today’s vegetable

I wanted to quickly check in about the CASH fundraiser with some minor updates and announcements. (Nothing fancy, and I won’t try to skip out on a proper post later in the day. Promise.)

• On the whole it’s going really well so far. We’ve raised more attention than money, but both were goals from the start. I’m optimistic about the way it has unfolded so far, and there’s a real sense of momentum building on this end.
• We’ve gotten some nice coverage online, and I’d like to thank the following outlets: Magnet, Creative Commons, FMLY, Pitchfork, KEXP, Asthmatic Kitty, Kill Rock Stars, and Gold Robot. A nonprofit fundraiser isn’t always considered news but each mention makes a big difference. If I’ve missed anyone please drop a line in the comments.
• More people have started following our Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/cashmusic.org) and our Twitter account (@cashmusic) — thank you for listening and spreading the word! Growing awareness on a friend-to-friend level is vital to us, so every time you tell someone you know about CASH Music it helps.
• We just launched our “thank you” mix on the CASH site. There are 12 tracks from artists I genuinely love and you can bet there will be a full post about the whole playlist here soon. But it’s a great mix, half of which can’t be found elsewhere right now. Check out the free stream, but I promise that a couple bucks for the 320k download is well worth the donation to a good cause.
• We’re adding new items to the raffle in the next few days. They’ll go up as they’re ready but expect a proper announcement sometime next week.

That’s all for now. Thanks for giving it a read.

Healthcare issues are being debated on all levels of government and our personal lives. They’ve become central to our daily routine as this country tries to find its way, and they may well prove central to the Obama presidency.

I’m in no way qualified to talk about how to fix the system, but I feel plenty qualified saying it’s broken. This summer my family lost our health insurance because we simply couldn’t keep up with the premiums. Those of us who run small businesses, make art, or work on a 1099/freelance basis have to pay out of pocket for health insurance. In my case the bill weighed around $1300 a month for a family of three. That’s crushing, but with a toddler and a baby due…well…shit. You pay.

Long story short we spent about six weeks without insurance, and I had to hunt for a policy that would cover Taryn’s pregnancy and not consider it a “pre-existing condition.” After finding the right policy there was a series of phone calls to the insurance broker. I was given lists of paperwork, filled out page upon page, then back to the phone calls. Then more paper. In total the process took days, not hours, from my life. Now I’m paying the bargain price of $800 each month with higher doctor fees, higher prescription fees, and a pretty hefty deductable.

I don’t want to come across as bitching about a lousy system. I want to lend perspective.

Think about musicians. Artists who are touring the country playing music and working their way up can’t afford health insurance. An established artist who dares to start a family while continuing to make music can’t afford health insurance. Put your iTunes on shuffle. The music changes your life, but you can bet that a healthy percentage of the artists performing it can’t walk into an emergency room without fear of bankruptcy.

I don’t know enough about healthcare reform to say much more. The arguments I hear are largely centered around the comfortable middle class versus the destitute, but there are other perspectives to consider. Artists, entrepreneurs, freelancers, day laborers; all forced to pay out-of-pocket or risk ruin if they’re hurt.

The current system is broken.

One final, personal thought: Never should a family have to risk losing everything because they’re bringing a new life into this world.

Morrissey saved my life tonight. Music was breaking my heart. Remixes. Remasters. Bullshit upon crap built to suck the last few pennies from my already empty pockets, retroactively taxing me for buying albums that were apparently poorly mastered in the first place. Mediocrity. New albums from old favorites that serve as little more than patina on a precious catalog.

Photo: Dave Bullock (eecue)/Wired.com

It started with Depeche Mode, the Jesus of my personal trinity of holy teenage music love. I had heard little bits of their new Sounds of the Universe and was far from in love. And frankly that’s been the norm since 101 and Violator first made me swoon. But I saw mention of a full-album stream on David Gutowski’s wonderful largehearted boy. Click. Listen. Ugh. There’s nothing so bad about the record, but nothing new either. Not a hint of evolution or glimmer of new ideas. Just more of the same and somehow less than before.

So I dive back into my feed reader and find a post about Coachella. Opening I find a picture of Robert Smith leading the current incarnation of the Cure, hair a-tangle and complete with the standard red lipstick. The Cure are, were, and likely always will be one of my favorite bands. And that credit is almost exclusively earned from Disintegration back. But they’re another band quasi frozen at their peak. They’ve worn dresses, gone (and helped define) goth, done Peel sessions and stadium tours — but now its just 1994 but older. And less flattering. Would no one accept Robert Smith without the hair and makeup? I thought that rule applied only to Kiss. And that sound that seemed to defy evolution and shift so quickly from one early album to the next now moves like tar, complete with dinosaurs.

