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

Journalist Robert Palmer has died

I heard the news today ...

Scribe of rock's 'unruly history' gravely ill

I'd always wanted to be a writer. As a kid, I wrote plays, short stories, a science fiction novel and comics (that I also drew). I didn't think about writing journalistically until I started buying records. Now, journalism is not the first thing that pops into my mind when somebody says, "records" (unless we're talking about public records and that's a whole 'nother ball of boredom). However, I didn't start looking for non-fiction writing about anything until I developed an extreme interest in pop. When I started buying records, I started wanting to read about them. I anxiously awaited new issues of Cheetah in 1967, and Eye in 1968. I still have copies of Circus from about that time, and Creem, Crawdaddy and Rolling Stone from the early '70s. The combination of the writing and subject matter got me excited. I wanted to do the same thing for a living. The interesting writers among them, the ones with a sensibility that made their stories more than just pro forma celebrity interviews or consumer-oriented reviews -- juiced things even more. Whatever you think of them individually, Nick Tosches, Ed Ward, Langdon Winner, Lester Bangs, Dave Marsh, Greil Marcus, Jon Landau (before he hooked up with Springsteen), Robert Christgau and a host of others, made it fun to read about the music. The writing Palmer Robert Palmer -- No! Not the Addicted to Love singer! -- also holds a high place among pop-music writers (at least as far as I'm concerned). Never shrill, Palmer has calmly and eloquently traced the trails of American music that mattered to him. He has the understated fervor of a professional detective trying to unlock a mystery. His most well-known achievement has to be Rock and Roll: An Unruly History. The project spanned a PBS TV series and a companion book. Particularly in the book, Palmer's wide-open intellect challenges much of the conventional thinking about rock and its origins, while still reporting most of the same historical information to be found elsewhere. (Palmer's account of being accepted into the dark, secret world of nightclub musicians -- and barely avoiding a shootout -- at the beginning of the Unruly History book is a hoot.) Palmer is one of the pioneers as far as rock writing for mainstream newspapers goes. He was the New York Times' first full-time rock writer and chief pop critic (1976-88). I was a rookie journalist in 1976 living and working in New Jersey, and Palmer's writing in the Times became a staple of my pop reading diet. The underlying intelligence of his analysis was the winning element. It wasn't just that the stuffy Times catered to "intellectualism." Palmer never stooped to academic formalism in his writing. Instead, he wrote for that paper with a grace and passion that undercut the Times' stultifying style. He made the Times a fundamentally more human paper. Palmer needs help Palmer is seriously ill, and at last word I have, was to undergo a liver-transplant operation. The medical expenses have been enormous, about $150,000 so far, and he could use some financial help. For information on a tax-deductible fund set up in Palmer's name, contact the National Music Critics Association at NMCAssn@aol.com. Copyright © 1997, Salvatore Caputo

Last bats: Realignment's races will be different

I'm watching the Dodgers trying to stay in the National League West race with less than 1 1/2 games to go when I realize it's not going to be this way next year. The lords of the realm are going to have some sort of realignment plan in place before the next season starts. Baseball is a safe haven for nostalgia. After all, there's no harm done by remembering "the good old days" of a sport. That kind of nostalgia doesn't get in the way of living in the present. However, change has come mighty quick in recent years. Divisional realignment created the wild-card spot in the playoffs. This year, interleague play was added to the regular season. Next year, it'll be a whole new ball of wax with at least a few teams switching leagues. The divisions will be different, although some rivalries will be preserved and new ones created. The sad part about it is that -- duh! -- the changes will be made not to improve the game, but to improve business. The lords of the realm virtually forced realignment to happen when they assigned the expansion Tampa Bay Devil Rays to the American League West division. Come on! Everybody knows that couldn't stand -- having all the Rays' divisional opponents a day's flight away. I wouldn't want to have that team's jet-fuel bills. Good stories in baseball? This year, however, there's plenty else in the game to give fans the excitement that seasons long past brought. Larry Walker and Tony Gwynn both chased a .400 batting average for a minute. They didn't make it, but few rooted against them. People felt good about these guys the way they do about the big names of old. Unlike the way they feel about, say, Tony Philips. Then, there was the war of attrition in the chase after Roger Maris' record. In the past few weeks, the field shook down to Mark McGwire and Ken Griffey Jr. It doesn't seem like either will make it, but when was the last time two guys hit 50 home run in a season? Couldn't be that Mantle-Maris year, could it? Even if Junior wears his hat backwards, he's got a low-key air that keeps him on the good-guy side most of the time. McGwire says he signed his huge contract with St. Louis only after his son, who lives in southern California, said it was OK. It's not the same as Lou Gehrig saying he's the luckiest man alive, but it's a statement that has a similar kind of vulnerability and emotion behind it. Definitely not what you'd expect from a guy who hits rocket blasts almost every day. Speaking of rockets, how about Roger Clemens? The Red Sox have to rue the day they let this fabulous pitcher go, with the hint that he was washed up. Not hardly. There were other good stories in this year before realignment. For instance, people say that pitching's diluted. However, in the year when two hitters chased .400 and another two chased Maris, eight pitchers had a shot at winning 20 games as late as September 1. Enough for instances, though. It's fun to realize that even thought baseball deserves the licking it gets for having the most spoiled athletes in pro sports and possibly the most medieval owners, there were too many good baseball stories this year to mention here. What's most likely to be remembered next year is not the realignment, but the reason for the realignment. Two new teams coming aboard in Florida and Arizona. The fans in those markets will get big-league ball for the first time and cheer their good guys. They won't be cheering the owners. Of course, the owners in their counting houses won't be able to hear the cheers anyhow. Copyright © 1997, Salvatore Caputo