Here Comes the Man

"Well, they told me to come on over


I made my way to New York


And they tried to have me deported


Stop me from getting work


Blacklisted me all over


They were vicious and they were mean


They were big time operators


Baby, on the music business scene."

- Van Morrison, "Big Time Operators"

It is well documented that Bing Crosby was a ferocious father who beat his sons and enstilled years of depression into his entire family. Yet every December, hundreds of thousands of Americans put on White Christmas and lose themselves in the magic of the season to Crosby's swooning voice "roasting chestnuts" and "dreaming of a white Christmas." It is safe to say that many are completely oblivious to the fact that Crosby liked to use his sons like a chain-hung Everlast bag. I ask you then, do people really care about the man behind the music? Especially when the music is so good?

Thursday was St. Patrick's Day and BreakThru Radio has dedicated all things this week to the Emerald Isle. To do my part, I want to try to expose the truth behind a rumor regarding an Irish musician that only some of you young listeners may have heard, few of you may actually know more than a few songs by, and most of you probably won't have a clue who I am talking about: Van Morrison. (I realize I am not giving BTR's listeners much credit here. My editor already scolded me, and in all fairness, he is right to do so. I just find it infuriating when people find out I am a huge Van Morrison fan and start whistling the melody to "Brown Eyed Girl". It's like thinking The Beatles stopped recording after "Love Me Do".) Here is what one music blogger has to say about 'Van the Man': "Van Morrison is a cantankerous, paranoid asshole who thinks everyone is stealing his ideas." Okay, that is pretty much to the point; but is it true? Well, as a staunch Van Morrison fan of over 15 years, owner of 33 Van albums, three DVDs, having read two biographies on the man, and seeing him perform over five times, I can pretty much confirm that from everything I have seen and learned--yep, the guy is a real Irish prick!

But who cares?

Like so many great artists before him, Van Morrison is a victim of being identified with only one or two pieces of his work--most commonly "Brown Eyed Girl" and then maybe "Gloria" or "Moondance", or perhaps "Baby Please Don't Go" (which, ironically enough, is a song he did not even write but adapted from American bluesman, John

Lee Hooker). Understandably, Morrison gets very annoyed at the banal expectations of his more pedestrian fans to perform those specific 'hits' from fifty years ago. I was once at one show in Toronto where Van opened up with "Tupelo Honey" and immediately followed, without break, into "Brown Eyed Girl." Knowing these Morrison-identifiers are usually saved for the encore, I was both shocked and pleased at his decision to get the crap out so early. When "Brown Eyed Girl" ended, Van looked aimlessly to the side of the stage, took a sip from a nearby glass, and announced something to the effect of: "Now that we got that shit outta the way, we can get on with the real show." Half the audience cheered as the rest sat dumbfounded, understanding neither the man's accent nor the truthful pleasure in his jest.

(Interluding anecdote: The song "Brown Eyed Girl" was originally written, recorded and titled as "Brown-Skinned Girl" by Van Morrison in March of 1966. Morrison begrudgingly had to change the lyrics because of the implied content. The song, "an exuberant combination of R&B and pop with a nostalgic lyric celebrating the euphoria of young love,"[1] was a little too risqué of a topic [inter-racial relations] for 1966 and Morrison lost his will to fight Producer Bert Berns' insistence on "radio playability.")

Van Morrison's attitude towards life and his music is a combination of his own eccentricity and abuse at the hands of the industry. For an only child growing up in the civil unrest of Belfast during the middle decades of the twentieth century, Van had an astonishing talent and obsession for American music (specifically the Delta Blues). He became insistent on 'making it in America' after breaking from his founding band, Them (who were known for their macho and pugnacious attitude towards the burgeoning 'pop' industry) because of their less-than-shared vision of musical competence.

