News of Clear Channel buying the great WFNX, one of the last independent commercial stations with a point of view in the New England, hit me harder than I would have anticipated. Things have been going down this road for more than a decade. And since Bill Clinton signed the Telecommunications Act of 1996, consolidation of media ownership happened as quickly, and with as ugly consequences as even the most dire of predictions. I don’t know enough about the sale of WFNX specifically to say that it would not have gotten sold without that 1996 act, but it certainly would not have gone to the gargantuan, monolithic “could not seem more like a corporate villain in a movie” Texas-based Clear Channel, responsible for some of the all-time worst media programming. Just as weakening of financial regulations led to the financial meltdown, these sorts of loosening  of regulations inevitably have outcomes, generally negative. There is usually a reason that such legislation gets enacted. And there are likewise reasons for the repeal and/or slackening of such rules: money and campaign donations.

Enough of the political aspect. I am so sick of and disappointed by politics that I feel to waste more space on it is bad karma. Let’s talk about the personal aspects of this. WFNX was on the forefront of 1980s and 1990s commercial radio’s last-gasp of innovation, open-mindedness, and, frankly success. Yes, they were early supporters of Buffalo Tom. But they were instrumental in the huge commercial acceptance of Nirvana and the victories scored for little old alternative bands that came through the busted-open doors. Previous to that, WFNX was the first place most kids heard of the Cure and the Smiths, REM, and so on. We used to travel the world. While there were great programs on state-supported radio in Europe, the U.K., and Australia, we would mostly go to college radio when we toured the States in the early (pre-Nirvana) days. Most kids in the middle of the country lived for 120 Minutes on MTV, or imported issues of British music papers Melody Maker, Sounds, and, NME, to find out about new music. We knew we were lucky to have WFNX and even the less-adventurous WBCN (which had once been as innovative and maverick as WFNX would become). We had long been aware of our good fortune as music fans to have college stations like WMBR and — back before it became the Grateful Dead-Jack Johnson Station — WERS. But it was the precious few commercial stations that had the strong signals and the listenership that allowed us to make a living. It was stations like WFNX who had us visit on each record and sponsored shows like this one, with the Pearl Jam billed under Buffalo Tom. Whatever happened to those guys?

We long ago gave up trying to make a living at music. In 1999, I still had some hope. But by then we saw the writing on the wall. It said “Limp Bizkit.” The CD era that had kept the major labels alive was ending as file-sharing began. We all know the rest of the story. It’s interesting, I am writing a book about the music of the Rolling Stones, tracing the band’s history through their songs. Singles were events back in the mid-’60s. And then, albums became even bigger events through the ’70s, all the way into the 1990s. When the Stones were touring America for the first time, it was still a nation will highly distinctive regional cultures. Radio stations were responsible for the hits of their area. So the Stones might only play to 300 in Michigan, and 3000 in Boston. And there would be breakout records in areas of the country that might or might not lead to more widespread success. This was still true in the 1990s when bands in the south like the Connells would be rock stars and then come to play to 30 people in the Blue Wall at UMass. But such regionalism also vaulted bands like the Dave Matthews Band, for better or worse.

The world is a smaller place and we all get fed the same thing, usually dispiriting dreck. A recent drive across central Florida depressed me as I had the radio on scan, with my kids getting excited every time the same Katy Perry song came on. Their father exacted his revenge on the way home, however, when I stumbled across a college station in Tampa playing some vintage ’60s and ’70s soul and R&B with a unique cast of characters on the mic. But after their initial groans and lamentations that the music was not what they knew, and it must be old since their father seemed happy, my daughter genuinely became engaged in the songs, just as she had been before she got into school and became aware of what all the other kids listened to. I don’t expect her to listen to her father’s record collection like the subject of a recent satire in the Onion, but the opportunity to stumble across something different on the radio is rapidly passing. Maybe the days of radio being responsible for such exposure is over now that the Internet allows endlessly deep exploration. But recorded music as an income stream has narrowed down to a drip — with each drop highly lucrative for the lucky winners. And you have to be your own gatekeeper, so only the truly curious and energetic will dig below the surface to try to uncover new and interesting music, or old and interesting music. There are such gatekeepers on the web, such as Pitchfork on one end and Al Kooper’s New Music fo Old People and Red kelly’s excellent The B-Side on the other end of the spectrum. But gone is John Peel. Oedipus has not been on a commercial station regularly for many years. Vin Scelsa is on satellite.

