Sammy Sosa made Mark McGwire better

The Chicago Cubs' Sammy Sosa, the also-ran of baseball's home-run chase with 66 dingers, was voted the MVP of the National League today. The Baseball Writers' Association members, who did the choosing, were virtually unanimous. The only dissenters among 32 voters who made Sosa their first choice were two scribes from St. Louis. They voted for the only other slugger to hit more than 61 home runs in a season: Mark McGwire of the St. Louis Cardinals. If they hadn't, what would the home crowd have said about them? Without a doubt, McGwire holds the sexiest record in American sports. By hitting 70 home runs this summer, McGwire didn't just break the record held by Roger Maris, he played Godzilla stomping on Tokyo. People can talk about expansion-diluted pitching all they want, but it takes a real slugger to hit moonshots. We'd better hope that none of the balls he hit out of the atmosphere deflect an asteroid our way. For hitting 70 home runs, McGwire was acclaimed the savior of baseball. He helped bring people back to Major League ballparks. To hear wistful baseball fans tell it, McGwire was Babe Ruth and Albert Schweitzer rolled into one. Cheers were heard in parks where only the wind had moaned since the baseball strike of 1994-95. People came in droves to watch the guy take batting practice. They booed if their home-team pitchers wouldn't pitch to him. Clearly, everyone was ready for the record to be broken. Maris set it 37 years ago, breaking Ruth's 60-run record from 1927. Consistent Mark, surprising Sammy McGwire didn't want to talk about the home-run pace he was on. He said that it wasn't worth talking about breaking the Maris record until a player had 50 runs at the beginning of September. In fact, he started getting downright testy in the face of continuous questions about the home-run record. Although he did seem a little happier after he hit 50 by the beginning of September, he seemed hard-pressed to enjoy what he was doing. When McGwire's use of androstenedione, a muscle-enhancing drug, was questioned, he seemed on the edge of losing it. Sosa, on the other hand, seemed to relish attention. He quipped that he took performance-enhancing drugs, too: Flintstone vitamins. In the later stages of the home-run race, commentators all noted the difference between the way Sosa and McGwire took the pressure. Writers speculated that Sosa was grateful because he came up from the poverty of the Dominican Republic. McGwire had been dogged by the press much longer, and maybe Sosa wouldn't have been so happy if he'd been mindlessly asked the same litany of questions every day since spring training. Each year since the strike, people have put money on McGwire to break the home-run record. Sosa, on the other hand, crept up on everyone. A free swinger most of his career, he didn't get much notice as a slugger until he hit 20 home runs in June, setting the Major League record for long balls hit in a single month. In responding to questions after the MVP was announced, Sosa continued to say what he's said all year, that the real MVP and baseball hero this year was McGwire. He humbly accepted it, but gave the impression he didn't get why he should have been voted in over McGwire -- especially in a laugher. So who's the MVP? As do all judgment calls, this MVP award has its boosters and detractors. The debate heated up many a barroom and sports-talk radio phone line. The McGwire boosters say, and rightly so, that McGwire led the charge that made baseball vital to fans again. People who weren't fans knew who McGwire was and kept track of whether he hit one out on any given day. He set records in walks as well as home runs this year. However, most importantly, they argue, if 70 home runs -- a number that still leaves some fans giddy -- doesn't get you the MVP, what will? Sosa's boosters argue that he had a better all-around year than McGwire and helped put his team into the post-season. This argument also holds some water. I can't pretend to know what the baseball writers were thinking when they voted, but I have to agree with their choice. However, not for any of the reasons mentioned before. The X factor Sammy Sosa was the X factor that made the season interesting. The camaraderie that he and McGwire shared seemed to help McGwire lighten up and enjoy the home stretch of the season, just when it appeared he was losing patience with the whole circus. Without Sosa, McGwire's getting the record was virtually an inexorable, foregone conclusion. Imagine what the season would have been like if Sosa wasn't on his heels. Unlike the 1961 race between Maris and Mickey Mantle, neither Sosa nor McGwire was taken out of the running by injury. So there was some question as to who would end up with the home-run record this season. When Sosa hit 66, McGwire's answering shots became more dramatic. Now that it's over, people forget that the race was still on and it was an open question whether Sosa would overtake McGwire. If McGwire had been the only one in it when he hit 62, he probably would have let up. Cardinals manager Tony LaRussa said that McGwire did express relief that it was "over" after he hit 62. If not for Sosa, everybody could have gone home happy that Maris' record was finally broken, and that a new generation of ballplayers finally found their place in the pantheon where Ruth sits. However, the main reason it didn't stop there was Sosa. McGwire racked up 70 because Sosa hit 66. McGwire has the sexy record, and he'll be remembered by far more people for that record than any league MVP ever has been. If McGwire's record was the biggest thing to happen to baseball this year, then Sosa definitely was an MVP for keeping it exciting to the last day of the season. Copyright © 1998, Salvatore Caputo

