• Notes on Cerebellum Blues, Playlists One and Two: Europe, part two of two.

Welcome to my series of posts about how I got into music and songwriting and the events that ultimately led to the 2012 release of my first album. Here are the posts, so far:

1. a little bit of blood, lots of sweat, a few tears (the launch!)

2. what’s with the title?

3. beginnings

4. from high school to LA and back

5. the talent question

6. the lost years

7. walking away from music, part one

8. walking away from music, part two

9. Europe, part one.

If you read anything that strikes a chord please let me know in the comments section or via email. As always, thank you for reading

Though I did not fully realize what was happening at the time, I can still remember the morning when my life in Europe began to fall apart. I had gone out to get a pastry from the bakery across the street from my apartment and as I was returning I saw my business partner, the person I’d started my translation/copywriting service with, walking up the sidewalk from the canal. He’d been gone for a few days, no one knew where, and through the cold air and under the grey light of an overcast sky I could see he was unshaven and had his hands dug deep into the pockets of his wool duffle coat. He saw me and said hello cheerfully enough but on that morning I knew our business partnership was over.

When we started the business together, I found my partner’s heavy drinking to be entertaining and not a big deal. He seemed so together most of the time. Besides, everyone drank heavily in Munich, it was part of the culture and alcoholism was seen as a choice more than a disease. I confess, too, I didn’t know anything about alcoholism, what it looked like, how to spot it, the damage it could do. But I learned. And in the end, my partner’s problem forced me to face the hard truth that we could not continue to work together and to ultimately to shut down the business. Why didn’t I just look for another partner? I’m not really sure but I do remember how hard the business had been to get going and how much I had spent on business cards and a brochure. I was also painfully aware of the fact that my partner owned most of our client relationships. Actually, now that I think about it, Michelle and I tried to run the business for a brief time but she had her own goals and could only devote a tiny bit of time. And so, I started to think about what to do next and that was when the notion of working in an ad agency and actually creating ads rather than just translating them — a notion that I had been thinking about for awhile — started to truly take root.

I first approached a few of my Munich advertising clients about a copywriting job but they were very clear that there was no way they could rationalize hiring me primarily because I had no experience as an advertising copywriter. Surprisingly enough, the language issue wasn’t that big of a deal because a lot of advertising in Europe is done in English, and a lot of German companies want help with materials for the American market. But lack of experience? Well, that was a deal breaker.

And so I hatched a plan. I would return to the States and get a job with a US agency, work just long enough to build up a decent portfolio (I figured one to two years) and then return to Munich or maybe the UK if my weak German turned out to be a big deal, after all. By early 1993 I was obsessed with my this plan and I was completely confident it would work. In fact, I was infused with a level of confidence I had never before possessed and I believed I would have a fairly easy road into adland and be able to build a strong portfolio quickly. I mean, how hard could it be, right? I had moved to a new country, taught English to former East German border guards, started my own business, gotten black market health insurance, fallen asleep on night trains back to my apartment and missed my stop, driven in Italy. Surely, adland would be not only be glad to hire someone like me (I’d read that agencies liked to hire young writers with interesting life experiences), but also the work would be relatively easy after all I had been through. There was another factor to my chutzpah: Europe had made me an optimist. Go figure, right? Isn’t Europe supposed to breed morose intellectuals? But there I was, very, very far from morose and certainly no intellectual. In a way, my years in Europe had made me more American, more ready for risk, more ready for change than all my years in America had.

And so my new plan supplanted all of my old ones, which had primarily involved my continuing with the marketing translation business and supplementing my unpredictable income with teaching jobs in Europe and Asia (I’d heard that the pay in Japan was especially good). I told myself that advertising was the answer to all my concerns: it would give me a career I would enjoy, money in the bank and the possibility of serious money down the road. And what of music? Yes, I knew I could not live without it but it was different this time. I was realistic and I would just keep music as a hobby, nothing more. More important, what about Michelle? I told myself I was not being a cold-hearted bastard by putting my career ahead of us for the time being but in hindsight I was. I set my departure date for early 1994 and all through 1993 this fact wedged its way between us and pushed us apart.

I walked everywhere in Munich. Neither Michelle nor I had a car, so it was by foot or by bus or by train that we got around the city, but usually by foot. Michelle worked far more than I did and was also enrolled in the university so I was often alone and walking became, in addition to a way to for me get around, a way to pass the time. I had my routes: there was one along the Isar river, which flows through Munich, several emanating fromMarienplatz, Munich’s main square, and a few through Schwabing, the area north of the university and bordering the English Gardens, where I also walked. Ever since I can remember, walking and songwriting have gone together for me but back when I was living in Munich I mostly tried to stop the songwriting thoughts when they started up because I did not want the mental burden of thinking about something I felt was hopeless.

The year was probably 1992 because I remember I was still living in my unheated apartment at 1 St. Bonifatius Strasse and I was out for a long walk in the English Gardens when something completely unexpected happened: a line formed in my mind that I thought would make a good song. I tried to squelch it, to think of something else, to not burden myself with the hope that I might be onto something, but I could not. The line was “people change” and when I got back to my apartment I picked up my guitar and worked out some basic chords for a song that would indeed be called People Change and then spent the rest of the year and some of the next trying to finish the lyrics. But I could never get them to be quite right because I was unsure what the line should mean. Was it about Michelle and me? Was about a past relationship, an imaginary one, someone else’s? I never really could decide although I did, at one point, try to make the song about Michelle and me as we faced down 1993 and my decision to leave Europe at the end of that year. When I finally finished the song just a few years ago, about the only words I kept from the original version were “people change”; for the rest, I stopped trying to write a song about actual events and instead created fictional characters whose lives had some similarity with mine. Regardless, back in 1993, when I finished the first version of People Change, I liked it well enough to want to write more songs, but it would be another 10 years or so before I actually did.

The address of my final apartment in Munich wasPariser Strasse 11. It was a small one-bedroom on the top floor of building that looked just like all the other buildings surrounding it and my only furniture was a futon, a flimsy metal shelf and a wardrobe made of cloth (old apartments in Munich don’t have closets.) Given how few possessions I had, I thought packing it all up would go quickly. It did not. In the end, it took several weeks and when I was done I had made around 10 six-high stacks of standard yellow Deutsche Post boxes piled against the right wall as you entered the living room from the kitchen — an orderly monument to the disorder of my values. How could I be so cold to just leave the way I was? I don’t know. Yes, I was desperate to have a career in advertising and I kept telling myself that once I got a little experience under my belt I would be back but I was probably lying to myself. I remember my last night. It was January, the weather was cold and wet; Michelle and I went to the movies and sawShort Cuts and stayed up most of the night and treated ourselves to a cab to get home. The next day, rain was coming down hard as I took the bus from the terminal to the plane.