In 1966, Van made the move to New York City where he was quickly picked up by Producer Berns of Bang Records (a partner of Atlantic). As a ruthless businessman eager to feed off the new Irish talent behind Them's success, Burns quickly recorded Van's new single and soon-to-be US Top 10 hit "Brown Eyed Girl" (1966). Upon arriving in New York, Morrison recorded a number of singles for Berns who robbed him of the royalties through a deceptive contract and sent him packing back to Ireland flat broke. Even worse, Berns coerced Morrison into signing a "five-year publishing deal for a non-recoupable advance of $500." It was a deal Morrison would never emotionally recover from, later describing the arrangement as "professional suicide."[1]

Already fragile because of his extraordinary quirkiness and lack of social skills, Morrison's opinion of the music industry was ruined for life, and with good cause. What makes Morrison so admirable is the way in which he channeled that anger and hatred into fifty years of amazing albums. Watch this video, recorded in Canada in 2008, to get a sense of Morrison's continued disdain for "the record industry" still, forty-four years later:

It is a fair statement to presume that anyone who is a serious Van Morrison fan is most likely aware of his reputation around the industry; both within musician circles and fans alike. A review of one of Morrison's more recent unauthorized biographies, (one I have not read) titled Can You Feel the Silence (2003), remarks how the biographer "makes no bones" about Morrison's "even-handed manner," claiming that "Morrison may have made much more great music than bad, but it always comes with the caveat that Van the Man is essentially difficult and nasty." Biographer Clinton Heylin immediately sets the tone to his book, opening with a Morrison quote on himself; "'Hello darlin', I never said I was a nice guy.'" Yet, the response I usually like to give to the one in one hundred people who know Van's legendary temper is, "Who cares? Do you know anything about his music beyond five popular songs from the Sixties? The man is a musical genius."

Sir Harold Nicolson, the British writer, diplomat, and politician, once said of the Irish: "The Irish do not want anyone to wish them well; they want everyone to wish their enemies ill." This may be what best sums up Van Morrison: a young Irish musician burned early on in the ugly corporate world of American record labels who is unlikely to forgive and certain to never forget. Again, though, I ask: "Who cares?"

Van Morrison is a man about music and can do without the rest of the bullshit. In one interview, he remarked how image, identity, and name mean nothing. "Can you play?" is all he asks of anyone. In Van's world, either you can or you can't. That's it. No questions asked. The circus of frenzy that attaches itself to the music industry is what makes Morrison so miserable, and in return, so crass.

'Just shut up and play,' is his mantra. And everything from the breaking down of his songs to an attempt to understand the motive behind each metaphor inflates irritation. Van Morrison will be the first to tell anyone that nothing else matters but the music:

"'No, no, no, because, it's not about me,' Morrison said with a vehemence that didn't sound defensive--as his denials, of anything, so often do. 'It's totally fictional. These are short stories, in musical form--put together of composites, of conversations I heard, things I saw, and movies, newspapers, books, and comes out as stories. That's it,' he said, though already his tone had shifted to that of utter wonder that people won't accept this. 'There's no more.'"[3]

[1] Rogan, Johnny. Van Morrison: No Surrender (London: Vintage Books, 2006) Pg. 199.
[2] ibid.
[3]Marcus, Greil. When That Rough Goes Riding (New York: Public Affairs, 2010) Pg. 140.

The Inequalities of Classification

Go into the iTunes Music Store on your MacBook or iPhone and type in a search for "World Music." Here are the first six albums that come up within that organized genre: Irish Drinking Songs, Moulin Rouge Songs of France, Sicilian Folk Festival, Songs of Israel, Paraguayan Harp Vol. 1, and Little Singers of Tokyo. I don't think you have to be a music scholar to hear the difference between an 'Irish drinking song' like "Biddy Mulligan" and "Kisha-Poppo", the Japanese child choir choral.

I have written on the taxonomy of music for BTR before, and this week being 'Globalization & Culture Week' presents the perfect opportunity to re-hatch the topic. Understanding there is an innate part of the human psyche that has each one of us subconsciously seek ways to organize items and thoughts in our head as to better understand their components, I still ask the question; "How necessary is this practice?" When you go to visit a friend living in a new town and they take you out to a place you have never been before, before getting ready you ask the question, "What kind of place is it?" In this scenario, the question serves as part of a greater purpose--"what should I wear?" Therefore the attempt to predetermine whether the place is a restaurant, English pub, sports bar, or full on nightclub actually plays a role in related decision-making. The point to be drawn here is that the organization of an object can serve a valuable purpose and thus not all practices of taxonomy are moot.

