Acoustic Americana Music Guide, August 20 to 31 (PLUS Fall events & beyond)
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UPDATED August 20 ~ More events, more concerts, more festivals added!
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The GUIDE’s Ticket giveaways continue! Go to
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http://acousticamericana.blogspot.com/2010/08/free-tix-from-acoustic-americana-music.html
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Tied to the Tracks
ACOUSTIC AMERICANA
MUSIC GUIDE
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AUGUST 20 through 31 edition (+ events INTO THE FALL & beyond)
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NEWS FEATURES
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…in this edition:
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1) KENNY EDWARDS, R.I.P.
2) 11th ANNUAL “AMERICANA MUSIC FESTIVAL & CONFERENCE” WILL DELIVER STELLAR MUSICIANS
3) FOLK-AMERICANA MUSIC ON L.A. RADIO – ADDENDUM TO LAST WEEK’S FEATURE STORY
4) BRAD COLERICK’S “WINE & SONG” SERIES – STILL STRONG IN NEW VENUE
5) WE’D LIKE YOU TO MEET… TONY JOE WHITE
6) Editorial: WHY A SHOW BIZ CAREER CONFUSES HEROES & CELEBRITIES – AND MAKES YOU A TARGET FOR GOSSIP (Part 1)
7) THE GUIDE NEEDS YOUR HELP: “THANK-YOU” GIFTS CHANGE AUGUST 31
(We’re skipping our “We’d Like You to Meet” feature this week.)
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1) KENNY EDWARDS, R.I.P.
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This morning, the McCabe’s website published the following:
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“… we wish to say goodbye to an old friend of McCabe’s as KENNY EDWARDS peacefully left this mortal coil last night. Kenny performed at our very first official McCabe’s show in 1969 as a member of BRYNDLE (featuring Edwards, ANDREW GOLD, WENDY WALDMAN, & KARLA BONOFF), and was a member of the STONE PONEYS with LINDA RONSTADT (along with our first concert director BOBBY KIMMEL). In addition to continued work with Ms. Ronstatdt, Kenny played with just about everyone in the California rock scene, including EMMYLOU HARRIS, STEVIE NICKS, J.D. SOUTHER, DON HENLEY, BRIAN WILSON, WARREN ZEVON, VINCE GILL, JENNIFER WARNES, LOWELL GEORGE, and many, many more. He was last seen at McCabe’s in January when he played our first show of the 2010 season. He was an important part of our history and we remember Kenny and thank him for a lifetime of great music. If you would like to send well wishes to his family, or want to read more about him, please visit his website, www.kennyedwards.com.”
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Just last week, we published news that Kenny was in poor health and needed help from everyone. We at the Guide remember him fondly, and join countless fans who will miss him. We send our best wishes and condolences to his family and loved ones.
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2) 11th ANNUAL “AMERICANA MUSIC FESTIVAL & CONFERENCE” WILL DELIVER STELLAR MUSICIANS
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For four days, Wednesday through Sunday, September 8-11, Nashville will be taken-over not by the red-state-trailer park rock that it foists on us as “country music, but by the 11th annual “AMERICANA MUSIC FESTIVAL & CONFERENCE” at the Nashville Convention Center, plus various performance venues, including the famous Ryman Auditorium, and the Sheraton Nashville Downtown, 623 Union St, Nashville, TN 37219. Festival info, 615-386-6936; www.americanamusic.org.
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We are thrilled that we can bestow a humble “SHOW-OF-THE-WEEK” pick from the Guide to anything that’s happening in Nashville. But this event is about real music, and an enormous showing of it.
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Scheduled to perform are SHELBY LYNNE, THE CAROLINA CHOCOLATE DROPS, ROSEANNE CASH, ABIGAIL WASHBURN, CHERRYHOLMES, ELIZABETH COOK, STONE HONEY, 18 SOUTH, BLACK LILLIES, CADILLAC SKY, HAYES CARLL, PETER CASE, CHIP TAYLOR, TONY JOE WHITE, CHARLIE LOUVIN, RAUL MALO, CHUCK MEAD, TOMMY EMMANUEL, MARY GAUTHIER, KEVIN GORDON, RAY WYLIE HUBBARD, WANDA JACKSON, JOHN OATES, EXENE CERVENKA, CHAPMANS, SUSAN COWSILL, KEVIN GORDON, WILL KIMBROUGH, CORB LUND, PAUL BURCH & THE WPA BALL CLUB, RANDY KOHRS BAND, JON LANGFORD & SKULL ORCHARD, MICKY & THE MOTORCARS, OVER THE RHINE, DEX ROMWEBER DUO, STEELDRIVERS, SARA STORER, STONE RIVER BOYS, SWEETBACK SISTERS, PAUL THORN, TRISTEN, WILL KIMBROUGH, TODD SNIDER’S ROCK & ROLL REVUE featuring JASON D. WILLIAMS, DAN BAIRD & FRIENDS, & FRAZEY FORD. They’ll be joined by buzz-worthy up and coming acts AMERICAN AQUARIUM, DEFIBULATORS, SHANNON WHITWORTH, FRONTIER RUCKUS, CADILLAC SKY, & SARAH JAROSZ. More artists tba.
