FAITH IN THE FUTURE; LYRIC BOOKLET

i have to see my ex tomorrow wish me luck

songs/20

Happy Holidays Everyone! I started making these yearly playlists in 2001 as an attempt to connect with friends in the wake of 911. It was just before the dawn of ITunes, and way before social media. We were not in touch like we are today. I burned dozens of individual cd’s one at a time, printed up customized jewel case covers and snail mailed them all out. It was an annual month-long labor of love. Over the past few years, streaming music has made it much easier and faster to compile and distribute, and frankly much more fun. I still look forward to putting the playlist and blog together and sharing it with all of you. Particularly this year as it gives me a chance to connect with so many friends I haven’t seen in quite some time. It was a tremendously challenging year for all of us. I was grateful to have had my family here in LA the entire time, we remain healthy and well. The west coast Herzogs know just how lucky we have been. The next year will not be without its own challenges, but I'm hopeful we are able to move past this pandemic and the exhausting events of the past 4. More than that, I look forward to seeing each and every one of you in 2021. Until then, be safe, be well, and be good to one another. Enjoy the music.

ox peace, dh

Los Angeles CA. December 2020

Khruangbin - Time (You And I) Don’t ask me to pronounce the name of this eclectic trio from Texas, but this dubby disco tune had me returning to its chilled out groove often during the last few decidedly “un-chill” months. Dreamy and funky, the groove takes me back to NYC’s early 80′s club scene and Ze Records releases from the likes of Kid Creole and Coati Mundi.

Anderson .Paak- Lockdown Scenes from the front, June 2020

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Bill Withers (1938-2020)- Use Me The legendary Bill Withers left the playing field at the top of his game in the early 80′s, hardly heard from again. And while he didn't pass from Covid, his healing pop hymn Lean On Me seemed to be everywhere as people found music to help them cope with the challenges of the pandemic. Withers left behind a legendary and enduring group of hit songs that moved easily from soul to folk to pop, not to mention the subtle rolling funk of this one.

Black Pumas- Fire Strong debut from an unlikely Austin duo that garnerd both buzz and grammy nods. The critics are calling it “psychedelic soul”. Not quite sure that nails it, but like the artists coming up next, they’re carving out new ground while drawing inspiration from classic sources.

Gabe Lee- Babylon

Marcus King- Wildflowers and Wine

Charley Crockett- Welcome to Hard Times

Three artists that are literally changing the face of Country and Americana music. Soulful, authentic and diverse, reaching back for inspiration but always looking forward. If you like this sort of stuff they are all worth checking out. Each album is filled with quality songs.

Low Cut Connie_ Private Lives Philly’s Low Cut Connie are back at it with a double album that plays like the soundtrack to a boozy night at your favorite bar. Sweaty, funky and not a little bit messy. If Peter Wolf and Bruce had a kid it would be this blue eyed soul boy. Adam Weiner grew up in the shadow of the Jersey shore and can't help but have a bit of that E Street hustle.

Willie Nile- New York at Night One of New York’s beloved adopted  son’s dropped this love letter right into the jaws of a battered metropolis driven to its knees by the pandemic. It was heartbreaking to listen as the “city that never sleeps” came to a full stop. Somehow I still found myself coming back to it, imagining night’s ahead, when NYC is back on its feet and I’m roaming its streets. Looking for music, a beer, or maybe just a slice, and fueled by the irreplaceable energy and promise of the greatest city on earth.

The Long Ryders- Down to The Well Americana pioneers the Long Ryders reunited last year for a surprisingly solid album. This single sounds like it could have been recorded during their 80′s heyday featuring their trademark Byrds like jangle and harmonies, but the lyrics mark this song as unmistakably 2020.

The Speedways- Kisses Are History UK power pop outfit reach back to the the 60′s on this sweet slice of retro pop perfection.

Billie Joe Armstrong- That Thing You Do

In the early days of the pandemic we had all our kids (+ a significant other) at our house for a few months. It worked out great and we were luckier than most. The biggest issue was keeping enough food, weed and wine around.  There were some great nights with amazing meals, followed by gathering around the TV together. We re-watched The Sopranos, binged Billy On The Street, and revisited some of our favorite movies. One night we went back to a old family favorite, Tom Hanks’ underrated love letter to the one hit wonders of the post Beatles era, That Thing You Do!  I’ve seen the movie several times and it never fails to please. A true feel good film and a perfect Kodak snapshot capturing a simpler time in American pop culture. 

While we watch the unlikely chart topper’s The Oneders  fizzle as fast as they rose to fame, its not really the point. The movie is really an old fashioned love story. Playing like a perfect hit song you can listen to over and over, full of both hooks and heart. I always thought the title track, written by Fountains Of Wayne leader Adam Schlesinger  (who we lost to Covid), brilliantly captured the British Invasion sound every group wanted after The Beatles stormed America. Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong must agree. During the pandemic he cut an album’s worth of cool covers including a faithful version of this one.

Gerard Way (W/Judith Hill - Here Comes the End A tale of discovering music in 2020:  Heard this on a Netflix trailer for the series The Umbrella Factory. Turns out it is performed by Gerard Way (My Chemical Romance) who also writes the comic book the series is based on. (got all that?) He’s joined on this searing garage/psych rave up by the talented and versatile Judith Hill doing her best Merry Clayton.

Hinds- Spanish Bombs I’ve been following this Madrid based, all female outfit of punky garage rockers for a few years now. I think they are pretty great. This track, recorded for a Joe Strummer tribute bursts with an unbridled joy the stone faced and politically minded Clash could never muster. I bet Joe would love it though

The Secret Sisters- Hand Over My Heart Have enjoyed their harmonies for some time now. This one gives me vague Wilson Phillips vibes and I don’t really mind. 

Tame Impala- Breathe Deeper I know I’m supposed to like this guy, all the cool kids do, I’ve even seen the band at Coachella. Over the years very little of the music has stuck to me, but the pandemic offered a bit more free time to dig into this funky dubby, chilled out jam, and it stuck with me. Not to mention that 2020 was all about deep breaths.

Ledisi (feat.Corey Henry)- What Kind of Love Is That Ledisi is back with some slinky, sultry R&B and jazzy vocals

Dinner Party- FreezeTag An R&B/Jazz collective featuring Terrace Martin, Robert Glasper, 9th Wonder and Kamasi Washington use sweet soul on heartbreaking and all too familiar tale..

Toots and The Maytals- Time Tough  I’ve written an awful lot about my love for Reggae over the years. Right after Bob Marley kicked the door down for me, Toots showed me around the house. Ska, rock steady, and roots. He was true reggae royalty and sadly we lost him to Covid, just after he released what would be his last album. Check my Toots tribute blog and playlist.

Mungo’s Hi Fi- The Beat Goes SKA! These clever UK roots reggae collective never fail to surprise. This kitschy Sonny & Cher cover managed to make me smile every time I heard it. No mean feat in 2020

Stone Foundation (feat. Durand Jones)- Hold on To Love Frequent collaborators with Paul Weller  (he appears on a track on the album), Stone Foundation are back with another batch of their UK soul revival stylings. This one features Durand Jones ( of Durand Jones & The Indications) on vocals and some great reggae style horns at the top.

The Pretenders- You Can’t Hurt A Fool Can’t resist a good torch song, especially sung by the smokey voiced Chrissie Hynde. Was kind of shocked at how many good songs were on this album.

Shelby Lynne_ Don’t Even Believe in Love Sultry country soul and one of her strongest albums in awhile.

Jaime Wyatt- Neon Cross Outlaw country has a new bad girl. And in case you didn’t think she was serious, she enlisted producer Shooter Jennings (and his mom Jessi Colter on one track) to help make her point. 

Daniel Donato- Justice 25 year old guitar prodigy call his music “cosmic country”.  Ok, now I’m listening. You should be too.

The Jayhawks- This Forgotten Town 30 plus + after their debut this Twin Cities alt country group led by founding member Gary Louris continue to deliver. They find their inner Neil Young on this one.

Lucero- Time To Go Home God I wish I was in a bar right now listening to this, even if I might be crying in my beer.

John Prine (1946 -2020)- Lake Marie We lost so many this year, but this one really stung. A true American songwriting treasure, who was still making great music against all odds right up to his untimely passing. His songs are known for their simplicity, and economy of words. but this one goes against the grain. I’m still not exactly certain what it’s about. Sorrowful and haunting, yet somehow uplifting and redemptive. I heard him perform it live here in Los Angeles a just over a year ago and it has stuck in my head ever since. There is surely a place in heaven for the great John Prine.  He sang about it on his final studio album in 2018. Ironically it became the last song on his last record.

Thanks for making it this far....

***Play the entire songs/20 Spotify playlist HERE!***

Neztalk

An interview with Ken Sharp, 1989

In March, Michael Nesmith spent a couple weeks in New York City doing a series of interviews with the media to promote the New York opening of his latest production, “Tapeheads”. Besides promoting “Tapeheads”, Michael is having one of his most visible, high-profile years in a long, long time, with the recent release of a video and album and the impending release of another album and the “Overview” video magazine. Rock radio reporter (and MBF member) Ken Sharp had the opportunity to interview Michael and he shares that interview with us here:

KS: I know you’re asked this question all the time, so let’s get it out of the way right off. When are you going to get back together with … The First National Band?

MN: Well, yeah, that’s the most common question that I’m asked actually. Most people come up to me and say, “Say, whatever happened to the other guys?” and I know immediately that they’re talking about John London and Red Rhodes and John Ware. I mean, who else would they be talking about?

KS: What is Red Rhodes up to, by the way?

MN: Well, you know, I’ve lost contact with all those guys. John London moved back to Teas. He’s working, I think, in the real estate business or something and Red Rhodes I haven’t talked to. I assume that he still plays. I got a call from one of his family — his ex-sister-in-law — the other day and I called her back and she left the wrong number so I wasn’t able to get in touch with her. And John Ware, I think, moved to Nashville and is working in the radio business in Nashville.

KS: April 5 marks the release of “Nezmusic” …

MN: Oh, really? Is that when it’s coming out?

KS: I think it is. I was curious, some of this stuff came out in different forms, but why now? What was the idea behind compiling it? Were there a lot of requests or what?

MN: Yeah, well, it was just a combination of requests. I get a lot of fan mail from the Monkees fan clubs and stuff. And almost every single letter requests for me to put out the old music. What I did was I went back to the archives and over the years I’ve made a couple of dozen albums, I guess, and the first ten that I made are still under the auspices of RCA, but there were about 4 or 5 that I made subsequent to that beginning with a record called “The Prison”. So Harold Bronson over at Rhino Records called me up and he says, “let’s put out, let’s go back and re-license…” That’s kind of their business, you know, And I said, “Harold, I don’t think anybody’s gonna play any of my records.” And he says, “Well, we specialize in marketing records that don’t get played.” So I compiled two LP’s.  One was an LP which was to be songs from the country sort of era, with the First, Second, Third National Bands, and the second which was to include things off “Radio Engine” and “Infinite Rider” but also half a dozen songs that I wrote for a movie called “Video Ranch”. And divided them up into “The Older Stuff” which was the country stuff and “The Newer Stuff”. So “The Newer Stuff” was the only thing we were able to get out because we had licensing problems on “The Older Stuff”. So we could only get one of them out. And when I put together “The Newer Stuff” I realized that I had music videos on seven or eight of them and I had also been getting a lot of requests to combine all those music videos on one videocassette, so I put it together and called it “Nezmusic”.

KS: Wasn’t “Video Ranch” called something different? “Neon” something?

MN: “Neon Ruby”.

KS: Why was that project not completed?

MN: Well, the biggest reason is that I was not able to interest a distributor in releasing it. That’s the biggest reason. Had I been able to do that it would have gone forward. The creative elements were there, but it’s a movie musical and, like “Tapeheads”, these things are tough. Number one, they’re very hard to do creatively and, number two, they’re hard to market. However, I think we’re about to enter into the time when we’re going to see more and more of those, so keep your fingers crossed. Maybe “Video Ranch” will come out. (laughs)

KS: It’s nice to see unreleased tracks like “Tanya” and “Formosa Diner” will see the light of day.

MN: Did you get a pre-copy of this?

KS: No, I didn’t.

MN: Did you see the liner notes, or what?

KS: No, I’m a pretty big fan, besides what I do for a living, so I did a lot of research.

MN: Sounds like you’ve been on Lexus Nexus or one of those online services.

KS: Will you release any videos for the Rhino early material? Something like “Joanne” that you never did a video for to promote it?

MN: Till you said it I hadn’t thought of it. Maybe it’s a good idea. I don’t know. Do you think it would be a good idea to go back and do old songs? Creatively, do you really? I don’t know, because I think of the video as a form and there is such a thing as an audio-only record. Can you imagine a video of “Joanne”, takes a picture of a beautiful woman in a filmy dress living in a house by a pond? It starts to get kind of dumb. (laughs) The emotion it evokes is different. When I wrote “Rio” I really had a picture in mind, although I didn’t realize at the time that it was gonna father an entire way of life, but I did sort of have in mind that this would make something nice to put on film. Then when Island asked me to make a promotional clip to send overseas and I did it, you know, it all married up nicely. But to go bac and do it … maybe I’ll write some stuff. Best I should do “Video Ranch”, I think.

KS: Do you still write songs? Do you still play the guitar.

MN: Yeah. Not a lot, but I still do it.

KS: Will we see new material from you? Not as an audio album, but as a combination?

MN: Yeah, I’d do that.

KS: There is a demand. I’d love to hear it and so would a lot of other people.

MN: You know, the biggest problem that I have, number one, is that nobody will play these records on the air. I won’t get any airplay. So without airplay making a market for this, it’s very hard and unless you have a Rhino Records behind it that is willing to commit to marketing the record without airplay, you’re in trouble. And also when you’re writing to this kind of form it’s very expensive and kind of a big uphill battle to do unless you really feel like you got some sort of a built-in market.

KS: Don’t you thin country radio stations would embrace your music?

MN: Well, I don’t know. We live in the days of Randy Travis and Dwight Yokum. I don’t think so. I think there’s a different mindset afoot out there.

KS: I hope it still doesn’t dissuade you from making new music.

MN: Maybe I’ll be some young Dwight Yokum’s Buck Owens, how’s that? (laughs)

KS: In 1979 you felt the audio end of schemes was going to be obsolete and in 1982 you closed the record division of Pacific Arts.

MN: Was it ’82? I thought it was earlier than that. Well, that sounds about right.

KS: Now ten years later with CD’s and DAT’s here and music sales at an all-time high, how do you account for that and did that enter in your decision to work with Rhino on releasing stuff.

MN: Well, no, it’s an anomalous bulge. It doesn’t mean that there’s a rebirth of audio-only stuff. I mean, I think you have to look at your own lifestyle and find out, you know, what do you do more of? Do you watch more television or do you listen to more radio? That varies from person to person, but I’ll bet if you took a national statistical average you’d find more people watch more television than they listen to radio. Simple. OK, start with that as a point of departure. Why did CD’s suddenly take off? Well, number one, it was exceptional sound quality. Number two, it was a very accessible and easy user-friendly medium, and, number three, you’re able to go back and hear stuff that you’d loved for a period of time but you’d basically worn your records out. So you drew from a huge catalog, a great library of material with people who were replenishing and restocking their early audio times. But these are people who grew up on audio. Now let’s shift to the 9-year-old, to the 8-year-old who is going to be 20 in the year 2000. What kind of equipment will this person have? Will they have a CD? Yes. What can a CD do that an audio record can’t? Well, it can play pictures. You’re seeing go into place the technological base for this video revolution and I still stand by my original statement that the audio medium is going to diminish and diminish and diminish and diminish until audio-only will occupy a very small part of the overall — what do you want to call it — entertainment spectrum. It’s like network television. Network television, look at the shrinking share. Are you familiar with these statistics?

KS: Go ahead, please.

MN: Well, I’m not so familiar with them that I can quote them with complete accuracy, but it’s something to the degree that it’s gone from a 93% share in the mid-‘70’s or early ‘70’s of the total homes using television to somewhere around 60% and one point represents millions of people. But you have to look at that they’ve lost, what, thirty, forty MILLION viewers? They’ve lost it. You also have to look at what videocassette has done to the redefinition of prime time television. Videocassettes are prime time television. And what it says is prime time television is not at 9:00. Prime time television is 2:31 in the morning, it’s 6:17 in the evening, it’s 12:11 in the afternoon, it’s whenever the consumer wants to put the videocassette in and watch it. Now you have an interested consumer, aware of what they’re watching with a high desire to view. That’s prime time television and videocassettes have simply robbed the network television market. Those are the sort of changes that you can’t overlook when you try to make a sense of what’s gonna come in the future, And I think you’re going to find this in the audio/video or video music or whatever name you want to put on it. I don’t know what you could call it. And all the things that are going into place now is not the resurgence of the audio-only medium but basically the audio-only medium riding the technological curve of the present day and with the music getting a nice free ride on this. When it’s all said and done, these are video discs.

KS: Back to “Nezmusic”…on a song like “Cruisin’ “, did you have the idea for the video in mind and then come up with the song or did you write the song first and then create a video around that?

MN: Well, with “Cruisin’ “ the video was very much in mind and all of the songs since then have the pictures very much in mind and try to make them both work together.

KS: Do you enjoy working that way? Does having the visuals in mind help your writing?

MN: Yeah, it expands it because sometimes when you’re writing one of the things you’re looking for is a proper way to express a particular emotion. So you might spend hours or days or quite a bit of time trying to find a word, a phrase or something that conveys some idea what you want to convey. When you put pictures into the equation, you can think, “All right, I don’t need to SAY this out loud. I don’t need to put this in a word because, when I marry the picture to it, it will convey this.” So many times just the presence of the video in your mind, the picture in your creative processes will help you out. For one thing, “Cruisin’ “ was this odd rap record, OK? Go figure. And to me it was OK to just say poems over the top of a kind of simple bleat, you know, it was just bass and drums.

KS: Ahead of its time, when you think about it.

MN: Yeah, when you think about it. (laughs) But at the time no one was thinking that rap would become what it became. And so with “Cruisin’ “ it was a fairly clear poem — the challenge became how do you pictorially represent a phrase like “the light behind their eyes”? How do you do that? And when you write to the video form, sometimes you’ll avoid a phrase like “the light behind their eyes” because it’s much more descriptive and evocative of a mental image than it is of an actual picture. And it’s very important for me to make sure that I steer clear of narrative interpretation of these things. So with “Cruisin’ “ I learned my way a lot and, yes, I did write it with the visual in mind, but I also drove myself into a ditch in several other instances, for instance “the light behind their eyes”, and what I was left with was a cheesy video effect. I mean, I had to do this thing that made this guy’s head blow up with light, you know, Well, OK, so that was fine, but still …

KS: On ”Nezmusic” the overall clips hold up so well — the humor in “Rio” and how current “Cruisin’ “ is — to look at it now.

MN: Well, you know, when we made ‘em a long time ago we were sort of on the cutting edge of the form and we didn’t have the mandate to make a commercial for a record. What we were trying to do was really work on the form. And so the result was that we employed a lot of really basic values and basic values have a tendency to be basic (laughs), to be permanent.

KS: It’s the 25th Anniversary of the Beatles’ arriving in America …

MN: When is that?

KS: Well, actually, it was February.

MN: Oh, it was?

KS: Yeah, Feb. 64. The song “I’ll Remember You” exemplifies your love for the Beatles. I wanted to talk about that and ask you a few Beatles questions. 

MN: Let me tell you about “I’ll Remember You”. Have you heard this song? “I’ll Remember You” I wrote while John was alive. I wrote it in ’79 or ’78 and I wrote it to send to him. I was just gonna give it. You know you write songs to friends sometimes. So it was just a message I was gonna send to him and I knew he was living with Yoko at the time in the Dakota taking care of Sean as a househusband, and I admired that in him. I thought it was good, you know, especially after his sort of sowing some oats there before and so I realized that I was quite fond of John and I’d spent some time with him and I had never really, aside from “Lady Madonna”, I had never really expressed a lot of appreciation for his music. One of the things that happens is that as a writer and a famous or celebrated individual you very seldom have your peers walk up to you and say, “Say, you know, I really like what you did,” Very seldom. I mean, most of the time you’re in some major competition. So I wrote that song specifically with that in mind, just to express a little gratitude. And then part of it I was trying to think from what dynamic does this thing that I feel about John and the music that he wrote come? And I realized that I had the same level of appreciation for the Fred and Ginger movies and I began to draw the parallels between the two of them to enhance the song “I’ll Remember You”. But it was not posthumous to John.

KS: Did you send it to him before his death?

MN: Nope. Never got to it. I just kept it and I didn’t send it and then the next thing I know, Howard Cosell says, “At the end of the day, it’s only a football game …”

KS: You stayed with John in 1967. What was that like? There are a lot of comparisons between you and a lot of talk of the rivalry between the Beatles and the Monkees.

MN: It was like, you know, staying with you or staying with anybody else. You just go over somebody’s house and stay!

KS: Was John a fan of the Monkees’ series?

MN: Don’t know. Didn’t talk about it. Like I say, it’s the sort of thing you don’t talk about. They were recording “Sgt. Pepper” at the time and he played me some tracks for “Sgt. Pepper” and that was about as far as it went. We played a little bit. I mean, basically, that’s what you do. That’s what I did with those guys. When you hung out, you played. You picked up a guitar and played.

KS: There’s a video for “A Day in the Life” in the studio and you’re in it! What was that like, to be there for one of the greatest recording sessions? It must have been amazing.

MN: Well, I know, but you have the mists of myth around it. Whatever it is that’s your current discipline, look at what you’re doing and think about the friends that are involved in that discipline with you and think about going out and having a hamburger with them. How big of a deal is it? It’s not a big deal at all! But listen, I mean, it makes for great dinner stories and I can get anecdotal about it and I can tell you all sorts of things and create magical images and stuff but that’s all nonsense. Basically it’s just John says, “Well, we’re going to be in the studio. You wanna come down? And is it OK that we take some pictures? We’re going to have a camera crew there.” And I said, “Sure.” It was good ‘cause there was a stack of people there, you know what I’m saying, it was a party. “Well, Paul’s got this band together and we’re going to do this big orchestra thing and so maybe you’ll sop by.” And I said, “Hey, I wouldn’t miss it.”

KS: What did you think about the comparisons? A lot of people said there was a rivalry…

MN: What, between the Monkees and the Beatles? Well, it was lunacy. I mean, there was not only not a rivalry, it’s like the Beatles were the Green Bay Packers and we played tennis! You know, it’s just not the same game.

KS: Did you think they had an influence on you as a songwriter?

