NASHVILLE

I’ve just returned from spending some time in Nashville, and I liked it a lot. The city is pristine and pleasant, and as I often say, returning to New York City is an embarrassment in these categories. What is perhaps most striking about Nashville is how new so many things are, the way Long Island or California was in the 1950s and 1960s.

The the downtown area on Broadway was really jumping with live entertainment and mostly young people jamming the bars and restaurants. That may be why we had a curious experience at the upscale “upstairs” of one of them, when a waiter asked us for identification. I haven’t been asked for proof since I was a teenager and the drinking age was still 18 in New York, but anyway we incredulously handed it over. He studied it with more scrutiny than a TSA agent, and when I asked what that was about he explained that  they’ve been getting harassed or busted for underage customers so they decided to ask everyone without exception for I.D. That was pretty lame and makes about as much sense as everyone having to take off their shoes when boarding a flight, and the food wasn’t that good either. 

We went to the Grand Ole Opry twice; once at the old Ryman auditorium and again at the “new” Opry (which is forty years old) and thoroughly enjoyed it. Contemporary country singers tend to all sound the same to me so I was pleased to hear some older stuff as well as bluegrass and cowboy singers. However, if you lack  much meat on your behind, as I do, you will find sitting in the Ryman auditorium sheer torture, since the seating consists of extended hard wooden pews. At the new Opry at least the seats are padded. The excellent, varied, and relatively inexpensive  programs make up for any inconvenience. 

For a change of pace we also went to a concert by the Nashville Symphony at the Schermerhorn concert hall, which is a very impressive facility with fine acoustics. It is reminiscent of the kind of design you see in concert halls across Europe, but with more modern details. The Mozart program they played sounded as good as anything I’ve ever heard in New York. The downtown contains some architecturally interesting skyscrapers that don’t have the cookie cutter steel and glass look of so many other cities. The reproduction of the Athens Parthenon in centennial park is very impressive, and if you haven’t been there since the statue of Athena was added, filling the space from floor to ceiling, it will blow you away. There are also many interesting places in the vicinity of the city, such as plantations, gardens, the Hermitage, etc. that are well-preserved reminders of the past. 

This is a place with a vibrant pulse and the “music city” name is very appropriate, although there is a lot more to it than that. The musical base is very broad. If you doubt that just watch an episode of the television show Nashville just for the music. It seems to be a very livable city. This is the kind of place that, along with vast sections of the country, people on the coasts are just oblivious to, or view with  a misplaced contempt. That is essentially a kind of reverse-prejudice against  a largely Anglo-American culture that is far more pronounced than anything emanating back. As much as I like the “diversity” (to use a purloined phrase) back home in New York, I also appreciate places where things are just basically American. It is well worth a trip for the entertainment venues alone and I look forward to returning on business as well. 

REMEMBERING PAUL AND DONNA

It was during a summer more than three decades ago while I was staying with my friend Paul Jabara in Hollywood that I met Donna Summer. Being young and foolish and having made the rounds with starlets, I thought I was a Casanova at the time with irresistible charms, so I propositioned her. She, being a good Christian woman, just smiled and said “Honey, I don’t have the time,” and from then on,I'm embarrassed to say, I was labeled as the lover boy. At that point Paul’s song “Enough is Enough” with Donna and Barbra Streisand was in production and subsequently became a huge hit. Paul was the only one in the world who could have pulled that off, for reasons that will become clear. But first I want to say something about Donna. 

Donna Summer was a stunningly brilliant singer with an astonishing range in octaves and she was very much a part of the whole creative process in her recordings. I believe her collaborations with the German composer Giorgio Moroder are some of the greatest recordings of any kind ever made and all hold up today. I don’t think “I Feel Love” has ever been absent from the dance floor since its inception and you will still probably hear it in any club you walk into. Their work really reached its creative pinnacle with the double album Once Upon A Time, which is still available, like many of her other records. She was the lead singer of what was basically the last creative new wave in popular music. I don’t think there has really been anything at all original since disco (not counting rap, which is more a sort of poetry than music to me) and everything since has basically been recycled. It was on the crest of that last wave that Paul really came into his own.

