I posted a while back about the Ashton Kutcher/Demi Moore/fill-in-the-name-of-about-a-100-different celebrities phenomenon and what it meant for the future of Twitter. Over the last month or so Twitter has gotten even bigger, more heavily used, and has risen even higher on the cultural radar to the point that Kutcher in his competition with CNN to get to a million followers made headline news. Which begs the question:
Why does one need a million Twitter followers?
Well, if one is a celebrity, I suppose it would not be a bad way of marketing oneself. And that’s fine, I suppose. If a person’s goal is to get a bunch of followers in the interest of forwarding their popularity, and if a bunch of followers are satisfied (as they seem to be, in their millions) with this one-to-many relationship in which their chances of getting a tweet responded to by said celebrity are about as great as getting struck by lightning, that’s fine. My first reaction to this is “But this is not what Twitter was intended for.” It’s a social networking app. It supposed to be this place where you and your group of friends, confidants, coworkers, etc. join to follow one another and post little quickie updates on how each other is doing. Because of the homogenous nature of the application, a tweet from Ashton Kutcher about what he had for lunch looks just like a tweet from Aunt Sarah on the same subject. It doesn’t say “And, oh by the way, 1.97 million other close intimates of Ashton just got this same post”. So your response “Was it good?” to Aunt Sarah will probably get a response. Chances of a response to your question to Ashton are about that of hitting the next Powerball. But should we criticize Ashton Kutcher for simply drawing millions of followers? Depends.
Let’s say I’m an up and coming actor, breaking into Hollywood. I set up a Twitter account and immediately start Tweeting to anyone I can find trying to get them to follow me. Ok, no problem there, either. But there is a certain form of etiquette in Twitter, at least in how it was initially envisioned. You are expected to respond. “Follow back” as it is called. If you follow me, I notice you are following me, and decline to follow you, well, I’m certainly free to do that. Perhaps I don’t know you, or like you. But what if 10 thousand or so people respond to my overtures to follow me, I in turn respond by following 5 people (there are actually worse examples of this), and, to make matters worse, when my followers tweet me, I don’t respond to them. To me, this is beginning to look more like fan mail than a social network. Penn Jillette has 625,000 followers and follows 2 people. That can't even be all the people in his house with a Twitter account. This pretty much sends the message "You must hang on my every word, but I couldn't care less what you have to say."
Now, of course, a celebrity with 40,000 followers can’t follow back all 40,000 of them (although some do. You can set up Twitter to “auto-follow” people who follow you. At first, I thought these celebs were Twitter champs until it became apparent that they were actually responding or interacting with any of those they were following). But some of them do yeoman’s work in this regard. Alyssa Milano has about 90k followers. She follows a couple hundred which is a pretty good number of people to follow. And she responds to them.
To me, there are some countervailing factors at work here.
1. How many people follow you AND attempt to communicate with you? Lot’s of people follow folks simply to get the twitter stream updates. Of the people who contact you, how many do you in turn respond to?
2. How many people do you follow? Personally, I think this number can’t go much above 200 and still allow you to maintain some kind of communication with your followers.
3. Do you attempt to contact your followers, or simply wait for them to contact you? Simply following them back is deemed courteous, but is it really if there’s no subsequent communication?
4. You may have a 1 to 1 twitter ratio based on 100 followers and 100 followed. You will have the same ratio if you have 100,000 followers and follow 100,000. The amount of interaction between you and your followers is going to be vastly different in the latter case.
5. In my experience, there are two kinds of people with extremely high twitter ratios. First are the celebs who simply put their accounts on Twitter and who through no direct action of theirs garnered thousands of followers. Second, though, are the folks who are out to garner the greatest number of followers they can for whatever reasons. Their intention may not be to interact with followers at all other than to broadcast to them.
6. Whom do you follow? Consider this scenario: I am a celebrity. I have 40,000 followers. I follow 100 people. Not a bad follow number, but they are all other celebrities. Meanwhile, the 40,000 other people who do follow me are not followed in return at all. Celebrity broadcasting system in disguise.
7. Do you respond to people who follow you, even if you don’t follow them? This is even more confusing. I tweet with a person who has a few thousand followers, and even though she doesn’t follow me, she does respond to my tweets. To me, this is just as important, if not more important than whether she follows me or not. You don’t have to follow someone to communicate with them.
8. Spam factor: You may have 1,900 followers and follow 1,900 people. Great Twitterratio, but you may also be a “bot”. No real interaction going on at all.
To me, all ratios aside, optimal use of Twitter would be based on:
1. How many people contact you (either direct, or reply) that you don’t respond to?
2. Why do you want a number of followers so high that you can’t manage their attempts to contact you?
3. If you have an insane number of followers and in turn follow less than 10 people, is this a social networking app to you at all? Or a celebrity broadcasting network?
One of the underlying elements of Twitter that leads to this confusion is that it differs from other social networking apps in that you don’t have to have permission to follow someone. This doesn’t happen in Facebook or MySpace, for example, since a “friend’s request” is necessary to set up a communication. So this is new ground being tilled, and we’ll be discovering more uses (and misuses) of it as we go along.