But now the heart of the matter: Morrissey, I love you.

And yes I know, the repeated standard from Moz is that he’s detestable, contemptable even. And those that profess to love him don’t know him. And I certainly don’t know the man. But the myth? I love the myth. How can you not? From the incredible energy bursting from the Smiths to a lifetime refining and redefining that energy, the largesse that is Morrissey is simply undeniable. At every turn he choses scorn over adoration, poking instead of caressing and always seeming to choose brutal honesty when fluff is demanded or evasiveness when a simple answer would suffice. It’s brilliant.

I imagine he’d hate the comparison, but Morrissey is Sinatra. He would be hated and discarded if only he wasn’t loved so fucking much.

This brings me back to Coachella, the RSS post. Next to Robert Smith is a photograph of Morrissey, included here and taken by Dave Bullock. In it Morrissey looks defiant, whipping a microphone chord across the stage with a sneer on his lips. It’s triumphant. And I hear he was a right prick on stage, just as he should be. His latest album Years of Refusal is one of the best of his solo catalog. If anything it brings an increase to that raw energy, a vital sound that’s lacking to most with a career spanning the years his has. And he must know it. it drips from the speakers.

Music brings such hope to me, and tonight was a bleak and hopeless night until I saw a single photograph of the myth that is Moz — the only real survivor from the adoration of my youth.

All these opinions might not ring true to you, but to me they’re very real and true facts. They matter, and they’re important. And the one fact above all else:

Morrisey endures.

It’s been ages since I’ve posted to this blog — and I’m almost certainly the only person reading it at this point. But I wrote this last night over on the CASH Music curator page at WFMU’s new Free Music Archive, and I feel it’s important enough to repeat. Hopefully it’ll spurn me on to more posts. Without further ado:

As of this writing the Free Music Archive is set to go live in a handful of hours. At CASH we’re busy as ever and in the middle of a particularly vital push right now, but I’m taking the time to make sure we’ve tweaked the little details of our profile, uploaded and properly categorized music, dotted ‘t’s and crossed ‘i’s. Why? It’s simple:

The Free Music Archive is important.

Just in case that seems somehow obvious or overwhelming let me repeat myself with a little more emphasis.

The Free Music Archive is important!

Jason Sigal, WFMU, and the team behind this effort have been working like mad to accomplish this, and it’s no small feat. The development of this site and the principles on which it stands are important now more than ever. The FMA represents an archive of music that is culturally significant and open to the public.

The FMA, backed by one of the finest radio stations in the world, will not only ensure that this music doesn’t fade away, but that it remains visible, accessible, and available for discovery and sharing.

I could go on. And will again. But for now I simply want to say congratulations — and impress upon anyone who reads this just how vital this project is.

Congratulations, and thank you to all who’ve had a hand in building this.

I’ve been spending a fair bit of time thinking back on my career as I look forward to the road ahead. I’ll spare both people reading this entry all the various autobiographical notes, but there’s one thing in particular that jumped out:

I’ve always claimed that the first real job I got in music was working on a website for Natalie Merchant. (Her site, timed for her 2001 Motherland record.) But thinking about it, this isn’t true.

The first thing I ever did in music was actually a website (with matching t-shirts, no less) for Brooklyn’s own Ex Models. It primarily supported their excellent debut, Other Mathematics. And when I say excellent, I mean really. This was a favorite for years, and its lost nothing with a fresh listen. It’s a bit of a double-time romp through Devo/Byrne/mathrock, and well worth the 24 minutes of your life it’ll take.

It was through Ex Models that I met Marisa Handren (a dear friend and the finest PR person I’ve ever met — fourpawsmedia.com) and through her that I met Deerhoof, Xiu Xiu, and the nice folks at Kill Rock Stars. So while Natalie the first major-label artist, Ex Models were the very first.

Now imagine I wrote something very insightful or potentially tear-jerking here. I’d really like to do it myself, but I’m tired and a little self conscious. And if you don’t mind, please make it good. I pride myself on my closings.

So this is the page that I had intended to post for the root of whatistodaysvegetable.com, but when it came time I just couldn’t do it. I really wanted to keep a bite-sized little bit right up front like the original burrito site, but the usability horror of it — that damned usability — just seemed too great. I wish someone would convince me otherwise…