10.29.04: Charleston SC

Birdies, bunnies and black people. Those are the 3 subjects of cute watercolors in a gallery in the historical district. This district seems to be about half shopping and half residential. Half of the historical district has become a sort of colonial-themed mall — with the occasional church or Confederate museum interspersed between the Gap, Banana Republic, Calvin Klein, shoe stores, candle shops and colonial-style furnishing shops. The other half of the center is mostly well-kept, beautiful mansions, and may be entirely inhabited by the gentry and by interior decorators.

After a walk around, Tracy, Mauro and I have oysters, crab cake, shrimp and alligator sausage at a bar in town. It's delicious, though the oysters seem like they're on steroids compared to most I've seen.

I suggest to Tracy that the town has 2 opposite and complementary sides — the frilly feminine side of gift shops, colonial furnishings and chintz, and the macho side represented by The Citadel, a private military college which is also more or less right in the center of town, though tucked off to one side. Even in the romanticized past the Southern ladies in long dresses were protected by an impressive array of canons and fortified seawalls.

Tracy points out that there is a third side — the ever-present but sometimes out of sight Black population, who, in this town, appear to be relegated to the service industries. There is almost no integration or mixing whatsoever, although there are a few Black tourists here by the waterside, taking in the sights.

The Civil War started here. It seems it hasn't ended yet. There is a Daughters of the Confederacy neoclassic edifice, a Confederacy museum and numerous buildings housing fraternal and Masonic organizations.

I am reminded of the theory that the war was not really about slavery. That was an excuse, a high moral justification by the North for subjugating the Southern agricultural lands. The North, so this theory goes, controlled the manufacturing and much of the shipping and finances, so the South felt under the thumb of the Yankee businessmen, manipulated and squeezed. No wonder they wanted to secede, if that was indeed the case. The anti-slavery crusade was real and just alright, but it may have been used like the words "democracy" and "freedom" are used today to justify an essentially economic war.

During the last week, the missing 320 tons of high explosives that have been missing in Iraq (this was known by the U.S. government for over 6 months) has become a political football. It is the largest missing arms cache in world history. Today the Pentagon has produced a spokesperson and a soldier who claims he blew up some explosives — but, when questioned whether or not it was these missing explosives, no one could say. So basically they are muddying the water, confusing the issue, and hoping for misinterpretation, as election day is only a few days away.

The issue is whether the explosives were still in the bunkers when the U.S. troops arrived, as it seems they were. In that case, they fall under U.S. responsibility, which makes the management look pretty incompetent.

This show was sold out weeks ago. It's in a nice theater right in town. When we enter the stage, the audience rises and I am shocked, pleasantly, to see how young the crowd is — it seems to be mostly college age kids. In the course of the tour, these kids usually make up some percentage of the crowd, maybe 1/3 or 1/2, but here they're the majority.

As the set proceeds, they're up and dancing and the whole front row seems to be young women. From the looks of it they're either on dates or here to party — the crowd at times appears like a giant sorority mixer gone wild. Not that I've ever been to one of those, but I'm imagining what they must be like — a lot of screaming blondes and arm waving. They’re the loudest crowd we've ever encountered — they seem to revel in the incredible volume they can achieve. Terry, mixing from the middle of the floor, is doing his best to get the band heard above the din — he's got the PA cranked. My between-song patter is useless, it's met with a rising wave of indistinct yelling and conversations with friends who must be across the room. Afterwards, Terry tells me he ended up putting in earplugs in between songs, the applause and yelling was deafening him.

Crowds need to express their crowdness, their existence. Sometimes we're just a justification for them to come into being, and a good show is one in which they can vent their joy and pleasure at the communal experience. The music is important, but secondary. (I hope not really, but there's an element of truth there.)

This will be the last show for a while... until a short Australia/New Zealand leg in February. After the show, the band and crew convene at the restaurant next door, a French place with good wines and a raw bar. I sort of say thank you and goodbye to some of our folks, then George, Paul, Mauro and I board the bus at 1:30 AM for a 10+ hour drive to New York. [It turns out to be more like 14 hours, though, to be fair, I suggested the driver rest during the night if he felt like it.] The rest are all dispersing to Austin, Milwaukee, Houston, Atlanta, Oxford Miss, Oakland and Minneapolis, where Terry is mixing an Alanis Morrisette acoustic show.

It's 10AM as I write this and we've just passed Spotsylvania, so we've got a few more hours to go. The trees have turned — the reds, yellows and oranges of fall have reached this far south. We've been in summer/spring weather for the last month, so it's odd to be returning to the chilly climate where some of us live. 

Over the next few days some of the gear will be returned to its owners and some of it will be checked, repaired and eventually put in storage until we go out again. Halloween and Election day are right around the corner. NY will be jumping. Daylight savings time is over at midnight tonight. I will have to adjust to sedentary life, which isn't always easy. I tend to feel restless without the focus of the shows at the end of each day. I'll have quite a few boxes of stuff to sort through — stuff I've collected and stuff that was given to me on the road.