Music is not as concrete however, and when dealing with the abstract, the idea of organization under rubric becomes a tougher concept to sell. If anything, it can or should be linked to 'mood.' For example, when you get comfortable on your couch at the end of a week and flip on Netflix, the categorization of films in the Netflix library most likely assists you in determining which film you want to watch by forcing you to ask yourself, "What am I in the mood for?" Even still, the programmers at Netflix take a little too much liberty with their film-buff lexicon, offering genres like "Independent Romantic-Comedy Heist Film with a Twist," or my personal favorite, "Movies You'll Like." How is this a qualified genre when Netflix doesn't even know what mood I am in?

Record companies originally began to organize their product in categories so their customers could more easily navigate about the store in search of items they intended on purchasing. The point must not be lost on the reader here - the creation and development of organizing music by "type" was a practice in customer service and increasing sales revenue and had very little to do with sound. If someone walks into a music store looking for John Coltrane, they would be more likely to purchase an Ornette Coleman album that is filed next to Coltrane in the "C" column of the Jazz Section than if the entire store was merely alphabetized and next to Coltrane sat Coldplay, Edwyn Collins, Jason Collett and Sam Cooke. The business model was simple: learn the customer's musical taste, steer him/her down the desired aisle like cattle, and sell more records.

(Interluding anecdote: Some of you may find it interesting to learn that before Record Shops, music was sold in the furniture section of large department stores because radio/turntables were seen as pieces of furniture and the records were sold alongside them as add-ons to the purchasing of a new home stereo by furniture salesmen. I can guarantee, there was no "music-by-genre" then.)

Many artists who get categorized under the "World Music" heading find it ever more offensive than I have already discussed. According to an online BBC News article, Nitin Sawhney, a UK artist who was named winner of the Boundary-Crossing award at BBC Radio 3's inaugural Awards for World Music in 2002, is "less willing to accommodate the whims of retailers, media and shoppers."

Sawhney applies race-theory to the categorization of World Music: "The phrase creates a 'racist' category ... that lets people sideline music by artists who are not in the same style or from the same background as the majority," Shawney told the BBC. "It's always flattering and complimentary to get awards ... [b]ut at the same time I don't understand the concept of judgementalism [sic] in the arts. I always think of the arts as being about personal, emotional expression. I tend to think that music is the place that doesn't have barriers or prejudices, but it's amazing how people try to force their barriers or prejudices onto music."

While I personally would not go as far as to apply theories of racism to the categorization of music, I do empathize with Sawhney's ulterior motive--that being, to do away with concepts of "judgment in the arts" altogether. How can one major grouping like "rock" or "jazz" have so many subtypes that everything from Icelandic prayer to Aboriginal didgeridoo be classified as 'World Music?'

I prefer the laid back, disinterested approach of Spanish-French guitarist Manu Chao who says it is a "lazy label," and UK-born African singer Susheela Raman who calls the idea of a World Music genre "ridiculous." Regardless of what I, or any other artists think on the matter, "the term 'world music' has already become well established" in the industry. "There are magazines and festivals dedicated to it, and the music business has used it as a category to measure sales since 1998." Furthermore, some "2.5 million albums from the world category were sold in the UK that year."

It is great that sales are up in the category. Without doubt, the explosion of file sharing and online purchasing of music has made just about any piece of music, from anywhere in the world, accessible to all people of the earth. It may be too early to tell, but one can argue that the more we move into online music sharing as the norm and get away from large record labels trying to find a mathematical method that easily track sales in order to improve revenue streams, the closer we will be to getting rid of the concept of genre completely. And then what would we be left with?

Sound. Collaborative, harmonic, cooperative sound.