Positively official: Bob Dylan 1966

I was in my freshman year of college, which I hate to admit was in 1970-71, when I picked up the best rock concert album I've ever heard. Nobody since, not the Sex Pistols or the Stooges, Nine Inch Nails or Kiss, has outdone the teetering-on-the-abyss urgency of Dylan's Royal Albert Hall Concert.

Now, 27 years later, long after I wore out the cheap plastic of the bootlegged double album, called Zimmerman in this particular pressing, I get to hear it without Like a Rolling Stone running out in mid-song.

The album was tucked away in the back row of a run-down record store just off campus. I had no idea what the two-LP set contained, other than it was a Dylan bootleg. I thought it would be outtakes from studio sessions.

Instead, it was a live album of what we know today was a performance by Bob Dylan at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester, rather than his Albert Hall concert from the same tour.

Savvy pirates

These bootleggers were smart. The concert was in two parts -- acoustic and electric. Dylan played the acoustic part first, but the bootleggers labeled the electric part as the first disc. Good move, because as emotionally charged and wondrously sung (well, compared to the way Bob sings these days) the acoustic part was, the electric part was even more so.

Dylan and the Hawks (you know, the guys who became the Band) played the most outrageous noise ever made, before anyone made up the rules for outrageous noise. To hear himself over the noise of the band, Dylan shouted the lyrics in a manner completely different from the acoustic set or from the way he sang before. (This was the beginning of the blenderized vocals he offers these days.)

The lyrics were always the point with Dylan, but his melodies usually were more than workable. He threw all that out when performing with the Hawks behind him. Instead they played the chord progressions and Dylan bent and twisted the melodies, making mincemeat of the intellectual meaning of his words.

The boy can rage

So what? The emotional intensity of the performance carried the weight of betrayal he wrote about in I Don't Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Met). The guy was definitely feeling it on stage.

This was a mean noise, but the beat, the volume, Robbie Robertson's stinging guitar leads and the undertone of Garth Hudson's organ, made it a liberating, joyful experience too.

The bootlegged copy of the concert I bought so long ago is hard to interpret. The tension between Dylan and the audience is indecipherable. Without being able to hear the audience, I though Dylan was putting the audience on when he screamed, "I don't believe you! You're a liar!" before he went into his closing song, Like a Rolling Stone. That's one reason the belated CD version that he finally released as The Bootleg Series Vol. 4: Bob Dylan Live 1966 -- The 'Royal Albert Hall' Concert is great. Listeners can hear the fuel for Dylan's furious performance.

The second side of my bootlegged LP was so crammed with music that the bootleggers couldn't fit all of Like a Rolling Stone onto it. Rather than fade the song out, they just let the groove run into the label, sending my needle skating across it and cutting off the music in mid-rage. The complete version of the CD is better, offering a chance to hear what would become Dylan's anthem, when it was fresh and without any inkling of the warhorse it would become.

Dylan has made way too many official concert albums of fairly mediocre shows. Only After the Flood, from his "comeback" tour with the Band in 1974 comes close to the fire of the 1966 tour. (Although the short set he did on Concert for Bangla Desh shows off the gentleman farmer Dylan of the early '70s to good effect.)