Later.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Coach John Burkett
Running is like walking. We all think we know how to do it because we’ve pretty much done it all our lives. You parents hoist you up, give you a nudge, and off you go. No instructions necessary. Running, if not altogether instinctual, is at least learned by example from watching others. I mean, what’s to learn, right?
I see a lot of runners in the park, including some pretty hard-core types that are there every day, mile after mile. I see lopers. I see bouncers. I see draggers. I see lurchers. I see stumblers, but unfortunately, I see very few people who really know how to run.
I grew up in a small farm town in rural Illinois. Illinois isn’t just a big basketball state. It’s also well known for cross-country running at the high school and college level. I am long legged with a spare build, not enough upper body strength to be much of a force on the basketball court, but it just so happens bone thin, long legged, spare build is just what the doctor ordered when it comes to distance running. Running, like just about any other farm kid, was just about the most natural thing I did. In school, I could either get off the bus at the end of the farm block when the Watkins kids got dropped off – about ¾ of a mile from my house – or ride the bus for an extra 45 minutes and be the last kid let off at my own driveway. I often rode my bike down to the Watkins’ house, and thought that it couldn’t be that much of a walk. I wasn’t really as concerned about the distance as I was the time. I figured it ought to at least cut off a few minutes from the circuitous bus route. And it did, but I soon discovered that if I ran it, I could really chop off some time. Like 20 minutes. Carrying schoolbooks, I remember running this distance and getting home neither winded nor sweating. Ah, youth.
One fall day we had a school wide physical fitness run scheduled for all boys of all grades. I was a freshman that year. We were to run part of the school’s cross country course which wound around behind the school, back behind the Lion’s club pavilion, back up around the parking lot, baseball diamond, and then to the rear of the gym, about a mile and a half. I don’t think I much even really knew what cross country was, much less what they did or who they were. I knew the junior and senior track guys, and had some idea that some of them ran cross country in the fall, although what that meant was foreign to me. I don’t remember much about the run except for two things. I came in third, behind the two top varsity runners, and the cross country coach, who’d never spoken to me before, barely let me alone long enough to take a shower and change. Very soon I was being sneaked into varsity meets and placing well.
We moved when I was a junior to a fairly large city with a much larger high school. I’d been touted as something of a basketball player (which never really played out) but kind of made it in under the radar as a cross country runner. One of the reasons for this was that the little school I ran for prior to that couldn’t begin to compete – either individually or as a team – with larger school. The cross country coach was a short, squat man with a growling voice and a constant grimace on his face. I’m pretty sure that in the 2 years that I knew John Burkett I never saw him smile. I suppose that everyone has a teacher, or coach, or minister; someone who impacted them and “changed their life” in some way. John Burkett was that man for me. I hated him. Or feared him, or both, maybe. I know the sense of fear was purposeful (he was actually kind of a big teddy bear of a man, now that I look back on these days). He had to keep us on edge. On meet days we met at his house at 6 am. No running. It was a day of total rest. His wife brought out plates of scrambled eggs and steaks. I’m not so sure it was even legal for us to go to his house under Illinois High School Athletic regs, but we did, and we ate well. Then no more food all day. Woe betides you if you got caught with a Twinkie. Then, by 4 pm we were well fed, digested, rested, and ready to run. He also had us on a program of these packets of vitamins (this was years before any sort of vitamin craze). We took two packets a day. Each packet had twelve tabs, each one about a half inch long. Our pee was bright orange. And in the summer (this much I’m pretty sure is completely outside of the ISHAA regs) we had TWO A DAY practices. We met on a golf course off campus, across town. Each morning, 5 to 7 miles. Each afternoon, 7 to 10. When I was a junior in high school, I was 6’3” tall and weighed something just a bit more than 140 pounds. I could hold my breath for nearly 3 minutes. My resting pulse rate, (diligently recorded per Coach Burkett, three times a day) just before dropping off to sleep at night was just over 40 beats per minute. I could hear the powerful thump in my chest if it was quiet enough.
And I could run. Oh, how we could run. At the time (if memory serves) the regulation distance for cross country was 3.25 miles. This was not run on a track, either, but very often over hill and dale on golf courses, country clubs, forest preserves. The best time I remember posting was just over 15 minutes. Today I run 5 miles a day in 45 minutes.
The first thing that coach Burkett did with us was teach us to run. Some of us had already met with some success and were just a little dismissive of this squat little man presuming to tell us how to run. And he never did run by example, either. But he talked. Or shouted. A fiddle maker friend of mine tells me that Ishtaak Perlman’s violin instructor never touches a fiddle, pointing and gesturing instead with a cane. Burkett got us to look at how we ran from the outside. To notice what our legs were doing. Our arms, our posture. Almost the first thing he said to me when he saw me run was a pretty typical remark from him: “You could be a pretty good runner if you’d learn how to use your legs.” And then walked away, purposely leaving me to hang on the words.
I watch these scufflers and draggers, bouncers and flouncers, bumpers and plodders in the park and I think of John Burkett. I can hear his words. “Pick your feet up! Your shoes shouldn’t make any noise when you run! Heel, toe. Heel, toe, Heel toe!” But mostly what people don’t do is the simple thing that he taught us; use the legs that you have. We assume that because we learned to run somehow that we know the only way – perhaps the optimal way – that our body is capable of doing this. I know for a fact that he got me to increase each on of my strides by nearly a foot. He got me to know where my head was. Your head should be on a string. Straight, not bouncing up and down. Torso upright, shoulders back. Arms serve a purpose – they are for balance. You are not running if both your feet aren’t off the ground at the same time. You are walking with style or spirit or something, but you aren’t running.