MN: Well, I didn’t feel any, but that’s not to say that they didn’t. I mean, I was not really a product of those times. My musical roots went back more to hymns and movie music, some of the classics and R & B and country. That was sort of my musical mix. It’s one of those things that makes me very comfortable with elevator music today. There’s such a thing as good elevator music. I’s hidden to most people because everybody thinks of dentists when they hear it, but nonetheless, every once in a while I’ll be standing in an elevator and start tapping my foot and everybody in the elevator will look at me like, “What is wrong with this guy?” (laughs)

KS: “Magic” was a great homage to the 1950’s era. 

MN: Well, it kind of was, wasn’t it? I didn’t intend it to be but it sorta ended up that way, didn’t it?

KS: Being on the Monkees’ television show, did it plant some ideas in your head even back then about how far you could go with the visuals? Did you gain a lot from that?

MN: I think so, to a certain degree. There was a large amount of the technical and creative part that went on that I didn’t pay any attention to. So I didn’t get as much as you might think. What I learned from that was really how to work with a creative team. The musical dynamic, learning to put together the image with the music really came from watching musicals, “Singin’ in the Rain” and “Fantasia” and, you know, those musicals, those old, old musicals. You can rent them at the video store now. “Wizard of Oz.” You know, these are tremendous musicals. So that was, and I guess Busby Berkeley as much as anybody. Do you know his stuff?

KS: In ’83 you said you lost interest in music videos. You said it was like radio with pictures, whereas you saw it as an art form. I wanted to ask why you dropped out and why you didn’t stay with it to bring it into new areas?

MN: Well, the idea of radio with pictures came because most music videos are like commercials for records and I was being asked to do videos for people and I didn’t want to do that. It’s the same thing if somebody called me up and asked me to do a commercial. I don’t want to do a commercial. So I made a decision to do motion pictures which was where I felt like I could do the art form. I tried to put together music type of motion pictures — wasn’t completely successful with it. “Tapeheads” is the first time I’ve gotten even close. But it really was not an attempt to abandon the music video form but to get into an area where I could actually do it. And music videos weren’t it.

KS: Do you think music video is healthier now or is it even worse than it was six years ago?

MN: Oh, it’s gotta be healthier than it was because there’s just a certain law of progress that goes with everything. You gotta get smarter people. You’re saying to me now as if you understand it — and I assume you do — that the current music video is a commercial for a record. You also say that to me as if that’s a pejorative. You say it in a certain disparaging way, so I assume that you don’t think it’s a good thing, that you think it’s as least not a fulfilling element of the form. So I can tell you from talking to literally dozens of other people like yourself that you echo a common sentiment, at least in my experience. So I think that what that common sentiment is bringing forward is that, well, we’ll tolerate the radio with pictures things because at least it kind of pushes us along, but there’s more here than meets the eye, there’s a bigger bone buried in this backyard than we’ve dug up, whatever metaphor you want to insert. At some point somebody’s gonna come along, grab hold of the form and do it, whether it’s me or whether it’s somebody else, I don’t know, but it’s gonna be somebody who’s gonna come along and do it.

KS: And there’s the occasional gems that do come through that make you still believe in the form.

MN: I think heavy metal is probably the most fertile ground right now for something to come along. Well, it’s Wagnerian. You have to look at it that way, number one. I’m talking about heavy metal as a real point of departure. Heavy metal is a good example of music that’s really taken a left turn somewhere along the line and you have to keep in mind that Hendrix was on the first Monkees tour, you know. That’s one of the great ironies of the 60’s. And it was Hendrix who infected me with a love for heavy metal and made it stay forever, which, you know, I’m still a big heavy metal fan. I couldn’t find much that I liked with heavy metal. I liked AC/DC and I liked some of the stuff, you know, from Aerosmith, Foghat, REO Speedwagon, and some of these things that weren’t really heavy metal but kind of were heavy metal pop. It really wasn’t until Eddie Van Halen came along. And Van Halen was the first time that I thought, “Ah! There’s been some life breathed in here.” Of course, now, I don’t know what he’s doing, he’s off in some other zone again, but where he was working with David and those guys, that was HOT. That was real Iwo Jima stuff. Eddie plays the guitar a lot better than Jimi played it. The difference is Hendrix didn’t play the guitar, Hendrix WAS the guitar. Major difference. This guy, when he would touch the neck of his guitar, number one, it was upside down and backwards, or backside down and upwards, whatever you want to call it, but it was screwy. When he touched the neck of his guitar it was very hard to see where his fingers ended and the guitar started. I mean there was a kind of glow around the whole thing. I know this sounds all kind of cosmic, but it’s true! He really was an amazing dude. With Van Halen, I think what Eddie’s got is the same kind of wonderful sensibility that Jimi had but the guitar is a technical extension. He’s very organized in the way he plays and very soulful but Hendrix was…you cannot compare those two. In terms of real crash/burn rock’n’roll there’s a band out there which is somewhere between my absolute favorite band, which is Z Z Top, to Metallica, which is from some other place. And then I sort of like but ignore the Bon Jovi’s of the world, Poisons and Whitesnakes and stuff and Ratt. It doesn’t work. I thought for a while Michael Schenker’s group was gonna do it, right after he left the Scorpions and he did that one album that was just wow! This guy has flat got it. And then he just went nowhere. I think, drogas, el drogas.

KS: You stated recently that putting movies on videocassette was like driving an Indy 500 car to work, a major misuse of the medium. What do you feel can be done to rectify that, and is that where “Overview” comes in?

MN: Well, I think you have to look at the whole user event, yeah, and “Overview” is a part of that. “Overview” is information carrier, though. “Overview” was a magazine on videocassette that just brought previews and reviews and things of coming attraction and it was designed as kind of a video guide. I think that hews closer to the form. At the end of the day, I gotta tell you I think home video is an entertainment medium and I think it’s gonna occupy the same place in the minds of the future people that records kind of do now. That’s where I think it’s gonna extend from, not from motion pictures, do you know what I mean? So you have to think in terms of contemporary music, what records are, in order to get a handle on how to use the video medium. That’s me. That’s the way I think of it.

KS: The first version of “Overview” that you put out, about two years ago, it failed. You’re doing something again with it. What will be different in terms of concept, marketing, distribution?

MN: You have to be careful about thinking that “Overview” failed. “Overview” did what it was intended to do, which was to provide me with a test market. The reason that it appears to have failed is because I thought that the test results would be more positive than they were and that I would go with it immediately. The test results were negative nit it wasn’t a result of the magazine. The test results were the result of the distribution system not working. I had to redesign the distribution, redesign the marketing system, and once that was done I felt like I could go forward. Well, that’s what I did. I went forward, redesigned the marketing system, redesigned my distribution system, and you’ll see it this fall. Again with another test. It may not work again, but we’ll try it again.

KS: Good. I think it’s a phenomenal idea. Just to have, like even on cable TV, the access of a library in front of you where you can just get any information you want, read the newspaper, do all that…

MN: Well, you’re talking about the Holy Grail right now and what that is is the interface of the computer with the video medium, movies on demand, pictures on demand.

KS: Does that interest you?

MN: I’m into it up to my eyeballs! And as a matter of fact you’ll see me come back through here in August with some announcements along this line. But with the availability to take the computer, interface it effectively with video, you’re very close to what you want and all of us want. All of us want to download. All of us want a couple of keystrokes, gimme the data. But you know the data stream in this thing is so dense. Do you have any idea of the technological mountain you’re trying to climb there? The data stream — and I may get this wrong — the data stream on a color video picture, one second, is 80 megabytes! If you know anything about computers you know that that’s a lot of storage. And most people have a hard disc and maybe have 20 megabytes, 10 megabytes, 40 megabytes on a hard disc. By the time you get up to 80 megabytes you’re starting to get into some serious computing power and BIG BUCKS. Well, to get one second of color video with sound on a screen uses 80 megabytes. It uses all the storage space that you have on one 80 megabyte hard disc. So just figure out how many billions of bytes you have to have in order to get 90 minutes. Apple, Hypercard, some of these other computer programs are really blazing the trail with graphics based computer technology that’s gonna make something of what you want. You might be having to live with black and white slides for a while or just somebody talking underneath it, but, hey, it’s a start. And that’s gonna be there. Everybody wants this. Me, too.

KS: It’s the 15th Anniversary — another anniversary — of the formation of your company, Pacific Arts. Being a musician for your whole life and moving into working as an executive and working on that level, was it a difficult transition?

MN: Well., let me answer it this way because it’s a question that’s commonly asked, which is how do you manage to change hats so often and so easily and the answer is, which is a good answer, is that I don’t change the hats. It’s the same hat. The dynamic and the values that I employ to write a song, make a record, do a video, make “Tapeheads”, is the same one that you use to run a company and it’s just different applications of the same values.

KS: Are you pleased with where the company is now? Is it beyond what you envisioned at the beginning? 

MN: Well, it’s different. I don’t know. Every morning I get up and I wonder is this the right place to be going? And a company is a very hard thing to project, you know, the best laid plans of mice and men… The important thing in a company is to be adaptable. U see a lot of people come to me with systems analysis, management systems, a way to control this, that, and the other thing, how to make 5-year projections, 2-year projections, 1-year projections. They all have their place, but none of them occupies as an important place in the hierarchy of things as being adaptable, being able to think fast, be quick on your feet so that when everything goes to hell in a handbasket you can make a decision and ether do something that either saves the day or gets you out of the mud. And when it comes to running a company it’s a question of getting up, assessing the day, and saying, “Well, am I stuck in the ditch?” Or am I on the road? Or is the ditch really the road?” It gets very subtle and curious out there sometimes. So you know one day I may wake up and there will be no Pacific Arts. One day I may wake up and Pacific Arts will be Warner Brothers. I don’t know.

KS: Let’s talk about “Tapeheads”. I loved it. What was it that attracted you to the project? Was it an almost instant affection for the story that made you feel it was right for Pacific Arts?

MN: Well, it was the Swanky Modes. I mean, you know, there was a script that had running through its core the heart and soul of 160’s R & B. Now I don’t mean to indicate that’s what the movie’s about, ‘cause clearly it isn’t. But I thought, depending on who we cast for the Smoky Modes, this could be an unbelievable thing to see. Then when Same Moore and Junior Walker were cast, I was even more thrilled. Of course, all the musicians in the world began to say, “Gee, can we come down and work?” and “Can we come down and play and do all this stuff?” And then when I started hearing the music that they were recording originally for the movie I was just blown away. So the first thing that appealed to me was the music and at the end of the day the thing that makes me the happiest with it is the music. I think “Ordinary Man” is a hit!

KS: Is filmmaking the primary interest for you? Or is it one of many?

MN: Well, right now, I gotta save “Tapeheads”. I gotta make “Tapeheads” work and that’s what I’m talking to you and what I’m talking to everybody I can talk to about right now ‘cause “Tapeheads” has gotta get a shot. If people can understand what is at the root of “Tapeheads” and it can grow, it’s a point of departure for me to make other musical movies and it has to be demonstrated that this is a valid form. I don’t know whether it’s gonna make a lot of money. It may or may not. So far the video looks like it’s gonna do very well. But it’s the music part of this and the combination of movies and music is where I want to be, it’s where I’m totally focused and where I want to ultimately be. And like I say, maybe the next one will be a heavy metal movie. Don’t you think that would be cool? A heavy metal movie? Think of that. I mean, you go into a nice big theatre, I’m not talking about some little squeezie 14-plex, I’m talking about something with this humongoid screen where you can do all this major kill sound and you go in there and you get a couple of concert stacks. You don’t use the speakers that they’ve got ‘cause they’re kinda twinky, you know, you get some concert stacks and you put ‘em in there and you get some big sound and you just do it a little bit like a concert. Why can’t the cinema experience be like a concert experience?

KS: Would it be something like a “Spinal Tap” or a documentary type?

MN: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, something entirely of its own. You know there’s a dynamic, there’s a creative imperative inherent in heavy metal music. It’s male adolescence, it’s cars and women — spelled W-I-M-M-I-N. They’re into it and it works!

KS: And you can identify with it, as well.

MN: You can identify with it. I mean, it’s not the way I lead my life, I’m a fairly conservative guy. But as an art form, I mean, cripes, you can’t ignore that and I think if you’re looking to put some power up on the screen, you know, these guys have got their hands on the trigger.

KS: Which part of the creative process do you enjoy the most? The ideas, the writing, the filming, the editing, or just sitting back and enjoying the end result?

MN: It’s the end result. Yeah, sit back and watch it. I make movies ‘cause I want to see ‘em! It’s the only reason. I don’t know why else to make a movie. You make a movie ‘cause to want to see it. I don’t like chopping the onions and dicing the carrots and standing over the stove much. I don’t like that much.

KS: Same thing with music, as well?

MN: Yeah, you write music ‘cause you want to hear it. That’s why I started writing music. I couldn’t play the guitar. So I couldn’t sing and so anything anybody else was doing so I said, “OK, let’s all sing this song. I don’t know how to play that’ song.” So you make up a song you can sing.

KS: It’s funny that you talked about “Cruisin’” being early rap, because I wanted to ask you about Run DMC’s “Mary Mary”, which you wrote.

MN: Well, I don’t know. My life has been nothing if not poetic. You know what I mean? (laughs) There are certain closed great parentheses is my life and I wonder what open parentheses I’m in the middle of right now. You know, every once in a while, I’ll look at “Mary Mary” and I think, “My Lord! Is this unusual or what?” And then to see this come back around! People say to me, “Are you surprised that the Monkees are doing so well in their reunion?”, and I say, “No, I’m surprised that Run DMC recorded ‘Mary Mary’ as a rap single!” That’s the surprise.

KS: And they did a real good job, I thought.

MN: I thought so. Sure. I mean, if that’s the rap dynamic. I thought when I was doing “Cruisin’” that what I was doing was just reciting poetry over a very spare and simple musical bed. I like the concept of rap because it gives people who can’t sing the ability to express themselves musically. I think that’s cool. I’m not sure what they’re talking about a lot of the time. I suppose it’s OK to talk about “I like the way you look, baby”, but, I mean, I don’t know, it burns out pretty quick for me.

KS: It seems like you’ve reconciled with your past with the Monkees, recognizing that you’ll always be identified with that. 

MN: Well, you’re right. The curious thing to me is that there’s ever any question that I may or may not do that. I mean, why in the world wouldn’t I do that> I don’t have anything to reconcile. It’s always been just fine with me. I knew when I got involved in the thing that IU was going to be a Monkee for the rest of my life. You don’t get involved in things that hot and not have it stay around. Christopher Reeve knew when he took the Superman part that he was gonna be Superman so he better get peaceful with that before he does it. I was peaceful with it before I did it.

KS: Do you think if you did anything with the band, especially a movie, would it adversely affect you or would it fit into the scope of your company? Would you consider something like that?

MN: Sure. We’ve talked about it many times. The problem is not whether or not I’d do it. It’s whether or not anybody would make that movie. And there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of interest in it. I mean, I think it would make an interesting film. You wanna know my guess, I think of there was gonna be something on film it would probably end up on television. Television is the Monkees’ medium. And I don’t know whether or not we could pull it off — the four of us as adults could pull off — what we pulled off 25 years ago. Probably not. So that you have to look that pretty hard.

KS: Would you get involved in a Monkees’ record, maybe contributing a couple of songs?

MN: Sure. Absolutely. All those things are up in the air and up in the wind and we talk about ‘em all the time. I would’ve gone on tour, but I didn’t have the time. I was just finishing “Square Dance” and just starting “Tapeheads” and as a matter of fact I told 'em I would. We were gonna go out and just do half a dozen dates, you know, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, something like that. They called up and said, “Listen, we went to get a drink of water and the faucet fell off in our hand and now it’s 280 dates.” I said, “Well, partners, I can’t do that. I’ve got 25 employees here. I can’t walk away from this.”

KS: On the follow-up tour in 1987 they did quite a few of your songs, “Circle Sky” and “You Just May Be The One”. Was there any plan of your doing a few shows in 1987? It seemed that’s why they had those songs in.

MN: That is constantly in our minds. I think they’re gonna come back this year. We’re trying right now to figure out how to make some dates work. We tried to make one work in Philadelphia. I couldn’t get there. We tried to make one work in Chicago. I couldn’t get there. You know, it’s a nightmare.

KS: There’s a video floating around of the Greek Theatre in 1986. It was just so heartwarming to see.

MN: Oh, you should’ve been there! Oh, it was terrific, it was great. You know, we just tried to figure out the right way to do it and decided I’d come on at the end. And so we put together a couple of numbers and, you know, he guys went through their whole show and it was like, “So long, goodbye,” they’re taking their final bows and then I walk out from the edge and hey hit me with the spotlight and I’m telling you the place went up for grabs! It was unbelievable. It exploded!

KS: The big question is did you have to relearn “Pleasant Valley Sunday” and “Listen to the Band”? You were playing that lick on “Pleasant Valley Sunday” pretty good.

MN: No, I don’t think I’ll ever forget that. Number one, it’s not that hard. Like I say, it’s a big part of my life. I like that part of my life. I wish I could do it more and, if we can figure out a way to do it more…you know, we talk all the time, trying to figure out how to get me back un on the TV show. You know, they’re off in Europe right now doing some big tours and I’d love to be there. I’d love it! It’s be great! But…we gotta get people out there to see “Tapeheads”. (laughs)

KS: The Monkees are receiving a Star this year on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. How do you feel about that and will you attend?

MN: Oh, yeah! You bet! I feel great!

KS: If you were watching TV and a Monkees episode came on, would you watch it?

MN: No. I’ve seen ‘em too many times. I’ve seen ‘em all dozens of times.

KS: You saw them as a spectator in ’86 in Texas. What was that like?

MN: Well, that was real edifying. I’ve been asked about that before, too, and the one thing that was obvious to me was that Micky should’ve been in front all along. You know, he is so good. Why we stuck him back on the drums, that was one of the dumber things we ever did. Between David and Micky up front, I mean, you got two power hitters up here, you know? I just stand there, I don’t do anything. I go over and stand by my amp and play the guitar. And Peter probably could have been a better drummer than Micky because Peter’s a better musician than Micky. So I don’t know, maybe we should’ve given Micky a bass and let him play bass or something, but he was great. It was wonderful to see, too, I’ll tell you.

KS: “The Girl I Knew Somewhere” was the first song you guys all recorded together, which you wrote. The first session, was it a big relief or a lot of pressure?

MN: Well, there wasn’t any pressure to it. You know, there wasn’t a lot of support for us playing, because it was like, “Come on, guys, you’re actors,” and “How are you gonna play and make the music? You know, it’s just too big of a workload, number one. Number two, what kind of material are you gonna play? What are you gonna do?” So it wasn’t a question of “Can you play, can you make decent music?” It was a question of “If you play, how are we gonna make all this fit into what we’re doing? ‘Cause there’s so much other stuff!” So the pressure was never really “Can you play and can you play well?” The question was “OK, we figure you can play and we figure you can play well enough and we know Nesmith writes and we know the rest of you guys write, so maybe this well all come about, but then what?” And that was the big question, because as they predicted it got tougher and tougher and tougher as we got busier and busier and busier.

KS: The “Live ‘67” album on Rhino is interesting to listen to because you guys were a great garage band. 

MN: That’s exactly what we were. We were a garage band.

KS: Have you heard it?

MN: Well, I mean, I heard it when we made it. (laughs)

KS: It had electricity that blew away a lot of critics when they reviewed it, and it had an almost psychedelic version of “Steppin’ Stone”.

MN: It was a psychedelic version of “Steppin’ Stone”. Unequivocally.

KS: What direction do you think the Monkees would have gone if “HEAD” had been a success?

MN: We would have just continued to make films and records. Abandoned television. Probably have jumped into the video form about the time I did. That’s my guess. We would’ve stayed right there.

KS: Would you have veered into a country direction, as “Good Clean Fun” and ”Never Tell A Woman Yes” indicated for you?

MN: No, I don’t think so. Micky was always the voice and Davy was always the voice of the Monkees and they didn’t…Micky was never comfortable singing those country type songs. But you know Micky’s got a terrific pop voice.

KS: I’ve interviewed him, but he seems very insecure and underestimated himself about how good he is and what a great showman he is.

MN: Yeah. Yeah, he does. That’s one of the reasons he ended up sticking back there on drums. I was like, “Yeah, sure, I’ll play drums.” “Mick, get up, get out here.”

KS: In 1969 you went to Nashville and recorded material for an album side of a Monkees LP. What happened with that?

MN: Well, nothing. By that time he show was off the air and there wasn’t any place to put it. That band went on to become a band that had a little bit of success in their own right called Area Code 615 and they were a session band. One of those songs that we recorded was “Listen to the Band”. And then there were some other songs in there that I can’t remember what they were. “Saint Matthew”, I think, was a song that we did. There was some other stuff. It just got stashed in a vault somewhere.

KS: Why was the live “Circle Sky” replaced with a studio version? A lot of critics have said it was a fantastic live performance. In fact, Peter felt it was the best recorded example of the band.

MN: Well, that was done, and I think Peter’s right. I think, if you talk about the Monkees as a band, you have to look at “Circle Sky”, number one, and “Girl I Knew Somewhere”, number wo. I mean, that’s basically a garage band. And that’s the way garage bands play — loud and fast. (laughs)

KS: Were there any songs Davy or Micky sang that you were especially partial to, that you wish you’d sand? Like you did a demo of “Daddy’s Song” first.

MN: No, I was always happy with the way the vocals went down. Every time I’d sing a Monkees’ song it’d sound like a country tune…and at the time having it sound like a country tune wasn’t a good idea. Maybe it’s different now, I don’t know.

KS: It’s interesting how critics hated the Monkees but the public loved them, while your solo career as a country rock pioneer was a hit with the critics but not with the public.

MN: Well, you have to let history write that chapter, Ken. I don’t know what place I have in all of that and don’t really much think about it one way or the other.

KS: One last question, if you could choose three Nesmith songs for a time capsule that would be discovered in a thousand years from now…

MN: Well, I wrote one like that, you know. Because I thought about that. It’s called “Capsule” and it’s on the “Infinite Rider” LP…

[Transcribed from a PDF found on Monkees Live Almanac]

This isn't going to be like most of my tales, but here we go.

Customer walks in I say hello

customer: do you buy vinyls?

me:(the usual)it depends what they are and what the condition of the records is.

customer: the needle on my vinyl player broke

me: I can tell you where to get a needle in town or through the mail.

customer: I just want to sell them

me: ok, let me take a look, it will take a few minutes for me to figure it out and then I will make you an offer so you can hang out or go get a cup of coffee or something

customer: I'll just wait

me: ok, I'll let you know when I am done

Another customer walks in and I say hello

2nd customer: do you have any Black Sabbath vinyls?

me: I believe we have one used Sabbath record and one new, reissue Sabbath record but that's it. We have some CDs if you just want the music though

customer: no, I only want vinyls. I heard that they are much better than anything else

1st customer: yeah, vinyls are the best quality, I got a nice crosley last year for xmas.

me: that's not always true, it depends, there is no blanket statement that can cover any format other than 8 track tapes suck

1st customer: 8 track tapes? is that those?(points at cassettes)

me: no, it's way worse than that.

customer 2: but digital files are the worst

me: no, they aren't, Flac files are great, some mp3s are basically only giving you a part of the recording but some are better and cassette tapes from the early 90's- mid 90's can be fantastic. They no longer use that technology used for those tapes though so any new tapes are not even close to those of the 90's.

customer 2: yeah but vinyls are good

me: yes, they are good as long as they are made to high quality specifications. Cds can be great too.