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Artists selected to perform underscore Americana’s formative place in the world’s musical landscape. The the inaugural “Best Americana Album” Grammy, presented to LEVON HELM for his “Electric Dirt” album earlier this year, shows that the genre continues to grow deeper grassroots and gain industry recognition and respect.
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This is really two events in one. The 2010 Americana Music Festival is part of the 11th annual Americana Music Festival & Conference. Each year, the Americana Music Festival & Conference brings together legendary artists and the next generation of rising stars for four days of music and education. For four nights, the Americana Music Festival features approximately 100 live performances in the intimate setting of five downtown Nashville clubs.
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The 11th Annual Americana Music Festival & Conference offers seminars, panels and networking opportunities at the Nashville Convention Center by day, proudly providing Nashville’s most educational music industry forum. Each evening, it brings musical showcases at premiere venues like the The Mercy Lounge, Cannery Ballroom, The Station Inn, The Basement, and 3rd & Lindsley. The Festival’s capstone is the annual Americana Music Association Honors & Awards at the historic Ryman Auditorium. The ceremony toasts winners in six member-voted best-of-the-year categories and bestows Lifetime Achievement Awards on several honored guests.
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The event is intended to “cover the interests and needs of artists, managers, labels, radio stations, publishers, agents, promoters, retailers, performing rights organizations, legal and business affairs executives, tour-related services, merchandisers, new media and all related allied professionals.”
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JOHN MELLENCAMP, WANDA JACKSON, LUKE LEWIS, GREG LEISZ, & BRIAN AHERN will be honored with Lifetime Achievement Awards at the critically-acclaimed Americana Honors & Awards show, presented by the Gibson Foundation.
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The 2010 Americana Lifetime Achievement Award honorees are JOHN MELLENCAMP, whose songs have influentially combined the blue collar sweat of rock and roll and the humble grit of honky tonk; WANDA JACKSON, the undisputed “Queen of Rockabilly” and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member, whose growling glamour reshaped the role of women in both rock and roll and country; LUKE LEWIS, Chairman of Universal Music Group Nashville, whose visionary commitment to the label’s Lost Highway imprint has created a home for numerous Americana greats; GREG LEISZ, the go-to lap and pedal steel, guitar, mandolin and bass virtuoso who has enriched recordings by Lucinda Williams, Emmylou Harris, Joni Mitchell, Bill Frisell, Whiskeytown, Robert Plant & Alison Krauss and more; and BRIAN AHERN, whose work as a producer includes seminal albums by Emmylou Harris, as well as output from Marty Robbins, George Jones, Anne Murray, Billy Joe Shaver, Rodney Crowell, Jesse Winchester and Ricky Skaggs.
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Mellencamp, Jackson, Lewis, Leisz, and Ahern will be honored in the Songwriting, Performance, Executive, Instrumentalist, and Producer/Engineer Lifetime Achievement categories, respectively.
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All honorees will be present to receive their awards at the 9th Annual AMA Honors and Awards Show (during the 11th Annual conference), on September 9 at the historic Ryman Auditorium in downtown Nashville. The ceremony will feature performances by RODNEY CROWELL, ROSANNE CASH, PATTY GRIFFIN, SAM BUSH, THE AVETT BROTHERS, CORB LUND, WILL KIMBROUGH, SARAH JAROSZ, and more. JIM LAUDERDALE will again serve as master of ceremonies, while BUDDY MILLER will lead the all-star house band.
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Each year, the Americana Music Association honors distinguished members of the music community with six member-voted annual awards and Lifetime Achievement Awards. Presented by the Gibson Foundation, the Honors & Awards are attended by over 2000 artists, music loving fans, and entertainment industry executives in one of America’s musical shrines, the historic Ryman Auditorium. The event has been broadcast internationally via Sirius/XM Radio, BBC2, WSM and Voice of America. The Honors & Awards have featured many amazing moments over the years, including Johnny Cash & June Carter Cash’s last live performance together, as well as show-stopping appearances by John Fogerty, Lyle Lovett, Rosanne Cash, Solomon Burke, Old Crow Medicine Show, Emmylou Harris, Rodney Crowell, the Avett Brothers, Mavis Staples, Robert Plant, Patty Griffin, Guy Clark, Levon Helm, and many more.
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The Americana Music Association is a professional trade organization whose mission is to provide a forum for the advocacy of Americana music and to promote public awareness of the genre to support the creative and economic viability of professionals in this field. Dedicated to building and promoting the Americana genre and the individuals who participate in that industry, the Americana Music Association works closely with artists, labels, radio stations, retailers, print media, festivals, agents, publishers and more to help organize and build the infrastructure necessary for the Americana genre to achieve success both creatively and financially.
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Wednesday to Saturday’s daytime conference hours are 9 am-5 pm, and the evening festival runs 8 pm-1 am nightly. Rooms at the massive host hotel are nearly sold out.
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Registered attendees have access to sanctioned events including daytime educational panels and forums, all sanctioned evening performances at local venues, and a ticket to the Americana Honors & Awards at the Historic Ryman Auditorium.
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Conference Registration goes up in price on August 20. Right now, it’s $350 for AMA members; $450 for non-members, and that includes a ticket to the critically-acclaimed Americana Honors & Awards show. Individual Americana Honors & Awards Show tix are $55, or $50 with Music Festival wristband: The nighttime festival is open to the general public. Wristbands, good for admission to all venues during the four-day event, are the best bargain in music at $50 in advance, available now.
