MYSPACE’S MOST POPULAR BANDS- The Numbers are In

For those of you who didn’t read the introductory blog last week, here’s the deal- I’m looking at the plays/views for an individual musical act’s MySpace site(s) to determine who is most popular, at least of the ones that I can remember to include. Obviously MySpace could probably just click a button and list them all in order, but they haven’t done that yet, and by the time they do, or if anybody knew they were doing it, the results might be manipulated and therefore useless. So this is a snapshot in time, all relative to July 2008, a point at which I figure every act that cares to join MySpace is already on the band-wagon without a lot of ones who are now out-of-date, like much of the Internet itself, barely a decade old. What does it all mean? That depends. Though there are obvious advantages and disadvantages inherent with any count of MySpace ‘hits’, and the results are nothing if not unscientific, they are nonetheless interesting, at least to me. If someone took a scientific survey, the results might be different. But how would you do that? Would minorities be accurately counted? Would youth? At what age would you start counting? What about people without access to electricity, much less computers, much less Internet, as if computers were anything but Internet-machines these days? What about overseas?

The biggest skew is toward initiative; only those motivated enough to log on will be included here of course. The next biggest skew will be toward technological proficiency. If you can’t navigate the Net then you won’t be counted here. Such considerations are obvious and don’t really discriminate. The main discriminatory tendencies will be toward youth and toward the wealthy, those most likely to have the means and the lifestyles (i.e. the spare time) to show up here. Given population demographic skews toward older populations in Western countries anyway, maybe this balances out. There is certainly a bias toward Western countries, particularly the US, where Internet usage is high. Using the terminology of physics, numbers would probably fall off in inverse proportion from a line extending through space from LA through New York to London and in time from the moment NOW back into the past. The older the act, and the less memorable of course, then certainly the less likely they are to score highly here. They might score more highly here than in CD sales, though generally I suspect the ratios are similar.

Countries within that Western spatial orbit, including Canada, Mexico, Scandinavia, even Russia, still count strongly, then fall off precipitously. For example, T.A.T.U. the Russian femme-pop sensation led by ‘fierce brunette Julia Volkova’ and ‘sprightly red-head Lena Katina’ easily score 5 million MySpace hits while Puffy AmiYumi, superstars from Japan, who have courted the English-speaking audience far longer and far harder, barely get a quarter million and play small clubs on the US West Coast like Slim’s in SF and the Key Club in West Hollywood. Shonen Knife only get half that and I can’t even find a site for Umeboshi Plums. The numbers are similar for Faye Wong from China and Coco Lee from Taiwan, zip for Korea’s BoA (not the bank). Even sexy Anggun from Indonesia, on record as the best-selling Asian artist outside Asia, barely scores 50K, though she now lives in France, where she records albums heavy on the drum machine and poses semi-nude on the beach for mail-order bride ads touting the ‘smoothness of Indonesian women.’ She can’t do that back home in Bali, though the white girls do, hence 10-12 aftershocks to 9-11 (a popular name for mini-marts there). Of course these MySpace numbers don’t mean much until you compare them with well-known Western acts, so we’ll let the results speak for themselves, remembering that I have to actually search an act’s site to get the numbers, so there could be some gross omissions. Anyway here goes:

Number one overall in MySpace plays (drum roll here please): Lil’ Wayne at 140 MILLION MySpace plays (just as a point of reference Russia with a population of 141 million is the ninth most populous country in the world). At about half that number are slinky umbrella girl Rihanna followed closely by the rapper ‘50 Cent’ each with some 70 million. Chris Brown is not far behind with 65 million, though with some 85 million views. Surprised yet? Don’t be. Hip-hop and rap have tremendous pull in the third-world, with its universal themes and individual screams and schemes. You don’t pull these kinds of numbers with sales in south LA and Bed-Stuy alone. They may not have poster-boy status overseas equal to Che Guevara and Bob Marley yet, but whoever emerges on top of the rap race certainly could. Ready for the country? Rascal Flatts comes in at 60 million. Number 6? Guess. It’s time for another sexy girl, right? They’re legion. Another rapper maybe? Lil’ Wayne, 50 Cent, and Chris Brown are hardly unique. Guess again. Now for something completely different: a girl yes, but the anti-Britney. How about Avril Lavigne at around 60 million? Now if a country full of hip-hop fans was scary, what about a country full of raccoon girls, all wearing too much make-up and laughing at us men when we try to come on to them? Now that’s scary! But don’t worry. The dollhouse girls Danity Kane right behind prove that all is right with the world.