My junior year we went to an invitational meet that included the small conference that I had come out of. I would be running against some of my old competitors from my freshman and sophomore years. I can even name some of these guys, they had been such nemeses of mine then. Of all the runners in that conference in that meet that day, the nearest runner to my time was over a minute behind me. And I didn’t win the meet. I don’t remember where I placed, but I remember standing with my coach, nearly fully recovered, watching these runners coming in panting and wheezing. And I remember the tiny half smile that coach Burkett gave me as he turned to walk away.
Coach Burkett was probably 50 then, in 1970. He may still be alive, but judging by his beer gut and lifestyle back then, I’d be surprised. He taught me something else, too. Something that I didn’t know I’d even learned until well into adult hood. How to go through pain. When you think you’re done, you still have about 20 percent left. I can hear him say it. You always have more.
Thank you, coach.
Later.
I see a lot of runners in the park, including some pretty hard-core types that are there every day, mile after mile. I see lopers. I see bouncers. I see draggers. I see lurchers. I see stumblers, but unfortunately, I see very few people who really know how to run.
I grew up in a small farm town in rural Illinois. Illinois isn’t just a big basketball state. It’s also well known for cross-country running at the high school and college level. I am long legged with a spare build, not enough upper body strength to be much of a force on the basketball court, but it just so happens bone thin, long legged, spare build is just what the doctor ordered when it comes to distance running. Running, like just about any other farm kid, was just about the most natural thing I did. In school, I could either get off the bus at the end of the farm block when the Watkins kids got dropped off – about ¾ of a mile from my house – or ride the bus for an extra 45 minutes and be the last kid let off at my own driveway. I often rode my bike down to the Watkins’ house, and thought that it couldn’t be that much of a walk. I wasn’t really as concerned about the distance as I was the time. I figured it ought to at least cut off a few minutes from the circuitous bus route. And it did, but I soon discovered that if I ran it, I could really chop off some time. Like 20 minutes. Carrying schoolbooks, I remember running this distance and getting home neither winded nor sweating. Ah, youth.
One fall day we had a school wide physical fitness run scheduled for all boys of all grades. I was a freshman that year. We were to run part of the school’s cross country course which wound around behind the school, back behind the Lion’s club pavilion, back up around the parking lot, baseball diamond, and then to the rear of the gym, about a mile and a half. I don’t think I much even really knew what cross country was, much less what they did or who they were. I knew the junior and senior track guys, and had some idea that some of them ran cross country in the fall, although what that meant was foreign to me. I don’t remember much about the run except for two things. I came in third, behind the two top varsity runners, and the cross country coach, who’d never spoken to me before, barely let me alone long enough to take a shower and change. Very soon I was being sneaked into varsity meets and placing well.
We moved when I was a junior to a fairly large city with a much larger high school. I’d been touted as something of a basketball player (which never really played out) but kind of made it in under the radar as a cross country runner. One of the reasons for this was that the little school I ran for prior to that couldn’t begin to compete – either individually or as a team – with larger school. The cross country coach was a short, squat man with a growling voice and a constant grimace on his face. I’m pretty sure that in the 2 years that I knew John Burkett I never saw him smile. I suppose that everyone has a teacher, or coach, or minister; someone who impacted them and “changed their life” in some way. John Burkett was that man for me. I hated him. Or feared him, or both, maybe. I know the sense of fear was purposeful (he was actually kind of a big teddy bear of a man, now that I look back on these days). He had to keep us on edge. On meet days we met at his house at 6 am. No running. It was a day of total rest. His wife brought out plates of scrambled eggs and steaks. I’m not so sure it was even legal for us to go to his house under Illinois High School Athletic regs, but we did, and we ate well. Then no more food all day. Woe betides you if you got caught with a Twinkie. Then, by 4 pm we were well fed, digested, rested, and ready to run. He also had us on a program of these packets of vitamins (this was years before any sort of vitamin craze). We took two packets a day. Each packet had twelve tabs, each one about a half inch long. Our pee was bright orange. And in the summer (this much I’m pretty sure is completely outside of the ISHAA regs) we had TWO A DAY practices. We met on a golf course off campus, across town. Each morning, 5 to 7 miles. Each afternoon, 7 to 10. When I was a junior in high school, I was 6’3” tall and weighed something just a bit more than 140 pounds. I could hold my breath for nearly 3 minutes. My resting pulse rate, (diligently recorded per Coach Burkett, three times a day) just before dropping off to sleep at night was just over 40 beats per minute. I could hear the powerful thump in my chest if it was quiet enough.
And I could run. Oh, how we could run. At the time (if memory serves) the regulation distance for cross country was 3.25 miles. This was not run on a track, either, but very often over hill and dale on golf courses, country clubs, forest preserves. The best time I remember posting was just over 15 minutes. Today I run 5 miles a day in 45 minutes.