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If you go, send us your review!
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3) FOLK-AMERICANA MUSIC ON L.A. RADIO – ADDENDUM TO LAST WEEK’S
FEATURE STORY
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In last week’s major feature, we observed, “This has got to be an ‘only-in-L.A.’ story,” and we explored, in detail, the current state of affairs with folk-Americana music on Los Angeles broadcast radio, and its mix of ironies and good-news/bad-news contradictions.
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A point we’ve offered previously, but did not repeat last week, remains key: with 14 million potential listeners, Los Angeles is, by far, the biggest radio market in the US. Yet it remains the one that offers the least diversity, by far, on the broadcast dial – anywhere in America. Even small markets, including Kansas City, Omaha, Oshkosh, and Sheboygan, offer greater diversity, as does the rather sparsely-populated California Central Coast.
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How is it, that with L.A.’s vast population and the most diverse assortment of audiences in America, local broadcast radio is devoid of anything approaching rich diversity?
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Last week, we explored some of that. Back in October, 2008, we looked into that part of the question (web link below).
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For now, things are what they are, and none of us can afford to regard anything (as little as it is, in terms of weekly L.A. broadcast hours of folk-Americana music) as something that’s safe. It isn’t.
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KPFK’S LATEST PLEDGE DRIVE (they do seem to be endless these days) IS THIS WEEKEND. That station’s sole surviving pair of folk-Americana music shows must do well, yet again, in the station’s fund-drive, or they may be gone. Those shows are MARY KATHERINE ALDIN’S “ALIVE & PICKING,” Saturdays from 6-8 am, and ROZ LARMAN’S “FOLKSCENE,” Sundays from 6-8 pm, both on KPFK 90.7 FM in Los Angeles, simulcast at 98.7 FM in Santa Barbara and on the web, where you can learn more, at www.kpfk.org
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After this gauntlet of support-it-or-else, comes KCSN’s pledge drive, due in a few weeks. The Guide will attempt to get a statement from that station’s management regarding its stated lack of commitment to its only remaining hosted (non-automated) programming – that being its weekend folk-Americana lineup of shows that begin at 11 am on Saturdays. KCSN broadcasts at 88.5 FM in the parts of L.A. where it can be heard – chiefly, the San Fernando Valley, spotty on the West Side and downtown, absolutely unavailable in Pasadena, the San Gabriel Valley, or anywhere to the well-populated east. Their schedule is at www.kcsn.org.
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We’ll keep you posted, whether or not we can get a statement from KCSN regarding their ongoing format changes, and whether – regardless of what happens in their pledge drive – they will keep or dump the folk-Americana shows that just won the little station “Best of L.A.” honors, for the second time, in Los Angeles Magazine.
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Other’n that, to hear any folk-Americana music on broadcast radio, you need to live where you can hear the broadcast signal of KCLU from Thousand Oaks, 88.3 FM in the West SFV & Ventura County / 102.3 FM & 1340 AM in Santa Barbara; web simulcast at www.kclu.org. Or, in south Orange County, you can hear folk-Americana programming on KUCI, 88.9 FM from Irvine, simulcast at www.kuci.org. Beyond the two L.A.-based outposts with their sparse offerings, and the college stations to the northwest and south, you can’t hear folk-Americana music in your car, ‘round these parts – unless you have XM/Sirius satellite radio. Of course, there are rich offerings, 24/7, on the internet.
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For more background on all this, and on what is-and-isn’t on L.A. radio, way back in 2008, the Guide examined the state of affairs at that time with KCSN, KCRW, KPFK and other outlets. It’s in a News Feature titled, “L.A. RADIO: LACK OF DIVERSITY = LOST BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES,” that ran October 17, 2008. We’ve given it a fresh link that takes you to it and nothing else. It’s available at
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http://acousticamericana.blogspot.com/2010/08/background-on-folk-americana-on-la.html
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As always, the Guide’s daily “Radio & TV” listings links will help you find many options for folk-Americana music radio, mostly on the web – because it’s music that’s richly abundant elsewhere, but damn-near-extinct in L.A.
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4) BRAD COLERICK’S “WINE & SONG” SERIES – STILL STRONG IN NEW VENUE
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BRAD COLERICK, whose originals have been all over TV for 20 years – including one sung by the late JOHNNY CASH – has brought a strong weekly music presence to South Pasadena over the past ten months. His Thursday evening events have always included talented guest artists, including some with rather big names. That much happily stays the same, but a change arrived for this week’s show, on August 19.
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Brad told us in advance of the August 19 show, “Thanks to all of you who were at the ‘Wine & Song’ show last Wednesday – our final show at WineStyles. A bittersweet evening with the closing of WineStyles, but what a great 50th birthday party for me. Looking forward to our maiden voyage at Firefly Bistro, August 19 at 7 pm. Come check out the new space and great menu! TRACY NEWMAN and ERNEST TROOST are our featured guests this week.” (We told you he has great guests.)
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Unfortunately, even the weekly crowd for the music each week (usually at or near capacity) wasn’t enough to keep Winestyles South Pas location in business. Happily, though, there are no cancelled weeks. The new venue for the series is Firefly Bistro, 1009 El Centro St, South Pasadena; 626-441-2443; venue website is www.eatatfirefly.com.