I go back to figuring out what to make for an offer on all these almost brand new reissues of every pink floyd, bowie, etc that were probably bought at target.

I put on Ghostface Killah.

I overhear them talking, vinyls blah blah blah, vinyls, audiophile blah blah blah. I hate rap blah vinyls blah blah vinyls.

I call customer 1 over and make him an offer, he is very pleased and I pay him, he then leaves. I believe he will probably never buy another record.

customer 2 comes to the counter with a pretty big pile, over $100 worth of stuff. I ring him up, he pays.

customer 2: Thanks a lot for all the info. So I noticed that you call vinyls "records" or "albums", why is that?

me: it's just the way it has been since the 60's that I know of.

Customer: not vinyls?

me: well, vinyl is also the plural of vinyl most of the time. When I say vinyl, I am talking about what the record is made from. I think of it like a car is made of steel and calling a car steels instead of a car doesn't really work for me, as a matter of fact I cringe a little bit every time I hear it to be honest.

customer: huh, don't I feel stupid

me: oh man, I'm sorry, I didn't mean that you should feel bad about it or anything, it's slang now, so many people say it, it has gone from being totally incorrect to just being slang. Don't I feel stupid hahahahaha

customer: hahahahha, I like this place! This is way better than *******. You actually care about your customers!

me:thanks

customer: Happy Holidays

me: You too

My customer may have learned something but so did I, thanks mister Black Sabbath(as you will be known from now on)! I hope you come back.

Part 2: Meeting @taylorswift Chapter 1: Let’s Try In the fall of 2012, my daughter Page had smiled at me and mentioned in passing, “You know what Mom? Taylor always makes me feel better”...... That smile of hers had stopped me in my tracks. I hadn’t seen happiness in her, like that, since my cancer journey had begun. It had been a long year for all of us, and even though I was exhausted, I decided to do what I could to cheer up my family. Later that night, I sat next to Page on the couch and asked her about her comment. “Oh, you know, Mom.” she said, “Her music just cheers me up when I’m having a down day”. “I don’t know that much about her, do you?”, I asked. “Oh yes!”, she said excitedly. She got up and ran for her ipod. Returning a few minutes later she said, “See, she’s really close with her mom, too. Just like us, that’s what I like”. “Let me see what you’re looking at”, I said. She passed me her ipod where she had pulled up www.TaylorSwift.com. On the homepage was what looked like a letter from Taylor Swift to her fans. It mentioned that her favorite number was 13, that she was close with her mom, that she’d grown up on a Christmas Tree Farm in Pennsylvania...Interesting things like that. “Maybe we could get her cd from the library?”, I asked her. “That would be great!”, said Page smiling at me again. “Ah-ha”, I thought smiling to myself. I was so happy to do something that would make our house feel happy and normal again! I looked up the library website to place an order. It turned out that there was a lot of info about Taylor Swift at the library. “Wow!”, I thought, “She’s got a couple cd’s”. So I ordered them all. We anxiously waited for ‘Taylor’, ‘Fearless’, ‘Speak Now’, ‘Speak Now World Tour Live’ and ‘Sounds of the Season’ cd’s to be ready for pickup. While we waited, I got a test result back from one of my doctor visits. They’d found Melanoma cancer on my ankle. At the time of the doctor’s call, I didn’t know what Melanoma was. I thought it was just a not-a-big-deal, simple, skin cancer. I readied for my appointment. “We need to schedule immediate surgery”, was the first thing my Dermatologist said. Marc and I looked at each other. “It’s really that bad?” I asked. “Yes”, was her response. “Melanoma can translocate through your body by the lymph nodes. We need to remove it immediately as this type of cancer can spread quickly. She referred me to a plastic surgeon, and my surgery was scheduled for the next day. It was an outpatient procedure at a local hospital. I was given an IV, strapped to a table with my arms spread, and then given anesthesia. I could interact with the staff, and hear things, but I wasn’t very coherent in my replies. I also, luckily, couldn’t feel anything they were doing. Afterwards, I fully awoke in a darkened waiting area. I was given cookies and a coke, and watched for side effects. After a couple hours, I was given crutches and told that the doctor had successfully removed all the Melanoma cancer from my right ankle. I was relieved to hear that it had not spread. Soon after that, I was released. Recovery was slow, there were multiple doctor visits and stages of stitches removal, but it was a good feeling dealing with a cancer that could be cut out and removed. I asked if the Melanoma had been the cause of my weird symptoms. I was told, “no”. It took a month before I could walk without the crutches, but, luckily, while couch bound, Page and I had a new, happy hobby to entertain ourselves with: Taylor-Time :) Page’s Taylor Swift cd’s had arrived. She excitedly played them for me, one after the other, after the other, for days. We’d snuggle together, and watch the first snows of the season swirl around outside the windows, while we practiced singing all the words. She noticed certain differences in the writing of the words within the cd papers, and figured out they were Taylor’s secret messages to her fans. Hours were spent happily decoding them. After my naps, she’d proudly show me her results. I noticed that Page was starting to look like Page again. By now we were closing in on Christmas. I was still so exhausted and awful feeling from my original cancer and chemo, plus now I couldn’t walk well from my second cancer surgery. Days, other than our ‘Taylor-Time’, as we came to call it, were pretty bleak. I thought of looking up to see if Taylor might have a fan club Page could join. I’d remembered when I was younger you could sign up for things like that. I thought perhaps they’d send her a button for her jacket or a simple autograph, something we could surprise her with. I found an address online and sent off a letter. Each day, Marc would bring in the mail and I’d eagerly look up. Nope, nothing today. Oh well, I thought, maybe I didn’t have the right address, or it just takes awhile. We decided to get her a Taylor Swift wall poster for a Christmas surprise. Not knowing where to look for such a thing, I turned to my old reliable ebay. (I’m sorry Taylor, I was new at this time to buying stuff on the internet, plus my brain was all fuzzy...now of course we only shop on your taylorswift.com website :) I typed in ‘Taylor Swift’, and good gravy there were a lot of items! Scrolling through item after item I didn’t know what to get. Marc and I finally decided on a close up one of Taylor smiling. It was going to be perfect. Christmas arrived, and I still hadn’t heard back from the Fan Club. Luckily the poster was a huge hit! As Santa had given it to her, Page shrieked as she opened her stocking, and then held it up for us to see. Just as she proudly stood there with it unfolded for us to take a picture, Page’s dog decided to check it out for herself. Balancing on her hind legs, Suzie gave the poster a quick lick right across Taylor’s face!! Tears sprang from Page’s eyes, but I’m happy to say, the poster was saved. To this day it still proudly hangs, just a little bit dog slobbery, on her bedroom wall. January came and went, and Page and I continued with our ‘Taylor-Time’. We rented all the books and DVD’s on Tay we could find from the library. It really was, and is, a good bonding time we’ve shared. Plus, the more I learned, the happier I felt that Page was looking up to a good role model. It was amazing to find out all the similarities Page had with Taylor. They were both blonde, tall, liked to read, liked to write, loved horses and cats, couldn’t see without their glasses, liked to play Scrabble, eat gummies, eggs and cheesecake, bake, do kind things for others, and most importantly, be close with their families. We watched on the show ‘60 Minutes’ about when Taylor wasn’t much older than Page, how she and her mom passed out demo cd’s in Nashville, trying to get Taylor into her dream job of singing. We read about when Taylor was starting out and how she passed out homemade chocolate chip cookies to radio stations. We read about all the people Taylor helps through charity organizations and even privately visits with (please see my website to see a list of these items: http://www.lotsoflifeonalittlelot.com/thank-you-taylor-swift.html) . Page would say things like, “We must be related, don’t you think, Mom?”. She thought of Taylor like a best friend, close cousin or sister. Someone that she could always count on. Our days slowly crept past. My health was not improving, and with what strength I had, I split it between more doctor’s visits, reading about alternative therapies for cancer, and ‘Taylor-Time’ with Page. Each minute of every day, felt like it could be our last together. I couldn’t believe how our life had changed. I still hadn’t heard anything back from my first fan letter inquiry, so I tried sending another. One of those slowly creeping by days, all 3 of us, watched the DVD video for the Speak Now Tour. Marc and I had debated if Page was old enough to watch a concert, as we weren’t sure what all it would show. We decided to give it a try, so we all snuggled in with our popcorn, blankets and pets, and hit play. Page was mesmerized. She sang every song and started dancing around the room. When it ended, she said “Woo...That wore me out! Taylor must get pretty tired if she has to do that every night!” A few minutes later, she added, “Mom, can we send her something to help her, like she helps me?” I just looked at her. She was so caring and generous, and beautiful and kind. Smiling at her, I said, “Of course we can. I think that’s a great idea”. We called it ‘Page’s Taylor Swift Care Kit’. The next day Page and I started diligently trying to figure out what sort of item we should send to Taylor. Page thought we should send something ‘13’ related as that was Taylor’s favorite number. “Perfect”, I said, “Any other ideas?” “What if we send her 13 things that she likes and that would help her?” “Ok, what are you thinking”, I said. “I don’t know. Let’s write a list of ideas”, she answered. So we did. We leafed through books, magazines, thought of what we’d seen on DVD’s, and thought of what we’d like for someone to send us in the way of helpful items. We came up with our list. Next came shopping. We went early the next morning when I have my best energy. Here are the items we sent her: 1-canned pumpkin 2-cinnamon spice 3-pumpkin pie spice (because we’d read baking Pumpkin Bread is one of her favorite things to do) 4-super soft socks (to wear when she worked out) 5-pretty soft yarn (we read she likes to knit) 6-a book called ‘The Notebook’ (it’s one of my favorites, and because she loves a good love story) 7-Toy Story gummies (we’d read she liked those) 8-Cat Treats (for her beloved cat, Meredith) 9-Big Red gum (in honor of her upcoming RED tour) 10-Vitamin C (to help keep her strong and healthy) 11-Throat Lozenges (in case her throat got sore from singing) 12-A vanilla scented candle (to make her hotel rooms on tour smell comfy like home) Plus we bought a super cute sparkly heart bag to pack them all in. After that, home we went. While Page worked on packaging, plus making a homemade card and the 13th item (a special collage of pictures of Page for Taylor), I worked on finding another address to try to send it to. I should confess here that I’m a bit of a detective. Not a real one. I’ve just really always loved to solve mysteries. It probably stems from the fact that at about Page’s age I read all the Nancy Drew books, in order, from our local library. So thinking of this as just another mystery, I went to work trying to solve it. I found an address I thought would work. We boxed up the gift bag and decorated the outside of the box, too. We wanted whoever got it, to know right away that it was ‘Page’s Taylor Swift Care Kit’. Page at this point still didn’t know anything about how I’d been trying to reach Taylor. This ‘Care Kit’ was purely a from-Page’s-heart gift for her friend. Since Page didn’t know that I was trying to reach Taylor, after Page went to school I slipped in another letter I’d written, then mailed the package. I’d decided to move on from just trying for Page to be in a Fan Club. Now more than ever, I really wanted Taylor, herself, to know how much she meant to Page, and to thank her for how much she was helping my daughter cope with my illness. As the winter went on my illness constantly reminded all of us how short life really is. Marc and I wondered, “Was this all we were going to accomplish in life? Was this all we would remember?” We decided we’d like to try to take Page on a Spring Break trip of her choosing. Something fun. I’d do as much as I could, and we’d enjoy just being together. We decided to ask her that night what she’d like to do for a ‘Dream Come True’ vacation. We thought she’d say something like, “Let’s go to Disney”. But, she said, “Can I meet Taylor?” Looking over her head at my husband the thought, “Oh boy” crossed between us, but when I looked back down at her, what came out of my mouth, with a smile, were the words, “Let’s try!” The smile that crossed Page’s face is one I’ll never forget..... *Thank you for reading along with me 😊 This is an excerpt from my memoir 'Dream Accomplished: A Story of Cancer, A Mother's Love & Taylor Swift'. It is © & published. Paying forward Taylor's kindness, my family donates ALL book profits to help others battling illness. For more info, pls visit http://www.dreamaccomplished.com OR if you'd like a FREE ebook, pls send me a DM or email at [email protected] I'm happy to send you 1 :)

#13: MATT MITCHELL

As with the Dieterich/Rodriguez installment, I'd like to thank my subject this time around, the brilliant pianist Matt Mitchell, for his patience regarding the following post. The initial conversation here took place more than a year ago, in August of 2016, at my former apartment in Brooklyn's South Slope neighborhood. Matt and I had been corresponding about metal for a while, comparing notes on bands like Incantation and Revenge via Twitter. I was already a fan of his work, both as a leader and with Tim Berne, Darius Jones and various others, and as soon as I learned of his musical predilections along these lines, I knew I wanted to talk to him for HMB. I warned him in advance that it might be a bit before I could post the convo, and here we are, some 13 months later. (In between, we spent a fun night out at the Gramercy Theatre checking out a killer double bill of Morbid Angel and Suffocation.)

I'm thrilled to announce that this time around, I'm partnering with esteemed jazz scribe Nate Chinen and WBGO.org, which is hosting an abridged version of this interview. To read the "theatrical release" of this interview, please go here. Below you’ll find the jumbo-size director's cut, followed by an email Q&A I did with Matt earlier this month in which he discusses how his metal intake may have informed the pieces heard on his dazzling new Pi Recordings album, A Pouting Grimace (officially out 9/29/17). I've dug both of his prior albums as a leader so far, 2013's Fiction and 2015's Vista Accumulation, but to my ears, this latest one is not only vastly weirder and more distinctive but vastly more engrossing. It feels like a true arrival for him, and I expect it to make some serious waves. Without further ado, please enjoy Heavy Metal Be-Bop #13!

What was your introduction to metal? My entrée into metal, as I think it might have been for some jazz people, was actually via John Zorn and Naked City. I was in high school when Naked City was happening. I never saw them, but I listened to them incessantly, especially the Torture Garden tape. My senior year of high school was the Torture Garden tape and the first Mr. Bungle album, at the same time as a lot of Frank Zappa stuff that I was getting into. That's basically how I even heard of bands like Carcass and Napalm Death and whatnot. And then a friend of mine named Matt Johnson — this was back when you made tapes for people — he made me four full tapes, like 90-minute tapes; basically he made a metal comp for me. He titled it "Death Is My Life." He was a huge, huge metal fan. He was, like, the metal guy. He was a year ahead of me and it was like the last month of high school for me, and that's where I first heard bands like Death, Napalm Death, Bolt Thrower — he loved Bolt Thrower a lot. He was super tapped in. This was when, like, Nocturnus was a thing. The other day I just kind of came across that name, and I was like, "Oh, I remember listening to them back in the day."

He loved Morbid Angel too, of course, and Entombed. Obituary was an early one as well. And that sort of led me to gradually start buying my own shit. I tended to gravitate towards different stuff than he liked. He didn't like the fast shit as much. Bolt Thrower was one he really liked a lot; that was his thing, a little groovier. I gravitated toward the fuckin' insane shit. I was drawn to Napalm Death, so I got Scum and From Enslavement to Obliteration, and basically I was into the grind kind of thing at the time. I wasn't super aware of all the distinctions. But I was just interested in it from a kind of complexity sort of view, and the heaviness combined with that. It's not like I sat around longing for it, but then I realized, "Oh, this is crazy shit. Everyone's kind of playing everything at the same time. Kind of chromatic. The rhythms are a little weird." And that was around the time that [Napalm Death's] Fear, Emptiness, Despair was new, so I got that and was like, "OK, now I'm starting to really [get into this]." And since then it's been like, every couple years I'd get back in and catch up on what I missed, get a bunch of stuff. So that's sort of what's happened this year: I just keep going with it, and I keep getting new stuff.

Where are you finding new metal these days? Online. Bandcamp. All the sort of big labels have their own Bandcamps, and a lot of the bands will just have their own Bandcamp if they're not on a quote-unquote bigger label. I'm not really sure what the [sales] numbers are in terms of metal; I'm sure they way outstrip jazz. So I'll find the Bandcamp for a band, listen to it, and if I dig it, I'll try to track it down on CD. Not super hard — usually I'll go as far as Amazon. But I actually got a few CDs today in the mail from Nuclear War Now. I think every single one of those bands, when I was led to that page a few weeks ago, I'd never heard of any of them. I'd heard of a couple of them, like Black Witchery, but I didn't really know them that well. I got to them via getting turned onto Grave Upheaval, which unfortunately does not have a CD available. They just do vinyl and download, so I bought the download. So the CDs I got were two CDs by Irkallian Oracle, which I really dug because I saw them as sort of related to the "cavern-core" from Australia, like Portal and Impetuous Ritual. Sonically they're similar to that but kind of a little bit more defined, at least than Impetuous — sonically a little sharper. Although I do like a little bit of the sonic obscurity of Impetuous. So them and then there's an American band called Prosanctus Inferi — they're a little bit more ... I don't know; I have in some ways zero metal cred by the way I describe these things, but they strike me more as a grindcore / brutal death kind of take. Really kind of together but the drumming is sort of bizarre. It's kind of got a rawness to the playing, but sonically it's really clear. That really appealed to me.

Have you always been into the extreme stuff, or did you go back and check out things like Metallica? I did. I never bought a Metallica album, but I've listened to them. They were kind of more around. A lot of my friends knew about them. I definitely liked them. I probably would appreciate them the most now, but I tended to just go for the more extreme stuff. Even though they were obviously heavy and good at one point, by the time I was into it, it wasn't as... I just wanted stuff that scared me a little. I still want that.

I was sort of the same way — it was a pretty straightforward path for me from liking Poison in fifth grade to liking Morbid Angel in 10th grade. And then with all the punk stuff in between. Sure, I listened to that too. The girl I was with for a while was into Sonic Youth big time. Obviously they're a little different, but there was a lot of punk in there too. Then I got Gorguts' Obscura right when it came out, and that was, as most metal people know, super significant. I think I got into Cryptopsy around then too. (I've also barely heard half these names pronounced by people, so I don't even know if I'm saying them right.) So that was awesome. And then later Pig Destroyer and Agoraphobic Nosebleed. I actually got an Agoraphobic Nosebleed album before Pig Destroyer; I think Relapse might have put that one out first: Honky Reduction came out before 38 Counts of Battery or Prowler in the Yard. But that still is some of my favorite shit, for sure. Cephalic Carnage I got into. I still like them. I guess they're still together but their last album was four or five years ago, but I still think they're pretty happening. Around that same time I got my first Deeds of Flesh album, Path of the Weakening. And then I got She Lay Gutted by Disgorge. So that was sort of the "brutal death" entry for me, whatever that means; or I guess it means a specific thing to a lot of people.

I like Nasum, and early on I was into Brutal Truth. And their reunion albums are happening. They're pretty strong throughout their whole discography. The album for me by that band that really hit home was Sounds of the Animal Kingdom. You could almost say that's like their Sgt. Pepper, or whatever. Super expansive. Man, it's so awesome. And the EP that came before it, Kill Trend Suicide. 

So even up till now, it's sort of parallel tracks of more grind kind of shit and then the brutal death and sometimes a little bit in the middle.

Was black metal a thing? I dipped my toe into that a little bit. I found it hard to find bands I liked as much in that style. That seemed to be an area that was slightly more concerned with image than musical content. That's putting it really simply. I did find some that I like. I like Darkthrone. I like Mayhem — I love that album De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas; it's just fucking awesome. And some of their later stuff is super killing too. Like Ordo Ad Chao is out there. Ches Smith was telling me that they produced the album themselves, so Mayhem, at least with that lineup as it was at the time of that record, that's their unfiltered-by-a-producer vision. Left to their own devices, they made their most bizarre album.

I was never obsessed with [black metal] like I was those other types.

Part of what's interesting to me these days is, with bands like Portal and some of those Australian and New Zealand type bands is they sort of bring what I like about the black metal into it, the atmosphere. But of course a lot of that is because it's just sort of descended from Incantation. Really, Incantation's clearly, to me, one of the granddaddies of that whole sound.

Even the first Incantation album, Onward to Golgotha and [De Mysteriis] are not that hugely different in terms of vibe. That sort of just occurred to me right now. It's interesting: It's like they sort of started in the same relative part of town and just went wherever.

Do you know Jute Gyte? I guess it's technically black metal. It's one guy who lives in St. Louis; he's super-prolific, and he puts out two or three albums a year. He plays a microtonal guitar, a 24-note-per-octave guitar, and plays crazy harmonies too, inside that. It's already super-chromatic. It's not just your typical minor-triad kind of black metal. Harmonically it's super, super sophisticated. Sonically, it's pretty bizarre too. Even the fact that it's a drum machine, he uses that sort of like a creative advantage. And every third album is, like, this weird electronica that has almost nothing to do with metal. He has so many records, but it's all on Bandcamp. He's a guy that is just totally standing alone in a weird way. It's really compositionally substantive. Even somebody that loves contemporary classical music, like I do — I mean, this guy clearly studies that type of shit. Even now he's getting into polyrhythms, like having whole sections where it's two different tempos at the same time and shit like that. 'Cause he puts notes on each one of his Bandcamp album pages. He sort of nerds out a little bit, like, "This tune I used this." So it's like 12-tone and rhythmic canons and shit. But it's also just super evil-sounding fucking black metal too. 

And Craig Taborn turned me on to Virus. He loves Virus and he got me into them.

Yeah, that music is really odd. I don't even know what to call that. Yeah, I guess you can see how it might have been related to metal at one point, but it's just weird, like, art rock. But the guitar parts are super substantive. There's a lot going on there, harmonically; the tones are really cool; the production is super well-considered. My mode a lot of times is just to put on my metal, either on my iPod or on my phone, in one playlist, and I just shuffle it just so I don't have to choose. But then a Virus song will come up and I'm like, "I'm still in brutal mode and this is awesome but..." I tend to skip the Virus tunes and then just listen to them separately, by themselves. It's like if Bowie made metal, or something like that.

For me, my trajectory is so idiosyncratic. There's huge tracts of stuff I just don't know that well. It's just vast. [Laughs] It's too much to keep up with, especially because, also, I make a living as a jazz pianist, so there's all this other shit too. If you actually want to create music, like play music and write it, you have to, at some point, just do it. You have to stop, not collect everything. You have to give up! On some level.