When I left the States for Munich in 1990, I consciously and enthusiastically left music behind. But music had stowed aboard with me as I left San Francisco on my maiden voyage to Munich and when I returned it was traveling openly with me in the form of People Change and various song fragments. Most important, though, my years in Europe and the immediate years that followed were when I finally started to really grow up. I became much more aware of life, what I was good about it, what I wasn’t. I made real choices, gave up some beliefs, added a few new ones, took on baggage, found new things to hope for and on and on. But I’ve always been a slow learner and the lessons from all of this, lessons that I think ultimately helped me to finally write some songs I was proud of, took years to sink in. In the meantime, I pursued a career in advertising, but getting a job was a lot harder than I thought it would be and building a portfolio harder still, so I stayed in the States and Michelle and I eventually parted and music once again receded into the background, not to be heard from for years and years.

• Notes on Cerebellum Blues, Playlists One and Two: Europe, part one of two.

Welcome to my series of posts about how I got into music and songwriting and the events that ultimately led to the 2012 release of my first album. Here are the posts, so far:

1. a little bit of blood, lots of sweat, a few tears (the launch!)

2. what’s with the title?

3. beginnings

4. from high school to LA and back

5. the talent question

6. the lost years

7. walking away from music, part one

8. walking away from music, part two

If you read anything that strikes a chord please let me know in the comments section or via email. As always, thank you for reading.

As I flew across the middle of the country toward Europe in the waning winter of 1990, I looked out the window and saw the sun setting behind me and darkness ahead and I remember feeling how fitting the view was. Behind me was the fading light of everything familiar while ahead was the unknown.

I was enroute from San Francisco to Munich to see Michelle, a girl I had met about a year prior and fallen hard for and now wanted to be with. When I first met Michelle at Café Trieste, a North Beach institution, I was working at The Sharper Image as a writer and playing in a band. By the time her visa ran out at the end 1989, I had quit the band and was about to be laid off from my writing job. I was in a good place. I was tired of chasing music and did not believe in myself much as a musician; as for writing, I liked it well enough, but catalogs? No, I wanted to write short stories and novels. And that was the plan. I was going to move to Europe to be with Michelle and to follow in the vestigial footsteps of my number one writing hero, Ernest Hemingway. I was leaving my guitar at home. I was packing a fountain pen.

And so one of the first trips Michelle and I took together in Europe was to Paris. I knew what I wanted to see: La Closerie des Lilas, the most famed of Hemingway’s cafe haunts. There I would order my drink, open my notebook, ready my pen and great thoughts would flow because I truly believed I had stories in me, they were just were trapped in some sort of dark place that I could not get to. Surely, The City of Light would reveal them. But the stories were not revealed. There were sentences, random words, a whole paragraph or two, but no stories or even the beginnings of stories. It was just as it had been in all other places I’d tried to write — San Francisco, Colorado, Los Angeles and more — and as I sat outside Shakespeare & Company after having been to Les Closerie, Les Deaux Magots, and Les Others, a hard truth hit me: I was not a novelist at heart or even a short story writer or a poet. I looked around and took in the acid rain-eroded, soot-blackened facades of the Left Bank and I saw that becoming a fiction writer was, for me, a fiction and no city was going to change that, not even Paris, my Paris, the Paris I had read about in Hemingway’s books and in a biography of the man, a city of magical qualities where anyone who was an artist would bloom to his fullest and feel the deep satisfaction of doing something beautiful or terrifying or joyful or tragic and that would somehow add to the world and make it a more interesting place. I was tired. And I looked up to see it for what it was and asked myself, “Now what?”

After Paris, I remember going for a walk just outside my Munich apartment at the time. It was spring and I headed toward one of the many canals that work to control flooding on the Isar river as it flows through Munich and I remember standing in green grass and watching the water flow by and looking up and seeing the trees in leafy celebration and for perhaps the first time in my life being able to take in such a scene and not feel melancholy. So this is what it’s like to feel happy, I said to myself. I was not wondering about what to write in song or word, I was not concerned about my ability to play the guitar, I was not doing anything other than appreciating the beauty around me. I was also able to recognize and revel in the fact that I was living in a Europe that was more filled with optimism than even the America of myth because Europe in the early 90s was The Continent of Hope. The Wall was down, The Soviet Union was crumbling, the European Union was growing, the Euro was coming. Meanwhile, back in the US, Clinton was struggling, the Internet and the dotcom boom were still a few years off, fear of stagflation was making a comeback and seemed legitimate, while in Europe everywhere I went and every person I talked to was overflowing with dreams and plans and hope. It was infectious and I got infected bad but no so bad that I started to believe in myself as an artist again. Instead, I thought about starting my own business and began to think about what I might do and at first I drew a blank but then it slowly dawned on me that the answer was literally all around me, for everywhere I went in Munich I saw awkward English, the result of translations done by non-native English speakers. It was the perfect environment in which to start a marketing translation service whose work didn’t sound like translations and I knew just the people to pull it off: a friend I’d met at Berlitz, who spoke German so well that even Germans couldn’t tell he was Englishman, and me since I knew copywriting from my years at The Sharper Image. I approached my friend with the idea, he was in and we were up and running.

But when there is only one thing in life you have ever truly wanted to do, to not do it, for whatever reason, is not a choice you can live with for long. I think music started to come back in Berlin, where I was teaching English to former East German border guards who were being retrained to work security for department stores. It was one of my last teaching gigs before I started the translation service. I stayed with an elderly couple who had been pillars of the community before The Wall fell but were now pariahs, because he had been an East German policemen and though he swore all he ever did was to help people get their cats out of trees you knew there was more to the story. The gig lasted 2 weeks and during that time I would teach from 8:30 to 4:00, then take the train into the center of what was West Berlin and walk from Zoo Station to the Virgin store, where I would go from listening station to listening station and check out tracks. My favorites were songs from the new REM album, Out of Time, and a Michael Jackson single called Black or White. Over and over I would listen to these songs, then walk around Berlin a bit more before catching a train back to Hoppegarten, the Berlin suburb I was staying in.