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More on the series, its upcoming guests, and its host at www.wineandsong.com and www.bradcolerick.com
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5) WE’D LIKE YOU TO MEET… TONY JOE WHITE
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Over the past five decades, TONY JOE WHITE, aka “The Swamp Fox,” has earned some major hits of his own, and seen some of music’s top artists turn his compositions into signature songs. That includes ELVIS PRESLEY’s version of Tony’s “Polk Salad Annie” to RAY CHARLES’ take on Tony’s “Rainy Night In Georgia.” Tony Joe has written for TINA TURNER, JOE COCKER, KENNY CHESNEY, HANK WILLIAMS JR., DUSTY SPRINGFIELD, and others. He’s an iconic Southern songwriter and deserves a title that’s too easily applied to others – he’s a true songwriter’s songwriter.
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TONY JOE WHITE will perform at the “AMERICANA MUSIC FESTIVAL” in September, with a showcase on September 11 at Nashville’s Mercy Lounge.
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It’s perfect timing for Tony to preview tracks from what’s being called his “raw new record,” titled, “The Shine,” due for release September 28 on Swamp Records. He’ll perform his new songs along with some of the classic hits he’s written – songs he’s recorded, and his songs that have become hits when recorded by so many others.
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“The Shine” is a stripped-down collection of ten new songs he’s written. They’re songs that, says the album’s advance promo, “beautifully lay bare his rich, nuanced baritone, and distinctive brand of swampy southern soul.”
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Each year, the Americana Music Festival & Conference brings together legendary artists and the next generation of rising stars for four days of music and education. For four nights, the Americana Music Festival features approximately 100 live performances in the intimate setting of five downtown Nashville clubs. (See the Guide’s feature story on the event.)
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There’s plenty more on Tony Joe and his remarkably successful career at www.tonyjoewhite.com
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6) Editorial: WHY A SHOW BIZ CAREER CONFUSES HEROES & CELEBRITIES – AND MAKES YOU A TARGET FOR GOSSIP
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Part One
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This is something we’ve wanted to write for a very long time. In one sense, it’s an indictment of a media that is too easily manipulated. In another, of society. And in some cases, it’s an indictment of crafty and calculated manipulation, both by entertainers and their publicists, whose goal is simply to stay in the news cycle.
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Note we chose the terms “entertainer” and “celebrity” here, and are careful to distinguish those from use of the word, “artist.” The reason for all that, and for noting it at the outset, should be obvious as we continue.
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Let’s begin with the question, “Why can’t our society tell the difference between heroes and celebrities?”
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Perhaps it’s because we live in an age that is determined to be devoid of heroes. Oh sure, we occasionally get an airline pilot who successfully crash-lands his plane in the Hudson, and saves his passengers, in defiance of nearly every crash statistic. But the things that once gave us our heroes do not seem to be with us today. The old staple of the war hero is gone, given the controversy and unpopularity of the nation’s current and recent military escapades. Instead of the historical role of war – as what happens when politics and diplomacy fail – war is now primarily political. And anything political seems onerous enough for automatic disqualification as a place to make or sustain heroes.
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We’ll bet, if Sully Sullenburger were to endorse a candidate for office, he would be so vilified by that candidate’s opponent – and a phalanx of moneyed interests with fringe agendas – that his moment as a hero would be trashed. We seem bent on finding too many flaws to allow anyone to be a Charles Lindberg or a Jacques Cousteau or an Albert Schweitzer or a Jonas Salk or a Carl Sagan or an Albert Einstein.
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Instead, we get not a hero, but a celebrity-du-jour, a Michael Slater, the Jet Blue flight attendant. After being bonked by a rude woman’s suitcase that she was pulling from the luggage bin before she should have been out of her seat, and cussing-out Slater with a blue streak when he told her to sit down, he, Slater, lost it. He returned her profane invectives over the plane cabin’s PA, grabbed a couple bottles of beer and his own carry-on, pulled the emergency slide, and left the plane and his employment.
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Slater slid into instant “folk hero” status, as bestowed by most of the media. Folk hero? The cover of the New York Daily News went farthest, with a giant headline quoting Slater’s mother, “My Son, The Hero.” Hero? For losing his required-for-the-job professional demeanor, and his temper? Are you kidding? Would you want that guy as your flight attendant if you were aboard Sully Sullenburger’s plane, about to crash-land in the Hudson River?
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Our times have bestowed odd ideas about heroes – especially the transitory celebrities who are simply in the midst of their fifteen minutes of fame – and the images are actively fertilized by the media.
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And somebody needs to explain the celebrity of Levi Johnston, the teenager whose only claim to fame was knocking-up the Alaska half-term governor’s daughter – and how and why he is now up for his own reality TV show, which is why he is running for mayor of Wasilla, Alaska. If he gets that show, it’ll probably be called the Wasilla Hillbillies, and he’ll be back in the fold (again) of the media-addicted Palin clan with their brood of offspring named for hydraulic transmission parts.
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Is our society so deprived of dreams of great achievement and visions and aspirations for going, as the late Gene Roddenberry put it, “where no one has gone before?”
