for a songwriter, there are few honors more prestigious than being inducted into the Songwriter's Hall of Fame... looking over this year's nominees, what it brought to mind was just how many people write songs... I mean, there was a time (like fifty or more years ago) when there number of songwriters in the world could be gathered in one room... a small room, even... and now, thousands of people are writing and selling songs each year and millions are actually out here writing songs... just check mp3.com, for instance...

ah, singing is breathing to me...

on the other hand, I was amazed at how few truly gifted and music-altering songwriters were actually given the big awards... the awards seem more insider awards for friends of the American music industry... granted the organization focuses on pop and reaches back to honor old classics, which is fine, but where are the Beatles or Webber and Rice or... well, I was disappointed in their list... not because the people on it do not deserve it, but because I think others deserve lifetime awards and the highest honors even more than those who already got them... they certainly are not giving awards based on musical innovation or popular sales (and how else to judge pop music though?)... so I will still prefer the Billboard rankings for music popularity since they use the definition of popular to rank and honor pop music songs and people...

it could be fairly said that music is my religion...

maybe I don't understand the process... or the dues paying experience... maybe that changes perception of what is popular... in any case, it got me thinking more about music again... and here it is just weeks away from the fifth (or is it the sixth?) year of the new millenium and I still do not have a pipeline to the music online... no, I did not BBS music in the 80s... no, I did not AOL or newsgroup or Napster music in the 90s... and no, I do not Kazaa music these days... I blame it on poverty, that is, going homeless in the late nineties and losing everything a couple of times, but that's just an easy excuse and it was not there before '95 when I had (for what they were worth) top of the line systems and connections...

if you only knew...

ethics?... respect for the creative art?... respect for copyright laws?... I guess, but after living in poverty (and mostly without music) for almost a decade now, I find myself taking out CDs from the library and copying them for my personal use... following the letter of the law doesn't exactly sit well with the ethcial child in me who I pretty much gag and stuff into the closet, but recently I've been thinking about checking out Kazaa (cuz I've seen it working on someone else's computer when we do drum circles at his place) and then I read this (why go seek that out, huh?) and I realized that when I had the funds to go out and buy a few hundred LPs or CDs a month, I had no thought at all of copying anything (except to make a mix tape) and felt good about that... and now that I am poor and have gone relatively musicless for almost ten years, the agony is eating away at every good thing within me (even my ethical child)... and so I may just go get Kazaa and get the music that means everything to me even if it means I'll spend all eternity in hell without music... no songs?... hmmmm, that's a thought to ponder... I think I shall pause and reflect...

I'll let you know when I start laughing...

. o O ( NOTES ARE THE NEW HAPPY PILL ) O o .
(just let me know you were here)