But the faded importance of terrestrial radio was that it was a pillar of financial support and viability to even working class bands like Buffalo Tom. They supported us right up until the end, with interviews with the great Julie Kramer and WFNX-alum Angie C. for our 25th anniversary this past fall. Funny, just this past week, I was reminded of a radio interview that I guess I reflexively and defensively forgot about as quickly as as I finished it.  I happened to be at a meeting for the real estate company I am affiliated with. Months ago, WFNX on-air newsman and morning personality, Henry Santoro, asked me, “so, I am thinking about getting into real estate. How do you like Hammond?” Soon enough, he joined one of the local offices. So, just a day or two before the announced sale of WFNX, here we were at this meeting at a hotel along Rt. 128, having a glass of wine at the reception. We got to talking about about the station, people who have come or gone, and so on. He reminded me that WFNX interviewed me fairly recently. They paired up the lovely Angie with some wacky morning guy who knew nothing about me and just asked some stupid unfunny questions that I mainly ignored. I honestly had forgotten all about it and can recall no details of it. But Henry was supposed to listen from home, as they were auditioning this obnoxious juvenile from the Northwest, who had taken some station “from worst to first” in the ratings. Drinking my wine, I just shook my head as Henry reminded me of it, two guys that were once having a blast in the 1990s hey day for interesting commercial music at some real estate meeting telling war stories and sharing disappointment about the current state of things. Move along, old timers! Somehow, when I was 21, I could sort of envision something like this.

As I was leaving, Henry shouted out, “Hey Bill, if you ever need anything played on the radio, let me know.”

*****

Though this song was written a while ago, the lyric and the music really seems fitting to the post. I have taken more than a month away from the project as I have been insanely busy with too many project, work, the book, music for hire, coaching soccer, etc. I think I have one more song for it. Then I will look into packaging it physically.

As always:

More about the overall project here: About: Long Island of the Mind Album section. You can download the file for this song here. Right click/Apple click, “save as.”

Previous songs collected here. Please pass along to others and spread the word. I have no publicist!

All songs ©Bill Janovitz

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There she is her arms are crossed

How on earth can she face this loss

Thought I was young and had it made

All my dues had long been paid

See the weeds have grown up high

Where the lovers used to lie

Icy bay to walk across

But nowehere left to go

Little boy long since gone

You need more than a bridge to get back home

He missed steps and missed the train

Got tangled in bramble in his brain

There’s a path we all are on

This I know is true

Left his kids and his wife behind

And he made his way to find…

I will never let you go

Oh, you know it’s true

Yeah, you know it’s true

Well I know it’s true

******

As always:

More about the overall project here: About: Long Island of the Mind Album section. You can download the file for this song here. Right click/Apple click, “save as.”

Previous songs collected here. Please pass along to others and spread the word. I have no publicist!

All songs ©Bill Janovitz

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Well, this was not on my to-do list, but a great literary agent in Edinburgh approached me about putting together a book proposal to mark the 50th Anniversary of the Rolling Stones. I have just signed a deal with St. Martins to publish it, aiming for spring 2013.

The idea is to take 50 of my favorite and/or representative songs, spread across all of their career, examine them deeply and contextualize them within the eras in which they appeared, kind of like what I did with the post here on “Gimme Shelter,” and in my book on Exile. But this is more telling the history of the band via the songs. Working title: 50/50: Listening to 50 Years of the Rolling Stones. Extremely fun, but a daunting prospect.

At some point, I hope to write about something other than the Stones. I don’t want to pretend to be an expert. I am only a fan.

I have a bunch of melodies and chord changes swimming around in iTunes. Every once in a while, I will have my library playing on shuffle and one of my demos will come up. I had unchecked all Buff Tom and my solo tracks from the library so they would not pop up when the music is on shuffle when people are over, which entails me lunging for the remote to skip whatever Janotune comes up. But when I switched computers, I forgot to uncheck.

This one popped up while I was eating lunch and did not send me lunging. I had forgotten it completely. It had the chords and melody and a lot of the words all on that first demo. Sometimes songs need to go away on walkabout for a year or two and peek back in, leaning their head against the door jamb tentatively: “um… you ready for me yet?” What kind of mood is Daddy in?

The rest of the words fell out quickly. How do they fit in LIOTM project? Just another character in the mix, I think. The images are, however, more along the line of Ferlinghetti’s phantasmagoria in the Coney Island of the Mind book of poems which lent this project a bit of inspiration for the title and beyond.