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That brings us to our second question: “Have we have lowered the bar to induct idiots who behave irresponsibly and anoint them as celebrities?”
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Absolutely, since that’s the only explanation for Paris Hilton and the Kardashians and the Palins and the fill-in-the-blank badly-behaving pop tart du jour. Beyond that, the question may not be, “Have we lowered the bar?” It should perhaps be, “Can we tell the difference, and do we care?”
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Have you ever seen that little red logo, “As seen on TV!” -? It’s used because it’s effective, whether or not the product works. The same is true for celebrities seen on TV.
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So, question three: “Haven’t show-biz people always been pop culture ‘Heroes’?”
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Time was, respected artists weren’t even in the running for hero status. Sure, there were a few anomalies with larger-than life myths, like John Wayne, and that B-movie “war hero” who never went to war, but who played the biggest role of his career as President of the United States, Ronald Reagan. (“Bedtime for Bonzo” notwithstanding.) But they were the exceptions. Errol Flynn played heroic characters. Jimmy Stewart, who really was a WWII hero, was content with being known as a good actor, and among his friends as a part-time comedic poet. Neither thought himself a hero based on the roles he played as an actor. Nor did Sir Laurence Olivier or Dame Judith Anderson, or Katherine Hepburn, or Maureen O’Hara. Nor George C. Scott, who refused the Oscar he won for playing a mythically-interpreted Patton (more on that later).
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During Hollywood’s Golden Age, it wasn’t just the control exerted by the Hollywood “Studio System” with its near prohibition of news of the personal lives of its stars. Even the gossip columnists, like Hedda Hopper, had limits.
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Musicians were never in the running for hero status. Not Louis Armstong or Leonard Bernstein or Aaron Copland or George Gershwin or Frank Sinatra or Dean Martin or Bessie Smith or Lena Horne or Harry Belafonte or Lerner and Lowe.
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Not even Woody Guthrie, who wrote what many of us think should be the National Anthem, “This Land is Your Land.”
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Not even Marion Anderson, who, because of her race, was infamously banned from singing in Constitution Hall by the Daughters of the American Revolution in the 1930s, bringing Eleanor Roosevelt to famously invite her to sing the National Anthem on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. The same place where Martin Luther King would define the Civil Rights struggle. (And the same place Glen Beck now wants to desecrate with a rally of his nutbag of followers to “explain” everything to them, probably in terms of chalkboard Nazis and check-under-your-bed communists.)
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Yes, media is rife with odd ideas about what constitutes celebrity, and actively fertilizes the transitory celebrities it creates.
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Whether in iconic and monumental venues, or on silver screens, or on stages with footlight candles or microphones, some measure of celebrity had always attached itself to performing artists, and sometimes to things that they did off stage. But it was measured and contextual. And, Fatty Arbuckle notwithstanding, it was usually interesting only if they did something commendable – not condemnable.
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Until recently, people in show biz went to great lengths to avoid being identified with anything lurid or shocking or even controversial. As far back as the 16th century, Shakespeare and his contemporary Ben Johnson lived with it, but their celebrity was never enough to allow either to write a play that would have criticized or ridiculed the reigning monarch, Elizabeth I, or her Royal Family.
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Well, then, question four: “Is it all based on fulfilling the expectations of the time?”
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The desire of artists to avoid condemnation became something that the dark forces learned to manipulate. That’s lasted into recent times. The era of unfounded allegations by the House Un-American Activities Committee and of Senator “Machine Gun” Joe McCarthy made the ‘50s a fearful time for people in show biz. Some, like Pete Seeger, and the screenwriter father of folk “singer-songfighter” Ross Altman, had their careers ruined by being “blacklisted” – simply because they stood-up for their Constitutional rights. Others, like folksinger Burl Ives, cooperated with the witch-hunt investigations, and enjoyed uninterrupted careers.
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If it was fear that constrained artists, it cannot be ignored that fear likewise set limits on what passed as “the media” and journalism through much of history. It took centuries before age-old limitations were, at last, no longer accepted without question. The great manifestation of awareness of it brought a paradigm shift – so much so, that America’s founding fathers quickly added the First Amendment to the Constitution, guaranteeing Freedom of the Press.
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It was a revolution of openness over propaganda, of a new ability to pursue meaningful things wherever the pursuit led, of an ability to reject the silly and distracting because it was in the interests of the powerful to deceive with distraction. It was an unprecedented era, one that remains ours to protect today. It brought the press a vital role as the “Fourth Estate” – the check and balance on the three official branches of government, and over time, it reflected the voice of the downtrodden, and the check on the powers and powerful in society. (When was the last time you saw the media in those terms? Perhaps a fleeting thought for the final episode of “Bill Moyers’ Journal”-?)
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In return for its unbridled and Constitutionally-protected status, the press did (if inconsistently) practice a sense of responsibility for accuracy, for checking sources and prioritizing what was important, filtering-out rumor and innuendo – especially gossip of bad personal behavior – as unworthy of the stature of news. Did it matter that Roosevelt had a liason with a paramour? Moreover, that he was in a wheelchair, though it was NEVER mentioned in the press? Or was Monica Lewinsky’s blue dress more important?