How did listening to so much metal affect your development as a jazz musician? I was talking to Kim Cass, the bass player, 'cause he comes over to shed and rehearse a lot. I remember him saying to me — I'm sure he won't mind me saying that he said this, but he was like, "Man, I just don't know how to access this stuff." And he's a bass player, too; he can play fuckin' electric bass. But he's just a total complete upright-bass virtuoso, plays any conceivable style of jazz you can imagine super, super well, but has been getting into metal also. I'm not sure if he's been listening to it quite as long as me, but he might have been. But we were talking like this, like how do we... It's not even something I know that I've figured out, how to deal with it. I think looking back on some of the music I've made, there's maybe a connection with some of the more, the type of jazz that for lack of a better term, deals with composition in a certain way and has sort of loping bass figures that might have, not heaviness, but sort of like a groove concept, laying into a rhythmic grid in a certain way.

I guess I have some tunes where, it's not like I'm setting out to write a metal tune; I definitely don't do that, like where I'm going to play metal tunes on the piano or anything like that, but rather sometimes, some lines, especially in the lower area of the guitar, or a downtuned guitar register might sort of... You could give it to a couple guitarists and some loud drums, and it might work that way.  But there's something about metal, especially death metal and that kind of stuff — not to be all intellectual about it, but there's some kind of rigor to how the riff structures go, how they develop, or the way one comes after another, or in terms of pitch, the way stuff happens. And that combined with a sort of directness of purpose, or something, I think [has been influential]. I think the connections are sort of more ethereal for me, in a way. Also, like, in terms of intensity. I love music that's more mellow too. I'm a huge Morton Feldman fan, which is like the opposite complete extreme, although interestingly, after listening to metal for four hours the other night, it was late, and I just needed to cleanse my palate, so I put on the second string quartet of Feldman and it almost kind of totally just fit because it was still these little figures that repeated in weird ways; it was just being played by a string quartet. [Laughs] It was almost like inverted metal, in a weird way.

[Metal is] music that deals with basic parameters of music in a sort of elemental way: pitch, rhythm, form. And a lot of the other music I like sort of does that in a clear way too, whether it's freely improvised... Like, Evan Parker, to me, does that. One reason I think Evan Parker, especially his solo soprano improvising, is so compelling is because it's so well considered. He's dealing with music in a sort of abstract zone. [That term] gets into territory that I don't love because then people talk about music being abstract versus emotional, which I sort of think — personally for me — is a bullshit dichotomy. But abstract in the sense of, just dealing with pitches and rhythms and sound. And to me, what I like about metal is, it deals with that in a really specific way, and that sort of affects how I like to improvise. It's just a directness, a conciseness, just, like, boom, we're just gonna hit it right now. It doesn't necessarily have to be concise in the sense of, like, we're only gonna play for 90 seconds, but it kind of gets to the point. You don't get the sense that it's noodly or searching. Even it's long improvisation, there's a path, sort of like an inexorability about it.

But yeah, it's that sort of thing, just sort of like a clarity. Even when it's sonically not clear, like a Defeated Sanity record — some of those, especially Psalms of the Moribund, I have to really stretch to hear what the actual pitch content of some of those things are. But that's part of what's appealing to me. But even if you can't tell the exact pitch content, you can tell the relative... you can tell that there's, like, clumps that happen next to each other, in time and/or space. And also with a lot of those bands, just the way they each kind of set up their own certain problems and solve them kind of in the same way each album but a little better each time. You get into a different band and it's just like, how does that band deal with the problem? 

You check out Ulcerate: OK, they started off more a little Immolation-y, maybe... You follow it all the way through and it's like, oh, they're really refining things in a certain way and they sort of expand within that. It's like a lot of composers — after a while, you're like, OK, over time, you can really tell this is the same composer, like Feldman, Xenakis. Stravinsky maybe was a little bit of a different case because he had these periods that were defined by super changing it up, but a lot of times, a composer sort of refines their shit, but then within that, you have a lot of variety just depending on whether or not you zoom in or out. And what I think is interesting is that metal bands do that too and a lot of times they achieve it with the compositional efforts being sort of... I don't know what the breakdown is for a lot of these bands, but a lot of times, the compositional efforts are sort of group-based, which is kind of interesting.

This hits on one of the things I love about metal, which is these large discographies and just that idea of micro-refinement. You mentioned Obituary before, and their albums get to a level of development that basically wouldn't even be apparent to most people because they basically don't ever change.  I saw them play in Rochester in, like, 1997 or '98.

Nice! That's an underrated period for them. Back From the Dead.

Back From the Dead! That's a great album. I had a Back From the Dead T-shirt. Isn't that the album that has the rap track at the end?

It is! And there's a really good live album to come out of that which is just called Dead. [Both laugh]

When you get these bands that have 10 to 15 albums, that's when it really gets interesting: There's something about how metal bands just kind of dig in, because there's never really a hope of transcending the underground; that's not even a goal. That brings up an interesting thing too. This is kind of speculative; I'm just sort of inferring it based on reading occasional interviews with people in these bands. But it seems like there's a not too crazy analog with the life of a jazz musician. Because a lot of these bands don't quite make a living doing what they do, so they're not beholden to anyone; they just do what the fuck they want. So they just stick to their guns and they just do it out of pure... It has that special kind of dedication that you do when you're desperately trying to fit in music with a day job. I kind of know what this is like, from having had a day job, where you're just trying to stuff it in. It lends a certain urgency to it. And if you're a group of four or five people with that sort of common purpose, you're all, like, this band is your fuckin' life. 

You mentioned Immolation, and for them, I know that's the case. I think one of the guys drives a truck and one of them does sound for events. That's crazy.

Yeah, it's one of those things where they're just like regular dudes here but then they go over to Europe and headline big festivals. Which, again, there's a long jazz tradition of that, too. But it's much different: It's rarer in metal to have [a musician who's in multiple bands]. Like, I can say I'm a member of eight to 12 bands. Some of them work more than others but none of them I can make a complete living off of. And that's kind of why I am a member of these bands too. I think except for your kind of rogue guitar hero type, or your drummers who tend to play and be the session drummer types, they can make a living doing it, it's a little rare. You're just in one of these bands.

Yeah, by and large, rock is about stable lineups, and jazz is a mix-and-match thing. In jazz, somebody's greatest record could be a record that's not their own album. Like, is the best place to hear Tony Williams on a Tony Williams album?  You could make a case that the best Wayne Shorter ever is Live at the Plugged Nickel. I'm not saying I would definitely say that but I've heard some people say that.

I like Miles Smiles as a Wayne Shorter record as much as I like Speak No Evil, or something. I got into those records when I was definitely no older than 14. I just found my way to jazz around when I was 12 or 13. So I started getting these albums on tape, 'cause we're talking 1987, '88. Back then, the attraction for me was Herbie Hancock, period. I mean, I loved all of it, but it was just like, "I want to hear Herbie." I would read reviews, I would read books about jazz, and I just somehow found my way to this or that record, and I was like, oh, Herbie Hancock, yeah, I love him. And oh, he was on Nefertiti, so I'd go to that, and then, after a while — it didn't really take that long — I still went to it for the Herbie but obviously then it was, like, the way Tony Williams played. People don't talk as much as I think they should about Miles' actual playing on those records. Especially Live at the Plugged Nickel, I think he gets short shrift, even though he was definitely in pain a lot when that date happened. But I love how he actually plays the trumpet; the improvising he does on the trumpet on the Plugged Nickel sessions is completely bizarre and awesome to me. That was a little bit more of a later... like, oh, man, I've been sleeping on this even though I've been listening to it constantly. Which is something that's pretty common with music — you just focus on some shit that appeals to you at the time. 

Yeah, I think in a lot of ways, good jazz records are inexhaustible. You can just focus on someone else, throughout the whole piece. Being a fan of jazz who's not a schooled jazz musician, that's what jazz is to me: it's combinations of different voices; just learning what a musician sounds like, and then what does that person sound like with all these other players. It's definitely an appeal for the quote-unquote schooled jazz musician too. For a musician who's spent his life learning how to play it, that's sort of inevitable because assuming you still do it after 30 years, assuming you're still bothering to try, it's because it appeals to you on some level. But I do like to sit back and just... 

I transcribed a lot of solos for five to seven years, or so — like age 15 to 20, 21. And then I kind of just stopped. I didn't stop listening to jazz; I just stopped writing down the solos. Because at a certain point, you have an idea how to connect notes together, and then it's just getting your technique and then just figuring out your way of connecting the notes. But my listening then just kind of entailed zooming out a bit, and sort of just listening in this way, like a little bit more of a grander scale. Kind of like a more aerial view, perhaps, like contour of a solo, or character or even more abstract concepts than notes. Similar things like that. Almost to the point where it's like, I'm trying to avoid being so lost in the thicket of the nuts and bolts of it. Even though that absolutely appeals to me. I just do that when I compose. That's when I allow myself to do that. I write something super, super specific, it might be really hard to play, and then I learn how to play it, and then I just decide how to be free with it. Just kind of kick it around a little bit.

Also, the notion of hearing stuff, it being inexhaustible, I've been experiencing that a lot lately because I've been having these listening sessions with Dan Weiss. He got some good speakers and a nice record player, so he's been getting back into vinyl, so we've been just listening to stuff we've known separately forever, but now that he has this nice system, we're checking it out. So he'll text me, like, "You have to come hear Nefertiti on the system." If there's an album I can say I know like the back of my hand, that's one of them. And then hearing it, it's just like, oh, my God. Hearing Ron Carter on a good vinyl pressing, for instance. The other day we had a hang with him and [Jon] Irabagon and Ben Gerstein and Todd Neufeld and me and Dan, and we listened to [John Coltrane's] Impressions and [Sonny Rollins'] East Broadway Rundown. Albums that everyone knows, but also several people listening to an album that they separately are way into but haven't listened to together, that's a whole thing. it becomes like a little mini hive mind of the room, in terms of the vibe of what you're listening to.

Yeah, it's an underrated and underutilized thing, to listen with other people. My listening is often so private. So much of this extreme metal stuff, unless you're in a very specific environment, you're not exactly going to blast that over speakers.  Yeah, and I find myself reluctant to bring it up too. Obviously I'm in no way embarrassed about liking it. It's just you have to then go through a whole thing about explaining... Like, "Oh, you like metal?" And then you're like, "This band, this band, this band" — just total blank stare.

Yeah, that's the thing, like, "Are you into metal?" Well, I like certain artists, but there's also a lot of it that I don't like at all… Sure [laughs]. I was thinking about that on the way over, how taste in metal is so [subjective], because of the total vastness of metal. That sounded so ridiculous: [Mock-pompously] Because of the total vastness of metal. But it is. Because there's so much of it, the tastes from individual to individual can vary so much. You could take 50 bands and make connections between any grouping of 10 of them and have them make sense, and one grouping can appeal to one person and totally not to another. 

Right, and also, in terms of my own listening, I like bands that have opposite qualities: a band like Necrophagist where it's incredibly complicated and air-tight; I also like a band like Revenge. Extremely filthy-sounding, kind of the border of black metal and death metal. Do you know Bestial Warlust, or Sadistik Exekution? They have that album called Fukk, and then there's an album called Fukk II. I have both those records, of course. [Laughs]

One thing that what you just said made think of is, some music hits the spot because it matches something that I feel like I want to hear but maybe I don't know in what form it actually exists. There's some jazz that I have encountered that did that for me. Nefertiti somehow was like that; [Cecil Taylor's] Conquistador and Unit Structures were like that. A lot of those Blue Notes were like that. [Eric Dolphy's] Out to Lunch was like that. When I heard it, it was instantly like, oh... That could be just because the music is so well conceived, it's convinced you that you've been waiting to hear this. That's a pretty ethereal thing. But some metal, like, say, by the time I heard Meshuggah, it was like, oh, OK, this totally makes sense, someone dealing with rhythm in this way, playing heavy music that's still fundamentally, like, basically rock music, super-heavy rock music. I remember hearing that and I was like, wow, it took this long for some guys to do this. I don't know why I thought that, but that's what I thought at the time when I first heard Destroy, Erase, Improve. It's like, oh, this totally makes sense; it's doing the shit I used to do on my sequencer in ninth grade where I'd just have one thing be in one time signature, turn it off, play the next thing in another time signature, just let it play and hear how it sounded. Not quite the same thing but pretty similar. They were just writing down compositions that the whole band was playing. It was like, oh, bands can play this this shit now too.

Yeah, I really liked what you said about how often metal bands will come up with a certain problem and just try to solve it again and again; Meshuggah are like that. Yeah, well, I heard that new track that they put out ["Born in Dissonance," from 2016's The Violent Sleep of Reason], and I was like, yep, there we go.

I kind of took them for granted for a while. Me too. I take them for granted because Dan [Weiss] is one of my best friends, and he is probably the biggest Meshuggah freak I know. I totally think they're great also, but his fandom just makes me look like a poseur with regard to them. So they're never quite as far from my mind because whenever [Dan and I] talk about metal, it's one of his favorites. It's funny 'cause that new track the other day, I listened to it and I was like, yep, it sounds like them, but a little bit of a new twist. I could smell the [Allan] Holdsworth-y solo coming a mile away, but that's cool; that's one reason you go to them.

Yeah, it's a strange thing. You can have this taste for quote-unquote weird music, but with a band like that you don't want them to not sound like Meshuggah. Which begs the question of, how much challenge are we actually looking for? Sure. I don't need them to be Defeated Sanity or Cenotaph. I have those bands for that. And then you go back to Meshuggah and you're like, oh, on a certain level, they don't quote-unquote play fast. They do play fast, but in the sense of the bass drum. This is a super obvious observation but it's mostly just about being groovy for them. Basically they do all the rhythmic shit that the other bands do, but there's always a snare on three.

It's beautiful how sort of mechanized but human their music is. Yeah, I mean, you can't fuck with them. It's one thing to not like it aesthetically...

The singer turned me off for a while. The delivery is just so flat. But I guess it's supposed to be.  This actually came up recently too. Basically what Kim Cass and Kate [Gentile] and I will do when we shed or rehearse, we'll play for a while and then we take a break and lately we've just been putting on metal when we have a drink, or whatever. I'm sure Kate won't mind me saying that we were talking about Meshuggah and she didn't really get the vocalist either and Kim was like, yeah, but you wouldn't really expect to hear one of those overtone-y growls like Lenzig from Cephalic Carnage would do — that wouldn't really quite fit. Now that I say that, it would be interesting to hear.

What's weird is lately it took me aback how clear they are, how much I can understand the words.

Yeah, and also it's that kind of metal singing where there's no sense that there's anything emotionally on the line. He's just kind of making sounds with his throat. As opposed to a lot of metal, where it seems like the vocalist is dredging up some element of their soul through performance. I know what you mean. [Meshuggah's vocals are] more like an instrument. [Gorguts'] Luc Lemay would be someone where, there's a lot of soul. There is. And the vocals are different from record to record too. That could be ... I don't know how old he is. He's got to be close to 50 or over 50. Sorry to age you, Luc!

Man, Obscura came on the other day. I've had that album for almost 20 years, since it came out, and it struck me how totally fucked that album is. It's so bizarre. [Laughs] It's really out there, man. And I basically live off of weird music, and that's, like, still... even in metal, there's nothing that quite goes that far.

/////

Follow-up email Q&A: September 2017

Can you talk about how this latest wave of metal listening that you were in the midst of when we spoke in 2016 might have informed the writing or playing we hear on A Pouting Grimace? With this project I definitely didn’t set out to write “metal-type tunes,” though in retrospect there are elements that come to mind with three of the pieces, “plate shapes," “brim," and “heft." “Heft” is probably the most overt nod to my love of some doom metal and slower type things. The other two pieces I’d say are relevant in the sense that they deal with repetition of material in a sort of riff-like fashion. Obviously that’s far from the sole province of metal, but I’d bet that the way it manifested in these pieces is somewhat related to the various sorts of heavy music obsessions I’d be inundating myself with around the time I wrote the music.

These albums/bands are not conscious influences but they’ve been some of my “new” discoveries over the past year or so:

1) Revenge, any of the records. J. Read’s drumming has to be heard to be believed, and I love the extremely raw energy.

2) Martire, Brutal Legions of the Apocalypse. An Australian band, chaotic energy, buzzsaw guitar 

3) Encoffination, III: Hear Me, O Death. Guitar/drums duo, slow and doomy, like Incantation on extreme depressants.

4) Impetuous Ritual, Blight Upon Martyred Sentience. One of my favorite bands, dark and evil sounding.

5) Grave Upheaval, self-titled. Australia again, shares personnel with Impetuous and Portal. The “cavern-core” approach pushed to an extreme.

6) Pissgrave, Suicide Euphoria. Philadelphia! Crushing. 

You don't strike me as the kind of musician who's interested in overt genre hybrids, or genres at all, as far as your own work goes. There are obviously elements of jazz, contemporary composition, Indian classical, etc., on the new album, for example, but it doesn't seem like any kind facile "fusion" is the point. That said, could you ever see yourself incorporating a metal influence into your work a more straightforward way? I’ve thought about it. You’re definitely right about not caring about genre hybrids per se. What interests me are dealing with the elements of music on an abstract, elemental level: notes, rhythms, etc. More like cross-breeding rather than Mr. Potato Head–style, slapping jazz ears and glasses on the metal body, so to speak. 

I’d likely approach such a project more as a “heavy music” concept, not beholden to this or that subgenre of heavy music, nor beholden to specific types of improvising. But I definitely fantasize about a very loud project somewhat in that vein.

I asked Craig Taborn this question, and I'm curious what your response would be: Leaving composition aside for a sec, do you ever find yourself thinking about or drawing upon metal when you're improvising at the piano? If so, how might that manifest? It really depends on sonic situation. Loud is one thing, fast is another, loud and fast is very tough unless the piano is really amplified, assuming there are drums present too. But in general for me the inspiration is only in the general attitude, or maybe a series of shapes, and it always is going to be refracted through my own tendencies, whether it’s pitch preferences, the rhythmic environment, etc.

Hola! Can I ask forma an angst with Namjoon? W/ a sad ending hehe thanks 💕💕

Title: I Guess We Changed (Namjoon x Reader)

READ THE PROLOGUE HERE

Genre: Fluff + Angst

Summary: You and Namjoon belong to a close-knit trio of underground musicians. Everything changes when Namjoon lands a major record deal.

Word count: 1.5k words

Namjoon let his head fall onto your shoulder, his eyelids drooping with exhaustion. You peered at the clock hanging on the wall of your “studio”–it was really just a shabby apartment you shared with two other musicians. It was just past three in the morning.

“Yoongi, our collab can wait a few more hours,” you groaned, sinking further into the tattered couch. “Let us sleep.”

“I have an early shift. Need to do this now,” Yoongi grunted, still smashing away at his keyboard. “Plus, inspiration is a fickle mistress.”

“Dude, our stage isn’t for another two weeks,” Namjoon argued tiredly. “Our set’s pretty much complete, anyway.”

“If you guys are tired, just go to bed,” Yoongi sighed, finally turning to look at you. “I’ll finish as much as I can now and we can work on it tomorrow.”

You and Namjoon leapt up at Yoongi’s dismissal, eager to go to bed. Namjoon practically sprinted out of the living room, disappearing into your bedroom with a loud crash. The sound of Namjoon’s muffled cursing carried throughout the flat.

Before you turned to follow Namjoon, you paused and looked at Yoongi. His eyes were ringed with purple and he had lost weight. Frowning, you walked up to him and placed a hand on his shoulder.

“Get some rest, okay?” you asked quietly, squeezing him gently. “You need to take care of yourself.”

“I will, Y/N,” Yoongi said with a small smile. “Go fucking spoon your boyfriend now, or whatever it is you two do.”

“We’re not dating!” you called over your shoulder as you walked away. That was the truth–sure, you were intimate, but Namjoon didn’t like to label things. And, well, you liked Namjoon.

In your room, Namjoon was already half asleep, nestled underneath a mountain of blankets. He roused at your entrance, his eyes opening slightly. You slipped into the bed with him, Namjoon’s arms wrapping around your waist instinctively.

“Night,” you whispered, leaning into Namjoon’s larger form. He radiated warmth, lulling you to sleep easily.

“Goodnight,” he replied, his voice gravelly, and kissed the back of your neck. His arms tightened around your body as you both slipped into a deep slumber.

The next morning, you slowly slipped from the covers of sleep. You were met by the sight of rays of golden sunlight streaming in through the open window, casting the room in a warm glow. Nearby, you could feel the constant heat of Namjoon’s body, although he was no longer laying beside you.

“Namjoon?” you called groggily, pushing yourself upright.

He was sitting at the foot of the bed, hunched over looking at his laptop. Namjoon’s eyes were wide, and his shoulders appeared to be shaking.

“Are you okay?” you whispered, crawling towards him. You hugged him from behind, resting your chin on his shoulder. “What’s up?”

“I got the record deal,” Namjoon said, his voice coloured with disbelief. “T-they emailed me this morning. They want me to go to Gangnam to discuss contract terms.”

“Holy shit,” you gasped. “Oh my god, Namjoon! That’s amazing!”

Namjoon turned to you, a huge smile finally illuminating his face. His cheeks dimpled endearingly. “I did it, Y/N,” he laughed. “I’m gonna make it.”

You laughed with Namjoon, wrapping your arms around his neck. He pushed you down so he was laying on top of you. With some difficulty, he kissed you, smiling too much for it to last long. Nuzzling into the crook of your neck, Namjoon sighed in contentment.

Tugging at the bottom of Namjoon’s shirt, you bent your head down to whisper into his ear. “I think this calls for celebration, no?”

Much later that morning, you found yourself curled against Namjoon’s chest. The heat between your bare bodies was both comforting and overwhelming. He traced patterns against your back, his fingers travelling across the ridges of your spine. You practically melted into his touch.

“I’m so proud of you, Joonie,” you mumbled into his skin. “The world’s finally ready for you.”

“You’re going to be right there with me,” he replied with conviction. “If I can make it, so can you.”

“Wouldn’t that be nice,” you giggled. A darker train of thought passed over you. You bit your lip nervously. “But if that doesn’t happen, don’t forget about me, okay?”

“Don’t talk like that,” Namjoon scolded gently. Then, he pressed a kiss against the top of your head. “But how could I ever forget about you?”

“About us, I mean,” you said, blushing slightly. “What’s going to happen with us?”

“We’re going to be just fine,” Namjoon replied. “Our situation might change, but that doesn’t mean we have to as well.”

Two weeks later, Namjoon was in Gangnam and you and Yoongi were still in the sketchier parts of Seoul. You had to rearrange your entire set, awkwardly trying to fill in the gaps Namjoon’s absence had left.

When you and Yoongi performed, you made a good duo. The audience responded enthusiastically to the harmony of Yoongi’s raspy, carnal rap and your sweet melodies. But you both felt wrong–something was missing. To date, it had been your worst performance.

That night, you and Yoongi took the bus home. How glamorous, you thought bitterly, replaying the video’s Namjoon had sent you of his new dorm. It was small, but still much nicer than the tiny, rundown apartment you used to share with him. Since Namjoon was no longer contributing rent money, you and Yoongi took on extra shifts at your part-time jobs.