I like it in this stark format. Right now I feel no need to add anything to it in terms of extra instrumentation or vocals. That might change. Listen at the end before the fade and you can hear the hard raindrops against the wooden 1940s forest green-colored bulkhead that sits over the basement door close to my Bomb Shelter recording complex. Oh, here is a photo taken in there the same night.

RIP, Jim Marshall, father of the rock amplifier.

******

As always:

More about the overall project here: About: Long Island of the Mind Album section. You can download the file for this song here. Right click/Apple click, “save as.”

Previous songs collected here. Please pass along to others and spread the word. I have no publicist!

All songs ©Bill Janovitz

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This is a thinly fictionalized true story from the annals of Huntington bully lore.

Billy Beard on drums. Scott Janovitz tracked him.

*****

As always:

More about the overall project here: About: Long Island of the Mind Album section. You can download the file for this song here. Right click/Apple click, “save as.”

Previous songs collected here. Please pass along to others and spread the word. I have no publicist!

All songs ©Bill Janovitz

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For a couple of years, circa 1958/’59, my father was second tenor in a vocal quartet called the Fabulaires. They sang a version of Doo Wop, but I think they aspired to sound more like the Platters and the Flamingos than Danny and the Juniors.

My mother and father went to go see the show Jersey Boys recently. It was my mother’s second time. She insists I will like it. I insist that it is highly unlikely since I hate most musicals and Frankie Vallie’s music in particular, save for the song “You’re Just Too Good to Be True,” which I absolutely love.

While my father was watching with her, she aked him where him where the Fabulaires had cut their demo. He recalled the name Allegro Studios.  As he wrote to me: “Allegro was mentioned in Jersey Boys, where FV and the Four Seasons cut their first record. 10 seconds before that was mentioned in the play, mom had asked me where we cut our record and I told her Allegro…weird.”

Allegro in New York was a famous place, apparently. Al Kooper, an illustrious and bona fide rock legend who happens to live here in Boston, told me it was a great studio located at 1650 Broadway (as seen on the label in the photo), which Al points out in his great autobiography, Backstage Passes and Backstabbing Bastards, is often confused the Brill Building located close by. The former is more associated with the old guard, pre-rock & roll. The latter is where most rock & roll song hustlers worked, people like Gerry Goffin and Carol King, Ellie Greenwich, Kooper, even young Lou Reed. And Tommy James recorded many of his biggest hits there.

I recently digitized the 78 RPM demo the Fabulaires recorded in 1959, a bit of a Holy Grail in my family. It has always blown our minds that our father did this, as he and the rest of the guys went on to regular old suburban normalcy, college, the army, raising families and so on. And now it is blowing the minds of his grandchildren.

My father and mother were casual music fans, really into the stuff they liked, but not real big record collectors. That all us boys (four of us, plus a sister) went into music to some degree, is more coincidental. It’s not like we grew up with parents who loved the Beatles, about whom my parents were largely agnostic. And they have no love at all for Dylan or the Stones. Tony Bennett? Nat King Cole? Elvis? Johnny Mathis? Carpenters? Okay.

The song was written by Wally Zober and Bert (Burt?) Salmirs. They wrote a song or two for Fabian and apparently managed him. Zober was also going to manage the Fabulaires boys. They met him out in Massapequa and signed a contract with him at some point. Zober and Salmirs might have had a label and the guys were going to do some recordings. Then Frank and Joe joined the Army Reserves and that was the end of it. The events leading up to meeting these guys, the details of the recording, and the dissolution of the group are cloudy, seemingly lost to the fog of history. I am trying to tease out the details. I will let you know what else I find out.

You can also listen/download here.

The B-Side, “Down in the Basement” (not the same as the Etta James song)

The balls they had to call this place “Walt Whitman Mall.”

Seriously, could you think of anything more cynical than naming a mall after Walt Whitman?

This was “our” mall. Walt was born and grew up in Huntington. There is also, more appropriately, a high school named after him as well. I went to the mall one day looking for Stones tickets in 1981. No luck. I was misled. I skipped out on school and hitchhiked to get there. I could not find a Ticketmaster, or whatever the outlet was. I think there was a Sam Goody across the street. I remember walking all over giant parking lots trying to find the place selling the tickets. It turned out that the Madison Square Garden tickets were in such high demand that you had to enter a lottery to be chosen to be able to have the honor of purchasing the tickets. I entered dozens of times. No luck. I remember trying to convince my parents to help finance the then-exoribitant-but-now-hard-to-believe-so-cheap scalper prices. No luck there either. At 15, at the height of my StonesMania, I missed seeing them for the first time.