"It will change your life; I swear"

In 1967, a mostly unknown folk duo from New York City performing under their last names provided a soundtrack to a daring screen adaptation by director Mike Nichols based on a 1963 novel by Charles Webb titled The Graduate. In the words of the pop culture blog Sarcasm Alley, the music and lyrics they produced "not only complimented the film, but enhanced it." For the young sixties generation that was on the dawn of a massive breakthrough in the sexual revolution, these traditional, peaceful folk-ballads dubbed over coming-of-age themes of adultery, temptation, and desire were an odd but hauntingly beautiful selection for the film. This is all without mention for what it did to the careers of the now- legendary duo, Simon & Garfunkel, as musicians and newly christened pop stars.

In 1967, the term "indie" as a music genre was far from even being imagined. The Graduate, however, sparked a fairly new concept in music promotion and that was the idea that a film studio and a record label could collaborate to push up and coming musicians by playing multiple tracks of a single artist in newly released films targeted to a youthful demographic. This subliminal marketing practice held court, really, until the 1990s when moviegoers and music-lovers alike began to notice the obvious relationship between film style and soundtrack. This is not to say that film genre and music genre did not pair well until the 1990s--anything from Jailhouse Rock to The Man With the Golden Arm would prove otherwise. It is just to push through the point that film and music may have never worked so well together to sell a subcultural zeitgeist of the "indie" category as it has in the last twenty years. Arguably, two films kick it all off: Reality Bites and Singles.

I apologize to my reader for quoting at length here, but one of the reviews I stumbled upon says everything there is to say about the new-wave nineties soundtrack as succinctly as I could ever put it. Here is what reviewer 'Lambchop' from epinions.com has to say about Singles: "The years 1990 through 1992 were banner years in the world of rock n' roll. Now considered the peak of the 'grunge' era, it yielded albums from massively popular acts Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains and Soundgarden in addition to somewhat less known but equally noteworthy bands including Screaming Trees, Mudhoney, and Mother Love Bone. After 1992, the 'Seattle Sound' (as it was also known) became the MTV version of rock n' roll but before then it was raw, real, and angry. It was everything that rock music should be. There are few compilations that truly capture the spirit of the era. One collection that managed that feat is the soundtrack to Singles. The film also did a fair job at capturing the scene and the generational angst." Singles was to the grunge generation who grew up in the 1990s what Garden State would be to the indie generation growing up in the 2000s.

"What are you listening to?" asks a coy and self-doubtful Zach Braff.

"The Shins. Ya know 'em?" answers the adorably wired and dorky Natalie Portman.

"No."

"You gotta hear this one song, it will change your life; I swear.

When actor Zach Braff places the oversized headphones upon his 'tête,' some clever film and sound editing follows that "changes the lives" of many young kids hearing The Shins for the first time. Garden State quickly became an underground cult classic after its release in August 2004. The soundtrack was equally successful, winning a Grammy for "Best Compilation Soundtrack Album for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media" in 2005 and launching the mainstream acceptance of such indie standards as The Postal Service, Nick Drake, and Iron & Wine. It even had shed some indie cred on the Brit-Pop sensation of the day, Coldplay. (Ironically enough, for this article anyhow, the soundtrack also featured a Simon and Garfunkel tune--"The Only Living Boy in New York").

I could go on to list so many other indie films that have helped push new bands, like what Juno did for Kimya Dawson and the Moldy Peaches, or what 500 Days of Summer did for She & Him, but as always is the case with these articles, brevity is golden. Of course, there is another film-soundtrack genre all on its own that hasn't been discussed whatsoever here. That is the trend for one single band to provide the entire soundtrack to a movie, especially for those movies whose narratives (fictional or otherwise) feature those musicians. An example of this would be the Irish-made Once or the Canadian-made This Movie is Broken which features music by Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglova, and Broken Social Scene, respectively. But that is a whole other article unto itself.

Ya Dig?

Just about anyone who knows me well can tell you what my all-time favorite DVD is. In fact, I love this movie so much that I have taken to the habit of being quite a philanthropist with it. Meaning, anyone with whom I meet and who shows a keen interest in its subject matter, I give them my copy and set out to buy another. I must be on my seventh or eighth copy by now. Spreading the greatness of The Last Waltz is well worth the $9.99 eight times over.