But difficulties aside, you simply missed him. Your blankets still carried his rich scent, his belongings were still scattered throughout your room. His sweaters hung from chairs and his shoes still sat in the doorway. Sometimes, it seemed like he never really left.

Your cell phone vibrated. It was a text from Namjoon.

RECEIVED 4:18 AM

How’d the show go, babe?

SENT 4:19 AM

it was ok. it’s weird performing without u

RECEIVED 4:21 AM

Don’t get used to it! We’re gonna make it big as a trio

SENT 4:21 AM

of course joonie~ go get some sleep now ok?

RECEIVED 4:22 AM

I will. Talk to you tomorrow

You looked up from your phone, watching familiar scenery roll past the windows of the bus. Beside you, Yoongi had fallen asleep, his head being jostled with every bump in the road. When the bus finally reached your stop, you shook Yoongi gently. The two of you walked the rest of the way home in companionable silence.

Two months later, you and Yoongi were stuck in the same position–the one you had been in for years. You and Yoongi released more and more recordings online, which brought little to no recognition and even less income.

Still, you mailed out CD’s and emailed files relentlessly. It felt like you sent hundreds out a day. Sometimes you’d receive a response, only to be invited to auditions with kids who were still in elementary school. You’d scoff at that.

“We should just make our own fucking label,” Yoongi would say sometimes, bitterness seeping into his tone.

At this time, Namjoon hadn’t been in as frequent contact as before. He texted less and hardly ever called. But he was training hard, and he sounded exhausted whenever you did talk to him.

By now, the sheets had lost their scent. You and Yoongi quietly packed away the remainder of Namjoon’s belongings–the one’s he didn’t deem important enough to bring with him, but were the world to you. They sat in a box, pushed into a dark corner of the apartment.

Slowly, Namjoon began to fade out of your life. The first time you walked into your flat, not expecting to see Namjoon spread across the sofa or on the floor, you realized that he was truly gone.

Two years later, you and Yoongi were working as songwriters. You sold your demos to some substantial companies, making your revenue off royalties. It was enough to make a living, and you could quit your day jobs.

Also, Namjoon had finally debuted.

You found out when one of the accounts you followed on Twitter shared a news article about him. Since Namjoon had stopped talking to you, any information you received was secondhand.

His music was nothing like you were expecting. It sometimes sounded manufactured, and his lyrics were no longer dark, cynical, or meaningful. He called himself Rap Monster, but his music was still tailored for the masses. It sounded like hip hop, but it didn’t feel like it.

Namjoon got popular pretty quickly. Soon, you could hear his music on the radio and he appeared on TV. Every time Yoongi heard him, he would change stations.

“Sellout,” Yoongi would spit.

But when you were alone, you would listen to Namjoon’s music. The familiar deep drone of his voice and the rapid, piercing intonation of his rap–it was a quiet comfort and a painful reminder. You missed the rapper who would perform passionately beside you. You missed the boy who would kiss you goodnight and good morning. Most importantly, you missed Namjoon, who would make you laugh, think, love, and cry.

The brightest boy in your life had left you with nothing but unwanted belongings and unanswered “what ifs?”

- Girl in Luv

Writing angst physically hurts me. My heart…it’s dead. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed! Our requests are open, so send us anything or reference our prompts page if you’d like. Thanks for the support! 

Tell me a story?

ive been trying to think of one for ages and i suck, so here are some things that happen when you work at a library:

one time someone came up to me and gave me a tomato? idk? also recently we found several opened cans of pineapple? they were full and just scattered around the children’s section?

jenny was helping someone and police appeared, tackled him to the ground, arrested him, and left, without a word

a little tiny boy asked me for chapter books about dinosaurs and when i gave him a stack, he literally fell to his knees and wailed “yeeeeeesss!!!!!”

the saddest part of working at a library is getting a tiny peak into someone’s life and mind. it breaks my heart when someone returns a stack of books about cancer or bpd. the worst was when there were about 7 books about “dealing with grief as a young widow”

there;s a pudgy boy with dark curly hair who ranted to me about adventure time, so i watched it to honor him and found my favorite show

a girl gave me a little illustrated book she had written about “destroying trolls” did you know they only eat boys with short hair

every tuesday during the summer we have a read to a dog event, and one therapy dog is enormous and black and i love him so much

once a youth services librarian brought her black poodle to work bc he was having anxiety and it was lovely

we had a wasp invasion once and so we were all stalking around the library with pans and raid, ready to kill the mofos in the children’s section

there’s this woman who always fights me on my age, that i can’t possibly be over 16. plot twist i;m 21 but she refuses to let it go

one time this man came up to me and asked what my major was. after i said “english” he went on a sermon about how i should go to school for ac repair bc then i’d actually have a job (even tho.. i have a job?)

there was this man named larry who i became good friends with. he helped me get a scholarship, but then he got cancer and moved to georgia and he refused to say goodbye i hope he’s okay :(

along those lines, i only see certain patrons when they’re in town for chemo. when i see them, i’m so happy they’re still alive, but so sad that they’re still in treatment. i worry when i haven’t seen one for awhile bc i don’t know if they’re in remission or… not

this man came up to me and asked if i could help him find a cd. he couldnt remember the lyrics, or the name, so he hummed to me

the librarian who brought her poodle had to move to louisiana or something, to the town where duck dynasty is? apparently to get a librarian job there, you dont even need a high school diploma. you need a masters here :/

people always go wide eyed and tell me how smart i am that i can answer their question, and i cant figure out if they know that google exists or not

my favorite event of the year is the lit and art magazine reading. we do it in a museum and an author/comic artist comes and lectures, and then we have a poetry slam, and it makes me so happy

last summer we found envelopes of photographs from the early 1900′s, of teenagers riding horses and hugging, and they’re the cutest!

sometimes i get to hang out with authors for a weekend. my favorites were a.s. king and andrew smith. we sat in the office and a restaurant and i got to just pick their brains. i love them. 

this woman once would not stop arguing that “graphic novels” should never be placed in children’s sections. she would not believe me that it was “graphic” as in “graphic design” rather than “graphic language”. her son was just standing there, so i made a stack of quality comics, glared at his mom, and set them in his hands. made sure he left with them. 

there’s this meme in the library world called the blue book. legend has it that someone came into a library once and said “i’m looking for a book. i dont remember what it was called, but it was blue, can you find it for me?”

a family periodically brings us cookies with little kid drawings it is v nice

sometimes people will pay for fines by mail. we’ve gotten envelopes from turkey and japan and such, filled with coins. but we love when they dont include a name or a library card number bc we dont know whose fines to clear.

during the summer, a montessori school brings their classes, and i always end up playing games with this group of little boys. i love them so much

recently i left the back door open bc it was warm and breezy out. this random man walked through the back door, up to my manager’s closed office door, and knocked. she opened it and he was like “i walked in through your back door lol” and when she told him to leave through the front, he did. he apparently didn’t come in for the library? it’s bc of him we cant have nice things smh

one morning my coworker went out to smoke and found a raccoon stuck in the dumpster. he spent literally 3 hours building a ladder for him and luring him out with cheetos

robyn found a cell phone once and set it on her desk so she could find who it belonged to. the ownder started texting the phone that he was going to bring his gun and kill the motherfucker that stole his phone. he was very sweet and apologetic when he realized he had left it at a public library

once we found a turtle in a garbage can and we adopted him. his name is yertle. sadly tho he got too big and a teacher who always came in adopted him to be a classroom pet i hope he’s having a good day

basically, i really adore where i work. i work with an incredible and badass group of women and men who really care about words, the world, and art. we preserve free speech and strive to create a safe place for everyone, and it gives me a lot of hope and inspiration. we laugh a lot. anyone who says that libraries are dying clearly are not using libraries. public libraries are thriving and essential. do not forget this.

ok i’ll leave it there. but i really love working in libraries. it’s always weird and wonderful.

ALL OF THEM IM A NOSEY BITCH

YOU ALWAYS DO THIS

1: when you have cereal, do you have more milk than cereal or more cereal than milk? MORE CEREAL THAN MILK OBVIOUSLY I’M NOT SATAN

2: do you like the feeling of cold air on your cheeks on a wintery day? No bc my cheeks are cold as hell and I need warmth

3: what random objects do you use to bookmark your books? I fold the corners or put little mailings/postcards in them, whatever I have laying around!

4: how do you take your coffee/tea? Tea, nothing; coffee, milk only!

5: are you self-conscious of your smile? Yes :( There’s a gap in my teeth and I hate it. I wish my teeth were perfect.

6: do you keep plants? Nope.

7: do you name your plants? Can’t name the plants you don’t keep, my dude

8: what artistic medium do you use to express your feelings? Uhhhh...no?

9: do you like singing/humming to yourself? YES all the time.

10: do you sleep on your back, side, or stomach? Side!

11: what's an inner joke you have with your friends? 

12: what's your favorite planet? Pluto bc it is still a planet okay

13: what's something that made you smile today? My boyfriend’s Snapchats

14: if you were to live with your best friend in an old flat in a big city, what would it look like? Messy af

15: go google a weird space fact and tell us what it is! “In space, the skin on your feet peels off.” EW SPACE WTF

16: what's your favorite pasta dish? MMMMMM any pasta tbh I’m Italian I will eat anything

17: what color do you really want to dye your hair? I love my hair color the way it is now!

18: tell us about something dumb/funny you did that has since gone down in history between you and your friends and is always brought up. My ex never let me forget the time I was passed out on his couch, and I woke up intermittently before falling back asleep. He was watching Rush Hour. I asked him, (HALF ASLEEP MIND YOU), Oh, is this the movie with Chris Rock and Bruce Lee? (I’m awful).

19: do you keep a journal? what do you write/draw/ in it? I write my thoughts and crazy paranoia in there boyyyyyeeeee

20: what's your favorite eye color? BROWN

21: talk about your favorite bag, the one that's been to hell and back with you and that you love to pieces. Uhhhhh it’s a longchamp bc I’m a white girl

22: are you a morning person? Not really

23: what's your favorite thing to do on lazy days where you have 0 obligations? SLEEP!

24: is there someone out there you would trust with every single one of your secrets? Not sure

25: what's the weirdest place you've ever broken into? I’ve never broken into anything omg

26: what are the shoes you've had for forever and wear with every single outfit? My Uggs, because I’m a white girl

27: what's your favorite bubblegum flavor? Mint

28: sunrise or sunset? Sunset

29: what's something really cute that one of your friends does and is totally endearing? My BFF giggles sometimes when she talks and idk it’s cute

30: think of it: have you ever been truly scared? Fuck yes, have you ever seen a spider? In your shower? Without your glasses on? 

31: what is your opinion of socks? do you like wearing weird socks? do you sleep with socks? do you confine yourself to white sock hell? really, just talk about socks. I LOVE SOCKS! When I get socks for Christmas I get so excited. I can fall asleep with socks on, but at some point in the night, they’re coming off my feet lol.

32: tell us a story of something that happened to you after 3AM when you were with friends. I ate pizza while I was drunk #wowimsocool

33: what's your fave pastry? Cinnamon buns, does that count?

34: tell us about the stuffed animal you kept as a kid. what is it called? what does it look like? do you still keep it? Winnie the Motherfuckin Pooh. No :( He fell in the mud and I had to throw him out bc the washer couldn’t fix him

35: do you like stationary and pretty pens and so on? do you use them often? Fuck yeah I do!

36: which band's sound would fit your mood right now? Noooo clue tbh

37: do you like keeping your room messy or clean? Clean, but it’s always a mess

38: tell us about your pet peeves! I hate when the President sniffs into the microphone while he’s delivering some sort of address, blow ur nose next time or stop doing coke

39: what color do you wear the most? Black lol

40: think of a piece of jewelry you own: what's it's story? does it have any meaning to you? Nose ring, no special meaning I just really like it

41: what's the last book you remember really, really loving? An Abundance of Katherines bc I fucking love the shit out of John Green

42: do you have a favorite coffee shop? describe it! Not really tbh

43: who was the last person you gazed at the stars with? Probably my bf

44: when was the last time you remember feeling completely serene and at peace with everything? The other night, at the beach! So pretty :)

45: do you trust your instincts a lot? Yes

46: tell us the worst pun you can think of. I couldn’t think of any, next question

47: what food do you think should be banned from the universe? Aerosol cheese

48: what was your biggest fear as a kid? is it the same today? Bugs, yes, ew

49: do you like buying CDs and records? what was the last one you bought? Don’t remember!! I bought the first Glee soundtrack when it came out LOL

50: what's an odd thing you collect? Socks?

51: think of a person. what song do you associate with them? I associate “All Night” by Chance the Rapper w my bf

52: what are your favorite memes of the year so far? Salt bae for sure

53: have you ever watched the rocky horror picture show? heathers? beetlejuice? pulp fiction? what do you think of them? Beetlejuice was the only one, I watched a little of Pulp Fiction - they were both ok

54: who's the last person you saw with a true look of sadness on their face? My friend :( she’s ok now but I saw her the other night and she was upset

55: what's the most dramatic thing you've ever done to prove a point? Not sure 

56: what are some things you find endearing in people? Laughter and the way people get excited over things

57: go listen to bohemian rhapsody. how did it make you feel? did you dramatically reenact the lyrics? It made me feel like I’ve been having too much sugar tonight tbh

58: who's the wine mom and who's the vodka aunt in your group of friends? why? I’M THE WINE MOM!!!! I am the wine QUEEN ok that’s all I ever drink. My bff is the vodka aunt, but she lives miles apart from me so we rarely drink together nowadays 

59: what's your favorite myth? Dude? I don’t have one

60: do you like poetry? what are some of your faves? The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, T.S. Eliot. 

61: what's the stupidest gift you've ever given? the stupidest one you've ever received? I got a really ugly hat once, and I gave a really ugly hat once, at the same Christmas exchange party 

62: do you drink juice in the morning? which kind? Nope

63: are you fussy about your books and music? do you keep them meticulously organized or kinda leave them be? Hell no I’m a living mess

64: what color is the sky where you are right now? Black

65: is there anyone you haven't seen in a long time who you'd love to hang out with? Yes, my bff 

66: what would your ideal flower crown look like? Mad lilies! They’re my fav flower

67: how do gloomy days where the sky is dark and the world is misty make you feel? Depressed and tired tbh

68: what's winter like where you live? Cold but not too cold bc you know global warming

69: what are your favorite board games? Scrabble!!

70: have you ever used a ouija board? Yes lol

71: what's your favorite kind of tea? ANY KIND! Right now I’m really feeling ginger turmeric from Trader Joe’s, though, soooo good

72: are you a person who needs to note everything down or else you'll forget it? YES.

73: what are some of your worst habits? Uhhh not going to bed early enough lol

74: describe a good friend of yours without using their name or gendered pronouns. This person is a HUGE JARLEY FAN and super adorbs!!! Hates Mon-El and LOVES TO RANT ABOUT IT AND I LOVE THIS PERSON REGARDLESS 

75: tell us about your pets! So I have a dog, he’s almost 12 years old which is really depressing bc he’s probably going to pass on soon :( I’m obsessed with him and love him so much!!

76: is there anything you should be doing right now but aren't? Yeah, taking my bra off why am I still wearing it

77: pink or yellow lemonade? PINK, always

78: are you in the minion hateclub or fanclub? Hate club, get them the fuck away from me

79: what's one of the cutest things someone has ever done for you? One of my old boyfriends learned how to knit for me which I thought was very sweet

80: what color are your bedroom walls? did you choose that color? if so, why? Aqua! Because I like it?

81: describe one of your friend's eyes using the most abstract imagery you can think of. “Comets.”

82: are/were you good in school? Not really

83: what's some of your favorite album art? Ohhhh I know this, I love Californication’s album art so much

84: are you planning on getting tattoos? which ones? I have seven!!

85: do you read comics? what are your faves? No

86: do you like concept albums? which ones? Wat

87: what are some movies you think everyone should watch at least once in their lives? The Lion King, BITCH

88: are there any artistic movements you particularly enjoy? Not really

89: are you close to your parents? Yes

90: talk about your one of you favorite cities. NEW YORRRRRK. Concrete jungle where dreams are destroyed you’ll never get anywhere go back to long island

91: where do you plan on traveling this year? Somewhere over the summer, not sure where yet tho

92: are you a person who drowns their pasta in cheese or a person who barely sprinkles a pinch? In the middle

93: what's the hairstyle you wear the most? Top knots bc I’m lazy

94: who was the last person you know to have a birthday? The Weeknd LOL

95: what are your plans for this weekend? Date night, then I’m not sure!

96: do you install your computer updates really quickly or do you procrastinate on them a lot? Ohhh I procrastinate so much

97: myer briggs type, zodiac sign, and hogwarts house? Not sure about the Myer-Briggs type, but I’m a scorpio + Ravenclaw

98: when's the last time you went hiking? did you enjoy it? Yes! I think in November. It was chilly, but a lot of fun

99: list some songs that resonate to your soul whenever you hear them.

One Headlight - The Wallflowers (listening now)

Home - Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes

Love Drought - Beyonce

Under the Bridge - RHCP

Strip My Mind - RHCP

Literally anything by RHCP

Do You Realize?? - The Flaming Lips (I cry literally every time I listen to it)

100: if you were presented with two buttons, one that allows you to go 5 years into the past, the other 5 years into the future, which one would you press? why? Neither, because I am choosing to live in the MOMENT :) 

Getting Started with Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is a misused and misunderstood buzzword. Some think it means to call up a Kardashian, pay them a bunch of money, and get them to share an Instagram post about your product or service.

While this is an example of influencer marketing, it is more of an outlier, especially for smaller businesses. Small businesses have much better options when it comes to influencer marketing.

First, what is influencer marketing? Here’s a good definition from the influencer marketing platform, Tapinfluence…

Influencer marketing is a type of marketing that focuses on using key leaders to drive your brand’s message to the larger market. Rather than marketing directly to a large group of consumers, you instead inspire/hire/pay influencers to get out the word for you.

This form of marketing is one of the most effective ways to reach and engage audiences not normally available to your business.

Street Teams

I play the drums and have a bunch of friends who have gone on tour. Do I regret never trying to be a touring musician? Maybe, but let’s stay on task here, ok?

Back in the day (which for me was the early 90s), there was no such thing as social media and the Internet was still in its infancy.

Touring bands would have to do everything by phone. They would call up venues or have a booking agent who did this for them. The shows were their only opportunity to engage with fans and future fans.

The smart bands would set up street teams in every city where they played. They would ask fans in each city if they would be interested in being on the band’s team. Sometimes, the team members would get free merch or tickets to future shows.

In exchange, they would be expected to hand out flyers and plaster the town with posters for upcoming shows. So, as they prepared a new tour, they would mail out flyers, stickers, and maybe some free tickets to their street teams.

Doing this got these bands exposure in advance of their shows and helped them build their fan base. More fans = more ticket, merch, and CD sales.

This was an early example of influencer marketing, in a sense. Street teams consisted of fans of the band who had an influence in their community when it came to what shows people should attend.

Influencer Marketing Today

Your brand is now looking for its modern-day street team. Social media influencers can be your boots on the ground, so to speak. They can get the word out about your business and help build your fanbase.

The most common misconception about this type of marketing is that you have to work with social media influencers who have millions of followers.

It could actually be a mistake to go after these heavy hitters. The problem is that they are so popular that they don’t have a real connection with their followers.

So, while you might get some good exposure, the chances of building a solid fanbase through these personalities are very small. You’re better off focusing on what influencer marketing expert, Neal Schaffer, calls micro and nano influencers, influencers having 10,000 and 1,000 followers, respectively.

Getting Started with Influencer Marketing

Any new marketing venture can be overwhelming. You’re faced with some familiar questions…

Where can you find these micro and nano influencers?

What social media platforms will work best?

What tools and platforms will you need?

Who will manage these efforts?

Why would they work with you?

What are your goals?

The last two questions are the most important, in my opinion. If you have solid answers to both, the rest will fall into place. Let’s take a deeper look at each…

Why Would an Influencer Work with You?

Going back to our street team example, the bands would approach fans for help. Imagine a musician going up to a completely random person and asking for that person to be on their street team.

This would be ludicrous for lesser-known bands. Similarly, the same is true for brands trying to court an influencer. Sure, a bunch of money could convince an influencer to work with you, but it will be hard to convince their followers that they truly value your brand.

Plus, they would have to disclose the fact that they are being paid for their promotion efforts (follow these federal guidelines to avoid any serious imperial entanglements).

Influencer marketing is most powerful when the influencer is truly a fan of the brand. Fandom doesn’t occur overnight. Fandom takes effort.

A solid foundation of positive brand recognition and reputation will make for more successful campaigns. You can build this over time using…

Quality content that entertains and/or meets Google’s E-A-T standards

A consistent and helpful social media presence in target channels

A consistent brand presence

Basically, you are building brand authority so influencers will want to work with you. If you do not have sufficient brand authority, you better be super cool or cutting edge, otherwise, it will be difficult to convince these people to consider your offer.

Your Influencer Campaign Objectives

In addition to brand influence, you’ll need a clearly defined set of goals before approaching an influencer. Your campaign will be more successful if you and the influencer both clearly understand the campaign objectives.

For example, the campaign could be centered on building registrations for an event.

Or maybe the goal is to build awareness around a new product launch. Whatever your goal, make sure it is clear, attainable, trackable, and will justify the time and expense of working with an influencer.

Choose a goal that is focused and not some nebulous goal like “building awareness” or “growing followers.” These are legitimate goals in a sense but harder to quantify and track.

You’re better off starting out focusing on a goal with money attached to it, especially if you will need to show any sort of ROI to the higher-ups.

Develop an Influencer Profile

You have your own brand authority, and you’ve identified an appropriate goal. Great! Now it’s time to figure out what the perfect influencer looks like.

“Um, her name is Kayla and she has like, a gazillion followers on ShapChat!” Yeah, not that.

This exercise is similar to developing customer personas. You are creating an archetype of the perfect influencer. You might have influencers in mind already, which is great. Use them as the model in case they don’t want to work with you.

Detail the following in this profile…

The ideal number of followers (remember your micro and nano crowds)

Target platform where they hold influence

Level of engagement and authenticity (are people into them, like, for reals?)

Is a natural match for your brand

Remember, we’re talking about real people with organic reach and influence who would be open to working with your brand.

Finding Influencers

Now it’s time to find you an influencer. Again, if you had one in mind all along and they still make sense after going through the exercises above, reach out to them.

If you don’t have someone in mind, you’ll need to find someone. Buzzsumo is a great option for this. Of course, you can also just go looking.

Search for keywords or hashtags relating to your industry on the platform and see who is talking about it.

You can also divide and conquer. You may even find that someone on your team either knows of the perfect person or might even be that perfect person themselves.

Just don’t settle on one. Take the time and get a solid handful of candidates before moving on to the next step.