Regardless, Live 1966 is the only Dylan concert album you have to have.

Copyright © 1998, Salvatore Caputo

Interloper in the Moody Blues universe

I got to see the Moody Blues for the fifth time in my life on Sunday night. More times than I got to see Miles Davis or Captain Beefheart. Ah! The things we do for love!

What I'm saying is my wife is a huge fan, and I'm not, which is not to say that the Moodys don't do a good job.

On the contrary, they have one of the most polished and professional shows on the rock circuit. Contrary to my ignorant impression before my wife rediscovered one of the favorite bands of her youth, the Moody Blues can cut a groove that gets people up and rocking.

I guess the wall-of-sound style of Nights in White Satin made the Moodys seem so grandiose and genteel to me that I couldn't imagine people dancing to their stuff. That's what happens when you just scratch the surface of something.

If I have one gripe, it's that the format of their show varies so little. They have such a big body of work, you'd think people would tire of the same dozen or so tunes.

Two sides of life

To me, their music is just pleasant, tuneful stuff, full of wide-eyed sentiments about living and loving. But as I watched the crowd and, especially my wife, I could see that the band's songs served these people as a vehicle to The Other Side of Life, as one of the Moodys' best songs puts it.

In my wife's eyes, I could see dreams unrealized awaken. For the length of the nearly two-hour-long show, she imagined living life much larger than our humdrum allows.

I don't think it was nostalgia exactly, because the longing they seemed to exhibit was for a world they have yet to visit, rather than one they've lost.

That's quite a feat to accomplish, and few bands make their audiences feel it so thoroughly. At times, I wish I could go along for the ride, but musical taste is inexplicable. Critics take their stab at explaining why something is good or bad, but in the end, bad or good, something either moves you or it doesn't.

The bulk of the crowd at Blockbuster Desert Sky Pavilion on Sunday (and this crowd included fans of all ages) was moved by the Moodys.

Copyright © 1998, Salvatore Caputo

Frank Sinatra: Voice of the Century

Note: I wrote the entry on Frank Sinatra in "MusicHound Lounge" (Visible Ink).

Pour one more for the road and then close the saloon, the voice of the century fell silent today, when 82-year-old Frank Sinatra died of a heart attack. Since a hospitalization in late 1996, the singer known as the Chairman of the Board had been rumored to be on his deathbed.

The self-styled "saloon singer" had his boom and bust periods, but he endured as a star for the greater part of five decades. He virtually invented pop-music stardom, creating the path that rock generations followed, even when they were rebelling against his way.

Although calling him the "voice of the century" is just the kind of grandiose claim his critics would skewer him for, no other American pop singer comes close.

Billie Holiday? Louis Armstrong? Ella Fitzgerald?

The deck was stacked against singers on the black side of the color line. Influential and great though they were (and Sinatra acknowledged Holiday's influence on him), the white mainstream could never have accepted them as pop stars Sinatra-style -- sexy, brawling and controversial.

Al Jolson? Rudy Vallee? Bing Crosby?

Although all three were major stars of their time, only Crosby came close to having Sinatra's staying power and influence. More importantly, Crosby didn't challenge himself musically. When he found his style, he repeated it with little variation. Sinatra's singing went through two major stylistic phases, and he kept refining his approach, seeking new collaborators and special projects well into his 60s.

Judy Garland?

Garland, so influenced by Jolson, is the idol of impersonators decades after she died. Her contributions seem encased in amber at this point, a relic of their time, a tribute to great showmanship, but with little impact on the rest of pop.

Elvis Presley? Ray Charles? Michael Jackson?

As entertainers, Presley and Jackson were far more dynamic, but their way with a song lacked the multiple dimensions of a Sinatra performance. Charles' voice has all the complexity of Sinatra's, and he had the creative fire to change his approach and experiment as he grew. However, Charles' output was more inconsistent than Sinatra's, and consistency counts in this particular evaluation. (Sinatra's That's Life can be seen as a tip of the hat to Charles.)

