Memoirs of a Music Junkie By L.E. Kalikow
It had been seven years since I last attended SXSW. As one of the original attendees from 1988 to 2010, I’d seen the changes as the internet gradually wiped out the music business, and the festival diversified into film, interactive, gaming, etc. But I really wasn’t prepared for what had happened to Austin itself.
How Music Got Here
When the new millennium began with record companies suing their own customers for peer-to-peer music downloading, the graffiti was on the wall. Like the industrial revolution before, the digital age wiped out the multi-billion dollar record business we once thought recession proof and timeless.
But the music didn’t die, it simply morphed into another dimension as the infrastructure built to filter, foster, package, market and sell it disappeared. Now music exists in an unfiltered internet ocean requiring navigational tools like Spotify and Pandora. And the vestiges of past record companies, co-opted into entertainment conglomerates, now create brands instead of artists, with commercials, soundtracks, and albums produced, not for the music, but to sell the brand.
As a white teenage civil rights marcher in the 60’s, I remember when ‘Colored’ became ‘Black,’ and suddenly I was an outsider. It was proposed that if we Caucasians could call ourselves ‘White’ and take pride in our various European heritages, former Negro slaves could call themselves ‘Black’ and take pride in their African heritage. However, with that Black and White distinction, an ‘us’ and ‘them’ mentality was also implanted.
Black Nationalism
I tried to watch the VMA Award show Sunday night, assaulted by two hip-hop DJs yelling Twitter nonsense over the smoking spectacle spotlighting a series of twat twitching, cunt grabbing, sex squatting, herky-jerky robotic arm flailing, ass bumping productions, clarifying this generation’s female transformation from sex object to predator, all synced to repetitive, electronic noise and dumbed down rap slogans, and all I could think was WTF! I’m definitely now in the ‘older generation.’
Sex in Music is Nothing New
The book, “Sex, No Drugs & Rock’N’Roll (Memoirs Of A Music Junkie)” is based on the premise that our baby-boomer generation has gone through the same maturation process as the country itself. In the fifties following WWII, we ruled the world and everything was simple. As we entered our teens in the early 60’s and began to rebel so went the country. And as we became cynical in the late 60’s, assassinations, Mayor Daley, Nixon and Watergate fed our disenchantment, all reflected in our music. Then, the complacency of adulthood in the 70’s through the 90’s into creeping old age and the arterial sclerosis of today.
A major record company president once told me I’d probably never be a star because, as he put it, “You wouldn’t kill your mother for it.” Although this may have been an oversimplification, it takes a special personality to strive for and thrive in the spotlight. And fame isn’t always sought, sometimes forced, but even those who chase the limelight eventually get burned. From Monroe, Garland, Joplin, Morrison, Hendrix, Presley to Phoenix, Houston, Jackson, and Prince, the list of drug and alcohol casualties is sobering.
Loss of Self
I just finished visiting my 92 year old mother at an ‘independent living’ home in West Palm Beach, and all I could think was, I’m not doing it! I remember sitting in high school and watching the track team marathon runners circling the school grounds until they collapsed, often throwing up along the way, concluding that wasn’t a sport for me.
Life Is Like A Hockey Game
It’s hard to watch the “Glory Days” of the music I grew up with die. It’s not just the recent passing of such musical marvels as Natalie Cole, Glenn Frey, Maurice White, and David Bowie. It goes much deeper than that.
In 1971 when I brought my first major recording contract home to my attorney father, in my book “Sex, No Drugs & Rock’N’Roll: Memoirs Of A Music Junkie,” I recounted, “As my father read the recording contract, he just kept shaking his head. To him it bordered on legalized slavery. We needed a consulting opinion.” So, we visited a major entertainment lawyer at the time who, “made the distinction between legal and practical in the high-stakes music business, with one-sided contracts that reflected the risk. On the other hand, once successful, everything was renegotiable.”
Ever since the Scorsese/Jagger project was announced over a year ago, I’ve been waiting with Christmas anticipation for its opening. Having recently watched and re-watched the terrific CNN documentaries on both the 60’s and the 70’s, I now had a special interest in “Vinyl.” The Valentine’s Day pilot launch coincided directly with release of my own book living through the music business during those years in “Sex, No Drugs & Rock’N’Roll: Memoirs Of A Music Junkie.”