Landing Your Influencers

Now, set up calls with potential influencers. They will likely be flattered that you’ve reached out to them as an “influencer,” especially the nano-influencers. But, flattery will only get you so far.

Don’t lead with the carrot here. There are a few things they might be interested in…

Great content they can share with their audience

More exposure by aligning with your brand (if your brand has good authority)

Money, gifts, freebies

Fame and fortune

That last one is a joke, kind of. The point here is that they might be interested in working with you just to get access to more content they can share with their followers. If you lead with money, you’d miss this potential arrangement.

If they do want something of value from you, make sure you can afford to give it to them. Remember, you will likely be asked to show ROI if you want to continue with influencer marketing. Make sure you will come out net positive.

Measuring Success of Your Influencer Campaign

Never do any digital marketing unless you can track it. You’re wasting your money and time otherwise. Influencer marketing is no different.

Make sure you have the tools in place to track the success of your campaigns. And remember, more likes are not a success. You want to track whether or not you’re achieving those tangible goals.

The actual mechanics of tracking are pretty simple and can be done with free software like Google Analytics and your social media stats.

Some of the hooks you might want to use include…

UTM codes in URLs

Hashtags (there are tons of tools to help with this)

Landing pages with tracking codes

Marketing automation tracking codes

You’d be fine with any of those four, but don’t limit yourself. We recommend using marketing automation as the backbone of any digital marketing strategy. But that is another post altogether. Oh, wait, here it is.

Influencer marketing is not just a buzzword. It’s a powerful way to amplify your marketing efforts. And it isn’t just available to large companies, small businesses can get in on the action too.

I like memes, sue me!

Remember, build your brand authority, establish goals for your campaign, profile the perfect influencer, set up a mutually beneficial relationship, and track everything!

If you’re serious about influencer marketing, I highly recommend reading Neal Schaffer’s book, The Age of Influence.

Getting Started with Influencer Marketing published first on https://wabusinessapi.tumblr.com/

For the Love of Notes

I know you have Science class in here and I hope it’s ok to write you, but I think you’re really cute. Mr. Carr is in a good mood today, I think he might have had a date with Mrs. Cart this weekend. Ha ha! Hope to see you in the hallway again. I also just realized we went to pre-school together and I have a picture of you. If you write me back just leave it here for me.

Bye.

I remember writing a note to Alan Cormen in 7th grade. I left the note for him in my science lab drawer because I knew he sat at the same table. He wasn’t interested. Most the boys I had crushes on back then weren’t interested. When I moved to Richmond, I had the biggest crush of my life that lasted from eight grade through high school. I also wrote him a note commenting on his beauty and skateboarding skills. That also was a failed attempt at written confessions of love.

From 8th grade until the end of high school, notes were the highlights of my day. I never knew when I was going to get one or who it would be from. My girlfriends mostly exchanged with me all day and it was easy to scribe the bubble letters of yore while in Ms. Pilkington’s English class. I would occasionally get notes from my guy friends as well, usually with Misfits, Metallica, Iron Maiden, or skateboarding graffiti adorning them. I cannot forget the actual folding of the notes, you had to do the one with the “tab” that you would pull out to open it and people actually wrote the word “PULL” on it. Sometimes they would get elaborate and show up as triangles or origami. Notes would get passed in the hallway between periods, they were in my locker when I changed books, and sometimes you’d find them mysteriously in your notebook. I remember Freshmen year, sitting in Mr. Wilt’s World Studies class and exchanging notes with Meredith Snellings consisting only of lyrics from The Smiths, and I remember the notes I’d get from my friend Sara who had beautiful penmanship and always wrote incredibly concise and intellectual letters on music or a guy or the punk rock show we went to the past weekend. It was also where you penned your scandalous gossip:

What were Lindsey and MaryBeth doing at the show?! Those girls are such harlots trying to get with the guys in our scene. Oh and did you know that Nicki Owen is pregnant! I guess she won’t be on the cheerleading squad for much longer. I saw her crying in the bathroom. See you at lunch!

Yes we used the word “harlots” because it sounded better than “slut”. We also had NOTEbooks which were passed around between a group of friends. Each period a different girl would write and then pass it on the next. The first time a boy said he loved me was on a note, claiming I was the raddest girl at school. Swoon. Then he wrote me a letter two weeks later breaking up with me and then I wrote a letter to him telling him to fuck off. Notes were such a huge part of how we communicated back then and it was exciting if you got a note handed to you. Notes were the way to confess untold secrets, to profess love, and to tell your best friend she was being an asshole at lunch trying to be too cool. You’d discuss the new CD you bought over the weekend, write poetry, or plan out secret parties. It would come on loose leaf, colored or sometimes sketch book paper, but always with doodles or lots of hearts and signed with a LYLAS (Love ya like a sis) or Later Sk8ter or a See Ya . It was special because you knew they were taking time out of their day to put pen to paper.

So now, we have email, text, and video chatting, and to be honest when email came out I treated it with as much enthusiasm as I did getting notes. In the beginning, I’d light up with joy looking at my inbox. The emails I receive currently consist of telling me what to do, what to buy, how to buy it, what bills to pay, when to go to things, where to get the best deal, and so forth. I haven’t received a proper personal email in almost…6 years. Sure, I’ve received “Likes”, Emojis, texts pages long, but none of that written communication excites me, it’s just become commonplace and sometimes the only time you receive anything worth reading is to tell you that you’re being a certain way. It’s become a place where people can abbreviate feelings and sentiments, a text can have some pretty involved meaning, but something about it lingering there and the urge to have to answer it right away takes away from the significance, to me. Not even through Facebook Messenger do I receive a lot of correspondence. It’s all very direct and with serious need. It’s the place you contact people you don’t have email addresses for. I still find it oddly strange to announce the death and births and marriages online. There’s something impersonal about it, it lacks the tangibility of the sentiments. And yes, Facebook has replaced the folded papers of youth, but what are people actually saying on your wall? “HBD”? “I saw that!” “I was at that show!” Pruned and lackluster remarks.

When I lived in New York, each restaurant I dined in had postcards. I loved that. I used to sit and eat and actually write out a postcard to people and send it on the way home. I think we all still feel something when we get home and there is a card or a letter for us in the mail. The feel of it alone to tear open an envelope handwritten and addressed to you. When I was internet dating, I made it part of my criteria for them to have to correspond with me in some pen to parchment form. Seems odd to some, but I found it entertaining, the notes I’d get or the photo of notes I’d get if they were remote. The ones who actually carried it out were the ones I gave my time to, you can only get so many horrid dick pics in a day. I’d get post it notes:

Here lies my favorite thing to eat at lunch. Doesn’t it look delicious?

Then there was an arrow drawn to the sandwich.

I’d leave notes like this on my way out of Mister’s apartment and he told me he loved waking up to them, but he would rather wake up to me instead, (insert gagging here). Sweet right?

Thank you so much for the wonderful evening. Coffee is ready and I hope to see you later.

My ex husband and I were legendary for the notes he would leave each other, especially like when he would leave early for a tour:

I’m going to miss you so much baby. Have a great day! I love you!

or when I used to come by his apartment when we were dating and he wasn’t there:

Hi! I came by to say hello and see if you wanted to get something to eat. I listened to that Miles Davis CD you leant me and it was good! I’ll be around later if you want to hang.

to after 5 years of marriage, me leaving these types of notes:

Can you please take out the fucking trash and put the dishes away!

I think the art of letter writing has gone out with the art of conversation. I’m a sentimental fool, I have letters from decades ago that I keep in a box because one day I had hoped to share it with my kids and grandkids as a kind of historical recollection of the person I was or written proof of words of love that were volleyed back and forth between misters. To me, there is still something magical about receiving a letter. It’s the same feeling you get when you open a book, you know?

I decided that this year I would get back into letter writing or at least postcard writing. I was in Stella’s for lunch the other day and they had one in the checkbook, so I wrote a note to a friend of mine in Richmond. Seems silly, but I know when he got it he was thrilled.

Hi there! I’m sitting at Stella’s and was thinking about that place we used to go to in New York when you came to visit. OMG, I miss that place. This red wine I’m drinking right now is freakin’ delicious. How are you? We haven’t seen each other in ages, we should hang sometime soon. I hope all is well and I just wanted to send a hello and how are you. Tell Jamie hello for me!

Ciao, J

Who knows, maybe it will be reciprocated and I will come home to something other than what I owe someone or 20% off at Bed, Bath & Beyond. Mr. Spectacular started collecting nice pens and inks when we stopped seeing each other, I will bet anything he’s never written one love letter with them. Sometimes it’s nice looking at the pen strokes and not having the immediate urge to reply back, but when you do, it will take time and effort. We have gone back to collecting records, making cassette tapes, and going to barber shops, so why not delve into the lost art of writing. You remember that thing you do with a pen, right? If you want to really mess with someone, write one in cursive and send it to a millenial. They will think it’s some coded instruction. But, seriously, how much would you make someone’s day by simply sending a postcard. Have fun!

Podcast: Growing Up With a Mentally Ill Parent



Growing up with a mentally ill parent can be a traumatic experience for any child. For Ally Golden, her mother’s mental illness was major depression, later diagnosed as borderline personality disorder. Ally’s book, A Good Soldier, chronicles her life growing up in this environment, with a mentally ill mother who frequently threatened suicide, and the psychological trauma that resulted for her. Decades later, her mother carried out her threat. Listen to hear Ally’s fascinating story.

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About Our Guest

Ally Golden is the author of A Good Soldier, a memoir on the emotional toll of growing up with a mentally ill parent. It is available on Amazon and other online bookstores. Ally frequently writes and speaks on the impacts of mental illness on family life. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and the Atlantic. Ally is also an active volunteer with the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, where she witnesses firsthand the devastating influence mental illnesses can have on the loved ones of the afflicted. To learn more about Ally, visit her website.

    DEFYING BIPOLAR SHOW TRANSCRIPT (Computer-Generated)

Narrator 1: Welcome to the Psych Central show, where each episode presents an in-depth look at issues from the field of psychology and mental health –  with host Gabe Howard and co-host Vincent M. Wales.

Gabe Howard: Hello everyone and welcome to this week’s episode of the Psych Central Show podcast. My name is Gabe Howard and with me as always is Vincent M. Wales. Today, Vince and I will be speaking with Ally Golden, author of A Good Soldier, a memoir on the emotional toll of growing up with a mentally ill parent. Ali, welcome to the show.

Ally Golden: Thank you so much for having me. I’m so excited to be here.

Vincent M. Wales: We’re glad you are here. So, right off the bat, I want to ask you – as Gabe just read – it was a memoir on the emotional toll of growing up with a mentally ill parent. What’s the story there? Give us a little background.

Ally Golden: While the story is I grew up in a relatively privileged environment. My family was upper middle class and I was living in the suburbs of Washington D.C. and on paper everything looked pretty good. When I was very young, my parents were still married, but my mother had always suffered from mental illness from the time that she was in her early 20s and by the time my brother was born – he was just a couple of years younger – my mother had really started to deteriorate. She at first had major depressive disorder, but then gradually began to develop what is known as borderline personality disorder, which is a personality disorder that’s characterized by shifts in how you view people, how you see yourself and your relationships. And unfortunately I was shaped by my mother’s constant volatility in terms of how she interacted with, me how she interacted with the rest of our immediate family, and how she interacted with our friends and extended family. And when I was eight years old, my mother began to share with me that she planned to end her life, and the next about 20 years were characterized by a lot of manipulation on her part to try and get me to do and say different things so that I could keep her alive and my own life was a game of control. And as long as my mother had survived, I had won that game. And so, my existence and my childhood were really formed on the basis of feeling like I could control another person and that of course, as you guys can imagine, led to some problems later on down the road. So the book talks about childhood but it also talks about what happens when you grow up in that kind of environment and how do you form your own relationships and how sometimes they fail because that’s not the most productive mentally efficacious way to go about life. And then how I go about starting my own family and the types of challenges that I face there.

Gabe Howard: Just to clarify: when you say your childhood, when did this start having an impact on you. I mean when did you become aware of your mother’s illness and when did it really start ramping up for you like to affect you personally.

Ally Golden: I was always aware of my mother’s illness. There’s a scene in the book where I talk about being like 3 or 4 years old and witnessing my mother crying in our living room. So I always knew something a little bit different about her. But when it really started impacting me was when she started threatening suicide. Because at that point I just became very scared and I would say or do anything to keep her safe. And being so young and feeling like you had to be the parent when you were a pretty young child definitely had some damaging effects and just led me to never know what one day or another was going to bring. In addition to being suicidal much of the time, my mother was also very volatile in terms of interactions with people. So I just never knew what was going to happen at the grocery store, what was going to happen at school, like who was my mother going to have a conflict with? And where was there going to be a scene? So, I would say almost as long as I can remember, my mother’s illness was a very salient part of my existence.

Gabe Howard: The title of the book, it’s… can you explain the title?

Ally Golden: I would love to explain the title for the title officially comes from some Tori Amos lyrics. Tori Amos is a musician, a songwriter who is very popular in the early to mid 90s, which is when I was coming of age and her song “Mother” talks about being a good soldier by raising your hand and always doing the right thing. And those lyrics really spoke to me because that was how I’ve gone about life. I’ve tried to do the right thing by my mother, by society, what’s expected and how can I not only meet those expectations, but exceed them? Despite the fact that things might not always make sense, I want to do the right thing, and so that’s where that title – A Good Soldier – I’m going to go through what’s essentially a war in my childhood.  But I’m going to do what I feel is right and what is the best thing. That’s where that comes from.

Vincent M. Wales: Well, at first, I was going to remark, you mean there are listeners who don’t know who Tori is? Really?

Ally Golden: Younger people don’t.

Vincent M. Wales: Then I stopped for a minute and though, yeah, of course there are.

Ally Golden: Younger people don’t.

Gabe Howard: Tori is fantastic.

Vincent M. Wales: I know, I’m gonna bust out my Little Earthquakes CD after we get off the show.

Ally Golden: Oh, that’s my favorite one and the song “Mother” is on the Little Earthquakes CD, and you know what, I’ve got a huge audience of college students that are really into the book. Because the book mostly takes place while I’m at college and they don’t… most of them do not know who Tori Amos is. I would say 80 percent do not have never heard her. So yeah it’s sad. I know it’s terrible.

Vincent M. Wales: It’s unfortunate.

Gabe Howard: That is sad. So Sad.

Vincent M. Wales: So yeah. OK so it takes place mostly in your college years. I think that’s pretty interesting, myself. What are some of the things you know during the process of writing this book, what have you personally gotten out of it?

Ally Golden: So originally I wrote it and I hoped there would be some sort of catharsis. Whenever you write a memoir, you’re like, well, I hope this is going to fill me with peace. And it really didn’t. I would say that the reason that I ended up finishing it at the end of the day was to help other people. And that may sound really earnest and a little bit cheesy, but I really wanted to… I’m a writer in my professional life as well. And I felt like if it was anybody’s place to be able to talk about this in a relatively coherent way, it was my place. And I… The one thing that I had wished when I was going through my childhood, my adolescence, and then later, after my mother (and this is a spoiler alert) after my mother did end her life, I felt very alienated and alone that nobody really understood what I was going through. And I wished I had a book like A Good Soldier. And I wish I could have talked with the author and felt like someone else had experienced the type of childhood and the type of trauma that I had. And so that really was the primary motivator for finishing it, editing it, and then publishing it. Because I had the typical concerns I think people have when writing a memoir. First of all, I wasn’t sure it was any good. That was a big hurdle that I had to get over. Like, I didn’t want to put out a piece of crap. And then, of course, you worry about stigma. Of course, you guys talk about that and we’ve all talked about that a lot in the mental health community. Putting this information publicly out there about my family, whereas even when my mother died, very few people knew about my situation. Even people who I could consider relatively close friends. And so, putting it out there publicly was kind of a big deal for me. And so, these were things that I had to deal with, but I just kept reminding myself, look if I can help even one person who has a mother like this feel a little bit better about their situation, then it’s worth it. And I’ve actually gotten probably a hundred emails from people over the last year, it’s been published about a year. And those e-mails just… They touch me, I correspond with people back and forth. I try to help them as best I can. And even though there is no real hope unfortunately for many of these situations, but at least I can make them feel like they’re not alone. And that’s what that was really the goal.

Vincent M. Wales: All right, well now that you gave us the spoiler…

Ally Golden: Sorry.

Vincent M. Wales: It’s okay. Tell us tell us about what happened there and at what point did your  mom finally take her life?

Ally Golden: Well, it’s a little bit of an interesting story in the sense that people always ask the question, well do you feel guilty? Because, sad as it is to say, there was a direct relationship between my behavior and my mother finally doing it. As I mentioned, she started threatening when I was around 8. And threatened it pretty often. Up until she actually did end her life when I was 30 years old. And, the way that it happened in the end was that I had said to my mom when I got pregnant, Mom, you know, I’ve been putting your emotional well-being ahead of that of myself for years. But now I have someone else that I need to think about. I’m going to have a baby and that baby is going to have to come first. And it was the first time in my life I’d ever set a boundary for my mother. Previously, I just let her kind of say and do whatever she wanted. And I put up with it. I let myself be emotionally driven by whatever my mother’s needs happened to be at the time because I was still… I still had it ingrained in me that I needed to save her at all costs. And so what I had done was I had driven her up to Providence, Rhode Island, where there was a treatment program – a world class treatment program – for borderline personality disorder. And they had said to her, you’ve got a detox off these prescription drugs before we can help you, because right now we don’t even know who the real Susan Golden is, because she’s so hyped on all of these prescription drugs. And my mother said no. My mother said, you know that is not going to happen. I need these drugs for various reasons. And that was when I had said to her, Mom, until I can talk to a therapist that tells me that you were making progress then that will.. you know… I’m not going to talk to you until we can do that. And that was when she ended her life. So, unfortunately it had a direct relationship to my actions, which was finally setting a boundary. And people say to me all the time, well do you feel guilty? And I’m like, look, I did what I needed to do. And it was 20 years later. I can’t put up with this stuff for 20 years. And I had to put my child first. Like that was the right thing to do, but it was of course very traumatic, as you both can imagine. And my mother also… the way she executed it was different. I mean, forgive the pun there. That’s pretty macabre. But it was different than we had always thought, like she’d always talked about pills and she didn’t use pills; she had a gun, which was very very surprising to me and very traumatic. It’s just not how I had imagined it. And it was very hard to hear from the police that it had happened that way. It was very hard to imagine when I would keep replaying the scene over and over again in my mind.

Gabe Howard: Of course I’m very sorry to hear about your mother and I’m so glad that you’re able to talk about it because, unfortunately, a lot of times when when things like this happen in our society, we tend to sweep them under the rug and we don’t talk about them and, to your point, many people have gone through what you went through and you are creating community for them. How does that feel? I mean, you’re a member of this community because you were traumatized by something that happens but that also was the inspiration to do it. So it’s, it’s sort of a double edged sword here.

Ally Golden: Yeah.

Gabe Howard: How does all of this come together for you?

Ally Golden: It comes together for me in a complicated way. I mean, just this weekend, I had something happen where… So I served as a volunteer survivor support person for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention for the last nine years. If you are a suicide survivor, meaning you have someone that you’d lost to suicide, you are able to volunteer to go and help other people cope with recent suicide loss, but you have to wait a year after your own loss so that you’re not interfering too much with… your own feelings aren’t interfering too much with what that person is going through. But I’ve done this for for nine years and, this past weekend, I had to turn down a visit because I just didn’t feel like I could handle it, personally. So, you know, sometimes my own needs still need to come first. But overall, I would say it’s been an amazing experience creating this community and helping people who are in a very similar specific situation. It’s been kind of eye opening to me to hear from people via e mail who have parents that are exactly like this. And sadly, many of them are my age now, like in their early 40s, and their parents are in their 70s and 80s is this is still going on. I can’t even imagine. It sounds terrible to say, but I think it’s important to recognize that sometimes your life gets better when something like this happens, because you just have less of the ongoing trauma. And I can say that I’ve just been much more effective as a person and as a parent not having my mother kind of holding this over my head all the time. I can’t imagine having like 30 or 40 more years of this to deal with and that’s what a lot of these people are going through and just to even be able to offer them the smallest modicum of support has really been helpful to me personally.

Gabe Howard: Thank you, Ally. We’re going to step away and hear from our sponsor. We’ll be right back.

Narrator 2: This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp.com, secure, convenient and affordable online counselling. All counselors are licensed, accredited professionals. Anything you share is confidential. Schedule secure video or phone sessions, plus chat and text with your therapist whenever you feel it’s needed. A month of online therapy often costs less than a single traditional face-to-face session. Go to BetterHelp.com/PsychCentral and experience seven days of free therapy to see if online counselling is right for you. BetterHelp.com/PsychCentral.

Vincent M. Wales: Welcome back, everyone.  We’re here with Ally Golden, author of A Good Soldier.

Gabe Howard: When you realize that your life improved after your mother’s death, did you feel bad about that? I think that many listeners would immediately feel like, oh wait, you were happy about it, you were glad? And I don’t think that you’re saying that you were happy about it. You’re just saying that, unfortunately, there was this – to use your word – this kind of macabre silver lining. That must be difficult to wrap your mind around.

Ally Golden: That is. And I definitely was not happy. In fact I had PTSD for a year. I also ended up giving birth to my child prematurely because of this – or not necessarily because of it, but let’s just say that there likely was some relationship because I was pregnant, remember. So my mother knew that I was pregnant and then did it anyway. So you know I had to to deal with a premature baby and had a lot of stress associated with that. So I was definitely not happy. I was miserable and the only reason that it ended up having a silver lining at all is that I was released from the constant stress of the uncertainty of not knowing if my mother was going to live to the next day. It’s kind of like – I like to compare it to having a terminal illness. You don’t want… no one wants to see someone that they they love suffer so much. And at a certain point for my mother, it kind of became like a terminal illness. But she just wasn’t able to get better. And you can, we could argue, we could spend a whole other podcast talking about, did she do everything she could? Was.. you know… Was it enough? Like, was there something else that was possible to happen besides this outcome? And that’s a whole existential psychological discussion. And I talked about it with people. But I think having empathy for her and I was able to come to the decision at the end that, you know, this had to happen for my mother in particular and definitely not for everyone. I’m not advocating suicide as a solution, but my mother was very, very ill and she stopped suffering. So there definitely was a positive thing in that that I try to look back on it and say well, she didn’t get to the age of 80 being completely miserable every single day. And, hopefully wherever she is now, it’s in a better place of learning, of peace. We don’t know what happens. There’s no way for us to know, but I like to think that her suffering at least is over.

Vincent M. Wales: So what advice at this point would you have for other children of mentally ill parents that might help them a little bit?

