To older musicians not ready to play a bran dance:

I'm fifty-one. I'm still brewing my mash of melodic pop-rocks. I'm as in love with music making and recording as when I learned to bounce tracks on a Portastudio in 1981. My songwriting gets better every year. Hell, even my drumming, while short on chops, is more musical than ever. My mind is working on music all the time, in the background when not in the foreground. Within my generally immature yet haggard mind, the music part remains hyperactive.

My music sounds young in some ways, too. It's traditional kinda Beatles-ish pop -- Beatles were only Beatles in their 20s. My voice is still this lil' poppy voice. I'd love to be a Leonard Cohen or Tom Waits but think I'm always going to have a Dorian Grey relationship between my voice and my body.

I'm not ready to act my age and start writing and playing country. Most popular country is truly creepy. Alt. country seems pretty overrated and "good for you." I like a barn dance, not a bran dance.

I'm too naive and unworldly to pose as a worldly-wise elder statesman. Which is too bad 'cuz I really look the part in the morning.

I like young-sounding pre-90s pop music and ethnic music. So pretty much every kind of music I love doesn't fit my physical image or my voice.

(Except for Ron Sexsmith -- he's so good, so brilliant, so unpretentious, and such a perfect example of what I'm on about.)

Every individual musician has to make herself undeniably great and work extremely hard to earn an audience. But what I'd like to see is many more musicians in their 40s+ become more relevant, respected, even loved by a wider national audience. That's one thing I'd like to talk about.

How can an older music-buying audience begin buying more music? Seeing as how young consumers -- the industry's traditional targets -- want music for free now anyway, might the increasing number of older music fans, poor as we often are, pay for more downloads, radio subscriptions, vinyl, projects like Artistshare, etc.?

I guess I'm looking for the future of popular music in general, not just how it pertains to me.

Games and cross-media and social/net/phone/music mix-em-up scenarios may be the future. I'd like to know more about that but I'm not going to be about it. You draw the line at some point, and my line is: music is ultimately to be listened to as music alone. Put it on on the background, sure, but remember to listen to music by itself ... and face the truth and beauty of it.

This blog will document me addressing these and other thorny music issues. To quote Deb Talan: "Me so thorny..." And I'll certainly be talking about the music I'm making and all the other music I love, and you love.

What I'd love to find are some like minds. Musicians and songwriters and listeners who are wide open and have eclectic tastes. More interested in songs than hyped "geniuses." More interested in sounds than chops or musical male enhancement.

Talk to slim!

xxxooo
slim

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