When I set out to write on this topic, though, I had to do some serious introsepctin' -- what makes Scorsese's 1975 documentary on The Band's last concert so magnificent? I admit, I am biased: I love The Band, and I love all the guest appearances who showed up that night to help bring the boys home just as much. So my opinion of the film was tainted even before the first time I ever saw the opening title card: "This Film Should Be Played LOUD!" It was expected that I, along with any other seventies classic rock fan, is going to appreciate the documentary. Yet the question is a pertinent one, does the music make up for any lack of camera technique or the overall quality of the filmmaking? How much can a film be judged beyond the quality of the subject?

The music documentary is not as old of a film genre as we may unconsciously think. Arguably, the first music documentary to make its mark on both the public and film-critic stage was D.A. Pennebaker's 1967 Bob Dylan documentary . Don't Look Back was a pivotal moment in filmmaking for two reasons: 1) it was among the first uses of the 'fly on the wall' cinematography technique in popular cinema; 2) it began a new craze in which musicians/bands were shot as they were, without a script and without slipping into character. This last point was significant in that it was a major shift from the kinds of films fans were used to seeing their stars in. Cross-fertilizing pop stars with film was not a revolutionary idea in 1965. The public was already used to seeing stars like Elvis Presley and The Beatles in movies like Jailhouse Rock (1957), Blue Hawaii (1961), Help! (1965) and A Hard Day's Night (1964), respectively. But until Bob Dylan and D.A. Pennebaker collaborated for his 1965 tour through the U.K., no one had ever seen anything like this.

Jim Ridley, in a 2008 'look back' piece (obviously he was above any title directive) for The Village Voicecalled the film a "rock doc [that] all but invented the form while presaging the music video." In another review, Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times remarks on the film's 'real' quality as its best; "the film is arranged in loose chronological order, [and] there is little obvious editing within each scene. This takes advantage of cinéma vérité's strong point -- its ability to show exactly what happened, moment by moment, the bad along with the good." Whether you are a fan or not (because Ebert certainly was not a fan of this film), there is no arguing its influence on the rest of "rock docs" to follow.

Skipping ahead a few generations (having already pseudo-represented the '70s with The Last Waltz in the opening paragraph), I feel I must spend some time discussing Dig!. The 2004 Sundance Grand Jury Prize: Documentary award winner orbits around friendly-competing bands, The Brian Jonestown Massacre and The Dandy Warhols. Although it wasn't revealed to the public until 2004, the footage is mostly all-'90s. When watching the film for the first time, one gets the sense that Director Ondi Timoner did anything more than release an edited version of her personal home video collection. Yet when deconstructing all that it is, Dig!soon reveals itself to be so much more compelling as an acute representation of how "indie" rock music perceived itself at the dusk of the twentieth century and how bands desired to be received by industry snobs. On top of all this, it was the ultimate no-holds-barred party vid--layered in alcohol, marijuana, cocaine, ecstasy, heroin, and good ol' rock n' roll. It is narrated by one of its stars, which is a whimsical twist, not originally planned by Timoner, that adds to its believability and the sincerity of its subject.

Joel Selvin of the San Francisco Chronicle: "Filmmaker Ondi Timoner followed the entangled rise of these two bands from the Pacific Northwest with an obsessive compulsive's eye for detail. Every ugly moment is on the screen -- from the onstage fistfights to the Georgia roadside marijuana bust -- as the two bands seek their respective fortunes." The screen plays out like a drug-addled version of Bob Saget's first season of America's Funniest Home Videos, for all of us old enough to remember what watching your buddies' band recorded in your garage on VHS was all about. Dig!'s success lies in it's relativity to its time and perhaps therein lies the lesson.

From Pennebaker to Timoner, with a very young Scorsese in between (he was 34 years old when he madeThe Last Waltz), the one thing these documentary filmmakers share in common is their ability to reflect the madness of their time through the music that defined it. The key to a successful band documentary is not to imitate that which has already been done. Instead, 'document' the music in the medium of which it lives, and you stand alone to make a great film.