Who’s next? I’ll give you a clue: white men can be sexy, too. Would you believe Justin Timberlake? This should hardly surprise, former Boy Band boy going out on his own and learning to cop a pretty decent hip and a hop in the process. Ready to Rock? My Chemical Romance is right behind Linkin’ Park at Number 9. Then Fergie has over 50 million plays ON HER OWN, without the other Black-Eyed Peas, so factor that in later. What color are her eyes anyway? Then come Kanye West and Beyonce’ with around 50 million also. Country super-star Taylor Swift is right there, followed by rockers Nickelback. The pubescent Jonas Brothers also have around 50 million views also, but not that many plays, so I won’t count them here, though I would if the other way around. Like I say, this is a snapshot; who’ll remember them in ten years? Want to know Hanson’s rating? It’s not bad, actually. Next on my list, hardly scientific I reiterate, are the hip-hop acts Plies, Ne-Yo, Jim Jones and Snoop Dogg with around or over 40 million, as well as Nelly Furtado, country pop-star Carrie Underwood and MySpace’s own star, the neo-singer-songwriter Colbie Caillat, who showed that MySpace could not only map the stars, but it could create them too. In the mid-30’s are Mariah Carey, Evanescence, and soft-rocker Jack Johnson. This completes my outer circle, the strato-pause, beyond which you’ve truly achieved escape velocity and start to form your own countries and governments. Let’s get a little more down to Earth, the mere stratosphere.

So far there seems to be a strong pattern favoring hip-hop and exotic females, and sure enough at around 30 million plays we find Alicia Keys and fellow mighty not-so-modest Mouseketeers Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera, still holding up after all these years, after growing up on our TV screens, after baring all for public consumption. Then there are rap and soulsters Timbaland, Ray J and Gnarls Barkley and ‘emo’ superstars Boys Like Girls. Where’s the rock and freaking roll? It’s there with Coldplay, neo-classic Daughtry, the Red-Hot Chili Peppers, alt-rockers 3 Doors Down and even heavy-metal old-timers Metallica and new timers Disturbed, all there at around 30 million. Thought maybe things might move a little slower out in the country? Think again. Country stars Kenny Chesney and Keith Urban are right there at 30 mill. Then there’s R&B singer Keyshia Cole at over 25 million, and a little closer to Earth at around 20 million plays are teen idols Miley Cyrus and the Jonas Brothers (though 50 million viewed, only 20 million actually listened), and also hip-hoppers Tech N9ne and Flo Rida, Vanessa Hudgens, pop-punks Relient K, and the UK chart-topper Natasha Bedingfield. Black-Eyed Peas are right there also, which gives Fergie an enormous figure (heh heh) if you add this to her total. Amy Winehouse is there too, bottle in hand (fitting name, eh?), as well as rockers Death Cab for Cutie, Maroon 5, Weezer and Foo Fighters, looking grungier every day, and rappers Usher and Jay-Z. We’re measuring popularity here remember, not wealth. And don’t forget the emo stars Good Charlotte and centerfold rockers Pussycat Dolls. Any comment would be superfluous.

This is boring so far, right? That’s the Top 50+ artists by my measurement of Myspace hits, subject to gross omission. There are no surprises there. Almost all of these are at or have been at the top of the charts recently (not all the Top 100 have millions of MySpace hits, however). That’s where I found most of them, and admit to listening to many for the first time in the last 2-3 days. Some have been on the charts since the birth of MySpace some three years ago, so these results are expected and to some extent negligible. Where’s the classic stuff you ask? This is where it gets interesting, and this is the reason I started this project. These numbers may even stand up over time. Now enter Robert Nesta Marley at over 20 million MySpace plays, and that doesn’t count his protégés and prodigal sons. Dead almost as many years as he ever lived, he is still a genuine third-world hero, arguably the father of world music, and still in the Top 100 on Hardie K’s list of MySpace popularity. It was only after his death that Record executives began scouring Africa for suitable replacements, even though they probably didn’t ‘get it.’ Marley is the only poster-boy who can compete with Che Guevara on third-world T-shirts, except for another rock-and-roll hero. Guess who. You might be shocked. I’ll tell you next week. I need a drink. Let’s take a break here. Next week we’ll continue getting more down-to-earth. That is where it gets even more interesting. Remember we still haven’t heard from the genres of jazz, bluegrass, and blues or the decades of the 80’s, 70’s, 60’s, 50’s, 40’s, 30’s, and even 20’s. That’s a lot of territory to cover. Can you believe it? They’re all here. Stay tuned, and feel free to tell me how many great artists I overlooked. This is a democracy, remember.