Why do these exhausting tours?

Well, looking at it pragmatically; in North America I made money. In Europe, South America and Australia/NZ I will probably end up losing a little, but North America will cover it. Then why do the areas that don't make money?

In the past, the rationale was that touring generated record sales. Well, this might be true for some. For new acts it generates a certain increased awareness and some press activity, but for me the connection is pretty indirect. I may have played to more people than have purchased my new CD this year. Granted, the record company would be pretty disappointed if I didn't perform, so maybe there's an unspoken agreement going on there.

My business managers say that getting out there activates the catalogue (I own  part of much of my publishing and writers share income with record companies when stuff is used in movies, etc.). This happens, they say, by reminding people of my existence, and possible relevance, especially the people who license music who might think of my name more than they would if I had stayed at home. So eventually more income is generated than just from the concerts. Or so the theory goes.

But there are other reasons to leave home for so long and return so exhausted. In the past I had to get on stage simply in order to communicate, to express a part of myself, as I was pretty shy socially. It was out of desperation. It was almost a matter of psychological survival.

I'm not as shy now, so that desperate need isn't there as much — but what has happened is that the performing now has become a pleasure. It has become, on many nights, a real joy to hear the music, to sing, to dance and try things out and see if they work (they don't always). I think the band and crew partake in this pleasure as well — I hope so, because there is not a lot of glory in it.

Performing is also a way of letting the material evolve, breathe, coalesce into slightly new forms — some of which often hint at a place to explore next, a new musical direction with seeds in something that was tried on the road.

And, I love to travel, to see new places, to visit old acquaintances and to meet new people. I think of my peers as being scattered all over the place, a network that exists but isn't always humming, and traveling helps re-cement some of those bonds.

Thursday's paper says that a new species of human has been discovered. Miniature people — 3 1/2 feet (about a meter) high — once inhabited the island of Flores, an island east of Indonesia. Neither dwarves nor midgets, these beings were true miniatures who hunted 10-foot (3 meter) dragons (whose ancestors now inhabit nearby Komodo) and elephants that had evolved down to the size of a cow. There were giant rats on the island too, which were also hunted by the Floresians.

It was a lost world where size and scale realigned themselves. As one creature shrank another became giant. I imagine there are other lost worlds too. We tend to think of these islands as figments of the imagination, quaint relics of novelists of the 19th and early 20th centuries. But if one such place really exists, until fairly recently, why not others? Granted, this species is extinct, but not that long ago, they filled this island. There were reports of them still inhabiting caves when Dutch settlers and explorers arrived in the 16th century. No wonder novelists' imaginations ran wild. Other outposts in other parts of world might have, or may still, shelter even smaller people — intelligent, industrious, inhabiting elaborate miniature cites, with tiny temples, tiny factories using tiny books to detail a science of time that posits a completely different and, to us, unimaginable universe.

I read that MTV has a new show premiering that they claim is ad-free — except for the unacknowledged insertion of a segment created by an ad agency and staring a jeans icon. Oh. It's an example of imbedded advertising, a future trend in which the product is part of the program and therefore the ad and the programming are inseparable. There are no commercials to skip or ignore, which pleases the client, so the producers and the ad agency work hand in hand to integrate the story, the scene and the characters.

It was often said that commercial television programs were merely a means of delivering viewers to the commercials that ran every 10 mins (or less) but now it will be like much of the rest of the country's visual landscape — the advertising and the editorial content will be hard to tell apart.

It is a nice taste of reality to see characters using real products and eating in real restaurants — we know more about the character by the stuff they wear, use and eat. But, sadly, much of this is paid for rather than being part of the writers' character development or depth. It actually makes the program more shallow, more fake, not more realistic.

In the future, this might reach a point where there are no producers, no studios and no TV networks anymore. The advertising agencies will make the shows, in their own studios. There will therefore be a nice savings to them of the cost of ads, money which could then be plowed into the "content," upping the budget of the "program." All of this is in turn paid for by the large corporations that sell diapers, drugs, beers, jeans and cars. Granted, these are the folks who pay for most shows already, but by eliminating obvious ads they can meld with the medium completely and seamlessly. (Wasn't this the way TV began? Didn't even the newscasters on old 50s programs shill for products without cutting to a commercial?)

Entertainment values will be high in the future — as one has to keep the viewers attention. So we don't expect anything too difficult, or anything that takes a while to get into. Expect a lot of winks and irony, cleverness, smirking and smartass behavior (a kind of inoculation of the empathetic heart)... and a big helping of sentimentality.

I also read that when Adam Smith proposed the laws of laissez-faire capitalism, there were few if any huge factories of millions of workers packed into grimy cities. His model was based on a scenario that soon ceased to exist.