Smoking and the Image of Cool

How many of you, for those who are smokers or were smokers or at least have ever tried smoking at some time or another, did so for the first time in some sort of live musical context? There is a relationship between music and smoking that together forms this iconic image of a cool renegade; a badass rocker decked out in subcultural fashion trends of the day, hacking on a cigarette as a symbol of independence, adult-status, and resistance. Or at least there has been for years. Our knowledge of the health dangers and threats to smoking are, I believe, having a positive effect on young peoples’ decision to not smoke cigarettes. There is another side to the coin, however, one that shines a little irony in the face of the noble marketing effort, and that is: the more successful anti-smoking campaigns have been at promoting the idea that smoking kills rather than looks cool, the more the marginal youth seeking to resist all forms of mainstream society is tempted to indulge in the targeted habit.

I would love to be able to survey all the readers of this article and ask, “what exactly came into your head when you read the title of this article? What image popped into mind? Was it a particular musician sitting there with a cigarette dangling from his lips while he soloed away on his Stratocaster a là Keith Richards or Jimmy Page? Was it an iconic black and white image taken from the golden age of the jazz years in Harlem—Lady Day standing at the mic in a smoke-engulfed Minton’s or Thelonious Monk sitting at the piano with an ashtray and burning cigarette next to the high C? Was it a badass Sid Vicious, Patti Smith, or Joey Ramone leaning on the brick outside of CBGBs, one knee bent with Chuck Taylor flat against the wall—the cigarette signifying the ultimate “Fuck You” to both the camera and you, it’s viewer. Or was it a solemn and lonely Tom Waits or Willie Nelson, playing to a crowd of four on a chicken wire and Christmas lights lit stage in a roadhouse somewhere off Highway 87? Regardless of what your vision was, in my opinion there is a certain romanticism and genuine hipness to the scenes I just laid out for you that is emphasized by the cigarette. I don't think you would be reading this blog if you felt otherwise. Replace the cigarette in each image with a carrot juice, and let's face it, the icon just lost its majestic power. Where is the "edge" in a vegan shake?

(As a side note: Did you ever stop to ask where the cigarettes are in hip hop, soul, classical, or pop music? It’s strange how some genres of music embrace the cigarette while others seem to abandon it altogether.)

Enough of the rock stars; let’s shift to the crowd. In an article written by Columbia University professor of Ethnomusicology Aaron Fox, the Dean of the Department contends, “[M]usic is like a cigarette…. ‘[they] are bad [and] that’s why they are good.’” Fox argues the disdain for smoking lies in the contradiction of a cigarette – what makes it so desired is the fact that it is so shunned against. This is precisely why smoking a cigarette becomes, what Fox calls, a ‘sublime’ act; because of our learned hatred for this small object we are taught will kill us, it exists in our conscious as an object representative of intense desire. In the case of the rebel, that desire gets inverted and becomes a desire “for” rather than a desire “against.” This passion for the subversive signifiers a cigarette instills is similar to the passion youth hold for specific musical genres as well; hence the marriage between the two forms is born. Being a member of a deviant subculture that is only admired by those within its sphere, and accordingly hated by everyone else, perpetuates the individuals desire for taste and expression of that said membership. Therefore the music, like the cigarette, signifies an embracement of those abhorred symbols – it’s good to love what is bad to love.

Fox takes the analogy of smoking and music one step further. “Smoking in a group of smokers is profoundly sociable,” he claims. Let us not forget our history of tobacco and remind ourselves that smoking came from Native Americans who would share pipes as part of a communal, social event. Music only enriches the experience of this gathering. Here, I find it necessary to quote Professor Fox at length: “The sociability of smokers is mediated by elaborate rituals of offering cigarettes to others (or conversely, “bumming” a smoke), of handling cigarettes performatively, of lighting both one’s own cigarette and those of others, and of organizing the rhythm of conversation around the rhythms of smoking.” This adds to the perception of “cool” especially for the impressionable adolescent who admires and emulates his/her elders of the same subcultural medium.

To the chagrin of parents, medical professionals, and anti-smoking campaigners worldwide, I argue that, as unfortunate as it may be, smoking as “cool” is an image that will never fade. In fact, like many social tropes, the more smoking is pushed to the margins of mass society the more it will be sought after as a symbol of the anti-normal. The only silver lining in all of this may lie in an argument supporting the necessity to address global overpopulation.

