Brief review of Sheryl Crow's Wildflower

Musical mom jeans.

The importance of being the audience

For several years I thought I wanted to be a musician. I love the idea of starting a rock band -- I keep wondering if the world is ready for a group of rocker moms who aren't all 20 and cute as models but are real people. I still like picking up my guitars and making noises, and I have lots of instruments, but the desire to be a rock star is less urgent lately.

Perhaps it was at my second Gomez show that I adopted this nifty little delusion that when I'm in the audience, I am the band's personal rhythm consultant, the one who lets them know when they're on and when they're not (because contrary to popular opinion, I haven't felt they were always on). When they're on, I dance. When they're not, I just can't. It's like that contract with the author or filmmaker when you read a novel or see a fiction film, what they call in literature classes the "willing suspension of disbelief." If the author says something inconsistent or the story is poorly edited or you watch a film about which you walk away muttering, "Those people never would have done that," they've disturbed the illusion and you catch that deflating glimpse of the man behind the curtain. When a group of musicians put all of their soul into it and are paying attention and listening to each other, magic can happen. When they're not, it's a dull thud by comparison.

And thinking of myself this way has opened my eyes to the importance of being the audience. Where would bands and authors and filmmakers be without an audience? It's an underrated role, but one I love.

Last night I filmed a band called GoGo Lab at their CD release party, and there were a lot of unexpected aspects to it. The hardest part for me was not dancing when I was shooting with my handheld camera, to keep the image steady, of course. It was especially hard because part of the band's schtick is this cool back-lit screen behind which people can go-go dance (and did!) -- just the thing for my showoffy side. (I would love to make a music documentary, but filming them would not be my dream job. I just want to dance. And direct.) The best part was how the musicians clearly felt about being filmed -- you could see it really pushed them a little to emote, to connect with each other and with their audience. I probably had a stupid grin on my face half the time I was filming, and I swear it made a difference -- it was one more piece of positive feedback for them. The worst part of filming was the feeling that by filming I was somehow disturbing the natural flow of the event and the audience's attention on the band. But it was a great example of how the energy can flow back and forth between the band and audience.

(And by the way, since seeing Gomez on Tuesday night at the Fox this week, I'm no longer so deluded about being their rhythm consultant -- Olly and Dajon didn't need any help at all.)

Reinventions: Sexuality

Lest we forget, pop star Elton John was not out of the closet when his musical career began. When he started writing songs with Bernie Taupin, the word was starting to circulate, and the emotional sophistication of Taupin’s lyrics in combination with John’s music suggested a more meaningful connection, which turned out to be very much the case. So Elton and later Melissa Etheridge came out of the closet. k.d. lang’s roadies had to clear many pairs of girly undies (and some others as well) from the stages after her shows. Madonna published her book Sex and dallied openly with Sandra Bernhardt between her alliances with celebrity husbands.

Now, gay is chic and everyone I know knows someone gay, if they are not themselves. Even in the little private community we visit in Cape Cod there’s a guy who got a divorce after being married and having kids and now lives there with his partner, a man, to the horror of my grandparents. But those grandparents are the ones who watch Fox News and despise Will and Grace, an update of The Odd Couple for thirty-something urbanites, which has already ended its successful eight-season sitcom run (guaranteering endless cable TV runs for the next several years). A year ago, when Madonna french-kissed Britney Spears at an awards show she provoked a stir, but it didn't last long (for some reason in the U.S. Janet Jackson’s nipple freaked people out far more – probably for the same reasons people are oogy about moms nursing their kids longer than a year or two here).


Tangent: As I write this I find that what I find odd about pop culture is how much emphasis on sex there is. Why would we want know anything about a celebrity’s sex life, much less anyone else’s, unless they actually told us about it themselves? But appetites for that sort of thing seem bottomless, and have inspired current media darling Diablo Cody’s willingness to go directly to the pussy shot to earn her fame and fortune without even passing Go and collecting her $200 first.