The first thing that coach Burkett did with us was teach us to run. Some of us had already met with some success and were just a little dismissive of this squat little man presuming to tell us how to run. And he never did run by example, either. But he talked. Or shouted. A fiddle maker friend of mine tells me that Ishtaak Perlman’s violin instructor never touches a fiddle, pointing and gesturing instead with a cane. Burkett got us to look at how we ran from the outside. To notice what our legs were doing. Our arms, our posture. Almost the first thing he said to me when he saw me run was a pretty typical remark from him: “You could be a pretty good runner if you’d learn how to use your legs.” And then walked away, purposely leaving me to hang on the words.
I watch these scufflers and draggers, bouncers and flouncers, bumpers and plodders in the park and I think of John Burkett. I can hear his words. “Pick your feet up! Your shoes shouldn’t make any noise when you run! Heel, toe. Heel, toe, Heel toe!” But mostly what people don’t do is the simple thing that he taught us; use the legs that you have. We assume that because we learned to run somehow that we know the only way – perhaps the optimal way – that our body is capable of doing this. I know for a fact that he got me to increase each on of my strides by nearly a foot. He got me to know where my head was. Your head should be on a string. Straight, not bouncing up and down. Torso upright, shoulders back. Arms serve a purpose – they are for balance. You are not running if both your feet aren’t off the ground at the same time. You are walking with style or spirit or something, but you aren’t running.
My junior year we went to an invitational meet that included the small conference that I had come out of. I would be running against some of my old competitors from my freshman and sophomore years. I can even name some of these guys, they had been such nemeses of mine then. Of all the runners in that conference in that meet that day, the nearest runner to my time was over a minute behind me. And I didn’t win the meet. I don’t remember where I placed, but I remember standing with my coach, nearly fully recovered, watching these runners coming in panting and wheezing. And I remember the tiny half smile that coach Burkett gave me as he turned to walk away.
Coach Burkett was probably 50 then, in 1970. He may still be alive, but judging by his beer gut and lifestyle back then, I’d be surprised. He taught me something else, too. Something that I didn’t know I’d even learned until well into adult hood. How to go through pain. When you think you’re done, you still have about 20 percent left. I can hear him say it. You always have more.
Thank you, coach.
Later.
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Mary Elizabeth Penson Sept 14th 1917 - May 16th 2009
My father died twenty years ago. Long enough ago that I really barely remember the service. I got to hold his hand while he died in the hospital, and this is the significant memory I carry from his passing. When my mother passed away last weekend, most of the services were setup to take place at the same places my father’s were. This necessary tie in helped to underscore the notion that they were together again.
My mother wrote the following article about 3 months ago for the local paper which was doing a series on married couples and how they connected. This is the article in full:
Features@ Star Telegram.com
For FEATURE, “I Do! I Do!”
"How do you know when you’ve met the man you are going to marry ? It’s not hard when you read the signals right.
We had just graduated, he from Morgan Park High in Chicago, and me from York High in Elmhurst, Illinois. We were both enrolled in a newspaper writing class on the downtown campus of Northwestern University. Two young men seemed interested in me; one had red hair, the other looked like Tyron Power. Both offered to do my research as I worked the latest and barely made it to a six o’clock class. Shameless hussy that I was, I accepted both offers, gleaned what was useful from both, and turned my paper in as the professor walked through the door. When it came time to discuss how to write an attention catching opening line, the professor used my paper as an example. That did it for the red-head. He no longer offered to do my research. But Tyron hung on. Actually he was an artist, and more interested in the composition of the newspaper.
We both now lived on the south side of Chicago, he with his parents in Beverly Hills and I with my widowed mother in a south side apartment near the lake. After class he got on the same elevated train I did, and sat down next to me. There was a little talk about where we both lived, and then he offered to buy me a White Castle when we got to my station, and we got acquainted over those mini burgers. And then there was that historical weekend when beer became legal and I got my first taste of what a hang-over was like.
But the true taste of mate-for-life material came one Sunday afternoon when we were walking along the lake shore toward the Loop. Large boulders extending into the lake for six to almost a dozen feet formed an embankment. We stopped to see what the crowd was watching. A small white poodle was trying desperately to gain pawhold and get onto dry land. I stood there mesmerize and then horrified as the waves slammed the pup against the rocks. I knew then that he was fighting for his life. So did Jack. Beside me he yanked off his shoes, rolled up his pant-legs and jumped over the boulders and onto the sand. He caught the dog and threw him up onto dry land where the pooch shook Lake Michigan all over the spectators and trotted away.
That was the day I knew whom I was going to marry. Before Jack died of cancer in 1980, we had forty-eight wonderful years and four great kids."
Mom, I love you. Angels speed you on wings to heaven.
Friday, May 8, 2009
Bluegrass Music
I grew up in a home with a commercial designer and an English teacher. Great music and literature abounded. I remember listening to Liszt, Chopin, Boots Randolph, and Thelonius Monk. My mom, now 92 and a children’s author after retiring from teaching, read me Huckleberry Finn every day after lunch during one Summer vacation from school. By age 10, I was reading Robinson Crusoe, watching Masterpiece Theatre and going to the Art Institute of Chicago, where my father had studied art during the Depression, to see the Rubens and Rembrandts. I was a spotty performer in school. If a subject didn’t interest me, I’d get middling grades. If it did, I’d ace it. Big things were expected of me. I was encouraged to take Latin in high school by a counselor who was laying the groundwork for a medical school future.