When my Berlin gig ended, I returned to Munich and it was clear that I couldn’t take not having a guitar anymore so I had my parents ship me my Steinberger. I also started spending even more time at WOM, the big record store in downtown Munich, where I could watch music videos and listen through headphones — transported, dreaming, not wanting to leave. My favorite videos were all of live performances and three stand out in my memory because I watched them so, so often: AC/DC, You Shook Me All Night Long; Guns and Roses, Pretty Tied Up and The Band When I Paint My Masterpiece.

Meanwhile, the marketing translation service was going well but I saw pretty quickly that it was not a long-term prospect for me. The more ads and brochures I translated, the more I wanted to be the original writer and my desire to become an advertising copywriter, mostly dormant since my departure from The Sharper Image, began to reawaken. I first tried to get a job in Germany. I approached a few of our agency clients and they politely turned me down, saying that even if my German were flawless, which it was not, I still had to show that I could actually write ads, not just translate them. I so I hatched a plan: I would return to the States and get a job with an ad agency and prove myself as a copywriter and then return to Europe in a year or so and get a job with an agency and be back with Michelle. I sat with the idea for a while. Could I really do that, could I actually return home, get a job, build up a portfolio and return to Germany and get picked up by a German agency all in the space of a year or two? The truth is I will never know because I never really tried to return after I was back in the States. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

• Joe Strummer Is Dead. A new song in "honor" of politics.

I wrote this song awhile ago — maybe a year or two — but was motivated to finish it by the looming election. When you hear the song you will most certainly hear a Clash riff or two so I've credited the writing of the song to Joe Strummer, Mick Jones and me. The players are the usual (stellar!) suspects:

Vocals: Toby Germano

Harmoanandgroanies: Me

Guitars and Bass: Tim Young

Drums: Andy Korn

Engineering: Jaimeson Durr

Recorded at Hyde Street Studio C, San Francisco, CA

• My first new song in a long, long time: "I Found Out the Hard Way I Should Have Done It the Easy Way".

To the best of my knowledge, I first started this song back in September of 2010. I started it just before Avalon and Amelia were born and had to finish it by stealing moments of time here and there, plucking guitar strings in between bottles, staying up a little late, multitasking at work (I was freelancing). As with most of my other songs, the music for this one emanated from The Maton, my favorite songwriting guitar of all time, and the story it tells is a mix of facts and fictions. Where this song takes a bit of a turn is how I found one of the vocalists. I was about to simply ask one of the people I’ve already worked with when a strange thing happened. It was just a few months ago and I was visiting a venue where one of the clients of the agency I work for wanted to hold an event. I was working with Perri Temko, an account person here at the agency, and as she and I tried to figure out how to place the stage and wall art and what to do about music and lighting, a song came on and she started singing along. Now, mostly when people sing along with songs it causes me great pain and suffering but Perri was right on key and in the pocket and sounded like she sang all the time. Pro. Her voice also has a great timbre that I thought would mesh beautifully with Elliot Randall’s, who has sung several of my songs and who I was planning to have sing this one. I remarked on her singing and she told me how it had been her dream until she had developed nodes and lost momentum and then life just took her down a different road but she never stopped thinking about singing. So I had to ask, “Would you sing a song for me?” I told her about the track, about Elliot, about what I’ve been up to and she said Yes. A few months later she was Hyde Street and nailing her parts like she did it all the time. It was weird, to be honest, but in a very good way. Give the song a listen and let me know what you think. Also, please note, this one is free! Yup, you can use the player below to download a meaty MP3 for your computer, iPod, phone, whatever. Enjoy.

PLEASE VISIT

MY FACEBOOK BAND PAGE

AND “LIKE” IT IF YOU LIKE THE SONG.

CREDITS:

Guitars:

Tim Young

Vocal:

Elliot Randall

Harmony Vocals: Perri Temko

Drums:

Dave Brogan

Bass and Keys:

Sam Bevan

Percussion:

Andy Korn

Engineering:

Jaimeson Durr

Writing and Producing: Me

Recorded at

Hyde Street Studio C

, San Francisco, CA

• Babes, booze and a bullet. A story from my other life.

Since starting this blog I have tried to keep what I write about here seperate from what I do in my day job. But today is a Big Day from my other life so I'm going to break my rule.

As long time readers of this blog know, I lost my job in advertising after suffering a severe traumatic brain injury in early 2006. In January of this year I returned to full-time work and the first TV commercial I've contributed to in over six years is airing tonight on the season finale of Mad Men. The show airs at 10:00 PM Pacific Time, 9:00 PM central so I hope you can catch it. 

Not to brag, the spot is pretty cool and involves a blonde, a brunette, a bachelor (not), booze and a bullet. The company is Turn, which does mystical stuff to place online ads fast, hence the bullet. If you see the spot, I'd love to read your reactions in the comments.

Here's some nice press: New York Times, SF Chronicle, Adrants

Roll credits:

Copywriter (gyro): Eric Flynn

Art Director (gyro): Ian Ashenbremer

Creative Director (gyro): Jeff Shattuck

Account Executive (gyro): Quynh “the mighty” Cline

Account Executive (gyro): Natalie Marmer

Media (gyro): Zak Garner

Motion Graphics (gyro): Toby Peterson

Director: Michael “True Blood” Lehmann

Exec Producer (Dark Light Pictures): Vince Arcaro

Producer (Dark Light Pictures): Sharon Groh

Editor: Mauro Camaroda

Music (MusicOrange): Blaise SmithActors: Amelia Cooke (wife), Susie Abromeit (homewrecker), Trevorst John (mad man).

• Notes on Cerebellum Blues, Playlists One and Two: walking away from music, part two of two.

Welcome to my series of posts about how I got into music and songwriting and the events that ultimately led to the 2012 release of my first album. Here are the posts, so far:

1. a little bit of blood, lots of sweat, a few tears (the launch!)

2. what’s with the title?

3. beginnings

4. from high school to LA and back

5. the talent question

6. the lost years

7. walking away from music, part one

If you read anything that strikes a chord please let me know in the comments section or via email. As always, thank you for reading.

1989 was the year The Sharper Image hired me as a copywriter. After I accepted the offer, I remember driving home and grinning the whole way and listening to loud music and thinking about how my life had finally, fundamentally changed for the better. I felt so good about myself and my future.

At the time, I was in a band called Germano Warfare and as I settled into TSI, I made up my mind to finally stop pursuing music. Given all my doubts about my musical abilities, my fear that I would never amount to much as a rock star, my infinite insecurities about anything and everything, I should have felt nothing but relief, but leaving Warfare was hard. First, the band was founded by one of my best friends, Toby Germano, and I felt I was betraying him, even though I also knew that my presence in the band was holding things back. (In music, you are either all-in or not, there is no in-between, you can’t hedge and I was always hedging in the back of my mind, sometimes even the front.) Second, we were good. Toby wrote great songs with interesting chords, words, melodies and grooves and delivered them with real showmanship over the pounding beats of Derek and Troy. Third, I liked the band. It was the first band I’d ever been in that I thought had something special. We looked pretty good, we played loud, we kept it simple. Last, but not least, being in the band made me feel like less of a looser, important when you’ve graduated from college and gone precisely nowhere in life.