The citations for this article were from Aaron Fox, “White Trash Alchemies of the Abject Sublime: Country As “Bad” Music,” in Bad Music: The Music We Love to Hate. eds. Christopher Washburne and Maiken Derno (New York: Routledge, 2004) pp. 39-61.

Dial up the Bunnies

I know the following has little to do with music and culture, but it does have to do with the Internet, which has changed the way we receive and listen to music. I was asked to write an article about the first time I ever went online for BreakThru Radio as part of their "Communication" theme week. Perhaps, after reading this, you will end up thinking about your own discovery of the Internet and the very first Web site you visited.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In the fall of 1994 and I was taking a 12^th grade law class even though I was still in the 11^th grade. The reason for this was that the teacher, Mr. Regan, had a reputation for being not only an excellent instructor of law but also one of those faculty members who was “in the know” with all the up-and-coming stories going on outside our small community bubble in northern Ontario. He was a man who was educated at Notre Dame University (a far-reaching impossibility for students in my high school) and a teacher who participated in cultured/educated practices like reading The New York Times every day and subscribing to The Economist and The New Yorker. He was a true “mover and shaker” long before Larry Page and Sergey Brin had even thought about their Stanford dissertation.

I remember sitting in the portable classroom and listening to him try to explain this new computer “thing” (I am almost positive this was the noun he used to describe it) called “the world wide web.” Only one girl in our class of about 30 had any notion of what he was talking about, as she told the class her father had already made appointments to have it “installed” the following week. As I recall, the way Mr. Regan explained it to his class was that the Internet (“Sorry. The what?”) was like a library in your computer. As unbelievable as it was, one was now able to visit different places to read written content and look up pictures taken almost anywhere in the world all from home and through a simple PC. “Think of it like a million books inside of your computer,” were his words.

It sounds almost ridiculous now; but how does one go about explaining this concept to a group of 17/18 year-olds most of whom had only been on a computer a handful of times, and out of that, only to type an essay or play a game. The concept of “online” was as foreign to us then as the concept of solar energy is to Republicans now.

Trying to wrap my head around it as a 17 year old, I realize now that it was the verbs “visit” or “go to” that confused me the most. I just couldn’t understand how one could operate a computer to “go somewhere.” Has the computer somehow become some sort of teleportation device? “This is freakin’ AWESOME,” were my most immediate thoughts.

Less than a year later, my parents were on board. Trust me when I tell you, for those of you too young to know life without the Internet, this thing took off like a forest fire. One day you were sitting in a classroom trying to make sense of a concept that places a worldwide library inside your computer, and the next you are sitting in front of your Compaq Presario 486DX2 listening to the sound of digital fibers rub up against one another like wounded crickets in a dying attempt at a mating call inside of a snowy television set.

It was a Friday night and my parents had gone away for the weekend when I lost my web browsing virginity. As you do in high school when the folks leave home, my brother and I had a small get together of friends to drink Olde English and play euchre around the kitchen table. Only this time, the drinking led us upstairs where our family computer sat in my sister’s room. One of my friends was well on his way to establishing himself as a tech-nerd (he is now a Senior Vice President of a banking IT division that designs and develops algorithms for Mutual Fund management) and was going to give us other athletic hooligans our first taste of the online world. He showed me how to disconnect the phone line from the wall and plug it into the back of our brand new Compaq (“A computer with a telephone jack? What the F?”). He then demonstrated where to click in the bottom of the screen to prompt the connection between computer and landline. My buddies and I had little patience for the tiny blue light that moseyed its way back and forth between computer icons waiting for something to happen. After a full beer and a few shout outs of, “this suuuuucks” and “dude, are you kidding me with this?” the green light was lit and we were on our way to being “connected to the whole world.”

The next step in my friend’s futuristic hacking abilities was to “double-click” on this picture of a shipping helm that sat on the desktop of the screen. After a few loading minutes, a new “window popped-up” and there was apparently “an address bar” at the top (recall: all of these terms are in quotation marks because they were so foreign to me/us at the time, we had no idea what my wiz-kid buddy was talking about. He was using a language none of us had ever heard before). “Are we in yet?” the group of adolescent fellas all wondered like a band of thieves who were trying to crack a safe. The loading Netscape home page had yet to produce a thing other than a taskbar and scroll bar--two features none of us had ever seen before.