One summer day I was going through my oldest brother’s album collection. He’s a good bit older than me, so he was off to college or some job; no longer living at home, at any rate. Mostly it was the college stuff of the day; The Lettermen, Peter, Paul, and Mary, and the like. I happened on an album by the New Christy Minstrels, checked it out with some mild interest until it came to a song titled “Billy’s Mule”. Folk, by this time (about 1964) was in the process of changing. In a few years it would take on nearly a unified protest theme, but for the time being, it was kind of nudging up gently against country music (its own form of folk, really). The song started out quietly and slowly, with a single instrument playing. I haven’t heard this song in over 40 years, but I can remember those notes clearly enough to be able to play them today. It was a 5 string banjo. The notes plinked, then “bent” or slid, one tone to the next, like an acoustic pedal steel guitar. I had never heard anything like it. I couldn’t tell you about the rest of the song because I just kept picking up the needle and dropping it over and over on the first few notes until the album was so scratched the song would hardly play.
I filed this experience away for perhaps a year. One evening I was watching The Andy Griffith Show with my family. I recall this episode pretty clearly. In fact, it airs fairly frequently on the classic TV channel here. In it the bluegrass band The Dillards appear as a family of mountain folk who come down to town to create trouble for Andy. Can’t tell you much else specific about the episode (which I later learned was not the first in which they appeared) except for a scene in which the boys play “Shady Grove”, an ancient Appalachian song, in the jailhouse. I was by now about 10 years old, interested in baseball and basketball mostly, fishing at the creek (I was lucky enough to grow up on a farm after my Chicago parents decided to do a “Green Acres” mid life move), running the fields with a couple of dogs, playing with friends in old hay lofts. The banjo player, Douglas Dillard, was leaned back in a chair, slacked faced, relaxed, staring blankly ahead while playing a crystal clear rapid fire staccato of notes that machine gunned out of the TV and shot me dead in the soul. The ancient tone of the 5 string banjo resonates with some Celtic corner of my soul. Within 24 hours, I owned a banjo.
A turning point came to me about 1973, while a freshman at college. Rather than study – ever – I would find a friend, some beer, and pack off with a banjo and guitar to play in a park, or down the railroad tracks. One night, a close friend, Russian exchange student and I packed off to play an open mic night at a club. As we were leaving the dorm, a pair of perfectly collegiate young girls passed us at the door, me with a banjo slung on my back. To this day, I can remember the disgusted stairs as they looked at the ragtag couple. At that moment, I realized that I had fallen off the merry go round. I had – unintentionally, inadvertently – made some decisions that would put me on a very different road. No more med school. No more pre-med. I had become a misanthrope.
Bluegrass music has always run just under the cultural radar. From time to time a song will come along that will cause it to perk it’s head up and get noticed. “Foggy Mountain Breakdown”, the theme song from the movie Bonnie and Clyde.. ‘Dueling Banjos” from the movie “Deliverance”. More recently, the movie “Oh, Brother, Where Art Thou” brought some interest with its semi-bluegrass, mostly just old rural Southern music. At these times, we bluegrassers take some pride in our music and occasionally get a little notice. Mostly, though, you can listen to the radio from now until Christmas and not hear one bluegrass song. It is niche music. I guess all music is niche music, but some niches are extremely broad and deep. Not bluegrass. If popular music is a mile wide and an inch deep, bluegrass is an inch wide and a mile deep.. If you go to a blues festival or rock concert, you will see big name bands on stage and spectators. Go to a bluegrass festival, and there will be more music going on in the park, campground, parking lot than on stage. Most people who follow bluegrass also play it.
When people ask what I do for a living, I softball my answer and just say “Musician”. If asked what type of music I play, I usually prefer “Acoustic”. If really pressed, I will more accurately respond with “bluegrass”, but only when I think the audience is open to it.
If you want to understand bluegrass music, do this. Find a good three day festival near you. (They’re there. Guaranteed. Just have search a little). Listen to the name acts on stage if you want, kill time, lay under a tree, but wait until dark. Then, as campfires light walk around and listen to the small groups of rank amateurs and band act pickers all gathered doing bluegrass communion in the night. Then, in the small hours when the night breezes come through the low branches of the cedars and elms, listen to Bruce Hornsby’s lyrics and hear the banjo wind and mandolin rain . You will hear the ancient tones.
“A cool evening dance
Listening to the bluegrass band takes the chill
from the air till they play the last song
I’ll do my time
Keeping you off my mind but there’s moments
That I find, I’m not feeling so strong
Listen to the mandolin rain
Listen to the music on the lake
Listen to my heart break every time she runs away
Listen to the banjo wind
A sad song drifting low
Listen to the tears roll
Down my face as she turns to go”
Later.
