian Wilson was my first musical hero. He was the genius behind the Beach Boys. The songwriter. The arranger. The producer. And a great singer with a lofty range that was clear and powerful even up into the falsetto.

 

Brian was a perfectionist. It's likely you've heard the song California Girls once or twice. While recording it in April of 1965, working with the legendary studio musicians known as the Wrecking Crew, it required 44 takes before Brian decided they had achieved a satisfactory recording of the backing tracks. God only knows how many takes it took to get the vocals.

 

By the time I was in middle school, I was reading Rolling Stone magazine regularly, whenever I could get my hands on one. I don't know, I must have read some mention of how brilliant the album Pet Sounds was, long before it ever achieved the mainstream appreciation it has now.

 

So I bought a copy.

 

Would it be fair to say it changed my life? Probably. 

 

Would it be fair to say it changed the future of popular music? I’d say, yes. Here are a few bits I stole from the internet…

 

“Pet Sounds revolutionized music production and the role of producers, especially through its level of detail and Wilson's use of the studio as compositional tool."

 

"It elevated popular music as an art form, heightened public regard for albums as cohesive works, and influenced genres like orchestral pop, psychedelia, soft rock, sunshine pop, and progressive rock/pop as well as the adoption of the synthesizer in popular music."

 

"The album also introduced novel orchestration techniques, chord voicings, and structural harmonies.”

 

Brian did this when he was 23 years old.

 

He’d begun hearing voices in his head when he was 20.

 

At some point, it was decided that he had schizoaffective disorder – which includes symptoms of schizophrenia and a mood disorder.

 

He struggled with mental illness for the rest of his life. 

 

Obviously, I can’t give you a complete bio here. He was a complicated and troubled man, but here’s the thing that always hits me… All his life, he had a simple goal; to communicate through his music to spread love and mercy to the world. 

 

After releasing an album by that name in 1988, that became his signature sign-off for any correspondence… Love and mercy.

 

If you haven’t already seen them, I recommend watching the 2021 documentary called Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road, and the movie from 2014 called Love and Mercy.

 

If you’ve never listened to the album Pet Sounds, I urge you to do so. As soon as possible. And I recommend you listen to it as Brian once said it should be heard, on headphones, in the dark, while high.

 

Brian Wilson died this morning. He was 82.

Questions on Writing

 

I’m not sure how I became a writer.

 

I didn't keep a journal as a kid. I still don't. I write a lot of my thoughts down, of course, but I'm kind of glad I didn't then. I can't imagine how silly it would seem to me now.

What was it like when the most important side effect of breaking my right arm was having to learn how to masturbate left-handed? …When my biggest concern was the giant zits that tragically appeared on my forehead overnight? And why did it always happen on a Monday or Tuesday? So I had to walk the school hallways for the rest of the week with Krakatoa erupting on my face?

 

Even when I realized I was good at this writing thing, I didn’t start with serious subjects. I had done bits and pieces for the local newspaper, but my first real writing job after college was in sports.

 

That’s when I discovered sports writers are assholes. I try to refrain from lumping an entire group of people into one derogatory category. But in this case, they deserve it. So I moved on to other things.

 

These days, when people ask me what I write, and I say, “Mostly creative non-fiction,” I get the most puzzled looks. “What does that mean? What do you actually write about?” 

“Well, anything I want.” 

That doesn’t seem to help. To most people, “anything” apparently means “nothing.” 

It reminds me of one of the early episodes of Seinfeld where Jerry and George Costanza are discussing how to pitch their show idea to NBC. 

George says: Everybody's doing something. We'll do nothing. 

Jerry: So we go into NBC, and we tell them we have an idea for a show about nothing. 

George: Exactly. 

Jerry: They say, "What's your show about?" And I say "nothing." 

George: There ya go. 

After a long pause, Jerry says: …I think you may have something there. 

When they say nothing, though, what they really mean is… everything. Everyday life. 

And it’s a little frightening that many people think it’s acceptable and possibly accurate to describe their daily existence as… nothing. If you don’t think something interesting happens to you almost every day, you might need to consider making some serious changes. 

But it’s more likely that you’re just not paying enough attention. 

I have written about watching a family with two young children become homeless, and then, months later, seeing them regain their footing – with help from the community they lived in.  This was a black family in a very white community. That story gave me hope. For a while.