The people I know who are gay and out are among the most well-adjusted people I know. Those same grandparents who can’t stand anything that puts gays in a positive light are so freaking squeamish about the topic that you wonder if there wasn’t some real trauma behind all of this for them, some locker-room horror shows they both witnessed as kids growing up in New Jersey and Massachusetts. It’s clear they don’t feel it’s a "lifestyle choice." It’s not an option for anyone in their minds. They are a little cooler perhaps toward their Cape Cod neighbor and his new partner, but I still think it’s good for the older folks to see someone become themselves and not being answered by lightning descending from God on high.

A willingness to allow people to choose their partners seems like a healthy development for our culture, which is why I support efforts to pass laws that allow same-sex marriages. I fooled around with boys and girls as a kid, and while in retrospect I was an oversexualized kid, I was also glad I had the freedom to discover what I like. As an adult I have found that what I like turns out to be a fluid concept. Often I am very feminine, and sometimes I feel otherwise. I enjoy the way my body works in sex and I also have lots of experiential curiosity about what sex feels like to a man. For many years I have not thought of myself as strictly heterosexual even though that is the life I lead, but rather pansexual. But I'm happiest within my partnership with my mate.

I just finished reading Bebe Buell's autobiography, Rebel Heart. (She's actress Liv Tyler's mom.) I'd be shocked if that isn't made into a film in the next few years. She rocks, and seems like a kindred spirit. A little while ago I started looking for "people like me," people who have been so moved by music or a personal, unique desire for something unexpected, that they have done things they never would have expected to do as adults, perhaps things that most of their peers were not doing. And I am finding more and more of them. Bebe Buell is an interesting woman, along with Pamela des Barres (I'm With the Band: Confessions of a Groupie and Take Another Little Piece of My Heart: A Groupie Grows Up), because they grew up as women who were initially subservient to these male self-styled rock gods (Led Zeppelin, Todd Rundgren, Elvis Costello, etc.). They had to discover their own power, figure out their own needs, and learn how to stop serving their men tea and propping their feet up when they came home after two-day benders. And it is these women who have in part gone before me and people like Diablo Cody. We rocker women owe them one.

Local Band Attempts to Track Down Mysterious Visitor To Its Website*

I do wonder and wonder. Why do I wonder so? I wonder that as well. I wonder how people reach their audiences. I wonder whether these Gomez guys have reached their audience already. Whether this is it. I feel I haven't found mine, haven't gotten brave enough to really seek it out. What if I fail? That question still hangs over my neck (and I think it's because I have big ideas). But I suppose I need to turn them into specific goals to truly be able to say I'm on the path. And slowly but surely, I am doing this, while I am finding my voice and courage. A theme that plays throughout my life (perhaps since sitting on Janis' Joplin's piano in 1967 during my formative years) is a primal interest in how and why people gather for musical catharsis. I'm interested in getting people to want to do something together. Maybe I'm still a frustrated lead guitarist and flamboyant parader, costume-changer (like the guy in Scissor Sisters).

I have concluded the difference between something good and something great is that you want to share it with people. I just gave my neighbor a new CD from Gomez (he and his wife, both ultracool people, love it). I saw someone from an old book group the other day and he mentioned a book and I said, "I love that book so much I have two copies: one to keep and one to give away." Music is particularly nice this way: Things that come recommended may stand a much better chance of being heard. That link takes you to a Neil Finn appearance on Morning Becomes Eclectic on KCRW in which both host Nic Harcourt and Neil Finn gush about Gomez before putting on "78 Stone Wobble" from Bring it On. If you don't love Neil Finn as I do and don't want to sit through his songs, skip to 23:35 in the program. This is one of the avenues that led me to the musical adventures of Gomez. If you do love Neil Finn, he does a nice live acoustic "Spirit of the Stairs."

*All credit for the title today goes to the most reliable news source in print journalism today.

Diablo rocks!