Ally Golden: So there’s a couple forms that advice would take for other children of mentally ill parents. When you’re a child, just look for other sources of support where you can. Sometimes that can be problematic because a lot of times the mentally ill person will distance or isolate themselves. Not always by choice. Sometimes because their illness isolates other people and that makes it difficult. But try to find other sources of support, other family members, other parents, mentors teachers, somebody else who can show you what it means to be a normal stable human adult and somebody who can love you unconditionally. I think that that’s really important. And in terms of people who are adult children of mentally ill parents, I think it’s important to set boundaries. And I never did this. But being able to say, look, I’ve got to put myself first. If I’m not mentally healthy, I can’t help anybody else. And to be able to say, look, I’m willing to support you, but I’m not going to give myself over to you. And my own emotional well-being was never a priority until I became pregnant. And if you think about it, it wasn’t a priority then, either. That was talking about the baby; it wasn’t talking about myself. So that can be very difficult. It can be essentially like leading a horse to water but you can’t make them drink and you can make yourself aware of all of the treatment options and try to get that person engaged in them and then support them while they’re going through it. But you can’t live somebody else’s life for them. And I think this was a big learning that I had. That was my mother had to do what she had to do. And I had to do what I had to do and I couldn’t force her into any particular situation. And so I think that that’s something that I wish I had known earlier, but I think that in my particular situation, I just needed to go through that for many years of just trying to fix it before I realized I can’t really fix it. If anyone’s going to fix it, she’s going to fix it, with access to the right treatment, which she absolutely had. It just wasn’t enough in her case, which was a sad situation. And I hope people also realize that there are a lot of options out there. If you have a mentally ill parent or someone you love,there are so many great resources. It’s not perfect. Medication’s not perfect. Therapy’s not perfect. Support groups aren’t perfect. But we are in so much of a better situation now than we were, let’s say, 20 years ago, where we are talking about these issues thanks to podcasts like this. It’s becoming out in the open. I wouldn’t have been able to have a frank podcast interview when my mother first died about this, but now I feel like the floodgates are being open, partially due to the celebrity causes. Unfortunately, we’ve had a lot of celebrities that have ended their lives in recent years. And that has helped us become more transparent. And then just seek out other support for yourself. I think the final piece of advice especially someone who knows what you’re going through if you can find resources like that where you can really talk frankly with someone who has been there. I think it’s really helpful to not feel so alienated and isolated.

Gabe Howard: Thank you so much. We can’t agree more. We’re really big fans of saying that we need to discuss mental illness, mental health, and psychology just much more open. I believe the word that you used was be more transparent about it. Because this is actually very common in our society. And I don’t mean suicide; I just mean mental illness or a mental health crisis or even just things like grief and stress or being overwhelmed. But, for whatever reason, you know, many of these things we kind of keep to ourselves until they reach a boiling point. So we really appreciate you being so open with, you know, something as personal as the relationship with your mother and how it impacted you and has affected your life. And to that point, my next question is, how has that relationship affected other relationships? Because you talk a lot about the relationship that you had with your mother, but you have relationships with other people. How is that going?

Ally Golden: That’s a great question, actually, that there’s two thirds of the book that are devoted to that, that are part two and part three, and it’s been a really troublesome journey for me and, I’ll be honest with you, I think that the biggest impact that my mother’s illness had on me was on my interpersonal skills, because I just… I didn’t know how to relate to people in a way that didn’t involve kind of neediness and manipulation and, I wasn’t borderline myself, fortunately, but I did pick up some of those traits, because that’s what was modeled for you. And so, I didn’t know how to have a separate existence that didn’t involve me glomming onto someone and making my needs their needs and vice versa. So I tended to, early on in my – especially in my romantic life, when I was very young or teenager – I tended to develop codependent relationships that weren’t necessarily healthy and what I ended up doing was I met somebody who was very stable and very reliable and when I was 20 years old and I made a life partner decision based on the fact that it was stable and normal and, you know, he wasn’t going to leave me and it wasn’t going to be turbulent and I was able to avoid ,I think for for many of the next several years, any kind of relationship turmoil that my mother had gone through.  But, you know, I mean as you get older you recognize that you need to learn certain things about yourself and so… I’m still married and my husband and I have been together for almost twenty two years, but in some of my other relationships with family members, I’m learning how to how to be vulnerable and how to express need without it being this all-consuming thing. But I would definitely say that this has been my greatest life challenge… has been turning it around from being someone who learned really unhealthy, not productive behaviors and becoming a fully functioning adult when it comes to relationships. So that’s been tough. And with my own children, you know, I mean I think I’ve been very very careful to not show too much in front of them. And I think I would, if I’m being very honest, I’ve probably gone too far in the other direction. My children need to see that I’m a human being, but I have a lot of trouble showing emotion in front of them, showing need in front of them, because I’m just so viscerally disturbed by the idea of putting on my kids anything like what my mother put on me. So, you know, I mean it’s not going to be perfect for sure. And you know, I guess based on the way that I was raised, I’m not going to be a perfect parent. I’m not going be a perfect human. But I’m doing the best I can and that’s I guess my message for other people is just, all you can do is the best that you can, learn from your experiences, try to get support, and take one day at a time.

Vincent M. Wales: Now, I think my last question for you has to do, again, with your mother. I myself had a… well let’s call it an unusual relationship with with my late mother. Were there good times that you had? I’m sure there must have been at some point. Could you talk on that a little bit?

Ally Golden: So I think one of the reasons that my relationship with my mother was so problematic is because it was inconsistent and, I don’t know what yours was like, but with my mom…if she had been universally horrible and, you know, like the evil stepmother that you hear about in Cinderella, then it would be much easier for me to just walk away or say, this woman is crazy; I don’t have anything to do with her. But that’s not what my situation was. My mother – in particular, when I was very, very young, when I was an infant, when I was a young toddler – my mother was an excellent mother. I talk about in the book, she was always the one who was in my corner. She was the one who encouraged me to be a writer. She always stood up for me when I had problems with other people. She was the person who wanted to go to bat for me at school. She was always the person I wanted to talk to when I had a problem and she was a great source of support in many ways. And she did love me. I really do feel that my mother loved me to the best of her ability. And, if she could have been a better parent, she would have. She wanted to have a child and in particular she wanted to have a daughter. So when she got that, I really do think that, if it wasn’t for the illness, we would have had a wonderful relationship throughout my life. And it’s just the illness stole that from her. But I don’t say that you know there weren’t good times. There certainly were. And like I said, if it had been more all or nothing, then I would it would’ve been easier for me. But the fact is I never really knew what was going to happen, how my mother was going to act toward me on any given day, what was going to set her off and so that actually kind of made it worse in a way, and I don’t know if you can relate to that based on your experience, but it was definitely troublesome for sure.

Vincent M. Wales: Thank you for sharing.

Gabe Howard: Yes. Thank you so much. And thank you for being on the show. I’m assuming that we can find your book on Amazon and probably many other booksellers online and off line. Where can we find your Web site, Ally?

Ally Golden: So my Web site is AllyGolden.com and it essentially just has some basic information about me and the book. And then of course the book is called A Good Soldier. And one thing I hope that – I know that a lot of your listeners are going through similar things and I genuinely love to hear from people, so you can email me through the Ally Golden website and I will get back to you. I write everyone back. So if people want advice… I mean again, I’m not a… I actually don’t even think I said this once, but I’m not a mental health professional, so I can’t take the place of someone who is qualified to give real advice but I can offer advice from the perspective of someone who’s been there and that’s what I did this for. So I would love to hear from people what you thought of the book, even if you hated the book. I mean I want to hear that too. What did you hate about it? What did you think didn’t ring true or what didn’t resonate? Like that feedback is just as valuable sometimes. So I look forward to hearing from everyone.

Gabe Howard: We couldn’t agree more and thank you so much for being so vulnerable and transparent and, again, peer support is very valuable. We’ve talked about it on this show before. That’s what Vin and I are. In many ways, we offer peer support. I talk about living with bipolar disorder. Vin talks about living with depression and we talk about the trials and tribulations of our life and hey we’ve gotten this far. So why not? I think our points are very valid and we’re glad that yours is too.

Ally Golden: They are and you guys are doing a great job. This is a great show and I really thank you for the service to the community because it is so important and it really does make a difference to people.

Vincent M. Wales: Thank you.

Ally Golden: So thank you.

Gabe Howard: We really appreciate that and thank you everyone for tuning in. Without our listeners, we’d be nothing. So remember, you can get one week of free, convenient, affordable, private, online counseling anytime, anywhere, by visiting BetterHelp.com/PsychCentral. Help us support our sponsor and we will see you all next week.

Narrator 1: Thank you for listening to the Psych Central Show. Please rate, review, and subscribe on iTunes or wherever you found this podcast. We encourage you to share our show on social media and with friends and family. Previous episodes can be found at PsychCentral.com/show. PsychCentral.com is the internet’s oldest and largest independent mental health website. Psych Central is overseen by Dr. John Grohol, a mental health expert and one of the pioneering leaders in online mental health. Our host, Gabe Howard, is an award-winning writer and speaker who travels nationally. You can find more information on Gabe at GabeHoward.com. Our co-host, Vincent M. Wales, is a trained suicide prevention crisis counselor and author of several award-winning speculative fiction novels. You can learn more about Vincent at VincentMWales.com. If you have feedback about the show, please email [email protected].

About The Psych Central Show Podcast Hosts

Gabe Howard is an award-winning writer and speaker who lives with bipolar and anxiety disorders. He is also one of the co-hosts of the popular show, A Bipolar, a Schizophrenic, and a Podcast. As a speaker, he travels nationally and is available to make your event stand out. To work with Gabe, please visit his website, gabehoward.com.

    Vincent M. Wales is a former suicide prevention counselor who lives with persistent depressive disorder. He is also the author of several award-winning novels and creator of the costumed hero, Dynamistress. Visit his websites at www.vincentmwales.com and www.dynamistress.com.

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Podcast: Growing Up With a Mentally Ill Parent



Growing up with a mentally ill parent can be a traumatic experience for any child. For Ally Golden, her mother’s mental illness was major depression, later diagnosed as borderline personality disorder. Ally’s book, A Good Soldier, chronicles her life growing up in this environment, with a mentally ill mother who frequently threatened suicide, and the psychological trauma that resulted for her. Decades later, her mother carried out her threat. Listen to hear Ally’s fascinating story.

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About Our Guest

Ally Golden is the author of A Good Soldier, a memoir on the emotional toll of growing up with a mentally ill parent. It is available on Amazon and other online bookstores. Ally frequently writes and speaks on the impacts of mental illness on family life. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and the Atlantic. Ally is also an active volunteer with the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, where she witnesses firsthand the devastating influence mental illnesses can have on the loved ones of the afflicted. To learn more about Ally, visit her website.

    DEFYING BIPOLAR SHOW TRANSCRIPT (Computer-Generated)

Narrator 1: Welcome to the Psych Central show, where each episode presents an in-depth look at issues from the field of psychology and mental health –  with host Gabe Howard and co-host Vincent M. Wales.

Gabe Howard: Hello everyone and welcome to this week’s episode of the Psych Central Show podcast. My name is Gabe Howard and with me as always is Vincent M. Wales. Today, Vince and I will be speaking with Ally Golden, author of A Good Soldier, a memoir on the emotional toll of growing up with a mentally ill parent. Ali, welcome to the show.

Ally Golden: Thank you so much for having me. I’m so excited to be here.

Vincent M. Wales: We’re glad you are here. So, right off the bat, I want to ask you – as Gabe just read – it was a memoir on the emotional toll of growing up with a mentally ill parent. What’s the story there? Give us a little background.

Ally Golden: While the story is I grew up in a relatively privileged environment. My family was upper middle class and I was living in the suburbs of Washington D.C. and on paper everything looked pretty good. When I was very young, my parents were still married, but my mother had always suffered from mental illness from the time that she was in her early 20s and by the time my brother was born – he was just a couple of years younger – my mother had really started to deteriorate. She at first had major depressive disorder, but then gradually began to develop what is known as borderline personality disorder, which is a personality disorder that’s characterized by shifts in how you view people, how you see yourself and your relationships. And unfortunately I was shaped by my mother’s constant volatility in terms of how she interacted with, me how she interacted with the rest of our immediate family, and how she interacted with our friends and extended family. And when I was eight years old, my mother began to share with me that she planned to end her life, and the next about 20 years were characterized by a lot of manipulation on her part to try and get me to do and say different things so that I could keep her alive and my own life was a game of control. And as long as my mother had survived, I had won that game. And so, my existence and my childhood were really formed on the basis of feeling like I could control another person and that of course, as you guys can imagine, led to some problems later on down the road. So the book talks about childhood but it also talks about what happens when you grow up in that kind of environment and how do you form your own relationships and how sometimes they fail because that’s not the most productive mentally efficacious way to go about life. And then how I go about starting my own family and the types of challenges that I face there.

Gabe Howard: Just to clarify: when you say your childhood, when did this start having an impact on you. I mean when did you become aware of your mother’s illness and when did it really start ramping up for you like to affect you personally.

Ally Golden: I was always aware of my mother’s illness. There’s a scene in the book where I talk about being like 3 or 4 years old and witnessing my mother crying in our living room. So I always knew something a little bit different about her. But when it really started impacting me was when she started threatening suicide. Because at that point I just became very scared and I would say or do anything to keep her safe. And being so young and feeling like you had to be the parent when you were a pretty young child definitely had some damaging effects and just led me to never know what one day or another was going to bring. In addition to being suicidal much of the time, my mother was also very volatile in terms of interactions with people. So I just never knew what was going to happen at the grocery store, what was going to happen at school, like who was my mother going to have a conflict with? And where was there going to be a scene? So, I would say almost as long as I can remember, my mother’s illness was a very salient part of my existence.

Gabe Howard: The title of the book, it’s… can you explain the title?

Ally Golden: I would love to explain the title for the title officially comes from some Tori Amos lyrics. Tori Amos is a musician, a songwriter who is very popular in the early to mid 90s, which is when I was coming of age and her song “Mother” talks about being a good soldier by raising your hand and always doing the right thing. And those lyrics really spoke to me because that was how I’ve gone about life. I’ve tried to do the right thing by my mother, by society, what’s expected and how can I not only meet those expectations, but exceed them? Despite the fact that things might not always make sense, I want to do the right thing, and so that’s where that title – A Good Soldier – I’m going to go through what’s essentially a war in my childhood.  But I’m going to do what I feel is right and what is the best thing. That’s where that comes from.

Vincent M. Wales: Well, at first, I was going to remark, you mean there are listeners who don’t know who Tori is? Really?

Ally Golden: Younger people don’t.

Vincent M. Wales: Then I stopped for a minute and though, yeah, of course there are.

Ally Golden: Younger people don’t.

Gabe Howard: Tori is fantastic.

Vincent M. Wales: I know, I’m gonna bust out my Little Earthquakes CD after we get off the show.

Ally Golden: Oh, that’s my favorite one and the song “Mother” is on the Little Earthquakes CD, and you know what, I’ve got a huge audience of college students that are really into the book. Because the book mostly takes place while I’m at college and they don’t… most of them do not know who Tori Amos is. I would say 80 percent do not have never heard her. So yeah it’s sad. I know it’s terrible.

Vincent M. Wales: It’s unfortunate.

Gabe Howard: That is sad. So Sad.

Vincent M. Wales: So yeah. OK so it takes place mostly in your college years. I think that’s pretty interesting, myself. What are some of the things you know during the process of writing this book, what have you personally gotten out of it?

Ally Golden: So originally I wrote it and I hoped there would be some sort of catharsis. Whenever you write a memoir, you’re like, well, I hope this is going to fill me with peace. And it really didn’t. I would say that the reason that I ended up finishing it at the end of the day was to help other people. And that may sound really earnest and a little bit cheesy, but I really wanted to… I’m a writer in my professional life as well. And I felt like if it was anybody’s place to be able to talk about this in a relatively coherent way, it was my place. And I… The one thing that I had wished when I was going through my childhood, my adolescence, and then later, after my mother (and this is a spoiler alert) after my mother did end her life, I felt very alienated and alone that nobody really understood what I was going through. And I wished I had a book like A Good Soldier. And I wish I could have talked with the author and felt like someone else had experienced the type of childhood and the type of trauma that I had. And so that really was the primary motivator for finishing it, editing it, and then publishing it. Because I had the typical concerns I think people have when writing a memoir. First of all, I wasn’t sure it was any good. That was a big hurdle that I had to get over. Like, I didn’t want to put out a piece of crap. And then, of course, you worry about stigma. Of course, you guys talk about that and we’ve all talked about that a lot in the mental health community. Putting this information publicly out there about my family, whereas even when my mother died, very few people knew about my situation. Even people who I could consider relatively close friends. And so, putting it out there publicly was kind of a big deal for me. And so, these were things that I had to deal with, but I just kept reminding myself, look if I can help even one person who has a mother like this feel a little bit better about their situation, then it’s worth it. And I’ve actually gotten probably a hundred emails from people over the last year, it’s been published about a year. And those e-mails just… They touch me, I correspond with people back and forth. I try to help them as best I can. And even though there is no real hope unfortunately for many of these situations, but at least I can make them feel like they’re not alone. And that’s what that was really the goal.

Vincent M. Wales: All right, well now that you gave us the spoiler…

Ally Golden: Sorry.

Vincent M. Wales: It’s okay. Tell us tell us about what happened there and at what point did your  mom finally take her life?

Ally Golden: Well, it’s a little bit of an interesting story in the sense that people always ask the question, well do you feel guilty? Because, sad as it is to say, there was a direct relationship between my behavior and my mother finally doing it. As I mentioned, she started threatening when I was around 8. And threatened it pretty often. Up until she actually did end her life when I was 30 years old. And, the way that it happened in the end was that I had said to my mom when I got pregnant, Mom, you know, I’ve been putting your emotional well-being ahead of that of myself for years. But now I have someone else that I need to think about. I’m going to have a baby and that baby is going to have to come first. And it was the first time in my life I’d ever set a boundary for my mother. Previously, I just let her kind of say and do whatever she wanted. And I put up with it. I let myself be emotionally driven by whatever my mother’s needs happened to be at the time because I was still… I still had it ingrained in me that I needed to save her at all costs. And so what I had done was I had driven her up to Providence, Rhode Island, where there was a treatment program – a world class treatment program – for borderline personality disorder. And they had said to her, you’ve got a detox off these prescription drugs before we can help you, because right now we don’t even know who the real Susan Golden is, because she’s so hyped on all of these prescription drugs. And my mother said no. My mother said, you know that is not going to happen. I need these drugs for various reasons. And that was when I had said to her, Mom, until I can talk to a therapist that tells me that you were making progress then that will.. you know… I’m not going to talk to you until we can do that. And that was when she ended her life. So, unfortunately it had a direct relationship to my actions, which was finally setting a boundary. And people say to me all the time, well do you feel guilty? And I’m like, look, I did what I needed to do. And it was 20 years later. I can’t put up with this stuff for 20 years. And I had to put my child first. Like that was the right thing to do, but it was of course very traumatic, as you both can imagine. And my mother also… the way she executed it was different. I mean, forgive the pun there. That’s pretty macabre. But it was different than we had always thought, like she’d always talked about pills and she didn’t use pills; she had a gun, which was very very surprising to me and very traumatic. It’s just not how I had imagined it. And it was very hard to hear from the police that it had happened that way. It was very hard to imagine when I would keep replaying the scene over and over again in my mind.

Gabe Howard: Of course I’m very sorry to hear about your mother and I’m so glad that you’re able to talk about it because, unfortunately, a lot of times when when things like this happen in our society, we tend to sweep them under the rug and we don’t talk about them and, to your point, many people have gone through what you went through and you are creating community for them. How does that feel? I mean, you’re a member of this community because you were traumatized by something that happens but that also was the inspiration to do it. So it’s, it’s sort of a double edged sword here.

Ally Golden: Yeah.

Gabe Howard: How does all of this come together for you?

Ally Golden: It comes together for me in a complicated way. I mean, just this weekend, I had something happen where… So I served as a volunteer survivor support person for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention for the last nine years. If you are a suicide survivor, meaning you have someone that you’d lost to suicide, you are able to volunteer to go and help other people cope with recent suicide loss, but you have to wait a year after your own loss so that you’re not interfering too much with… your own feelings aren’t interfering too much with what that person is going through. But I’ve done this for for nine years and, this past weekend, I had to turn down a visit because I just didn’t feel like I could handle it, personally. So, you know, sometimes my own needs still need to come first. But overall, I would say it’s been an amazing experience creating this community and helping people who are in a very similar specific situation. It’s been kind of eye opening to me to hear from people via e mail who have parents that are exactly like this. And sadly, many of them are my age now, like in their early 40s, and their parents are in their 70s and 80s is this is still going on. I can’t even imagine. It sounds terrible to say, but I think it’s important to recognize that sometimes your life gets better when something like this happens, because you just have less of the ongoing trauma. And I can say that I’ve just been much more effective as a person and as a parent not having my mother kind of holding this over my head all the time. I can’t imagine having like 30 or 40 more years of this to deal with and that’s what a lot of these people are going through and just to even be able to offer them the smallest modicum of support has really been helpful to me personally.

Gabe Howard: Thank you, Ally. We’re going to step away and hear from our sponsor. We’ll be right back.

Narrator 2: This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp.com, secure, convenient and affordable online counselling. All counselors are licensed, accredited professionals. Anything you share is confidential. Schedule secure video or phone sessions, plus chat and text with your therapist whenever you feel it’s needed. A month of online therapy often costs less than a single traditional face-to-face session. Go to BetterHelp.com/PsychCentral and experience seven days of free therapy to see if online counselling is right for you. BetterHelp.com/PsychCentral.

Vincent M. Wales: Welcome back, everyone.  We’re here with Ally Golden, author of A Good Soldier.

Gabe Howard: When you realize that your life improved after your mother’s death, did you feel bad about that? I think that many listeners would immediately feel like, oh wait, you were happy about it, you were glad? And I don’t think that you’re saying that you were happy about it. You’re just saying that, unfortunately, there was this – to use your word – this kind of macabre silver lining. That must be difficult to wrap your mind around.

Ally Golden: That is. And I definitely was not happy. In fact I had PTSD for a year. I also ended up giving birth to my child prematurely because of this – or not necessarily because of it, but let’s just say that there likely was some relationship because I was pregnant, remember. So my mother knew that I was pregnant and then did it anyway. So you know I had to to deal with a premature baby and had a lot of stress associated with that. So I was definitely not happy. I was miserable and the only reason that it ended up having a silver lining at all is that I was released from the constant stress of the uncertainty of not knowing if my mother was going to live to the next day. It’s kind of like – I like to compare it to having a terminal illness. You don’t want… no one wants to see someone that they they love suffer so much. And at a certain point for my mother, it kind of became like a terminal illness. But she just wasn’t able to get better. And you can, we could argue, we could spend a whole other podcast talking about, did she do everything she could? Was.. you know… Was it enough? Like, was there something else that was possible to happen besides this outcome? And that’s a whole existential psychological discussion. And I talked about it with people. But I think having empathy for her and I was able to come to the decision at the end that, you know, this had to happen for my mother in particular and definitely not for everyone. I’m not advocating suicide as a solution, but my mother was very, very ill and she stopped suffering. So there definitely was a positive thing in that that I try to look back on it and say well, she didn’t get to the age of 80 being completely miserable every single day. And, hopefully wherever she is now, it’s in a better place of learning, of peace. We don’t know what happens. There’s no way for us to know, but I like to think that her suffering at least is over.