I have written about a young woman at a bar who briefly left her own drunken birthday celebration to sidle up to me, a complete stranger, and tell me her mom had died years before… on her birthday. 

That was fifteen years ago, and I still think about it. 

I have written about karaoke and cover bands. About music, in general. And my involvement in the business. Which meant… writing about drugs, of course.

 

I have written about irrational fears. And rational ones. About happiness and heartbreak. About the incessant urge that creators have… to create. 

I have written about the time I was sitting in a coffee shop next to two women in their sixties when a news story came on the TV saying researchers, using stem cells… had made artificial sperm. One of the women was absolutely incredulous. And I don’t think she realized how loud she was when she said, "What? There’s no shortage..." 

Aren’t there moments that touch you? Moments that make you think? Moments that cause you to react in unexpected ways? Moments that make you laugh, or make you teary for reasons you can’t explain? 

 

One evening during my usual wanderings I noticed an older gentleman sitting in a car by himself watching the sunset over the Indian River. It was a nice little park with a boat ramp and some picnic tables. And the sunset was gorgeous as it often is there. Then I noticed a breast cancer awareness sticker on his rear bumper – you know - one of those pink ribbons. And around the license plate was a frame promoting a nearby hospice care center. And I realized that those two things were probably related. And that probably explained why he was alone.

 

One time, right on the heels of a passing hurricane, I drove out to the coast to see the damage. The weather was still bad - way worse than weather you'd normally drive in, but I was restless. Just before I went over the causeway bridge, I noticed one small man fishing off the long concrete pier. I stopped to watch and there was something about the way he was dressed and the urgency of his actions as he repeatedly cast and reeled. And it dawned on me that if he didn't catch a fish, he wasn't going to eat that day.

There’s a story in each of those moments. 

 

You can’t make this stuff up. Or, should I say, there’s no need to make this stuff up. It’s there. Everywhere. Every day. If you look for it. 

 

Until the last couple of years, the only fiction I'd ever written was on my tax returns. But now I dabble in fiction, too.

I’m willing to admit that the present reality is rather fucked up. So, it’s tempting to invent an entirely new one. But many fiction writers go on to create make-believe worlds that are even more fucked up than our own. 

I see no sense in escaping my own hell to visit one that’s even worse. 

I think I started with fiction because I go through these periods of self-reflection. And it's possible that's why I started writing in the first place. I had questions. Lots of questions. I thought they'd be answered, one by one, as I grew up. But I was wrong. Every time I answered one, another one came along. Sometimes they came in bunches.

Everything, of course, leads to the one big question: What is the fucking point of all this? WHAT is the point?

 

Then you wonder… Why is it that mankind has to try to find some meaning in life? I'm pretty sure cockroaches don't do this. Although, maybe I'm underestimating them.

How did I get to the point that, when I meet some wonderful woman, and have a nice conversation, I stop myself? I go no further. I walk away, thinking... no, she'd just break my heart anyway, if it wasn't already broken.

 

For me, I think writing – any kind of writing - is a process of trying to answer questions. But I’ve now realized it might be hopeless.

 

What if I’m wrong about the big question? What if there is no fucking point?

Lawnmowers and Leaf Blowers

I hate Mondays. 

Probably for many of the same reasons that lots of people hate Mondays. But also because I live in a busy, suburban neighborhood that comes alive at the beginning of every week with constant reminders of how truly pathetic we as a nation have become. 

Without fail, Mondays start early with the street sweeper, followed closely by the trash trucks. I especially admire the dedication of some of the drivers who are so determined to get every bit of trash out of the little dumpster that they use the mechanical arm to bang it several times against the top of the truck. Obviously, by the time I wake up, they’re already on their third cup of coffee. 

Just to be clear, these are necessary services that I do appreciate. I just wish they’d come around on Friday at about 4:00 in the afternoon – when I’m at happy hour. 

Normally, there is some construction or improvement project going on somewhere nearby, so the hammers and saws come next - occasionally accompanied by the staccato shots of an air gun spitting out roofing nails. Whenever these tools come out before 9 AM, I usually concoct detailed fantasy images about how they might be applied to the user – cracking skulls, sawing off limbs, or nailing hands to the shingles. 

Did I mention I hate Monday morning noises? 

After that come the noises that really irritate me... lawnmowers and leaf blowers. 

The concept of leaf blowers is ludicrous to begin with. 