But my mind was made up and so I told Toby I was leaving. I have vague memories of how it all ended but one is reasonably clear: I was standing outside our rehearsal space in Redwood City and I was talking with Troy and Toby, the sun was down, I was tired, a bit sad, but I was sure of my decision, and I think it was Troy who asked what I would be doing with my life and I remember answering with some vague thoughts on getting into advertising, he nodded and said he thought I would be good at that.

About a year later, the ‘80s crashed to an end, and The Sharper Image, a true symbol of ‘80s excess, let me go. Poof, just like that, my new life ended and once again I was in limbo. But it was different this time. The job at The Sharper Image had upped my self confidence and I was reasonably sure I could find something new. Even more important, I had met a girl. She was from Germany and right about the time I got let go, her visa ran out and I decided to follow her back to Munich. On my departure from the States, I considered whether to pack a guitar but opted not to. In fact, I left it all at home: the guitars, the amps, the recording decks, the microphones, everything. I had been toting it all around for years and I was tired of it and wanted to be free of it, free of the way it reminded me of my shortcomings and failures, free of the way it taunted and tempted me to try one more time, free of the guilt of having spent so much time and money and producing so little of worth. As I flew out of SFO and up and over the Rockies and into the mid-country, I remember looking out of the window the plane and seeing dark ahead while behind the sun was setting. A new day awaited and I was more ready than I had ever been for something different.

What I thought might be a few months became four years.

• Notes on Cerebellum Blues, Playlists One and Two: walking away from music, part one of two.

Welcome to my series of posts about how I got into music and songwriting and the events that ultimately led to the 2012 release of my first album. Here are the posts, so far:

1. a little bit of blood, lots of sweat, a few tears (the launch!)

2. what’s with the title?

3. beginnings

4. from high school to LA and back

5. the talent question

6. the lost years

If you read anything that strikes a chord please let me know in the comments section or via email. As always, thank you for reading.

By 1989, I was about four years out of college and two out of music school and it was time to, pardon the pun, face the music. Truth be told, despite all my effort — years of practice, a pricey guitar school in L.A., stints with multiple bands — in my opinion I was still not good enough to be a success, not as a performer and not as a songwriter. Was it just insecurity getting the best of me? I don’t think so. Regardless, my mind was made up and now there was one question above all others I needed to answer: what to do, what to do, what to do.

How do people decide what to do in life? I really have no idea, save for this: you chase an interest and if you love it, have a talent for it, work hard and get lucky you ultimately go pro. Failing that, you can also simply end up somewhere, for better or for worse. I did not want to just end up somewhere. But with music off the table, what was left? For me, the answer seemed to be writing. Ever since I won a short story contest in the 3rd grade I have fancied myself a writer, and over the years I have tried my hand at short fiction, poems, lyrics, a whole lot of letters, blogs. I’ve taken classes and read countless books on writing. I’ve also read Hemingway, lots of Hemingway, and once found it encouraging that he was morose and liked to be alone, just like me (depressingly, I later learned that this was not true at all).

Though my decision to pursue writing instead of music was made sometime in 1989, I had already started the process a few years before. I remember I was in my West Hollywood apartment and writing a letter to my sister and before I got very far along I realized I really couldn’t write worth a damn. Oh, I could put words on the page, compose complete sentences, even spell most articles and prepositions correctly, but write? Hell no. This was sad. I had an English degree from a good school, I had written countless papers and poems and lyrics and other stuff, but as I sat there pen in hand and unable to express in words what was on my mind, I finally understood how I had been simply going through the motions for eons, probably ever since third grade, and had never truly thought about writing and how to do it well. I put my letter to my sister on hold and headed off to a bookstore to find guidance. The book I bought has been my favorite book on writing ever since. It’s called The Writer’s Art and it changed my life. I read it cover to cover, read it again, and have referred to it way too many times to remember ever since that fateful day I first opened it.

So there I was, a year or so out of guitar school, a few years out of college, lessons of The Writer’s Art fresh in my head, my musical dreams fading as I played in bars with The Distractions, my job in a stereo store now in the past, my job selling books door-to-door no more, my job selling timeshares mercifully cut short when I just got up and walked out. Either I could get yet another meaningless job to support my music, or I finally, for the first time in my life, try to get a job I actually wanted and that would lead to even better jobs. Given that writing was my only interest besides music, I began to scan the Sunday paper for opportunities. After several thank-you-but-no-thank-thank-you letters, I finally got an interview.

The job was a weird one. I was interviewing to be an Indexer. “A what?” you ask. Well, back in the days before the Internet, all content had to be indexed so it could be looked up using keywords, etc. and I was to be among the legions doing it. Basically, it was a slight step up from data entry, but I actually liked the work because mostly what I did all day long was read magazines and newspapers. After about a year of this, I was promoted to write abstracts of articles about the computer industry. I loved writing abstracts because I felt very Hemingway as I stripped things to their essence. I also liked learning about all the stuff that was going on —  Apple, Sun, Microsoft, IBM, DEC, Compaq — and for awhile there I could recite from memory the complete product lines of tech’s leaders and what was good about them and bad. But... the burnout factor came fast and hard; besides, I knew writing abstracts was hardly what I had in mind for a career.

I can’t recall how I became aware of copywriting as a profession, but after about a year of writing abstracts, I started taking copywriting classes at the UC Berkeley Extension in SF. I can’t say I showed tons of promise, but neither did anyone else in my classes, so I figured my chances were okay. After completing my second class, I began religiously reading the Sunday classifieds for copywriting jobs that looked to be not only within my reach, but also at least a little bit fun sounding. There wasn’t much, but one day, there was an ad from The Sharper Image (TSI).

I had been reading The Sharper Image catalog for years and genuinely liked it and believed I could write good stuff for it. I also loved gadgets. But while my hopes were high, my expectations were not. After all, I was simply answering a newspaper ad, an ad I later learned had also been answered by about 100 other people, and I had no personal connections with TSI and not much in the way of writing samples. Still, I wrote the best letter I could, finessed my resume, printed both on carefully selected linen paper and mailed them off. When I got the letter requesting that I come in for an interview, I was more stunned than thrilled. Me? Are you sure? The whole interview process was grueling and took three months, complete with copy tests, as TSI narrowed the pool. When they finally offered me the job, I could not believe it. I still can’t.