Teen idol

Sinatra was the first true "teen idol." Sure, years before Sinatra, Vallee had created riotous stirs among a youthful following, and young women's heartbeats quickened at Crosby's relaxed "ba-ba-ba-boos."

However, neither provoked the sweeping mania among teen-age girls that Sinatra did, prompting journalists to dub him "Swoonatra" and to write that his fans were in a "Sinatrance."

Sinatra, born Dec. 12, 1915, in Hoboken, N.J., to Italian immigrants, spent his teen years active in athletics and intent on becoming a singer. His dad, a retired boxer, wanted him to go for a ring career, and Sinatra did try his hand, apparently with some success, learning skills that he sometimes brought to bear outside the ring.

Sinatra dropped out of high school. At 18, he took in a Crosby show in Jersey City that firmed his resolve to sing.

Both parents strongly disapproved. His mother, reportedly the dominant parent, wanted him to do something with stability. Like most Italian families, the elder Sinatras stressed "respect" -- both giving it and earning it.

Sinatra, an otherwise dutiful son, disrespected his parents' wishes and began singing in Jersey roadhouses, often for free, just to learn the ropes.

An only child, he had been doted upon up until that time. So he was used to getting his way and easily maintained his resolve despite being unaccustomed to his parents' opposition. This stubborn focus on his own goals helped forge the contradictory personality that earned Sinatra as many enemies as admirers.

As far as his singing and work habits were concerned, he was the epitome of class and gentility. Yet he could turn pugnacious the instant he felt the slightest disrespect coming his way. Worse than the flash of temper was his ability to hold a grudge and continue to criticize enemies to the point that even friends would tire of his harangues.

His way

By the time he started singing in earnest, Sinatra was already something of a ladies' man with a persuasive manner and dapper threads. He soon formed a group called the Hoboken Four, which won a Major Bowes Amateur Hour audition.

His mother, resigned to her son's determination, found him a paying gig at the Rustic Cabin in Englewood. He was the master of ceremonies and sang little in this job, but on the plus side the shows were broadcast on radio, giving him good exposure. Soon after, he married Nancy Barbato, his first wife and the mother of his three children.

In 1939, Harry James heard one of the Rustic Cabin broadcasts and invited Sinatra to sing with his big band for $75 a week. With James, the painfully thin, bow-tied, crooning Sinatra began to exert a hold on teen-agers and young adults. They hung around the stage door screaming for him.

When the James band folded, Tommy Dorsey played coy in negotiations, but eventually snatched up the singer for $100 a week.

Sinatra soon was stealing the show from Dorsey, which caused considerable tension even though the singer admired the trombonist's mastery of his instrument and "I'll do it my way" approach. Sinatra's voice jumped out of the first single he sang with the band, I'll Never Smile Again. When Dorsey played the Paramount Theater in New York in 1942, Sinatra's effect on the crowd was electric, and the bobby-soxers started swooning in their seats.

Soon after, Sinatra, already signed to Columbia Records as a solo singer, left the band. His subsequent success led to an era dominated by pop singers, an era that helped kill off the big bands he loved.

Swoonatra

On Dec. 30, 1942, the solo Sinatra was booked as an "extra added attraction" on a bill featuring Benny Goodman's orchestra. After Sinatra was introduced, the scream was so loud and unprecedented, that a clueless Goodman reportedly said, "What the hell was that?"

Sinatra's style was sweet. He sang ballads in a deceptively breathless fashion, holding notes with the slightest of quavers, sounding sincere and more vulnerable and sensuous than Crosby, Vallee or Jolson.

At each show, thousands of longing voices responded in a single cry, "Frankie! Frankie!"

Sinatra's engagement at the Paramount was extended to eight weeks with an attendance of 1.5 million, breaking Vallee's 1929 record in the same building. (When Sinatra returned five months later, he received a bonus of $7,500 a week above and beyond his regular pay.)

Writer Jack Long took in that engagement and wrote in The American magazine that "Sinatra's voice is to popular music what Valentino's eyes were to the silent movies -- sweet dreams and dynamite."

