Sunday, August 2, 2009

Where's El Kabong when we need him?

So I've been sitting in this coffee joint trying to write for the past couple of hours. There is music playing. The channel is something called "The Coffeehouse" on satellite radio station Sirius XM.

OK. Don't get me wrong. There are a lot of singer-songwriters I love. Unfortunately, I haven't heard any of them on this particular station. The shtick here seems to be that the singer-songwriters are playing covers of classic tunes. After a bit of hard listening, sometimes it's possible to figure out what song is getting covered. The problem is that the singers are so woefully insipid or cliche-ridden, like the waif-girl with the guitar or the stoner kid with the frizzy hair and the guitar, that even Lennon-McCartney or Bernstein-Sondheim comes out sounding like Jason Mraz or Melanie Safka, as in extremely annoying.

Having played or sat through countless open mics, I'm a veteran of sitting through sets by insipid singer-songwriters. But this station reaches a new level of blowage, or suckage, or whatever metric you want to apply to this stinkola musical shark chum.

Now, the problem, when this stuff gets foisted at the coffeehouse level, is this: You have your ASCAP or BMI dicks going around jacking up cafe owners, who might prefer to program their own playlists, via playing iPods or CDs, in their establishments. You know, like local bands or singers or bedroom electronica acts that could use the exposure. So what happens, after the rep from one of these publishers' enforcers gets in the cafe owner's face, is that he or she decides its easier to put up a "no covers" sign for anyone playing there, and then these proprietors subscribe to one of these foreground music firms like Sirius XM for their musical needs, because the paying-royalty business with the music is already squared away.

And some of those Sirius channels are pretty damned good. But a few of them, like this particular channel, were something Dante Alighieri was writing about in the 14th century.

I've been listening to this stuff for the past three hours. For the most part, what I've heard is generic, flavorless musical granola that goes in one ear and out the other. If the old Broadway test for a hit is that you walk out of the theater whistling the tunes you just heard, well, I'd have to plead amnesia here. I can't remember a thing, except for some acoustic guitars, whiny voices and other earmarks of "authenticity," like the occasional squeezebox.

The part that really bums me out is that coffeehouses used to be great places to hear local music. Here in Sacramento, there are a number of very good acts that haven't stopped recording new music just because record stores appear to be going the way of the slot car emporium. These acts sell their music at shows. You have to go to the shows to see them and buy the music. Which a lot of fans do. Still, wouldn't it be nice if you could walk into coffee joints around town and hear fresh new music from local musicians, instead of some kind of watered-down contemporary Muzak that has no local connection? Talk about a lost opportunity.

I'm not sure how this could be done, but wouldn't it be cool if there was a local-music waiver for coffeehouses and bars and clothing boutiques, so that establishments wouldn't get penalized by roving BMI or ASCAP agents for helping to promote local music? I'd sure prefer to hear what Buildings Breeding or Ahoy! or Mike Farrell or Ricky Berger or Agent Ribbons or Desario or Baby Grand or a bunch of other local acts are up to than some of the swill that's getting piped in instead.

And you?

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