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Yet, the media’s Constitutionally-protected “ability to reject the silly and distracting” even when “it was in the interests of the powerful to deceive with distraction,” has today been abandoned by the media itself. Too often, it is the media’s choice that bring us the silly and distracting, and leaves us to wonder whether deliberate distraction comes at the behest of the powerful.
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When TV news began, it had Edward R. Murrow to sort-out the difference between sacred cows and what had meaning and needed to be known. It took Murrow to help topple the tyranny of Joe McCarthy, and to reveal the scandalous serf system of California agriculture, and to draw a distinction that excluded dumb crap and historically inconsequential allegations of who-may-have-been-sleeping-with-whom at the time. When TV first began, it was a new medium of media that still had to define itself. Murrow and his colleagues had to fight to get more than 15 minutes of national news each night.
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It’s important to remember that those TV pioneers were poised to be the new media’s first celebrities, and arguably, the medium’s first “heroes.” Yet they chose to pursue the meaningful over celebrity – their own or that of others – and they approached their roles with solemnity and thoughtfulness. TV in those days had no place for “Inside Edition” or “Entertainment Tonight” or any other parade of scandalous allegations and front-and-center feature stories on celebrities behaving badly. Tripe TV had yet to appear.
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Murrow and his colleagues took time to examine what they, and the media, and their medium, might do, and to ask themselves if they should do it, and to consider, and to contemplate, and to reflect.
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In contrast, today’s 24-hour TV “news cycle” seems like an exercise cycle – spinning furiously without getting anywhere, other than to spice things up with commentary, and all too often, with salacious and titillating tales of the latest pop tart that’s in court or rehab. And they seem to do it in at least equal measures with whether we are accomplishing anything in Afghanistan. “Delaying” anything now risks accusations of equivocation, of “what-are-you-trying-to-hide,” and not plaudits for thoughtful and thorough presentation and perspective.
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We owe a debt to Murrow, who chose meaningful effectiveness over celebrity, who knew the difference between covering heroes and celebrities, and who had no thought of wasting the nation’s attention on anyone who merely wanted to be an insubstantial celebrity. Though, clearly, Murrow’s legacy seems more than endangered in our time.
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If TV’s early days set some good models, question five is, “When did scandal become desirable fodder for attaining celebrityhood?”
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Dangle a baby off a balcony in front of the cameras. Get drunk and abusive at a Hollywood nightclub. Wreck or abandon an expensive car on PCH or New York’s Westside Expressway. Ditch rehab. If you’re a celebrity, all those are formulae for getting media attention. Publicists know it. They count on it. They’re paid to keep their clients in the news cycle. There is no shortage of suspicions that some publicists advise their celebrity clients WHEN to behave badly, based on their “need” to get back in the news cycle, and back on the cover of the supermarket tabloids, and back on the TV talk shows so Jay Leno can ask, “What the hell were you thinking?”
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It seems almost impossible to reckon today, but we are accepting, as normal, something that is quite new. And we’ve had warnings. In the early ‘70s, the Eagles sang “Dirty Laundry,” that the “bubble-headed bleach blonde does the evening news” about nothing but scandal, innuendo, and celebrities’ dirty laundry.
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Nineteenth century actor Edwin Booth was a celebrity because he was a renowned actor, not because his zealot brother had murdered President Lincoln. One of Booth’s leading contemporaries, English actress Lily Langtree, was hugely popular when she toured the American stage, especially in the West, because she was a renowned actress. An obsessed fan who was allowed to bother her, like Judge Roy Bean on the Texas frontier, was an exception. Celebrities had their privacy when they wanted it.
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Newspapers celebrated Booth and Langtry and opera star Enrico Caruso for their talent and their performances. They were not held in the same esteem as heroes, though they enjoyed a benefit akin to it – no one would have accepted media intrusions in their private lives. Indeed, history offers examples of newspaper offices being wrecked or burned by mobs if inked criticism found the accepted heroes of the time wanting.
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Question six is a follow-up: “What the hell happened, and how did we get here?”
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Perhaps, as some social historians suggest, America lost its innocence with the assassination of President Kennedy and with what followed. The American consciousness changed. The Warren Commission Report determined that a lone gunman – an inconsequential loser – had changed history, on his own, and the Vietnam War became a protracted and pointless agony as a result. A dead hero. A bum of no consequence identified as the murderer and then himself murdered, on live TV. And history changed shockingly, though we will never know how extensively.
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A presidency followed that made civil rights happen, though the good work was drowned in the blood of a Vietnam War that may not have happened had Kennedy lived. After Johnson, another presidential administration had promised to end the war in Vietnam, but instead expanded wars throughout Southeast Asia; spied on its own citizens; committed clandestine burglaries; planted electronic bugs; created an “enemies list” of other Americans; disseminated disinformation; then went as far as it could to cover it up.
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Perhaps that was when we became unwilling to allow ourselves to find noble heroes. Is it coincidence that playing “Dungeons and Dragons,” reading “Lord of the Rings,” and other escapes into fantasy characterized the youth culture of the time?
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Time for question seven: “Does art imitate – and reflect – life, or does life imitate art – or, too often, merely seek escape from reality?”
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Popular culture tried to ignore Vietnam while that war was raging. The biggest film was “The Graduate,” in which Dustin Hoffman contemplated not The Draft, but a career in plastics.