One summer day I was going through my oldest brother’s album collection. He’s a good bit older than me, so he was off to college or some job; no longer living at home, at any rate. Mostly it was the college stuff of the day; The Lettermen, Peter, Paul, and Mary, and the like. I happened on an album by the New Christy Minstrels, checked it out with some mild interest until it came to a song titled “Billy’s Mule”. Folk, by this time (about 1964) was in the process of changing. In a few years it would take on nearly a unified protest theme, but for the time being, it was kind of nudging up gently against country music (its own form of folk, really). The song started out quietly and slowly, with a single instrument playing. I haven’t heard this song in over 40 years, but I can remember those notes clearly enough to be able to play them today. It was a 5 string banjo. The notes plinked, then “bent” or slid, one tone to the next, like an acoustic pedal steel guitar. I had never heard anything like it. I couldn’t tell you about the rest of the song because I just kept picking up the needle and dropping it over and over on the first few notes until the album was so scratched the song would hardly play.
I filed this experience away for perhaps a year. One evening I was watching The Andy Griffith Show with my family. I recall this episode pretty clearly. In fact, it airs fairly frequently on the classic TV channel here. In it the bluegrass band The Dillards appear as a family of mountain folk who come down to town to create trouble for Andy. Can’t tell you much else specific about the episode (which I later learned was not the first in which they appeared) except for a scene in which the boys play “Shady Grove”, an ancient Appalachian song, in the jailhouse. I was by now about 10 years old, interested in baseball and basketball mostly, fishing at the creek (I was lucky enough to grow up on a farm after my Chicago parents decided to do a “Green Acres” mid life move), running the fields with a couple of dogs, playing with friends in old hay lofts. The banjo player, Douglas Dillard, was leaned back in a chair, slacked faced, relaxed, staring blankly ahead while playing a crystal clear rapid fire staccato of notes that machine gunned out of the TV and shot me dead in the soul. The ancient tone of the 5 string banjo resonates with some Celtic corner of my soul. Within 24 hours, I owned a banjo.
A turning point came to me about 1973, while a freshman at college. Rather than study – ever – I would find a friend, some beer, and pack off with a banjo and guitar to play in a park, or down the railroad tracks. One night, a close friend, Russian exchange student and I packed off to play an open mic night at a club. As we were leaving the dorm, a pair of perfectly collegiate young girls passed us at the door, me with a banjo slung on my back. To this day, I can remember the disgusted stairs as they looked at the ragtag couple. At that moment, I realized that I had fallen off the merry go round. I had – unintentionally, inadvertently – made some decisions that would put me on a very different road. No more med school. No more pre-med. I had become a misanthrope.
Bluegrass music has always run just under the cultural radar. From time to time a song will come along that will cause it to perk it’s head up and get noticed. “Foggy Mountain Breakdown”, the theme song from the movie Bonnie and Clyde.. ‘Dueling Banjos” from the movie “Deliverance”. More recently, the movie “Oh, Brother, Where Art Thou” brought some interest with its semi-bluegrass, mostly just old rural Southern music. At these times, we bluegrassers take some pride in our music and occasionally get a little notice. Mostly, though, you can listen to the radio from now until Christmas and not hear one bluegrass song. It is niche music. I guess all music is niche music, but some niches are extremely broad and deep. Not bluegrass. If popular music is a mile wide and an inch deep, bluegrass is an inch wide and a mile deep.. If you go to a blues festival or rock concert, you will see big name bands on stage and spectators. Go to a bluegrass festival, and there will be more music going on in the park, campground, parking lot than on stage. Most people who follow bluegrass also play it.
When people ask what I do for a living, I softball my answer and just say “Musician”. If asked what type of music I play, I usually prefer “Acoustic”. If really pressed, I will more accurately respond with “bluegrass”, but only when I think the audience is open to it.
If you want to understand bluegrass music, do this. Find a good three day festival near you. (They’re there. Guaranteed. Just have search a little). Listen to the name acts on stage if you want, kill time, lay under a tree, but wait until dark. Then, as campfires light walk around and listen to the small groups of rank amateurs and band act pickers all gathered doing bluegrass communion in the night. Then, in the small hours when the night breezes come through the low branches of the cedars and elms, listen to Bruce Hornsby’s lyrics and hear the banjo wind and mandolin rain . You will hear the ancient tones.
“A cool evening dance
Listening to the bluegrass band takes the chill
from the air till they play the last song
I’ll do my time
Keeping you off my mind but there’s moments
That I find, I’m not feeling so strong
Listen to the mandolin rain
Listen to the music on the lake
Listen to my heart break every time she runs away
Listen to the banjo wind
A sad song drifting low
Listen to the tears roll
Down my face as she turns to go”
Later.
Sunday, May 3, 2009
The Front Porch Boys Days
I moved to Texas in the mid summer of 1976 after having failed to become a doctor or lawyer, scholar, or even a college sophomore much to my parent’s chagrin. My freshman year at Illinois State University just served to underscore how completely lost to music (and alcohol) I had become. Having come from a family of advanced degrees, artists, authors, professors, I became a… bluegrass banjo player. This affliction first struck me watching the Andy Griffith Show somewhere around 1964. The bluegrass band The Dillards portrayed the hillbilly family “the Darlings” (headed by the great character actor Denver Pyle) on this show after the success of Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs on the competing show The Beverly Hillbillies. I don’t remember anything about the episode I saw other than that they played the song “Salty Dog Blues” in the jailhouse and their banjo player Douglas Dillard lay sprawled against a chair looking like he was about to fall asleep playing the banjo breaks to the song. It was an earth moving moment for me. 45 years later I can still get goose bumps watching this episode. I owned a banjo within about 48 hours.