Here's the thought process… someone spends a half hour creating a horrendous racket to blow this yard debris into the road several feet away, entirely ignoring the fact that this very same debris will return the minute a few cars drive by or the wind picks up. 

Remember that hit song by the band Kansas called Dust in the Wind? I’m now convinced that was part of a late-70s conspiracy to sell leaf blowers. Black and Decker, Craftsmen, they were all in on it. Dust belongs on the ground, not in the wind. 

Then Big Pharma got into it. 

That’s right. They realized all this dust in the wind would leave us hacking and coughing and mopping our runny noses. Claritin, Zyrtec, Allegra, Flonase, Nasacort… They’re all in on it. Everything was fine until someone realized that if you could somehow collect fifty pounds of Sudafed, you could make crystal meth with it. 

So they started selling us phenylephrine as a substitute. Everybody bought it. I have some right now. 

Recently, it was discovered that phenylephrine's decongestant effects may not be significantly different from that of a placebo. I swear, I’m not making this up. I found an article from USA Today last September – “FDA Panel Declares Decongestant Phenylephrine Ineffective.” There’s a study from the Yale School of Medicine in October – “Phenylephrine, a Common Decongestant, Is Ineffective.” 

And it all started with leaf blowers… 

 Lawnmowers are equally ludicrous. 

Think of all the effort people put into creating a nice, thick, green lawn. 

So they can cut it. 

Then they feed, and water and coax it into growing back. 

 So they can cut it. 

Does this make sense? What the hell is wrong with people? 

Americans spend about $33 billion annually on lawn care. $33 billion. It’s a tragic waste of money, not to mention the effect on the fresh water supply and the impact of fertilizers and pesticides on the environment. 

And it’s all about keeping up with the Joneses. 

According to an article I found somewhere… “With the rise of suburbia in post-World War Two-America… a lawn expressed the national ideal that, with hard work, sacrifice and perhaps a little help from Uncle Sam, home ownership and a patch of land could be within reach for every American.” 

Then some bastard from Missouri named Leonard Goodall invented the rotary lawnmower in 1935. According to some other article I found, power mower production increased from under 35,000 before World War II to 362,000 in 1947 to nearly 1.2 million in 1951. 

 All that dust in the wind. Oh, the humanity… 

Lawnmowers. And leaf blowers. 

Again, it’s just a reminder of how truly pathetic we as a nation have become. We choose to showcase our alleged prosperity by using our limited resources to create shit that we then have to cut down and blow away. 

Does this make sense? What the hell is wrong with people? 

There is a growing trend toward turning lawns into gardens that support biodiversity while reducing the use of water and dangerous chemicals. I’m all in favor of it, but I don’t feel like I have seen much evidence of this trend. 

I’ll be glad to participate in any movement that helps to reduce the use of lawnmowers and leaf blowers… and support anything, ANYTHING we can do to let me sleep in on Monday mornings.

What If Your Parents Were Right?

 
“This is horseshit,” I said.

“Can you be more specific?," he asked.

“The vocals are auto-tuned. The backing tracks are electronic – processed loops made on someone’s laptop. God forbid they should pluck a guitar string or take a stick to a drumkit. The vocal melody gives you a sweet morsel to chew on, but then repeats it in an abusive way. As the initial sweetness dies from excessive repetition, it becomes meaningless goo. It’s like audio bubble gum; once you chew on it for a few minutes the flavor’s gone. Someone spent money to record that. Hard to believe.”

"Wow," he said. "You're serious?"

“Let's put it this way... If I ever accidentally ingest rat poison, I’ll listen to this to make me puke.”

For years, that’s how the conversation went any time someone tried to introduce me to a new pop artist. If they persisted, I would eventually threaten violence.

No, I’m just kidding. Sort of.

You know the Pharrell Williams song, “Happy?” That’s a great example. First time I heard it, it caught my ear. After about the fifth time, it started to annoy me. After about ten times – and every time since then – I want to punch him in the face.



Were there occasions in your youth that you’d be in your bedroom cranking something on the stereo loud enough that you parents could hear it down the hall? And they’d pound on your door to get you to turn it down, and then, afterward, at dinner, they’d be sure to let you know how awful that music was?

Surely, I’m not the only one?

Often, they would include something like… “music isn’t as good as it was in the old days” or “today’s music isn’t as good as it used to be.”

"Yeah, mom, yeah. Right, right. Whatever..."