Maybe I had found my calling, maybe writing was it, maybe all those years of fantasizing about being like Hemingway were indicative of an innate talent, something to believe in about myself. I could not say, still can’t, but what was my choice? Possible vs. impossible? Pretty much. And the practical North Dakota blood in me wanted possible hands down.

I accepted the job.

• Notes on Cerebellum Blues, Playlists One and Two: the lost years.

Welcome to my series of posts about how I got into music and songwriting and the events that ultimately led to the 2012 release of my first album. Here are the posts, so far:

1. a little bit of blood, lots of sweat, a few tears (the launch!)

2. what’s with the title?

3. beginnings

4. from high school to LA and back

5. the talent question

If you read anything that strikes a chord please let me know in the comments section or via email. As always, thank you for reading.

When I rolled back into the Bay Area from L.A. sometime in 1987, I moved in with my parents and set my cat, Jake (photo is here but you have to scroll down), on real grass for the first time in his life. He sat there frozen, completely unsure of what to do, much like I would do for the next few years.

Unlike Jake, who became supremely comfortable in his new environment, at least from my perspective, I never really found my footing. Truth be told, I had been in this somewhat suspended state since leaving college and even well before. I just really had no idea what I truly, deep down wanted to do in life besides music and I did not believe in myself as a musician so I was forever at a crossroads. It was a conundrum that haunts me to this day. But in life, sometimes the only thing to do is to try to keep moving, to hope you can either discover the right path or have it be revealed to you. So that’s what I did.

Over the next few years I was in three different bands: The Paupers (photos), The Distractions (photos) and Germano Warfare (photos). I wish I could say I was serious about all three but I was not. Sure, I learned the songs, practiced hard, did my best to look cool on stage but through it all The Doubt gnawed at me, this deeply etched belief in my being that I was not and never would be much of musical force. And so my real quest became to find a career I could live with.

In the end, while I did not exactly find a career, I did find a job I really liked and that I can honestly say changed my life more than anything else had up to that point. What was that job and what happened next? Stay tuned.

• Notes on Cerebellum Blues, Playlists One and Two: the talent question.

Welcome to my series of posts about how I got into music and songwriting and the events that ultimately led to the 2012 release of my first album. Here are the posts, so far:

1. a little bit of blood, lots of sweat, a few tears (the launch!)
2. what’s with the title?
3. beginnings
4. from high school to LA and back

If you read anything that strikes a chord please let me know in the comments section or via email. As always, thank you for reading.

Before I move on to the next phase of my music life, there’s a topic I have to address: talent. I could try to define talent, but why should I when Merriam Webster’s has done it so well:

4a : a special often athletic, creative, or artistic aptitude

Yup, I agree with that, to me talent is potential you’re born with that hard work can bring out and hone. I have talent for some things, but playing in time, locking into a groove, is not one of them.

Many, if not most, people I talk to about talent tell me it’s a myth (there’s even a book called The Talent Myth, read it, bored), that we can all be great at anything. Bull. Even after subjecting myself to the reality distortion field of the mighty Malcolm Gladwell by reading his book Outliers, I remain unconvinced. Gladwell’s 10,000-hours rule has become de facto fact but I don’t buy it, or I am the exception to his rule. Once upon a time I might have believed that if worked hard enough — and truly practiced with intent — I could become a really good guitar player. But then I went to G.I.T.

When I started at G.I.T. in mid 1985, I had been playing guitar for about seven years and despite much woodshedding remained a fatally flawed musician. No matter how hard I tried — and I tried goddamn hard — I still really struggled to play in time, forget grooving. But as I read about  G.I.T.’s curriculum, its instructors, its guest lecturers and took in the gushing quotes from satisfied G.I.T. students and considered the school’s location, which was in the heart of Hollywood and just down the road from Capitol Records, I concluded that G.I.T. held the answer to my rhythm woes.

The early days of G.I.T. were all about scales and learned them all: major, minor, lydian, mixolydian, dorian, whatever. G.I.T. also placed emphasis on shapes, which really helped me navigate the neck of the guitar with more fluidity and to understand why certain things worked and others did not. Most important, for me, G.I.T. believed in timing, as in in playing on the beat. I bought an electronic metronome and I practiced everything to it. I practiced for hours and when I wasn’t playing to the metronome I was recording to my drum machine. It all helped, I got better, but better is not good and because good takes talent.

When I finished G.I.T. I knew a lot more about the guitar than when I started and this extra knowledge has served me well ever since. I was also a better guitar player. In fact, I was so much better than when I had started, I was still thinking about a career in music and after school had ended and I was driving back up to the Bay Area, I was plotting the formation of a band. But you can convince yourself of almost anything when driving at night on I5 and drinking a few too many cokes to stay awake.

Be sure to visit the photo gallery! I'm adding stuff all the time.

• Notes on Cerebellum Blues, Playlists One and Two: from high school to LA and back.

Welcome to my series of posts about how I got into music and songwriting and the events that ultimately led to the 2012 release of my first album. Here are the posts, so far:

1. a little bit of blood, lots of sweat, a few tears (the launch!)

2. what’s with the title?

3. beginnings

If you read anything that strikes a chord please let me know in the comments section or via email. As always, thank you for reading.

I think I joined my first band early in high school. I don’t remember what we were called, although I’m sure it was something pretentious and embarrassing, but I do remember the people in it: Tim Dunn on drums, Lee Wilson on vocals, John Rossetti on bass and me on guitar. We rehearsed in Tim Dunn’s basement, played a few parties and then broke up. More bands followed throughout high school, most of which featured my friend Toby Germano on vocals (see photo above) but despite a few shards of hope, I don’t recall ever truly thinking I was in a band that would go anywhere. (Check out the photo gallery to see some shots of my high school musical career.)

Near the end of high school, I was still undiscovered and I started to get into songwriting and recording (if I couldn’t be a star of the stage, maybe I could be some sort of behind the scenes phenom). My parents bought me a bass, a Drumulator drum machine and a Fostex 250 cassette multitracker. My early attempts at songwriting were laughable, but for some unfathomable reason I believed in myself just a little and stuck with it. Mid-way through college I upgraded my Fostex to a Tascam 38 8-track reel-to-reel and traded in my Drumulator for a Linn Drum. My songs were getting better, they were sounding better, I was encouraged. By graduation, one of the many things I had learned in college was that I did not want a 9-5 job, and so, to stave off the real world just a bit longer and to chase the dream that I might be able to avoid it altogether, I headed for a guitar school in Hollywood.