A bluegrass banjo player in Northern Illinois in the late 60s had very little to occupy his time. I spent mine mostly dodging the scornful stares of my parents, working day jobs that ran from sporting goods sales to canning factories. My oldest sister moved to Texas with her first husband, and after a couple of visits during which I was able to find a little bluegrass, I moved to. My brother, who had taken a teaching spot at Texas A&M convinced me to have another go at college, and so I settled in College Station, living in a trailer with someone who drank almost as much beer as I did. One day my roommate asked me if I wanted to go hear some live music. We went to a pizza place where noisy A&M cadets and their dates ate pizza while a pale, long faced kid sang and played guitar for tips. I was immediately struck by the fact that this curly haired kid a few years younger than me had absolutely the smoothest voice I’d ever heard. My roommate introduced to the young photojournalism major and aspiring songwriter. His name was Lyle Lovett.
Within a few days I had worked music connections through Lyle to meet with a few other musicians that actually played bluegrass and lived on Church Street in an old house two blocks behind the bar strip near campus. Lyle lived nearby on Old Main, but spent much of his time there. I found the boys were actually a band, “The Front Porch Boys” and although students, were pretty accomplished musicians. The leader, himself an aspiring songwriter asked me if I’d like to join. This kid would later become one of the best of a good lot of Texas singer songwriters, co writing songs with Lyle. His name was Robert Keen, although he goes mostly by Robert Earl Keen today.
We lived, ate, and breathed bluegrass music. It was not at all unusual for us to play 10 or 12 hours a day. Any time two people weren’t at class, the instruments would get picked up. Although this band only lasted about a year and a half, I still see it as the most significant years of my life.
I met and married my first wife who owned a club that we played in, had two kids, divorced, moved to Arlington, got sober, met and married my second wife, had two kids and divorced about 6 years ago. I worked during my child raising years as a technical writer and web developer, but now do music full time. Bryan Duckworth, one of the FP Boys, is my closest friend still, and runs a violin shop in New Braunfels. Lyle won an Emmy, acted in some Robert Altman films, met and married Julia Roberts, and built a rock solid career as a musician. Robert continues to shine as a singer/songwriter.
I see Duckworth about 5 times a year if lucky, but have lost touch with Lyle and Robert. Wives, careers, my own sobriety gained around 1988, intruded on old relationships.
Robert’s parents had a ranch on a fresh water bass creek near LaGrange, Texas. We spent summer weekends there. Duckworth even lived there for a while. We spent as much time fishing as we did making music, but nights would be filled with bonfires, friends, songs. Years later, married to my first wife, long after the Front Porch Days, long after the crystal swimming fishing water August days on Cummins Creek, long after friends parted, listening to a recording of the Country Gentlemen sing the song “Letter To Tom” could take me there, choke me up, and get me to stare out a window.
“I've wandered by the village, Tom. I've sat beneath the tree
Upon the school house playing ground, that sheltered you and me
But none are left to greet me, Tom, and few are left to know
That played with us upon the green just fifteen years ago
The river's running just as still. The willows on its side
Are larger that they were, dear Tom. The stream appears less wide
But kneeling down beside the stream, Dear Tom, I startled so
To see how sadly I am changed, since fifteen years ago
But when our time shall come, dear Tom
And we are called to go
I hope they'll lay us where we played
Just fifteen years ago”
This post isn’t very well written. It reads kind of stiff. I think I’m unwilling to spend too much time thinking about it. Just write it, post it, and it’s done. Sorry. It’s an account of things, and nothing more. I’m sure I’ll write about elements of this in the future, but for now, just this terse piece that reads more like an obit than a memoir.
Later.
A bluegrass banjo player in Northern Illinois in the late 60s had very little to occupy his time. I spent mine mostly dodging the scornful stares of my parents, working day jobs that ran from sporting goods sales to canning factories. My oldest sister moved to Texas with her first husband, and after a couple of visits during which I was able to find a little bluegrass, I moved to. My brother, who had taken a teaching spot at Texas A&M convinced me to have another go at college, and so I settled in College Station, living in a trailer with someone who drank almost as much beer as I did. One day my roommate asked me if I wanted to go hear some live music. We went to a pizza place where noisy A&M cadets and their dates ate pizza while a pale, long faced kid sang and played guitar for tips. I was immediately struck by the fact that this curly haired kid a few years younger than me had absolutely the smoothest voice I’d ever heard. My roommate introduced to the young photojournalism major and aspiring songwriter. His name was Lyle Lovett.
Within a few days I had worked music connections through Lyle to meet with a few other musicians that actually played bluegrass and lived on Church Street in an old house two blocks behind the bar strip near campus. Lyle lived nearby on Old Main, but spent much of his time there. I found the boys were actually a band, “The Front Porch Boys” and although students, were pretty accomplished musicians. The leader, himself an aspiring songwriter asked me if I’d like to join. This kid would later become one of the best of a good lot of Texas singer songwriters, co writing songs with Lyle. His name was Robert Keen, although he goes mostly by Robert Earl Keen today.
We lived, ate, and breathed bluegrass music. It was not at all unusual for us to play 10 or 12 hours a day. Any time two people weren’t at class, the instruments would get picked up. Although this band only lasted about a year and a half, I still see it as the most significant years of my life.