But, you know what? Every time I hear a popular song now, I think, “What if your parents were right? What if music isn’t as good as it was in the old days?”

Well, as it turns out, there’s evidence.

A perceptive chap named Colin Morris published an article in which he looked at compressibility. As MP3 files are created, they’re compressed according to something called the Lempel-Ziv algorithm. That makes MP3’s smaller, and, therefore, easier to share.

Morris explains, “The Lempel-Ziv algorithm works by exploiting repeated sequences. How efficiently LZ can compress a text is directly related to the number and length of the repeated sections in that text.”

So this is a way of measuring repetition in lyrics.

He looked at the compression rate for all 15,000 of the songs that made the Billboard Hot 100 between 1958 and 2017. His conclusion?

“The songs that reached the top 10 were, on average, more repetitive than the rest in every year from 1960 to 2015!”

Among the prominent recent artists in the 45-55% repetitive range - Ed Sheeran, Taylor Swift, Blake Shelton, and Coldplay.

Those above the 55% repetitive range include Justin Bieber, Beyonce, One Direction, Maroon 5, Demi Lovato, and Rihanna.

Please, get me an emesis basin.

Among the top ten most repetitive songs of all time, he listed K.C. and the Sunshine Band’s 1977 hit, “Keep it Comin’ Love.”



Back then, when you were shoveling blow into your nostrils and sweating all over the dance floor at Studio 54, I guess it was only the beat that mattered. Who could hear the lyrics anyway?

By the way, I’m sorry if I’ve now planted that song in your skull.

But, wait. There’s more.

Dan Kopf noted another significant change.  He writes, “Popular music is shrinking. From 2013 to 2018, the average song on the Billboard Hot 100 fell from 3 minutes and 50 seconds to about 3 minutes and 30 seconds. Six percent of hit songs were 2 minutes 30 seconds or shorter in 2018, up from just 1 percent five years before.”

On the streaming music services that have become so pervasive, artists are paid according to the number of times a song is delivered to a listener via a digital “stream.” So it literally pays better if you have more shorter songs rather than fewer longer ones for your fans to stream.

But, wait. There’s more.

A study by C.N. DeWall and others, published by the American Psychological Association found that lyrics are darker and more self-focused than they used to be. Just what the goth and emo kids need…

But, wait. There’s more. And this is the clincher.

As reported in Scientific American, one study looked at the sonic characteristics of over a million songs – 464,411 of which date from 1955 to 2010. They looked specifically at three aspects; timbre, pitch and loudness.

Here’s how those were defined… Timbre is the sound color, texture, or tone quality. Pitch is the harmonic content of the piece, including its chords, melody, and tonal arrangements.  Loudness is not the listener-controlled volume, it’s the level when the audio signal is recorded and stored.

Here’s what they found: “After peaking in the 1960s, timbral variety has been in steady decline to the present day... That implies a homogenization of the overall timbral palette, which could point to less diversity in instrumentation and recording techniques. Similarly, the pitch content of music has shriveled somewhat. The basic pitch vocabulary has remained unchanged—the same notes and chords that were popular in decades past are popular today—but the syntax has become more restricted. Musicians today seem to be less adventurous in moving from one chord or note to another, instead following the paths well-trod by their predecessors and contemporaries. But the loudness of recorded music is increasing by about one decibel every eight years.”

There’s only one conclusion we can draw: mainstream music has been getting shittier in every conceivable way. More repetitive. More depressing. More homogenous. Less adventurous. Shorter. And louder.

Your parents were right!

So what do you do?

First of all, if your folks are still around, go to them, maybe take them out to dinner, and admit they were right. I’d suggest giving them a bit of advance notice so they don’t fall down or have a heart attack. It might make for one of those warm, fuzzy moments you’ll always remember.

After that, patronize venues that support original music, not karaoke and cover bands. Look for new artists that suit your existing tastes but also challenge you to accept different approaches. Sometimes it’s dissonant. Often they don’t follow traditional song structure.  But its ok. There’s recent music out there that has moved me just as much as anything I've heard that dates from 1955 to 2010.

But don’t listen to contemporary hit radio. Don’t watch the Grammy’s – at least until they find a way to incorporate more diversity in their telecast. Don’t let anyone shove a popular song down your throat. And if they want to know why you don’t want to listen, tell them – in the nicest way possible - it’s horseshit.