Hollywood back then, as I’m sure it is now, was full of people who claimed to have connections. These mystical, connected beings could help you make it, just like that, and one of them said he could do it for me. With my appointment scheduled, I remember walking up to a run down building, probably on Hollywood Boulevard or Sunset, that had a sign on top with the word “world” in it. It did not look big time, exactly, but that’s okay, I was good with starting small. Inside, a few brief hellos were exchanged and I handed over my cassette. Play, fast forward, play, fast forward, play... fast forward, eject. “I hate this kind of music.” I kid you not, those were the words he said to me. We talked a bit about my guitar playing, the guy thought maybe I had a future there, and he sent me back out into the paved dessert.

The exchange did not break me completely, I knew enough that rejection was part of the deal, but it certainly rattled me. A guitar player, me? No way, I KNEW I was not good enough and probably never would be to make it on my chops alone. Besides, by this time I had really gotten it in my head that I could be a pro songwriter. Later in those LA years of 1985-87, I was able to get one of my songs in front of Kenny Loggins. He was more encouraging, but did not offer me a contract of any sort.

Finally, as 1988 loomed in the near distance, I left L.A. Guitar school was done, I did not want to stay in SoCal, I needed to get back home and re-think things a bit. I loaded up my car, tranquilized my cat, Jake, so he could tolerate the drive to S.F. and hit the road. I will always remember that drive out of L.A. It was a smoggy day and as I headed out of the basin on I-5, I drove through a series of valleys, each higher than the last and with a sky just a little closer to blue. It seemed to be a perfect way to leave L.A., out of murk and into clarity. I finally crested Tejon Pass and headed down The Grapevine into the San Joaquin Valley. There were pure blue skies above, the smog of LA held back the the Tehachapi mountains, and I settled in for a fast drive home. Then I hit the tule fog. Visibility dropped from miles to feet, I slowed down, moved into the left line and used the white line to guide me.

That fog was metaphorical and would not lift for a few years.

• Notes on Cerebellum Blues, Playlists One and Two: beginnings.

Welcome to my series of posts about how I got into music and songwriting and the events that ultimately led to the 2012 release of my first album. Here are the posts, so far:

1. a little bit of blood, lots of sweat, a few tears (the launch!)

2. what’s with the title?

If you read anything that strikes a chord please let me know in the comments section or via email. As always, thank you for reading.

Ever since I started this blog, I have maintained that my brain injury was the catalyst for me to make an album. But I think the real catalyst happened back in 1970 or so, when my Dad moved the family out to California from the East Coast. He had gotten a job in Silicon Valley, and while he and my Mom searched for a house they could afford, they rented a house on Wyndham Way in Portola Valley (see photo above!). The house was furnished and came complete with couches, chairs, tables, beds, and, drum roll please, a console stereo system. It was a massive thing, replete with dials and knobs, made of wood and bookended by built-in speakers hidden behind thick-threaded fabric. But its true magic lay within, for stored in the built-in record compartment — underneath the turntable and other components — were a few albums that the owners had left behind.

The first one that piqued my curiosity was “The Old Chisholm Trail” (this might be it, I don’t know, looks different), at least I think that’s what it was called, and it was filled with cowboy songs that featured guitars, accordions and loads of harmony vocals. I’m pretty sure I wanted a guitar after hearing it, but my parents guided me toward the accordion, no doubt because of its resemblance to the piano, and soon I was taking lessons and hopelessly trying to learn how to read music. But there was another album in the base of that old console that eventually displaced the cowboy record as my favorite and shoved the accordion from my hands and remains a part of my record collection to this day: The Beatles Second Album.

Listening to The Beatles play Roll Over Beethoven was a revelation, truly; I had never heard the likes of it before — my parents were classical fans — and after one listen, I could not hear it often enough. My desire for a guitar intensified. To further stoke my Beatlemania, there was a girl at school who had an electric guitar and could play and sing without any effort whatsoever (really, she made it look so easy). Equally cool, she seemed to have all the records by The Beatles. She gave me several, which I still have, and it was around this time that I started to think about becoming a rock star and making an album of my own. I was probably in the 3rd or 4th grade, so I had way more time than sense. Lucky for me, though, I was born to parents from North Dakota and while they encouraged my music they also instilled in me a level of practicality that didn’t exactly put rock stardom first on my To Do list. And so, as I grew up, though I stayed with music, played in bands, spent a small fortune of my parents’ money on home recording gear and even went to a special guitar school in L.A. after I graduated from college, I always had a plan B should music not work out. Actually, that’s not true; there was no plan B, just a college diploma from a decent school, which I could use to help me start a career should I have to do such a horrible thing someday.

• Presenting the Cerebellum Blues Playlists One and Two lyric book.

Since I released my very first full-length album, Cerebellum Blues Playlists One and Two, several people have asked about lyrics and credits. I should have published this info with the release, but life had other plans. Also, I didn’t want to just slap something together, I wanted to do something nice. Well, today, I am pleased to announce that I have finally finished a digital booklet that includes lyrics and credits for every song on the album, plus some photos and brief notes about many of the songs. You can download the booklet here. Or, if you buy my album on bandcamp (physical or digital) the booklet will download with your purchase. Starting in the next few days, I will resume posting about the events that led up to the making of the album, starting back in 1970. The first of these posts is here, the second here. As always, thank you for reading and listening.

• Jim Marshall, creator of the Marshall Stack, has passed.

Back in the ‘70s, when I first started playing guitar, there was only one amp I really wanted, a Marshall. Nothing else came close. Marshalls had the dry, tight, crispy crunch that made hard rock sound like hard rock and all I wanted to play was hard rock. Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, UFO, Yesterday and Today, Judas Priest, Rainbow, Free, Bad Company, these were my favorite bands and they all used Marshalls. Word was, of course, that everyone modded their Marshall’s but I imagine that this was more hype than truth. I mean, plug a Les Paul into a Marshall and tell me you need to mod something.

One of my greatest memories is of being in my friend Chris Churchill’s garage with Chris and Rich Erickson and playing the chords to Smoke on the Water through Rich’s new Marshall Half Stack. Eventually I got my own Marshall. First I had a combo thing, can’t remember the model number, but it was supposed to be more versatile than the standard Marshall Super Lead. It was, but it was no Super Lead, which I got later on. What an amp, so loud, so cool looking, so Marshall.