Some things about the Internet will never change – they may have gotten a lot better – but they will never change. My reason for this quick digression away from our story is to prompt the question to the reader: “What Web site do you think a group of 17 year-old boys would first visit while drinking on a Friday night in a parent-less house?”

My friend explained that we had to type in “www” which stood for “World Wide Web” (“Woooaaaa. Cooooool!” we all gasped) and then the “address” of the place we wanted to visit. Apparently, we could type in anything (this was long before search engines were popular. You used to have to know the actual http address of the site you wished to visit in order to get there more quickly).

Then my friend hit the keys: w. w. w. p. l. a. y. b. o. y. .. c. o. m.

“Awesome dude!”

“Are we gonna get in trouble for this?”

“What if the cops come?”

“Will my parents know I looked at this? How do we delete it?”

The anticipation and adrenaline rush of the Internet was thrilling. What was going to happen? For all we knew the most recent Playmate of the Month was going to step out from the monitor of my computer screen and start asking us for i.d.

I can remember the page taking many minutes (which felt like hours) to load. First, the background color would appear; then the logo at the top. Next was the written content, which practically appeared word-by-word. There were very few images on homepages back then, as it would slow down the page download time way too much. To see an actual image, you would have to click on the “thumbnail” and it would reload a page. This could take several, and I mean SEVERAL, minutes. And the photos wouldn’t load top-down the way they do today either. The entire image would appear on the screen as one large blue-gray, out-of-focus mash. As minutes passed, the pixels would slowly become more defined and into focus. It was a bit like looking at a magazine through dirt-filled, foggy lenses and having them rubbed clean one swipe ever 2-3 minutes until you could make sense of what you were supposed to be looking at. After about five minutes, you could start to see an image that resembled skin tone and a female figure, and after about ten, you finally had a clear picture of a nipple.

It has been sixteen years now since my first Internet experience. Yesterday, I video Skyped from my iPhone while walking down Broadway in New York City to a friend of mine who was sitting at Heathrow waiting to board a flight. It is almost inconceivable how far, and how fast, the Internet has evolved. There is no arguing that it has literally changed the way we live and communicate.

For those readers who are now only 17 and using the Internet as a daily source of social nutrition, I wonder what you will be writing about in sixteen years? What will you be describing as archaic and unbelievably vintage? And just how will you be doing it?

In sixteen years from now, I wouldn’t be too surprised if you just hook up some nodes to your temples and think about what you want to say. The software program will write the words itself, translating your thoughts to text in seconds.

What is a Hipster?

For those of you who frequently check in with the inhuman ones, I apologize for my recent lack of content. I could spend the next 50 words griping about why I am unable to get anything up on this blog right now, but I will save you the pathetic self-pity.

Last week, I read a book that is being sold out all over in New York City titled "What Was the Hipster?" The book is a follow-up to a panel/academic conference held at The New School in April 2009 and was coedited by Professor Mark Greif. Mark is an amazing cat--he did his undergrad in literature and history at Harvard, Master's at Oxford, and got his Ph.D. in literature from Yale.

I sat down with Mark to interview him on hipster culture and we had a very interesting conversation. The book is so good, it inspired me to abandon one of my research topics here in my final semester to take up trying to answer the following question that has puzzled me about hipsters: "Why is this the one (or at least, first) subcultural movements of which its members wish to deny being a part of?"

Being called a "hipster" is an insult to most. The Onion captured it best in a witty article heading; "Two Hipsters Angrily Call Each Other 'Hipster'." Hipster culture is a fascinating topic to me and this week's Book Talk on BreakThru Radio was the best show yet.

I implore you all to take some time (the show is 60 minutes in length) and listen to Mark discuss what he and his co-researchers have discovered about hipsters in 2010 (especially if you deny being in the category yourself--this means you and all your hipster friends Eugenia). And, if you like what you hear, go and buy his book ("What Was the Hipster?").

Click HERE for the show.