By early 1943, Sinatra was a regular radio voice on Lucky Strike's Hit Parade. He had knocked Crosby out of the top pop-vocalist spot in polls by Down Beat and Metronome magazines.

Highs and lows in the '50s

When he won over the adult crowd during an engagement at the Riobamba nightclub in Manhattan, his celebrity was sealed. Newspaper columnist Earl Wilson noted in his biography of the singer, "Within a week, Frank Sinatra had changed from singer to national hysteria. I had to rush over to the Riobamba every night and try to squeeze in."

By 1946, Sinatra was selling 10 million singles a year. He was in such movies as Anchors Aweigh! He met and became friends with Crosby.

Yet, thanks in part to his on-again, off-again relations with his wife over his reported womanizing, his alleged ties to mobster Lucky Luciano, his brawls with the press, a temper on perpetual boil and a scandalous soap-opera romance with Ava Gardner (whom he wed in 1951), Sinatra had fallen from grace by the beginning of the '50s.

Columbia Records had him singing novelty tunes, which shamed him more than gossip did. He lost his voice at a nightclub engagement, ultimately suffering a throat hemorrhage that sidelined him. He was dropped by his agents.

Undaunted, Sinatra methodically rebuilt his career, signing at age 37 to Capitol Records. Through the 1950s, he created a new, swinging image that could appeal to audiences that had grown up beyond teen-age passions.

The bow ties of his early days were replaced by a hat cocked at a jaunty angle. The romantic ballads still remained his strong suit, but the solid swing and sentiments of such tunes as I've Got the World on a String defined his self-confidence and the muscle-flexing, prosperous America of the post-World War II era.

While continuing to make hit singles, Sinatra was the first performer to focus on albums. The concept albums he and such collaborators as Nelson Riddle created during the '50s stand up today as essential collections of pop-music craft.

He resurrected his movie career with 1953's From Here to Eternity, winning an Oscar as best supporting actor for his role as an Italian-American GI named Maggio. He was nominated for a best-actor Oscar in 1955 for his role in The Man With the Golden Arm.

The Rat Pack and Camelot

By the end of the decade, he was divorced again and ruled Hollywood with a retinue known as the Rat Pack, which he "inherited" from Humphrey Bogart. He was linked romantically to Bogart's widow, Lauren Bacall, and to a divorced Marilyn Monroe.

He was so active with women that Dean Martin was quoted as saying, "When Sinatra dies, they're giving his zipper to the Smithsonian."

Sinatra also ruled Las Vegas' clubs, where questions about mob ties again came up.

By 1960, Sinatra was courting political power. He became friends with John F. Kennedy, who apparently enjoyed the swinging lifestyle that Sinatra embodied.

Sinatra wanted to be a kingmaker. He threw a star-studded inaugural gala for Kennedy. However, the mob shadows circling the singer made Kennedy refuse an invitation to stay at Sinatra's place in Palm Springs in 1962. Sinatra was embarrassed. Kennedy stayed with the non-controversial Crosby. The relationship ended.

On the music front, Sinatra had started his own record label, Reprise, and continued his streak of good work, although the big hits were ceded to Presley and the rock and rollers. (When it first exploded, Sinatra hated rock, calling it brutish music, but later he hosted a television special in Presley's honor upon the rocker's discharge from the Army.)

Such mid-'60s songs as Strangers in the Night and That's Life let Sinatra compete successfully on the charts against The Beatles -- the latest heirs to Sinatra-like teen frenzy.

However, the mid-'60s Sinatra focused much more on musically challenging album projects than on singles. Sinatra's penchant for concept albums had expanded to include new musical settings, from team-ups with Count Basie to explorations of Brazilian sounds.

As focused as he was professionally, he seemed to drift in his personal life. He fell in love with Peyton Place TV star Mia Farrow, who was five years younger than his daughter Nancy. He married Farrow in 1966, and they divorced in 1968.

A couple of years later, Barbara Marx left Zeppo Marx to live with Sinatra. The singer married her in 1976.