But now I am a parent my own damn self. And this song here is a family affair. Scott Janovitz is here again recording the drums of Billy Beard. And my daughter, Lucy, helps out with backing vocals. She is turning 13 in April. I just had the out-of-body experience of seeing her first performance, as Molly in the middle school production of Annie (technically, “Annie Junior“). It was a whole lot of drama just auditioning. As the “backup parent” (line from The Descendants), I felt like I finally had a role to play and could at last offer up some help and guidance with fine tuning her vocals, coaching her to sing the right way, to project, and so on. It has been the time of her life. From getting the part to watching her take flight on stage was sublime. I was transfixed. Moments like these are when you fully realize your kids are their own people and have their own lives. Raising kids is sort of like curling. The most you can do is run ahead of them and sweep the ice to clear their path and try to influence their direction.

*****

As always:

More about the overall project here: About: Long Island of the Mind Album section. You can download the file for this song here. Right click/Apple click, “save as.”

Previous songs collected here. Please pass along to others and spread the word. I have no publicist!

All songs ©Bill Janovitz

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You can listen to and download the song here.

Billy Beard on drums. Scott Janovitz recorded him.

In order of appearance:

1-2. Shots from the Amtrack train home to Boston.

3. Finley Junior High, L-R: Bruce, Harry, kyle, me, Jeff,

4. Me

5. Some ecreen shot of a comic book

6. Shot from the train

7. Shot from the train

8. My grandparents in Florida

9. Video clip of Huntington Village

10. A dog waiting to dock the ferry from Port Jefferson to Bridgeport

12. My grandfather and uncle, Queens, NY

13. L-R: Chris, Danny, Charlie, Dan, me, John, reunion

14. Map

15. Huntington Harbor from Coindre Hall

16. Vince and John, Bolinas

17. A face from L’Archduque, Brussels

18. View across the bay to Northport

19.  Ferguson’s Castle (great link)

20. Huntington Bay

21. My grandparents and their friends, probably the Poconos.

22. Our house 1968-1979

23. A barbershop

24. Our T-ball team

25. My mother and father, circa 1963

26. Reunion: Eddie, Brendan, me, Dan.

27. Finnegan’s

28. Main Street.

29. The beloved and late lamented Hamburger Choo Choo (Photo courtesy of Michael Sullivan via Facebook)

30. Dan, Katy, Centerport

31. Love wallpaper

32. Little league

33. Mom, with child (me). Dad’s Le Sabre

34. Led Zep poster

35. Map

36. Daisy cat

37-40. Fenway

41-43. Dairy Barn

44-45. Shots from train

46. Bug at the shore

47. Map

48. Heckscher Pond

49. Shot from train

50. Huntington Village

51. My grandparents

52. Shot around Heckscher Park

53. Southdown

54. Halesite

55. Flower Hill

56. Our street and house from 1979-1982.

57. My mother and father in Milan

58. Chris

59. Huntington Bay

As always:

More about the overall project here: About: Long Island of the Mind Album section. You can download the file for this song here. Right click/Apple click, “save as.”

Previous songs collected here. Please pass along to others and spread the word. I have no publicist!

All songs ©Bill Janovitz

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(Not sure if the music player is not working on this one. It was not for me when I posted and I can’t figure out why. You can listen/download here).

Yesterday we recorded the fantastic guy and drummer, Billy Beard on four of my new songs (he is the second Billy in the Billy, Billy, Matt, and Philly combo that played all those residency shows at Toad here in Cambridge). Thanks to my brother Scott for recording this at his studio, Moontower. Don’t balem anyone other than me for the mix, though. I am so excited by the results that I figured I would post another song this week. Thanks for your contributions for offsetting such recording and musician costs.

“Mae and Maggie I & II” is sort of two songs in one, a suite of sorts. I think of it as a sort of centerpiece to this project. Some of the images are the shore and abandoned boathouses along Huntington Bay, and the frozen bay itself. As it is on Long Island Sound, the waves are moderate. It is sort of an inlet. And in very cold winters, the shoreline would freeze over. It deals with some of the same feelings as the Buffalo Tom song, “Don’t Forget Me,”  which would fit in very well with this project.

