It's all about the rewrite

It's a lazy Friday here in the office and, frankly, there's not much going on in my head either, so, uh, "Usually, I don't do this, but...:"

R. Kelly--Ignition (Remix) (mp3)

Depending on what time of day you stumble upon this blog, you are likely to read to read sometimes distinctly different versions of the same post. I'm not talking about the correction of misspelled or filling in of missing words (thought that does happen all to frequently). I am, believe it or not, talking about reconceptulization.

If you're a Johnny-On-The-Spot-Check-The-Blog-First-Thing kind of person, we certainly appreciate you, but you may not be getting the best version. I often finish posts late at night and schedule them to "launch" at 12:01 AM, and things can be a bit fuzzy by then, so even though I read over what I've written, I'm usually more pleased to have the post written than certain that I've said everything that I want to say.

One of the pleasures of writing this blog is the knowledge that whenever I see something that I don't like, I can quickly go back and change it, even rethink it, to make it clearer or even, God willing, funnier. The journalist with an absolute deadline does not have that option. In fact, even when I put myself on a tight deadline, which I often do, I can still go back to the post and tinker with it over and over.

Most of us, I think, are tinkerers. We like to fiddle around with little stuff, trying to get it a little more right, whether it's the decoration of a room or an Ipod playlist. People who write tend to do the same thing. If I'm sending out an email to a lot of people, I'll tend to go over it 20 or 30 times trying to get it right, though in my obsession to perfect, sometimes the different layers of the same reworked group of words don't quite go together, and because I've looked at it so many times, I can't see the mistake.

I know that talking about writing is boring, but think about the larger concept of revision. We spend a lot of our time inside of our heads replaying, revising, and correcting what has already happened. Usually, by then, it is way too late. Great comebacks and witticisms are so contextual that while "what I should have said is..." may get a chuckle from a sympathetic listener, that is more an acknowledgement of support than an affirmation that the words still have any power, given that they have been constructed for a moment that has passed.

"In our heads, there is the right thing to say."

In our heads, if we just have enough time to think it through, we can win every argument. In our heads, if we can just clear away the clutter, there is the right thing to say to make the point, to soothe the hurting, to woo the potentially wooable, even to fix the ills of the world. In our heads, given the infinite power of our minds, we trust that as the train of ideas continually rushes past us, eventually the perfect expression will signal to the conductor, have the train stopped at our station, and get off.

And that's the attraction of putting words down on a computer, posting them to a site like this. I don't have to wait for that and I'm not stuck either. While Thomas Friedman is locked into what he wrote in Tuesday's column or David Letterman is having to apologize and to try to clarify what he meant about which Palin daughter, I can keep tinkering and adjusting. "That is not what I meant," says T.S. Eliot's Prufrock, "That is not what I meant at all," but here at The Bottom, I can select a fine chisel and circle the subject and keep chipping away and maybe get closer.

It's a luxury we rarely enjoy in other parts of our lives.

R. Kelly is available at Itunes.

Reinventing Rock, Pt. 2: "The clumsy grace of the original"

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band--"Wings For Wheels (live)" (mp3)

There have been so many pleasures to entering the blogosphere this year, but among the best has been the chance to track down some old favorite concerts.

It's no secret that I am partial to live music, a position I plan to broaden in the coming year, but there are two legendary concerts from my past, which have only extended beyond my memory this year since we started this blog. The first is Bruce Springsteen's legendary Main Point concert in 1974. The second is Jackson Browne and David Lindley's concert from that same venue.

I suppose I should insert the following here: it's a Philadelphia thang; you wouldn't understand. But the fact is that I went to college in Philadelphia and took ample advantage of the thriving music scene that existed there in the later half of the 1970s. And that scene, while evidenced by an extensive list of concert offerings all 5 years I was there, was held together on a day-to-day basis by a radio station, WMMR. And WMMR played the two concerts I've alluded to above repeatedly. I had them on cassette and listened to them over and over, and, yes, not only did I "own" them then, but I feel like I have a right to own them now.

I have two points I want to make to justify my title, "Reinventing Rock," in this ongoing series. The first is this: when the ball falls on New Year's Eve, I will be beginning my 44th year collecting music, and though that term "music" has come to include almost all kinds of music, most of it is, obviously, rock music. As that ball falls on New Year's Eve, it will likely mark the beginning of another year where the music industry sees declining revenues, and, in their panic to control what's owed to them, they'll likely continue to harass little music sites like this one, as they have done twice this year.

But let's ponder a different perspective, shall we? As a 44-year collector of music, I want to change the question: what am I owed? To the music industry, I say, I have hung with you through 45's, LP's, cassettes, CD's, and now digital music. If you had your way with me, and sometimes you did, I would have bought the same music in 5 different formats. The same music. Just to keep up with the accessibility and playability of the exact same songs. So, again, I ask you, what am I owed? Why wasn't I allowed to buy the song once, and then, assuming I could provide the evidence, why wasn't I allowed to get a free upgrade to the next format? I mean, if a song is a song, why does it make a difference what medium it is played on? Once I purchased the right to play it, why was I required to re-buy it so many times?

Which takes me back to those two concerts at the Main Point. The radio played them and I taped them off the radio. And, because they were such an important part of my "formative music years" I want to hear them again whenever I want to. And so, I tracked one down on a blog, and I know that the other one exists, because I've seen reference to it, but I don't have it quite yet. But I intend to keep trying. Is that really illegal activity? Is it?

Because the real point, the main point (pun intended), is that full access to all kinds of music from an artist allows us to understand the process, the growth, the false starts and bad turns, the learning that makes, for me at least, the songwriters I admire more worth listening to. Case in point: check out the Springsteen track above. "Wings For Wheels" is from that Main Point show I listened to so many times so many years ago. I always assumed it was just "Thunder Road," which of course it is the precursor to. But it is also not "Thunder Road," and not just in its title. "Thunder Road," in its final version, has pretensions of becoming one of the great rock anthems of all times, a goal that it reaches. "Wings For Wheels" is more of a greaser song, the story of a nowhere guy who doesn't have much to offer but a car, and a not very reliable one at that:

Well, this 442, she's gonna overheat,
Make up your mind, girl, I gotta get back out on the street.

Contrast those lines with the final version:

Oh-oh, come take my hand
We're riding out tonight to case the promised land.

In the revision, the narrative becomes part of the great American metaphor. Even the girl's name change, from Angelina to Mary, broadens the song's appeal.

Of course, like so many others, I went with Bruce on this revision and along on his journey to become an international rock star, but often I still prefer the clumsy grace of the original narrator and his self-awareness:


Now the season's over
And I feel it gettin' cold,
I wish I could take you to some sandy beach
Where we'd never grow old.
But, girl, you know that's just jive,
But the night's bustin' open and I'm alive.

Isn't it nice to know that both exist and that you have a choice? I asked in the last post if you would prefer to study history or to chart and predict the future. With music, the answer is, of course, both, and the great gift of the Internet is that it allows us (for the moment, at least) to forge on in both directions, constantly revising our perspectives on the music and the musicians we think we know.