Paul Jabara had boundless energy and drive and his incredible persistence enabled him to realize whatever ambition he fancied. He was unstoppable.  Indeed hIs mother once told me that Gore Vidal (Paul really got around in his short life) said that no one but Hitler had more ambition than Paul Jabara- or maybe it was the other way around- and that was before he had even really hit it big. He was always like that. During my teenage years, apart from my best friend Geoffrey, no one was closer to me than Paul and we shared countless experiences growing up in Brooklyn. Back then I was kind of gawky, serious, naive, and hopelessly romantic, constantly falling in love from age 13 on, and he was like a squire for me, intervening in one fumbled passionate infatuation after another, while I in turn protected him from getting beat up. I realize now that despite his seemingly childlike innocence at the time, he was shrewd, more mature and knew me better than I knew myself. It was in his basement that I first seriously made out with a girl, and he used to record everything on an old Hitachi tape recorder, including a lot of embarrassing confessionals from me that he surprisingly still had many years later.

He was always obsessed with show business, and had more nerve than anyone I have ever known, being devoid of anything in the way of shame or inhibitions.  He managed to easily work his way backstage to most of the shows on Broadway and make friends with the cast, and later when I started driving at 17 we had a hell of a time in all the hottest nightspots of the era thanks to Paul’s incredible ability not only to get past any barrier but to connect with the biggest stars. He was totally unfazed by celebrities, perhaps because he knew he was going to become one. Back then his focus was on the stage, and curiously there was absolutely no indication that he would become a successful songwriter. While he coached me to improve my style and appearance, I actually gave him piano lessons and tried to teach him to read music, which he never did learn, yet he was still able to produce one hit after another. 

Years later in Hollywood I treated him at various places because, incredible as it seems, despite having an Oscar and a string of hits, he was short of cash and wasn’t making any more money than me at the time, which just shows you how corrupt show business is. But at that point it was also true that he didn’t have to pay at some places. He was at the pinnacle, able to recite an impressive list of stars he wouldn’t take calls from (that being an indication of high status in the weird world of Hollywood), but somehow the financial rewards were eluding him, although royalties eventually did kick in. He was always restless and couldn’t sit still. In a restaurant he would bounce around from one table of show biz types to another, exactly the way he used to when we were kids hanging out in a Bay Ridge ice cream parlor. He was unstoppable, and when he wanted something, resistance was futile. He once locked Donna Summer in a bathroom and refused to let her out until she agreed to sing his song, never able to take no for an answer. That turned out to be fortuitous for both of them, and the rest is history. And so although they are gone their anthems will go on and on. 

WHAT HAPPENED TO MUSIC?

I recently had occasion to listen to the latest album from “Jay-z.” I listened to the whole thing although it was sheer torture. I was searching for the slightest bit of musical content, which eluded me, since the entire album consisted of boring raps over the same constant beats. There’s a tiny portion of music in the background either sung by a girl or chorus, and to my mind they’re the ones who should get the credit, not the dude that is simply talking over it. This is not music. It may be poetry, but bad poetry. What is incomprehensible is how anyone can occupy their time listening to this stuff and others in the genre that all sound the same, but every time I go on a subway there is a large number of young people with annoying loud headphones bobbing to this junk. I presume the lyrics must be of some import, although through most of pop music history lyrics were often jumbled and incomprehensible. The music was what mattered. Now it isn’t even there, or sampled and electronically re-processed sound.

The sad thing is that this crap has been around an awfully long time. There hasn’t been much originality since the 1980s. Change and creativity used to be far more rapid before then. It is tragically ironic that we live in an era when musical reproduction and fidelity has reached new heights of pristine quality, but there isn’t much worth listening to that isn’t more than a few years old. This is not to say there is not anything good or new out there; there is actually a lot going on in different genres but they don’t get the air play or promotion.

No wonder CD sales are down. It isn’t just Internet downloading. There just isn’t that much worth buying or listening to out there. How ironic that we have the best technology ever for reproducing music and just about the worst product available ever. It is great for things like classical music or jazz, but the sales are miniscule in the US (whereas in Europe they are still significant along with some good pop music). Here is some good dance-trance stuff, but otherwise you’re left with ciassic rock retreads. There is also a large pop market, but the songs all sound like retreads of older songs scrambled through a computer to come out slightly different, but still formulaic. There is very little originality.

The other explanation of decline is that everything has fallen into more and more niche markets with smaller audiences. While this may be true, it leaves no room for something coming along sweeping much of the youth, as has been the case many times over in the past. Hopefully something “new” will come along as a trend sooner or later; my guess is that it would come out of Latin music. There is still nothing better than a good melodic line along with a catchy rhythm to get people’s interest.