I confess, I’ve never liked the look of the newer Marshalls as much as the classic Super Lead from the ‘70s. The problem is the logo. The older Marshall logo was small, but the new one is big and white and cheap looking. I’m sure the reason for the change to the logo was to make it more visible in venues, but Marshalls were visible, for chrissakes. They were distinctively designed with their angled cabinets, they were about six feet tall, they were unique. Besides, they were Marshalls and sounded like nothing else. They didn’t need a big, fat cheesy logo.

Today, I learned that Jim Marshall died. How is that possible? To me, Marshall was never a human being, but an amp. Truly, I never thought of the man behind the gear, didn’t even know there was a Jim Marshall for years. I know that sounds cold and I don’t mean it to, it’s just the truth. Now that he’s gone, I’m more aware of him than ever and will read up on his life, for he forever changed mine.

Long live Marshall.

• Notes on Cerebellum Blues Playlists One and Two: what’s with the title.

Welcome to my series of posts about how I got into music and songwriting and the events that ultimately led to the 2012 release of my first album. Here are the posts, so far:  

1. a little bit of blood, lots of sweat, a few tears (the launch!)

If you read anything that strikes a chord please let me know in the comments section or via email. As always, thank you for reading.

Before I get into posting about the whole recording process, the songs and more, I want to clarify why the album is called what it’s called and why there’s no band name, not even The Jeff Shattuck Band.

Here’s the scoop: I was talking to my wife, Catherine, about my what to call my album and what my band name should be, and she reminded me that there was no band, would not be one, I did not sing the songs, etc, so why try to pass myself off as something I’m not? “You should think of it as a songwriter’s portfolio,” she told me. Ultimately, I agreed with her but I really didn’t want to go with anything so boring as Jeff Shattuck’s Songs, so... what to do?

After much gnashing of neurons and many an additional wandering discussion with Catherine, with myself, with the universe, I finally settled on a way to do it: I opted to think of my musical endeavors as a project, which I call Cerebellum Blues, and over time I will release playlists, which will be collections of my songs grouped by mixtape principles. On this first album, I think of Playlist One as a mellow mixtape and Playlist Two as a mixtape that rocks a bit harder. I like this approach because another factor I was wrestling was the presence of so many lead singers on the the album. By calling each release a playlist, my hope is that I set the expectation for variety. Makes sense? Hope so.

Okay, onto the posts about how the album came into being. Next up: “beginnings”.

• Notes on Cerebellum Blues Playlists One and Two: a little bit of blood, lots of sweat, a few tears (the launch!).

Welcome to my series of posts about how I got into music and songwriting and the events that ultimately led to the 2012 release of my first album. Here are the posts, so far: a little bit of blood, lots of sweat, a few tears (the launch!). If you read anything that strikes a chord please let me know in the comments section or via email. As always, thank you for reading.

The album is Done. I can’t believe I can write that, but I can. Nearly 5 ½ years after I started it, my first full-length album is finally written, recorded, mastered and pressed. It’s called Cerebellum Blues Playlists One and Two and you can download it from my bandcamp site (best quality and lowest price), as well as from iTunes and Amazon. Use the links below to get your copy.

You can also get a physical CD. Yes, call me old fashioned, but despite the obvious trend toward pure digital — in music and so much else — I created something physical. My CD is available through my bandcamp page and comes nicely packaged with an 8-page picture booklet and a bonus track that will be available only to those who buy the complete album (physical or download). SPECIAL NOTE: If you buy the CD from bandcamp, you will not have to wait for it to arrive in the mail. Nope, bandcamp includes an immediate download in full CD quality sound (AIFF) if you wish, or hi-rez MP3 (plus some other geeky formats I won’t go into). To order your CD, please visit my bandcamp page via the following link:

I struggle to express what all this means for me. Making an album has been a dream of mine ever since I first heard The Beatles way back in the early 1970s and was transfixed by George Harrison’s guitar playing, John and Paul’s harmonies and Ringo’s effortless, musical beats. Those early Fab Four influences were joined over the years by Simon and Garfunkle, Pete Seeger, Led Zeppelin, Kiss, Deep Purple, Van Halen, Neil Young, The Rolling Stones, Tom Petty, The Police, R.E.M, Eurythmics, Green on Red, Richard and Linda Thompson, The Violent Femmes, Iggy Pop, David Bowie, Kate Bush, Buddy Miller and so, so, so many more. My vinyl collection surpassed 400, cassettes were everywhere, CDs joined the fray, even my own homemade tapes could be found strewn in front of my various stereo systems. But my music collection contained no official works by me.

Times have changed.

Now, there are copies of Cerebellum Blues Playlists One and Two in the living room, the home office, the car, my desk at work, my briefcase. I’ve ripped it to my phone and computer. I listen to it a lot and every time I do I feel good deep down inside, as a dream long dormant rises out into reality.

You can preview the entire album for free on my bandcamp site or by using the player to the left (which links via exotic CIA-approved code to bandcamp) so the best way to get a sense of it is to simply go listen to it. On side one, the mellow side, you’ll hear country inflected tunes that evoke The Stones, Tom Petty and maybe a touch of Buddy Miller, while side two rocks a bit harder and serves up some loud guitars, vocals that get a bit raw, and a few snakey, snarly guitar solos.

In the coming months, I will write at length about all that led to the creation of the album and what the process was like, but right now, I just want to write, once again, the album is done. I truly, truly hope you stream it, download it, listen to it, share it, recommend it and, most important, enjoy it.

• Ronnie Montrose: 1947 - 2012.

I still remember the rehearsal space. It was in the drummer’s basement and on days when we rehearsed, we made a fine noise. Or at least I think we did. It was my first band so I was hardly an expert. One of the songs we played was Rock Candy by Montrose. It starts with a monstrous drum beat and builds on a guitar riff so fat, it’s like Leslie West after a doughnut binge. I was a spoiled kid so I had a Les Paul and a Marshall, but my tone was nowhere near the record. And then there were all the fills, each so fluid and musical, and then the riff again. Maybe I mastered the basic riff, maybe, but all the nuances that make Rock Candy ROCK CANDY were missing. And that’s the magic of Ronnie Montrose’s guitar playing. At first it sounds simple, then you try to play it and you are flummoxed time and time again as he changes up the groove, works out double stops, holds a bend, times a release just so. What a talent. But let's not forget those riffs: Rock Candy, of course, but also Bad Motor Scooter, Rock the Nation, Make It Last, Space Station #5, even Paper Money. Oh, and how about Free Ride and Frankenstein? All parts of my youth and part of who I will always be. So when I read yesterday that Ronnie Montrose had died a bit of me died, too. He was one of the very first guitarists I got into and Rock Candy was a staple of more than one band I was in. Ronnie, may you rest always amidst a chorus of Les Pauls through cranked up Marshalls.