I met and married my first wife who owned a club that we played in, had two kids, divorced, moved to Arlington, got sober, met and married my second wife, had two kids and divorced about 6 years ago. I worked during my child raising years as a technical writer and web developer, but now do music full time. Bryan Duckworth, one of the FP Boys, is my closest friend still, and runs a violin shop in New Braunfels. Lyle won an Emmy, acted in some Robert Altman films, met and married Julia Roberts, and built a rock solid career as a musician. Robert continues to shine as a singer/songwriter.
I see Duckworth about 5 times a year if lucky, but have lost touch with Lyle and Robert. Wives, careers, my own sobriety gained around 1988, intruded on old relationships.
Robert’s parents had a ranch on a fresh water bass creek near LaGrange, Texas. We spent summer weekends there. Duckworth even lived there for a while. We spent as much time fishing as we did making music, but nights would be filled with bonfires, friends, songs. Years later, married to my first wife, long after the Front Porch Days, long after the crystal swimming fishing water August days on Cummins Creek, long after friends parted, listening to a recording of the Country Gentlemen sing the song “Letter To Tom” could take me there, choke me up, and get me to stare out a window.
“I've wandered by the village, Tom. I've sat beneath the tree
Upon the school house playing ground, that sheltered you and me
But none are left to greet me, Tom, and few are left to know
That played with us upon the green just fifteen years ago
The river's running just as still. The willows on its side
Are larger that they were, dear Tom. The stream appears less wide
But kneeling down beside the stream, Dear Tom, I startled so
To see how sadly I am changed, since fifteen years ago
But when our time shall come, dear Tom
And we are called to go
I hope they'll lay us where we played
Just fifteen years ago”
This post isn’t very well written. It reads kind of stiff. I think I’m unwilling to spend too much time thinking about it. Just write it, post it, and it’s done. Sorry. It’s an account of things, and nothing more. I’m sure I’ll write about elements of this in the future, but for now, just this terse piece that reads more like an obit than a memoir.
Later.
Twtiter Statistics Update: The Celebrity Factor
An update to my blog of April 17th, “Twitter and the Culture of Celebrity” (http://banjoboyo.blogspot.com/2009/04/i-started-compiling-some-data-today.html.) I’ve updated my stats to reflect some changes; new folks, new numbers. Here’s a chart showing the ratio mentioned in that post, that of followers to following. This ratio expresses two factors: 1) the sheer number of followers that a celebrity can draw, but also 2) their “return follow” rate. A simple expression of 1 to 2 produces the following.
I’d like to welcome a few newcomers to the ranks of the “one way celebrity broadcasting network”. Brooke Burke, Al Gore, Penn Gillette all have posted some great numbers of followers while following a number equivalent to a small high school basketball team. Topping these ranks, however, are musician Dave Mathews and comedian/magician Penn Gillette, both with about a half million followers, and both following – get ready for this – 3 people. That’s can’t even be all the members of their nuclear family with Twitter accounts. These new additions make last week’s champs John Mayer and Katy Perry look egalitarian in their follows.
Special Twitter Etiquette awards, however, to Kathy Ireland, Paula Poundstone, Fran Drescher, Alyssa Milano, Steve Isaacs, Mariel Hemingway, for following their follows pretty impressively. Remember that this ratio expresses both number of follows and followers, so a celebrity with tens of thousands of follows has to follow proportionately more people than someone with a hundred or so follows to post the same ratio. That’s why I’ve provided the second chart which takes these same celebs and lists them ordinally based solely on number of follows, for a little perspective.
Interestingly, the inverse proportion pretty much persists. Dave Mathews and Penn Gillette still follows just 3 people. Paula Poundstone pretty much still follows everybody who follows her.
I’ll continue to track these numbers as Twitter matures and grows in general use. I know if I owned the site, I’d be looking at charging some of these celebs for the free marketing I’m providing them with.
Later.
I’d like to welcome a few newcomers to the ranks of the “one way celebrity broadcasting network”. Brooke Burke, Al Gore, Penn Gillette all have posted some great numbers of followers while following a number equivalent to a small high school basketball team. Topping these ranks, however, are musician Dave Mathews and comedian/magician Penn Gillette, both with about a half million followers, and both following – get ready for this – 3 people. That’s can’t even be all the members of their nuclear family with Twitter accounts. These new additions make last week’s champs John Mayer and Katy Perry look egalitarian in their follows.
Special Twitter Etiquette awards, however, to Kathy Ireland, Paula Poundstone, Fran Drescher, Alyssa Milano, Steve Isaacs, Mariel Hemingway, for following their follows pretty impressively. Remember that this ratio expresses both number of follows and followers, so a celebrity with tens of thousands of follows has to follow proportionately more people than someone with a hundred or so follows to post the same ratio. That’s why I’ve provided the second chart which takes these same celebs and lists them ordinally based solely on number of follows, for a little perspective.
Interestingly, the inverse proportion pretty much persists. Dave Mathews and Penn Gillette still follows just 3 people. Paula Poundstone pretty much still follows everybody who follows her.
I’ll continue to track these numbers as Twitter matures and grows in general use. I know if I owned the site, I’d be looking at charging some of these celebs for the free marketing I’m providing them with.
Later.
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