Here's my rave recommendation of the day: Diablo Cody's interview with David Letterman if you want to be charmed off your ass by someone completely matter of fact about her desire to break free of her conventional upbringing and spend a year as a stripper at Minneapolis' sleaziest titty bars. The quote that stands out for me is, "I'm ok with being the Marshall's of naked women," when she referred to giving "bed dances" at the strip club for $39. In the interview she says her mom is still mortified but her dad just asked, "So, did you get an advance on the book?" (And she did -- and for the screenplays, too.) And her memoir, Candy Girl, rocks. But she's a charmer (except for the hot pink sheer tights -- those just didn't work on the video at all!). My new heroine.

In the spirit of abundance

Here are my top three favorite ideas for making a million dollars:

1. Write a book called The Madonna Effect about feminism, reinvention, and the new expansion of options for women and gays in particular.

2. Make mouthwash in small quantities for people to take with them and sip after meals. Distribute them in five-packs. Make the bottles recyclable or little single-serve pouches. No need to spit. Made with xylitol (Google it. It's amazing stuff), you would actually do good by helping people decrease tooth decay and possibly even other bacterial illnesses -- more important than ever for westerners accustomed to a diet high in white flours, rices, and simple carbohydrates. You would actually be doing people a service to make this for them, and you would both feel you had earned your worth in such a relationship. Xylitol may actually turn out to be an important tool in fighting the widespread incidence of diabetes. (The catch is that you can't allow people to ingest too much of it. The other catch: you'd need a lot of money up front to get it going.)

3. Well, this idea is not likely to make anyone rich, but it might save lives: Find a way to match the waste stream of fabrics from these places that make "miracle fabrics" -- the ones that knit up on impact to protect Olympic skiers and the ones that allow your clothing to weigh one pound and protect you from extreme cold -- with people like patrol personnel in the northern realms, Indian reservations where EMTs need uniforms that will protect them from the elements and perhaps even from each other. I still have the backpack made of Kevlar and I believe woven into Cordura fabric I used to travel repeatedly to Europe, the material used in bulletproof vests, as the salesperson was pleased to note and we were pleased to repeat.

It's weird to have all of this obscure fabric knowledge that I don't even know what to do with. My mom looked at me blankly last month when I said something about a tea towel with a "dobby weave." I explained that dobby refers to a weave that creates a pattern in the fabric, much like a herringbone twill or jacquard, anything where the design or pattern is woven into the fabric itself, as opposed to printed on it or free of any pattern. I still dream of being a textile designer when I grow up. Let's see, what are we up to? Mother, wife, writer, documentary filmmaker, designer (perhaps some kind of industrial design), architect, rock star, atelier, milliner, ski racer, backup singer for Gomez.... But I digress. Again!?

Following my follies even further

So I'm seeing how when I say yes, I am allowing in the things I really want. And my path took me to the Telluride International Film Festival last fall where I stood in line with an artist from Montrose who said, "I truly believe our first responsibility is to be ourselves, as fully as we can be."

For me the chimes start pealing out here, cascading torrents of joy. Yes, yes, yes! For me that means embracing all of the funny quirky bits in me out loud, and letting the wounded bits have their time in the embrace too. And I spent the last year doing this work that felt like dodging and burning an old print to bring up what I wanted to see in it and fade back some of what I didn't want to dwell on any longer. It took me a while to get over some stuff about my childhood, and it's by no means a process th people. I met thousands of people before I got to college. So I know people and I know about some stories.

And I am in idea mode, so I'm just going to keep working them out as much as I can. I'd like to look into theater as therapy as one facet of this book? film? Madonna's Legacy. I can see action sequences with actors and musicians and athletes, with a few talking heads: psychologists, or self-defense teachers, or rock musicians; I see office workers, people like I was not so long ago, who now get to express themselves in their dress today in a way they could not twenty years ago.

What I truly believe is that self-expression is one of the things that makes the world go 'round. With my purple house and pink hair, I'm walking the talk. With the incredible time and luxury to do all this, I'm tempted to run with it and see if I can bring that kind of opportunity for reinvention to others and help make something interesting happen. It's not everyone who has all these ideas and stories pouring off them in one way or another. It's not every 42-year-old who is signing up for her favorite band's "street team." So go woman! go girl! go! I just want see what happens when I really put my own ideas out there. I just keep having this feeling it's going to work out very nicely indeed.