Retirement was not his way

In 1971, with Barbara at his side, he retired from show business, deciding he was tired and that his voice just couldn't stand the strain of touring or multi-night engagements.

On the political front, he had supported Hubert Humphrey in '68, and the Democrats had backed away from him once again. So he switched to the Republicans and became a staunch supporter of Ronald Reagan, one-time Kennedy antagonist Richard Nixon and Nixon's vice president, Spiro Agnew. The Roosevelt liberal who had sung The House I Live In as a plea for racial and social tolerance was now considered part of the Establishment.

As the Nixon White House was going down in political flames over the Watergate scandal and allegations of corruption against Agnew, Sinatra "unretired" with Ol' Blue Eyes Is Back, a TV special that aired Nov. 18, 1973. His show came in third in a three-way ratings race. Worst of all, it came in behind a special by another singer, Dinah Shore.

Surprisingly, considering that the rancor between him and the press had become about as deep as it would ever be, he received glowing reviews for the show.

Sinatra's comeback had brought him into an era when he would tour arenas and amphitheaters. Treated as a legend, he was now expected to endlessly reprise his hits. In the '70s and onward, Sinatra's challenges were not about expanding his artistic grasp anymore, but about maintaining his hold on the audience. Nostalgia became more important than challenging himself or his audience. Now, his major goals were to fight off time's toll on his voice and to play bigger tours.

Even so, he still found contemporary tunes that he could make his own, such as The Beatles' Something. Nelson Riddle's overhaul of the song made it a staple of Sinatra's later years.

Grappling with Father Time

By the late '70s, he used his considerable skill at phrasing to mask wavering pitch and a rawness in his upper register. The drama and his way with a song were still good. As time went on, his singing deficiencies worsened, yet somehow he kept his skill at interpreting a song, at acting it -- even when he couldn't remember lyrics.

The audience that had grown up with him mostly overlooked the weaknesses. They needed him out there, and he needed them. Younger generations came to the shows to pay their respect for what he had done, not necessarily for what he was doing.

Yet in each decade of his career, he found some way to stay a player in pop music. It was easy for the '40s crooner and the '50s swinger, but a little tougher for the mature artist of the '60s and onward.

In 1980, he released Trilogy, a three-record set that was the most ambitious of a career that produced many innovations in pop. Each record of the set had a theme -- Past, Present and Future. The Past record explored old standards that Sinatra had not previously recorded. The Present featured takes on such then-current tunes as Neil Diamond's Song Sung Blue and Sinatra's last real hit song, Theme From 'New York, New York.' On the Future record, the idea was to have Sinatra reflect on himself and his continued ambition, but the suite dragged embarrassingly, maybe because it was more about his celebrity than his singing.

He kept touring even when he took a long hiatus from recording after the 1985 release, L.A. Is My Lady, produced by Quincy Jones, who had helmed the biggest-selling album of all time, Michael Jackson's Thriller in 1983.

End of the road

In 1988, Sinatra reunited his singing Rat Pack buddies, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr., for a much-heralded arena tour. Martin, scarred by the tragedy of his son's death, didn't share the nostalgia or Sinatra's drive to work so hard. He left the tour, which carried on with non-Rat Packer Liza Minnelli in his place.

The dates on Sinatra's 75th birthday tour in 1990 routinely sold out.

His series of Duets albums in the early '90s brought in some other star power to give the legend a chance at reaching young audiences. He reportedly never sang in the same room as his duet mates. His vocals sound as though they had some studio help, but nonetheless these projects worked.

Such people as U2's Bono sang his praises ("Frank Sinatra has got what we want: swagger and attitude"), and youngsters started listening to lounge music and embracing such Sinatra acolytes as Tony Bennett.

Even the press was on his side in 1994 when he received a Lifetime Achievement Grammy and was cut off for a TV commercial as he gave his acceptance speech. After all, this was pretty shabby treatment when the voice of the century was getting an award he clearly deserved. What other singer's lifetime achievement in the music business even came close?

Now, Sinatra's personality can be forgotten because his work is what's left behind -- and most of it is very good indeed.