• Buddy Miller, one of the greatest harmony singers of all time.

I love harmony. Simon and Garfunkle, CSNY, The Eagles. All good, but none can hold a candle to The Beatles, the greatest harmony singers of all time, for all time, till the end of time. But up there with The Beatles I have to put Buddy Miller, a GREAT lead singer, one of the greatest in my book, and an equally great harmony singer. Buddy does the hard stuff, like Lennon, like Paul Simon (and you thought Art did the great harmony, right?). Because in harmony, what singers typically do is sing higher than the lead singer. You hear that all the time, ask someone to harmonize with you and they will look for notes above what you’re singing. But the most interesting notes — and the hardest to sing — are the ones below. Listen to Buddy Miller with Emmylou Harris and try to pick out his melody. No easy task. Now add his ability to follow her lead so effortlessly you’re barely aware that he’s doing it. Sure, they’ve rehearsed, but Emmylou is not going to sing a note-for-note version of her rehearsal performance. She’s going to follow her heart in the moment. And Buddy Miller does the same. I get chills every time I listen to these two sing this song. Hope you do, too.

• Is this one of the greatest combinations of song and cinema ever?

The other day I joined

Taxi

, a service that helps songwriters and bands get their music heard by the right people. That night, I got home and already Taxi was sending me emails about opportunities. One caught my eye. It asked for a haunting song for a film placement and at first I was excited but after reading a little further my excitement faded. No love songs implored the email. But still, I was curious, so I clicked on the link in the email to the kind of song being sought. I was expecting a treacly bit of piano puss, but instead I was taken to a commercial for a video game called Gears of War. I love video games so I clicked play. I was transported. Whoever did the art direction for Gears of War is a Talent, but equally inspired was the choice to combine Gears of War footage with a song called Mad World. It was a hit back in 1982 for Tears for Fears but I missed it because I hated bands like Tears for Fears (no guitars, no glory). The song was a hit again in 2001, when it was covered by Michael Andrews and Gary Jules and used in Donnie Darko but I missed that, too. No reason, really, just missed it. I missed it again when it was used to launch Gears of War in 2006. But the other night I did not miss it. I sat transfixed in front of my laptop, the song transcending the small, cheap tin box speakers playing it and the video doing the same for the ugly YouTube container that could not contain it. Again and again I hit Play. The next day I downloaded the song from Apple. Then I read about it on

Wikipedia

. Then I looked up the lyrics. Then I learned it on the guitar. Imagine that: the chords were Em, G, D, A for the verses and Em, A, for the choruses. So simple yet so much more. I went on a mad search for more videos, found the official one for the release of the Andrews/Jules version, checked out Tears for Fears’ version, then found the clip I’ve posted above. Maybe I’m mentally ill, it can’t be healthy to like something like this, but I do. So, is it one of the greatest combinations of song and cinema ever? For me, right now, yes.

Unreal (pun intended).

• You get an idea for a song. But is it any good?

On evenings when moisture is mostly in the water and not in the air and the sun is at the right angle, I could look outside the kitchen or living room window and snap the above photo. But I don’t. Because while this scene is common, in that it happens on so many evenings, it is also rare in that I so often fail to see it, or if I do see it, I am too busy to grab the camera and the tripod and do the scene justice with proper equipment.

Ideas for good songs are similar. They, too, happen every day, but mostly I miss them.

Of course, unlike a sunset, song ideas cannot simply be captured and remembered forever in under a second, regardless of any equipment on-hand, so even if I do notice them, they still, mostly, slip away. Further, song ideas can’t be immediately sized up and judged, at least not by me. I have to notice them, capture them, cage them and then observe them for a little while before I can decide if they’re worth further effort. And this is the hardest part. I mean, songs are so subjective and it is so hard to tell what’s good and what’s not. It’s like that scene Basquiat in which Warhol (played by Bowie) looks at a piece of his art and says, “I can’t even tell what’s good anymore.” And then I want to be brutally honest but how do I that if I don’t know what’s true?

Sigh...

• Some thoughts on SOPA and PIPA.

This week saw a successful protest launched against SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act) and it now seems unlikely that either will pass. I suppose this is a good thing, as I believe that no law is better than a bad law, but...

I’m always stunned at the hostility shown toward content ownership. I suppose it’s a bit like the military, in that people are often against the institution but not against the soldiers. It’s a good technique as it dehumanizes the enemy (you direct your anger toward an organization vs the foot soldiers within it). But people seem willing to go a bit deeper in the content debate and call out individuals and call them greedy and evil. Why, just because some content creators would like to have the choice to protect what they’ve created?

In my opinion, copyright and patent laws are a good idea. Right now, copyright is a bit screwed up as owners can retain ownership for overly long (basically infinite) periods of time. I’d say cap it at 20 years and be done with it. Patents are already handled this way and the system seems to work well (look at all the innovation coming out of the US).

The problem lies with enforcement. How the hell do you define and allow a reasonable amount of sharing, while preventing wide-scale theft? I honestly don’t know, but the answer is not to place all the responsibility on publishers. Also, I don’t think you want a law that is smudgy; you want crystal clear rules that allow very, very little interpretation. Honestly, it seems like a job for some elegant code, but I guess no one either has or wants to write it.

As for all this “no flies on me” blather from the likes of Google and Facebook, it does not hold a lot of water for me. These companies want it both ways: they want to totally protect what they deem to be most valuable to them while promoting the idea that everything should be shared. Yes, Google pays royalties for YouTube, but you and I both know they’re getting a very, very good deal by not having to either pay ALL royalties due or police their service. Seriously, try to explain to a cop that you didn’t know you were speeding. Chances are he’ll just get mad. And what about the file lockers like Megaupload, recently shut down, that host illegal content but are never told No by Google when they want to sell ads?

Bottom line: something needs to be done. SOPA and PIPA were not good ideas for two reasons: 1) they did not seek to update copyright law and 2) their methods of enforcement would have made a lot of money for lawyers but not content holders. It’s a tough problem: how do you allow a reasonably free flow of information without ripping off the people who create the information? I don’t have the answer. But all those so-smart-they-glow-Googlers should be able to figure it out. Sadly, they’re too busy blowing all their money on unprofitable ego exercises (quick, name one Google product besides Adwords and its relations that make money).

Harumph.