Huntington Bay (iPhone shots from 2010)

More about the overall project here: About: Long Island of the Mind Album section. You can download the file for this song here. Right click/Apple click, “save as.”

Previous songs collected here. Please pass along to others and spread the word. I have no publicist!

All songs ©Bill Janovitz

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There is a part of my hometown called Huntington Station, or just “the Station,” as in, “Huntington Elementary is in the Station, across from the Projects.” That’s where I went to school after they closed down Village Green Elementary School. Later, we, and all the graduating fifth graders from a bunch of elementary schools — the old neighborhood schools- –were sent for just one year, to an all-sixth-grade school. Just that one grade. The township contorted itself into a tortured arrangement where we all came together for a year before then going off to two separate junior highs, rejoining again in one high school. In retrospect, this seems to have been what we call bussing, or at least some variation on it. It might have just been a reconfiguration of the schools. But the result was that a lot of us kids from lilly-white neighborhoods got sent to the part of town with the majority of the African-American population of the town, the Station. Literally, the other side of the tracks. (Okay, well, not literally. Apparently my geography is slightly off — by about a block.)

It’s where the LIRR (Long Island Railroad) stopped to let off commuters from the city. As with any station, people would park their cars there all day, come back and drive home. Or stop off for a drink. Huntington was known for having more than its share of bars and taverns, many of them still there — the Valencia Tavern, Finnegans. Others have changed over or disappeared. Emerson Boozer, an NFL player who played for the New York Jets lived in town and had a bar in the Station called Em Boozer’s Pub, which we used to pass by every day on the school bus. It was a forbidding-looking place and the “L-shaped bar” still holds sway in the collective mythology of Huntingtonians of a certain age. That’s gone now. I never set foot in the place.

The Valencia Tavern. Photo taken by Bill from car.

I have another song in this project that mentioned the Em Boozer’s by name. This song does not. Instead, it references empty bar stools, which to me is one of the loneliest images. Here is a place, a bar, which can be such a lively vital place, spirits high, literally and figuratively. To see an old bar empty, or have regulars no longer showing up is a desolate image to old drinkers, especially from the other side of the bar. That’s the point of view of the song.

Downtown, in the Village (as Huntington’s town center is called), kitty corner from the Dairy Barn, there is a famous old place that will seemingly never disappear, Finnegan’s. It’s a stalwart place where generations have gone, where I had one of my earliest bar drinks, and my father would share a drink with singer-songwriter Harry Chapin and other guys from the local “over the hill” basketball league.

The Dairy Barn, a Long Island Institution. Drive through for smokes, mini chocolate donuts, milk, and bread. Photo by Bill

Finnegan’s

Click the Finnegan’s link. There’s Finnegan’s and the mural on the alley side. That’s Trevor. He was a lovable troublemaker as a kid. Now he’s just lovable. He also now lives in Massachusetts. You can also hear Katy, who sang “Gimme Shelter” with us when we were 15. Also present, though typically quiet, is my best man, Danny.

I did not intend on bringing Chapin back up again. Maybe it’s just the natural force of a commercially successful artist on a kid growing up as a guitar player. His accidental death was big news down there. But we had other famous musicians in town. Richie Blackmore and Billy Joel both lived there. And while I am not exactly a huge Chapin fan (though I certainly like some songs), I guess I could identify more with him than the other guys.

As an aside, though, I have spoken with friends who say Billy Joel went out of his way to call and financially help people who lost loved ones on 9/11. Some of those are people who would not return to their cars left at Huntington Station that night.

Harry’s visage is tucked into the mural of the regulars on the alley side of Finnegan’s.

***

Sorry to be so maudlin! I swear that I have a pretty good sense of humor that is on display for most of my waking hours. I think. Music as always been the outlet for the melancholy, though. That does not necessarily excuse these often earnest and gloomy essays. But I can’t exactly accompany a song like this with some jokes or satire, could I?

As always:

I’m recording some tracks with drums this week. Next edition should be like a more rock ‘n’ roll band. This is where your kind contributions are going.

More about the overall project here: About: Long Island of the Mind Album section. You can download the file for this song here. Right click/Apple click, “save as.”

Previous songs collected here. Please pass along to others and spread the word. I have no publicist!

All songs ©Bill Janovitz

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