There'll be no more for the road.

The saloon is closed.

Copyright © 1998, Salvatore Caputo

It's Fe-BREW-ary, folks!

What a month! Salvatore Bono died! Yeah! That's my own dark secret. I shared a first name with Sonny. In the pantheon of pop, Sonny Bono was an odd one to say the least. He had a great talent for spotting a hit and for adapting to the times. Yet, as Phil Spector said of him, Bono had monster hits and didn't know what he'd done.

Spector should know. Bono came up through Spector's wall-of-sound productions.

Maybe Sonny was just humble or maybe he had more perspective than Spector did. From the outside looking in, it seems as though the pop world must have meant much more to Spector than to Bono.

In the end, conservative Sonny found his best expression in politics and with a family, rather than in show biz. You get the feeling looking back that Sonny was one of pop's working stiffs. At the end of the day, he clocked out of the silly trappings of the scene.

Still, when you think about it, his songs touted family values from the beginning. I Got You, Babe -- a sort of poor man's Bob Dylan tune -- rings with "till death do us part" fervor. His own late '60s solo record indicted all sorts of social ills, including porn palaces.

It was probably the Italian in him, but I don't think Bob Guccione would agree.

Month of dread

February makes me shiver.

And I don't mean from the cold, but from dread.

I don't dread Valentine's Day, Presidents' Day or Black History Month. I don't even dread thinking about the Grammys.

However, it's fingernails on the blackboard time when I hear radio and TV announcers say "Feb-YOU-ary" like so many kindergarteners.

The torture continues from about the middle of January and well into March.

Now, in a world of grief and pain this is not much of a problem. Still, I can't help my automatic, teeth-gritting reaction. I want to ask these people, "Do you still say "lie-BERRY" when you mean "library"?

Children might have a hard time putting together that "br" combination in the middle of a word, but to me, an adult mispronouncing "Fe-BREW-ary" sounds like a simpleton.

If that's elitist -- so be it. I think English is a great language and sometimes we ought to bother to learn it and teach it.

After all, it's the little things that mean the most.

Copyright © 1998, Salvatore Caputo

Happy New Year

Ambitious plans can become albatrosses. This web site was going to be the place where I'd continue the only part of my former job that I truly loved -- writing a column on pop music and pop culture.

Not being stuck in the stupid newspaper anymore, the column's boundaries would expand. Nothing would be out of bounds.

I would act as more of a critic since I would not be constrained by editors worried about reaching this or that audience demographic with a particular mix of coverage. I would not have to compromise my judgment to ride management's hobby horses.

For the most part, all of that has happened, and it's been a kick.

 

A little play-acting for my friends

Kicks aside, though, I had made a commitment with the web site that became a struggle to keep in the last quarter of 1997. I thought I could update the site once a week, adding to the online clips file, pointing out upcoming events and, highest on my list, writing this column.

That wasn't to be. When I checked in to do a little "housecleaning" today, I realized I hadn't visited the site since November. As anyone can see, as of today, 57 visitors have been to this site since September.

Obviously, I'm doing a little play-acting when writing for a site with so few readers.

At the newspaper, I had the luxury of knowing that 600,000 newspapers were in people's hands on any given Sunday when the column appeared. In the weird math of circulation departments, that translated to maybe 2 million people potentially taking a look at my words.

I knew that a very small percentage of those readers turned to the Arts Plus pages to read my column, but I also knew it was more than 57 readers per quarter.

Be it resolved that ...

So I'm making a New Year's resolution to market this web site more aggressively, and to keep up with it on a weekly basis once again.

As media conglomerates become increasingly greedy and conformist (Hey! Your bottom line might go down if you don't feed people the farina they want!) -- the emergence of the web as a vehicle for independent criticism seems wonderful. Yet, it's clear that even here the muscle belongs to those whose mouths are full of the mush of marketing for marketing's sake -- the people whose subservience to profit daily grinds meaning out of existence.

It's windmill-tilting time. You ain't seen nothin' yet.

Copyright © 1998, Salvatore Caputo