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Is it any surprise that popular entertainment of the time came to require fatalism? The biggest movies of that age were “Easy Rider” and “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” wherein the final scenes brought the bloody death of the main characters in a hail of bullets. Yet it was “Patton” that most famously won the top Oscars, its popularity partly a response of a nation who wanted victorious winners in an age of stalemate and despair. All in the wake of the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, and the growing awareness – but not acceptance – that Vietnam was not winnable.
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After Vietnam was lost and seen as a complete and tragic waste, we got “The Deer Hunter,” with its symbolic Russian-roulette suicide. And we got silly, unsubstantial, disco music, as the nation sought escape from conflict and loss and from “the horror” that was resurrected and condensed in the surrealistic “Apocalypse Now.”
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Along the way, there was chance at finding heroes – in a moment that ranks among the monumental achievements of human history.
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We went to the moon. The 12 astronauts who briefly walked and worked at science on a new world enjoyed, at best, some measure of celebrity, as did the three aboard Apollo 13 who didn’t quite get there. Neil Armstong, first man on the moon, shied away from celebrity. Buzz Aldrin, second to walk on the moon, tried too hard to court it. NASA proved inept at managing any of it, and we were left with no icons of exploration to add to the pantheon alongside Leif Erickson and Marco Polo and Christopher Columbus and Ferdinand Magellan and Henrik Hudson and Lewis & Clark. The lunar astronauts proved utterly unmarketable in their time, far less than Arctic and Antarctic explorer-hero Admiral Byrd had been to his.
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Perhaps that was because they didn’t behave like celebrities, but like the professional test pilots they were. Even Tom Wolfe’s efforts – overemphasized by Hollywood’s version of his book, “The Right Stuff,” provided insufficient grain for a celebrity grist mill.
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Thus, as the twentieth century waned, we were left with no heroes, and no apparent mechanisms to make any. In an historical anomaly, perhaps the closest we came was Sam Ervin, the U.S. Senator from North Carolina, and the other members of the Watergate Committee who caught-up with, and revealed, the abuses of the Nixon Administration. Young reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein fueled it, and inspired a new generation of journalists ready to reveal and uncover everyone’s real motives – for better or worse. Still, we had no enduring heroes – only admiration or contempt for a few people who had toppled the false gods.
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Then came the assassination of John Lennon in December, 1980. In death, he was lionized, and America forgot about his often goofy public behavior, his repeated drug arrests, and how annoying it had (always) been that he had (long) insisted on subjecting the world to the excruciatingly high-pitched vocal wails and weird Japanese-fusion music of wife Yoko Ono. (If you feel your bile rising, maybe we still cherish our heroes.)
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More than the previous generation’s fast-car-dead actor James Dean or plane-crash-dead musician Buddy Holly, or the previous decade’s drug-overdose-dead musicians Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and Jim Morrison, the gunned-down John Lennon – of the now certain-to-never-be-reunited Beatles – was elevated to hero status. Maybe it was inevitable, given that the Beatles had brought America its first joy after its young president was murdered.
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It was after Lennon’s death that America, through a very accommodating media, began, in droves, to elevate show biz celebrities to hero status.
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When John Denver, champion of the environment and the wild creatures in it, was killed in a plane crash, he had insufficient cred as a celebrity.
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When Michael Jackson died, media attention was akin to the death of a president. Jackson had spent too many years as the subject of the tabloids for the media to fail to capitalize every way they could.
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It didn’t help that network news divisions had long since stopped being respected entities that, in times past, had been provided by corporate America out of a sense of good citizenship. The media had become obsessed with ratings and the dominant primacy of advertising revenues that were boosted with higher ratings numbers. Morning news shows had been quietly transferred to the networks’ entertainment divisions. In no time, bad corporate citizens had become sponsors of news programs, protecting themselves from investigative pieces about their reckless or abusive behavior. Wal Mart sponsors just about any serious news or public affairs show that isn’t sponsored by Big Oil or Big Food. The esteem of the media as the “Fourth Estate” – that which would serve as a check on everything else – eroded as never before.
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Worst of all, nearly six decades after the Army-McCarthy Hearings, nearly four decades after Watergate, the erosion continues. The 24/7 news cycle has supposedly “broadened” but, instead, seems fixated on embracing a motley assortment of dimwits and tragically flawed (often darkly / comically flawed) characters and despicable publicity seekers, including many who seem to be famous for nothing more than being famous.
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How else do you explain Paris Hilton, and those reprehensible (but “successful”) conniving liars from “Survivor,” and the never-took-a-music-lesson wannabe pop stars from “American Idol,” or any of the so-called “reality” shows wherein the most ruthless backstabbers win the big money prizes?
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“American Idol” is particularly galling to musicians. We’ve often called it “Americana Karaoke,” since it’s devoid of any singer-songwriters singing their originals, and is instead a vehicle for Big Music to squeeze a few more bucks from yet another release of some sh-thump-thud piece of pop tripe – wherein the contestants are challenged to see if they can replicate the incongruous vocal gymnastics that seem de rigeur to sh-thump-thud pop tart success.
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Meanwhile, it’s representative of one key answer to the whole question of why celebrities are made by the entertainment industry: it’s all about money. Not art, not talent, not a willingness to work at a craft to become a bona fide artist and practitioner of their craft.