Vincent M. Wales: So what advice at this point would you have for other children of mentally ill parents that might help them a little bit?

Ally Golden: So there’s a couple forms that advice would take for other children of mentally ill parents. When you’re a child, just look for other sources of support where you can. Sometimes that can be problematic because a lot of times the mentally ill person will distance or isolate themselves. Not always by choice. Sometimes because their illness isolates other people and that makes it difficult. But try to find other sources of support, other family members, other parents, mentors teachers, somebody else who can show you what it means to be a normal stable human adult and somebody who can love you unconditionally. I think that that’s really important. And in terms of people who are adult children of mentally ill parents, I think it’s important to set boundaries. And I never did this. But being able to say, look, I’ve got to put myself first. If I’m not mentally healthy, I can’t help anybody else. And to be able to say, look, I’m willing to support you, but I’m not going to give myself over to you. And my own emotional well-being was never a priority until I became pregnant. And if you think about it, it wasn’t a priority then, either. That was talking about the baby; it wasn’t talking about myself. So that can be very difficult. It can be essentially like leading a horse to water but you can’t make them drink and you can make yourself aware of all of the treatment options and try to get that person engaged in them and then support them while they’re going through it. But you can’t live somebody else’s life for them. And I think this was a big learning that I had. That was my mother had to do what she had to do. And I had to do what I had to do and I couldn’t force her into any particular situation. And so I think that that’s something that I wish I had known earlier, but I think that in my particular situation, I just needed to go through that for many years of just trying to fix it before I realized I can’t really fix it. If anyone’s going to fix it, she’s going to fix it, with access to the right treatment, which she absolutely had. It just wasn’t enough in her case, which was a sad situation. And I hope people also realize that there are a lot of options out there. If you have a mentally ill parent or someone you love,there are so many great resources. It’s not perfect. Medication’s not perfect. Therapy’s not perfect. Support groups aren’t perfect. But we are in so much of a better situation now than we were, let’s say, 20 years ago, where we are talking about these issues thanks to podcasts like this. It’s becoming out in the open. I wouldn’t have been able to have a frank podcast interview when my mother first died about this, but now I feel like the floodgates are being open, partially due to the celebrity causes. Unfortunately, we’ve had a lot of celebrities that have ended their lives in recent years. And that has helped us become more transparent. And then just seek out other support for yourself. I think the final piece of advice especially someone who knows what you’re going through if you can find resources like that where you can really talk frankly with someone who has been there. I think it’s really helpful to not feel so alienated and isolated.

Gabe Howard: Thank you so much. We can’t agree more. We’re really big fans of saying that we need to discuss mental illness, mental health, and psychology just much more open. I believe the word that you used was be more transparent about it. Because this is actually very common in our society. And I don’t mean suicide; I just mean mental illness or a mental health crisis or even just things like grief and stress or being overwhelmed. But, for whatever reason, you know, many of these things we kind of keep to ourselves until they reach a boiling point. So we really appreciate you being so open with, you know, something as personal as the relationship with your mother and how it impacted you and has affected your life. And to that point, my next question is, how has that relationship affected other relationships? Because you talk a lot about the relationship that you had with your mother, but you have relationships with other people. How is that going?

Ally Golden: That’s a great question, actually, that there’s two thirds of the book that are devoted to that, that are part two and part three, and it’s been a really troublesome journey for me and, I’ll be honest with you, I think that the biggest impact that my mother’s illness had on me was on my interpersonal skills, because I just… I didn’t know how to relate to people in a way that didn’t involve kind of neediness and manipulation and, I wasn’t borderline myself, fortunately, but I did pick up some of those traits, because that’s what was modeled for you. And so, I didn’t know how to have a separate existence that didn’t involve me glomming onto someone and making my needs their needs and vice versa. So I tended to, early on in my – especially in my romantic life, when I was very young or teenager – I tended to develop codependent relationships that weren’t necessarily healthy and what I ended up doing was I met somebody who was very stable and very reliable and when I was 20 years old and I made a life partner decision based on the fact that it was stable and normal and, you know, he wasn’t going to leave me and it wasn’t going to be turbulent and I was able to avoid ,I think for for many of the next several years, any kind of relationship turmoil that my mother had gone through.  But, you know, I mean as you get older you recognize that you need to learn certain things about yourself and so… I’m still married and my husband and I have been together for almost twenty two years, but in some of my other relationships with family members, I’m learning how to how to be vulnerable and how to express need without it being this all-consuming thing. But I would definitely say that this has been my greatest life challenge… has been turning it around from being someone who learned really unhealthy, not productive behaviors and becoming a fully functioning adult when it comes to relationships. So that’s been tough. And with my own children, you know, I mean I think I’ve been very very careful to not show too much in front of them. And I think I would, if I’m being very honest, I’ve probably gone too far in the other direction. My children need to see that I’m a human being, but I have a lot of trouble showing emotion in front of them, showing need in front of them, because I’m just so viscerally disturbed by the idea of putting on my kids anything like what my mother put on me. So, you know, I mean it’s not going to be perfect for sure. And you know, I guess based on the way that I was raised, I’m not going to be a perfect parent. I’m not going be a perfect human. But I’m doing the best I can and that’s I guess my message for other people is just, all you can do is the best that you can, learn from your experiences, try to get support, and take one day at a time.

Vincent M. Wales: Now, I think my last question for you has to do, again, with your mother. I myself had a… well let’s call it an unusual relationship with with my late mother. Were there good times that you had? I’m sure there must have been at some point. Could you talk on that a little bit?

Ally Golden: So I think one of the reasons that my relationship with my mother was so problematic is because it was inconsistent and, I don’t know what yours was like, but with my mom…if she had been universally horrible and, you know, like the evil stepmother that you hear about in Cinderella, then it would be much easier for me to just walk away or say, this woman is crazy; I don’t have anything to do with her. But that’s not what my situation was. My mother – in particular, when I was very, very young, when I was an infant, when I was a young toddler – my mother was an excellent mother. I talk about in the book, she was always the one who was in my corner. She was the one who encouraged me to be a writer. She always stood up for me when I had problems with other people. She was the person who wanted to go to bat for me at school. She was always the person I wanted to talk to when I had a problem and she was a great source of support in many ways. And she did love me. I really do feel that my mother loved me to the best of her ability. And, if she could have been a better parent, she would have. She wanted to have a child and in particular she wanted to have a daughter. So when she got that, I really do think that, if it wasn’t for the illness, we would have had a wonderful relationship throughout my life. And it’s just the illness stole that from her. But I don’t say that you know there weren’t good times. There certainly were. And like I said, if it had been more all or nothing, then I would it would’ve been easier for me. But the fact is I never really knew what was going to happen, how my mother was going to act toward me on any given day, what was going to set her off and so that actually kind of made it worse in a way, and I don’t know if you can relate to that based on your experience, but it was definitely troublesome for sure.

Vincent M. Wales: Thank you for sharing.

Gabe Howard: Yes. Thank you so much. And thank you for being on the show. I’m assuming that we can find your book on Amazon and probably many other booksellers online and off line. Where can we find your Web site, Ally?

Ally Golden: So my Web site is AllyGolden.com and it essentially just has some basic information about me and the book. And then of course the book is called A Good Soldier. And one thing I hope that – I know that a lot of your listeners are going through similar things and I genuinely love to hear from people, so you can email me through the Ally Golden website and I will get back to you. I write everyone back. So if people want advice… I mean again, I’m not a… I actually don’t even think I said this once, but I’m not a mental health professional, so I can’t take the place of someone who is qualified to give real advice but I can offer advice from the perspective of someone who’s been there and that’s what I did this for. So I would love to hear from people what you thought of the book, even if you hated the book. I mean I want to hear that too. What did you hate about it? What did you think didn’t ring true or what didn’t resonate? Like that feedback is just as valuable sometimes. So I look forward to hearing from everyone.

Gabe Howard: We couldn’t agree more and thank you so much for being so vulnerable and transparent and, again, peer support is very valuable. We’ve talked about it on this show before. That’s what Vin and I are. In many ways, we offer peer support. I talk about living with bipolar disorder. Vin talks about living with depression and we talk about the trials and tribulations of our life and hey we’ve gotten this far. So why not? I think our points are very valid and we’re glad that yours is too.

Ally Golden: They are and you guys are doing a great job. This is a great show and I really thank you for the service to the community because it is so important and it really does make a difference to people.

Vincent M. Wales: Thank you.

Ally Golden: So thank you.

Gabe Howard: We really appreciate that and thank you everyone for tuning in. Without our listeners, we’d be nothing. So remember, you can get one week of free, convenient, affordable, private, online counseling anytime, anywhere, by visiting BetterHelp.com/PsychCentral. Help us support our sponsor and we will see you all next week.

Narrator 1: Thank you for listening to the Psych Central Show. Please rate, review, and subscribe on iTunes or wherever you found this podcast. We encourage you to share our show on social media and with friends and family. Previous episodes can be found at PsychCentral.com/show. PsychCentral.com is the internet’s oldest and largest independent mental health website. Psych Central is overseen by Dr. John Grohol, a mental health expert and one of the pioneering leaders in online mental health. Our host, Gabe Howard, is an award-winning writer and speaker who travels nationally. You can find more information on Gabe at GabeHoward.com. Our co-host, Vincent M. Wales, is a trained suicide prevention crisis counselor and author of several award-winning speculative fiction novels. You can learn more about Vincent at VincentMWales.com. If you have feedback about the show, please email [email protected].

About The Psych Central Show Podcast Hosts

Gabe Howard is an award-winning writer and speaker who lives with bipolar and anxiety disorders. He is also one of the co-hosts of the popular show, A Bipolar, a Schizophrenic, and a Podcast. As a speaker, he travels nationally and is available to make your event stand out. To work with Gabe, please visit his website, gabehoward.com.

    Vincent M. Wales is a former suicide prevention counselor who lives with persistent depressive disorder. He is also the author of several award-winning novels and creator of the costumed hero, Dynamistress. Visit his websites at www.vincentmwales.com and www.dynamistress.com.

      from World of Psychology https://ift.tt/2QhbDpr via IFTTT

#Repeat #Business #– #Use #This #Overlooked #Concept #and #See #Dramatic #Increases #in #Happy, #Loyal #Customers #clouds #comedy #fashiondaily #fitness #haircut #halfindonesiajapan #inspiration #makeuplife #music #viral

Studying how to draw repeat firm is the most effective thing you can do to get far more out of your marketing bucks and enhance income.

You’ll not be common with the phrase “use” once it comes to your business, however it truly is some thing which is significantly essential and usually skipped.

Permit me notify you a tale concerning a current purchase I manufactured….

Including numerous women, I consider Sephora to be “exactly where” for cosmetic goods. On one of my many rides to Sephora I purchased a bag total of things (which I hoped my partner would not view – he isn’t going to want to know I need all this stuff). I experienced lotions and lotions and I was thrilled about the accomplishment of my trip.

When I got property I snuck the bag in the house and up to the toilet to set it all absent, and then went on with my working day.

That evening when it arrived time to get better prepared for mattress, I noticed all my wonderful refreshing bottles and jars and tubes of high-priced pores and skin treatment and I understood I was not a hundred% sure which product to use at night vs .} the early morning and diverse other things that overwhelmed me. So, what did I do? I chosen up my previous cleanser and moisturizer and used individuals. Not even opening the new products I just bought.

Several of you are experience why did I hassle getting them?

The reason is the retailer made them look good, there was a rather present, some promised advantages and a pretty product sales female telling me it was excellent for my skin sort.

So, you are going to be pondering what is actually the issue here; they made a sale – they need to be pleased.

BUT imagine this – just isn’t it so much simpler to get repeat business than it is to get new business? (The reply to that inquire is sure) But why would I buy an additional product against the line when I wasn’t even sure how to use the initial one???

The problem here’s consumption. Folks buy products but they often (more often then you’d think) do not drink them. They may be confused, they may forget about the product once they get it home, they may be way too active – there are a great number of factors why. The base line is, in buy to get me hooked and get me back again in the store they need to guarantee I consume the first product I bought and drop in enjoy with it.

This problem exists in all industries. Carry you ever bought a guide and then not read it? Have you bought a home examine course and not completed it? Sold a tape collection and not listingened to it? My overflowing closet tells me I have. It all ends up in there for me to reach “one day.”

I may well have wished it in excess of anything, I might be busting at the seams for a bundle to occur in the mail. But existence kicks in and I get busy and one day gets another day and then its months and the buzz for the product is absent.

OK, I think I have harped on the problem lengthy ample. Now let us watch the solution….

In the scenario of my bag of beauty products what do you think they could have completed to guide me in the direction of making use of the product?

There are maybe many imaginative ideas, but I will just toss out a couple of of them as samples….

1. They could have included an instruction sheet telling me exactly when and how to use it. And I don’t suggest the tiny print directions on the jar by itself. An genuine pretty full shade sheet with images of lovely women (to remind me I can look like them with this product) and a recap of the benefits and then very straightforward stage by step directions. If I had that, I might have certainly used it.

two. They could include a CD for me to hear in the car on the way home with great skin care ideas and details.

a few. They could have had a product rep in the store to train and every me how to use the product and answer my inquiries.

None of that ensures I will go home and use the product, but it tends to make it much more likely. And brief of likely to the home of each of your consumers and forcing them to consume your product, all you can do is think of the largest factor that would finish individuals from ingesting your product and consider to deal with that issue.

When you sell something on-line, you collect their e-mail address so at the very the very least they should be included to your customer list and please be emailing them with tips on currently being the most out of the product and reminding them they need to really dig into it to get the benefits and then restate the benefits.

You can supply them a price cut on their subsequent order or even some other totally free present if they use your product and give you remarks inside of a certain quantity of time. You are killing two birds with one stone there – you give them the incentive to consume and you are securing a testimonial.

I urge you not to overlook this important thought. Your activity isn’t done once you’ve got the sale.

As soon as you have them consuming your product – you can sell them other products, sell renewals/refills of what they initially bought and so much more.

So keep in mind – just since a person demands something – doesn’t mean they’re going to use it.

Please consideration on instructing consumption to your customers and establishing your business by means of repeat guests.

The post Repeat Business – Use This Overlooked Concept and See Dramatic Increases in Happy, Loyal Customers appeared first on Beautiful Women.

source http://topbeautifulwomen.com/repeat-business-use-this-overlooked-concept-and-see-dramatic-increases-in-happy-loyal-customers/

Consumer Guide / No.72 / Broadcaster & entrepreneur, Steve Crozier with Mark Watkins.  

MW : Tell me about your background, and what did you want to do?

SC : I was born in Hertfordshire, England, and as a young child spent many summers with my grandparents in Henley, on the banks of the Thames. 

When I was six, I remember my grandad always turning on the valve wireless to listen to the BBC Home service at 6pm, accompanied by a bottle of cider.

I remember hearing Frederic Mullaly read the bulletin, and was awestruck by his voice, and the power of disseminating world events.

After the news ended, Frederic would get into his car and drive from Broadcasting House to his home in Henley - very near to my grandparent’s riverside bungalow - and drink sherry with my grandpa and grandma! 

I’d sit on the floor, just awestruck! That's when I knew what I wanted to do!

MW : How did you get into broadcasting? 

SC : Via the back door of sales. At first, I didn’t make the cut for Reading’s Radio 210; at that time, in the mid 70s, I was in TV (ad) sales in London - which was well paid. Besides, that’s where I lived and I wasn’t experienced enough to work at LBC, or Capital Radio. I had my eyes firmly on the Reading ILR franchise which was awarded to Kennet Ltd (who then became Radio 210). 

I made a tape at Roger Squires and mailed it to Kennets’ address, and made an appointment to meet with Neil ffrench Blake, who was Programme controller. We met in the Albermarle pub in Mayfair, London, and he referred me to Michael Moore, at The Sun, who was assembling 210’s sales department. News International, who owned The Sun, was part funding 210. Michael was a Murdoch Star, he hired me. 

This new team started work about six months before launch in the Filberts building in Calcot row, which was the then HQ, while the ambulance shed next door was being attached and adapted for radio, and studio use. There were three of us: David Oldroyd from the local newspaper, Linda Brookes from Capital Radio and myself. We had a large area map on an easel into which we pushed glass top pins. It was like a War Room from an old movie! 

As sales got underway, it was obvious that the actual radio spots had to be produced, so I moved to a production managers position, and we made hundreds of spots.

One week before our launch deadline, Neil ffrench Blake offered me an on-air job; Saturdays, 10am to 2pm. There was no shortage of live guests, and one of my first was David Cassidy! So, dear reader THAT’S how I got into radio!

MW : As a teenager, what records do you remember buying/collecting?

SC: As a teenager, I remember amongst the first records records I bought were Sgt Pepper, The Beatles White album, and some misc singles. They were expensive when ones only income was a newspaper round, and some occasional gardening work! An album was three pounds ten shillings, and a single was ten shillings or more.

MW : OK, let’s tune to 210...

SC : In the early days of 210, there was a huge shift in music tastes. Disco was giving way to mega rock bands (Eagles, Fleetwood Mac) and soul, R&B and funk were massive too. Soon, in the late 70’s Punk was to explode... actually, programmers and top-level DJ/ presenters (Bob Harris) hadn’t a good grasp of what was actually happening! Bob actually got into a fight with Sid Vicious at a club in London, and  “called it a day” with Whistle Test. 

Tastes and audiences were changing.

At 210, there was a calm sea of music policy, enforced by Neil. The 210 Top 40 was a slow moving list, not sales based, but tailored to fit a certain pre-determined ‘sound’ like many of the programmers in the States.

DJ tastes were being eroded.

During my time at 210, us youngsters were always on the lookout to expand. Mike Read, Steve Wright, myself and others picked up a lot of outside gigs, mostly local disco work. 

Thanks to my documentary and talk experience I got more varied offers such as British Forces Broadcasting which paid very well (I subbed for Tommy Vance) and then BOOM!

I successfully applied to audition for Esther Rantzens’  ‘That’s Life’. What a step up that would be...

MW : ...‘That’s Life’ ?

SC :  ...every couple of years or so, Esther’s reporter sidekicks would cycle-out, and replacements had to be found. To start the audition process, I spent a few weeks at BBC West London, picking out useable stories and building them into TV-worthy items. (The actual show was on summer break.) This culminated in a full TV studio recording WITH audience. Just like the real thing. There were about eight finalists (four pairs), and it was quite nerve wracking. 

Sadly, I didn’t get the part; as seemed usual at the time, existing BBC reporters got the jobs... us outsiders were window dressing for this process, but it was super fun, a great experience. As a result, I became friends with the team, and often went up to TV centre to sit in on the tapings.

MW :  Capital Radio 194 went to air the same year as LBC in 1973, but it was Capital Radio 604 in South Africa that you later joined. How did you get involved, and how did the two “ Capitals” compare? 

SC : In late 1978, a revolutionary radio station was being formed in London and Cape Town called Capital Radio. It had nothing to do whatsoever with either the South African government, or 194. Rather, it was to be based in an ‘Independent’ African State, called the Transkei. The aim was to broadcast uncensored news and music from the ‘Homeland’ of Transkei, south, and into South Africa, which was ruled by apartheid, and white supremacy. 

604′s mission was to broadcast actual, real news, and play rock and pop which hadn’t been rejected by the SA government censors. Its transmitter was the “‘loudest” in the Southern Hemisphere, but the antenna system was misaligned, resulting in a poor AM signal to the intended audience. Short-wave and FM functioned to a point in Cape Town and to and extent, Johannesburg. 

I was chosen to ship out to Port St. Johns, Transkei, and helped set up the broadcasting side. The main studio and staff base was located in a sleepy former fishing town called Port St. Johns, on the Indian Ocean. It was Paradise! It was also the first time I’d earned a five figure, untaxed salary! No outgoing except for high quality wine and spirits!

http://www.capital604.com/

MW : LBC celebrates its 45th anniversary this year - let’s look back at your time there...

SC : LBC is a book in itself! Suffice it to say that I joined as a jobbing freelance, doing late -night shifts and news, and then rapidly to traffic analyst (reporter) at Scotland Yard. This taught me London geography, almost like a black-cab driver. We then brought traffic in-house, when we added a small ‘plane sponsored by the Evening Standard, to view traffic congestion. As far as weekday presentation was concerned, I was usually co-anchoring with Philip Hodson, David Loyn etc.

My primary arc at LBC was news reading for Independent Radio News (IRN) and, for eight of my eleven years, I ran the syndicated travel programme ‘Time Off’. This was a way for us to showcase the many, varied press trip offers the station received. We were blessed with a huge audience, plus the central ability to satellite-out the components of the show, and also the entire one hour reel. 

In the late eighties, when a lot of people went freelance (off staff) we worked through our own companies/ entities and I turned ‘Time Off’ into a cash machine, selling the sponsorships myself.

http://www.geofflumley.org.uk/lbc261/

MW : Melody Radio launched with the slogan 'At last - radio without the speakers' - as a launch presenter, what was it like?

SC : In 1990, Peter Black invited me to join Lord Hanson’s Melody Radio, which I did for four years. (A TV comedian at the time called it “Quiet FM”, orr was that Radio Two?!)

Nothing much happened here...apart from having the luxury of an actual producer for each show, including Roskos’ old producer Aidan Day, who was now scheduling easy listening!!

In 2005 off I went again... another adventure; this time to Nairobi and back to my TV roots to help redesign the Kenya Television Network (KTN) I was MD and CEO, and the re-shaping was drastic. In my early days there I bought first series of ‘ER’, ‘Fresh Prince of Bel Air’, ‘Days Of Our Lives’ etc... paying the super cheap “Third World” rate card price. And boy did we milk it until the reels had to be returned!

PC’s and WIndows ‘95 had just come out, so we were all good! Such systems, good sales and top TV presenters, staff, and shows took us rapidly to the most watched in the land. We also had exclusive use of CNN International for news inserts and over-night programming. I was also tasked with designing two FM stations for Nairobi (population 6.5 million) which were up and running after I left.

MW : What constitutes your life now?

SC : I met my Colorado born wife-to-be in Nairobi - who was on a sabbatical from Southern California, and a career in law.

In May 1996 we were married in Manhattan Beach, a suburb of Los Angeles, and soon moved to Santa Barbara where she continued a successful career in Law, and is now the Assistant City Attorney. 

We have a daughter, now at Berkeley, and I continue with my own media and web projects and a movie and TV project in development.

© Mark Watkins / October 2018