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Too often, it’s simply about making somebody a celebrity, because Big Music can, and because they can make money doing it, and because the industry that has grown and proliferated around celebrities can make money from it – from paparazzi to publicists to tabloids to talk shows to so-called news media.
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In today’s media world, being a celebrity isn’t much different than being a hero. Media manipulators know how to erase the distinction, and society doesn’t seem to care, anyway.
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NEXT WEEK:
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We’ll continue, and tackle the central question, “Why should choosing a career in ‘show business’ give others a license to report on your private life and make allegations and speculations about your private behavior, whether true or untrue?”
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7) THE GUIDE NEEDS YOUR HELP: “THANK-YOU” GIFTS CHANGE AUGUST 31
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We hope you find this valuable, both are weekly News Features and our extensive event write-ups and reviews. Whether you’re here for the first time or a regular reader of the Guide, welcome.
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The Guide needs your support. Really and truly. Many people read it regularly, and have never helped to sustain it. If that’s you, we especially need your support, together with support from the artists whose gigs always appear in our listings. Doing this requires a TON of time. We’ve made our case to you (and there’s more below). Our mailing address is here:
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Tied to the Tracks
2424 Greenfield Av
Arcadia CA 91006
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We need your financial support – at a modest level – support from you, our readers and the musicians whose gigs appear in the Guide.
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Send us a check for $25, in return for THREE CDs of your choice, or for our professionally-produced live concert DVD and one CD of your choice (while they last, so act quickly!) And all that is about to change – see the next News Feature.
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BEFORE AUGUST 31 – please let us hear from you! We have extended the deadline from August 10, when it was scheduled to end, for your choice of three CDs from our catalogue, or our live concert DVD and one CD of your choice. Our “Thank-You” offer of DVDs / CDs in return for your support will CHANGE after August 31. We will offer ONLY the live concert DVD, plus one CD of your choice, WHILE THE CDs LAST.
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Please write your check for $25, made-out to “Tied to the Tracks,” and mail it TODAY.
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Then email us with a subject of “Guide thank you” and tell us whether you want 3 CDs of your choice, or the live concert DVD plus 1 CD of your choice. The catalogue of our extensive offerings is at http://acousticamericana.blogspot.com/2010/03/support-guide-and-get-some-great-dvds.html. Much of what’s listed there has already been claimed by other supporters, so list your second choices. (That’s why we must soon discontinue offering CDs.) We’ll email you back, and let you know. Please remember to title your email “Guide thank you.”
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We hope you’ll recognize that the Guide is unique: we aren’t just a calendar that lists events with names of artists you may not know. We tell you about those artists. Other sources offer only simple, “bare bones” notices of many of the events that are DETAILED in the Guide. Those other sources give you SOME of the “who, where, and when.” We give you that as the “starting point” – and then we give you MUCH more – and we bring you information on MORE events that the others list. MOST EVERYTHING IN THE GUIDE IS A VERITABLE FEATURE STORY ON EACH OF THE EVENTS. Along with letting you know “who, where, and when” the Guide gives you the all-important “WHAT” – what kind of music, what awards the artist or band has won, what the music media is saying about them, and often with useful info on the venue where they’re performing, and more.
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We hope you find that all of this is just so amazingly valuable that you’re willing to help us continue to do it, AND to move it all to a full-feature website with pictures, song clips, performance videos, and more! (Yes, we have that opportunity RIGHT NOW, if we can afford to take-on the responsibility to do it!)
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Our situation is ’purt near like your favorite NPR station: they depend, for most of their needs, on their individual supporters. We must depend on you, our readers, and the musicians whose gigs are listed in our pages. (We are simultaneously seeking commercial sponsors to assure that we can continue to publish and move the Guide to essentially “take-over” at www.acousticmusic.net, where the Guide is currently linked. There, we have been offered the opportunity to re-invent that site around the Guide, as a full-feature website with current reviews, photographs, music videos, and much more. But there’s no guarantee that we can get sufficient commercial sponsors to raise enough revenue to allow us to do that. We’re giving it a good go. Either way, just like a public radio or PBS station, we need financial support from YOU, our readers, and from the musicians whose gigs we list! Please help, so we can keep devoting the many hours required each week to do this!
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The Guide needs your support to continue to bring you NEWS, and CONCERT & EVENT LISTINGS, and to offer you FREE TICKETS through the summer and beyond, and we can only do that if we are still here. Some of you have responded with a check for $25, in return for THREE CDs of your choice, or for our professionally-produced live concert DVD + one CD of your choice. We are grateful to those readers and artists. (If you haven’t yet received your CDs or DVD/CD in the mail, please be patient, they’re coming.)
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Please sustain our ability to get free tickets and goodies for you, and for the Guide to be able to continue bringing you all the news and dozens and dozens of feature stories each edition, detailing live acoustic music events, festivals, workshops, and more. And thanks again to those who have contributed to continue making the Guide possible!
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THE LATEST FULL EDITION of the Acoustic Americana Music Guide is always available at
www.acousticmusic.net or at
www.acousticamericana.blogspot.com or by links from the News-only edition at www.nodepression.com/profile/TiedtotheTracks
or by following any of MANY links on the web to get to one of those sites.
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Entire contents copyright (c) © 2010, Larry Wines. All rights reserved.
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