SALSA STOPPED AT BORDER; LA MAKES ITS OWN

Rumor is that they’re stopping all salsa ingredients at the US/Mexico border, looking for Sam and Ella, the infamous outlaw duo causing more gut-wrenching havoc than anyone since Bonnie & Clyde. Apparently Sam and Ella like lots of fresh salsa, though it’s uncertain whether they actually prefer the tomatoes, the peppers, the onions, or the cilantro. Don’t forget the tortillas. Sounds like my kind of folk. Who cares if they’re a pain in the butt? Who’s not? Just as long as there’s no embargo on drums, brass, or guitars we’ll all survive.

With Esai Morales presiding, things got off to a saucey (sassy?) enough start at McArthur Park’s July 3 opening concert of the season. It’s everything that Memorial Park in Pasadena is not- dirty, smelly, and… full of people! There are people playing soccer, people having picnics, and people just relaxing. It’s in the heart of LA’s Central American barrio, you see, and it looks it, with pupuserias, tortillas veloces, the whole shebang. Before the concert began, there was even a little Central American sideshow party going on, with buffet and a marimba band playing the kind of cutesy Latino pop that they like down there. Guatemala was my first point of expatriation in life, but I can’t say I ever appreciated the music there very much, though there are possibilities. One of those possibilities is the Garifuna, who occupy a little crotch-shaped piece of the continent where Belize, Guatemala, and Honduras all meet, and who have achieved some fame, such as it is, in world music circles with the ascent of the late Andy Palacio of Belize and his album Watina, and to a lesser extent Aurelio Martinez of Honduras.

Punta Cartel opened the show, billed as Reggaeton in some blurbs and Garifuna in others, though in reality I think the correct term is ‘punta rock.’ That’s probably honest, since they’re probably looking for an identity as well as a sales pitch. I’m not sure what country they’re from, Honduras I think, since they all spoke fluent English as well as Spanish while invoking the names of all the Central American countries, though Garifunas are certainly not native to El Salvador. I heard no Garifuna spoken, an Arawakan-based language, though the people look more African than anything else, escaped slaves who inter-bred with the local Indians not unlike what happened in Florida. I suspect these guys are as much Caribbean Blacks as they are Black Caribs, as Garifunas were formerly mistakenly called, but I suppose the question is academic. There are all levels of involvement with any traditional culture. How many Native Americans actually speak a native language? Only the diehards do, my friends, only the diehards. Anyway the music was lively enough, if a bit frenetic at first. The opening number was almost un-listenable for me, all percussion and no direction, but by the second song they settled into a comfortable cumbia-style groove and pretty much stayed there for the rest of the set, only occasionally deviating for a Bob Marley tune or some other reggae-style number.

Son Mayor came on next to wide applause, probably as much for the sexy lead singer Juliana Munoz as anything else, strictly old school femme fatale with high heels and short skirt primping and strutting- imagine Salma Hayek in drag- but she can sing. The whole band is as tight as a drum with no weak spots. There are twelve members complete with multiple horns and percussions and some rocking good piano. In other words these guys kicked proverbial butt, playing no nonsense straight-ahead salsa of the highest order, and the dance floor (grass field actually) was full. If there was any weak spot it was only perhaps in the overly dramatic gyrations of Munoz, threatening to make a caricature of herself in that little Xena-does-the-asphalt-jungle skirt, scant cover riding high up muscled thighs, loose top drooping low over fleshy mounds of fetching endearment (excuse me a moment…) Okay, I’m better now, but don’t forget to catch Son Mayor sometime. They play all over the LA area.

Another salsa band named Rumbankete, a portmanteau I assume meaning ‘wall of rumba’ or something like that, played the LACMA (LA County Museum of Art) outdoors on Saturday. What a difference the venue makes! This makes Pasadena look like the barrio! In other words this is salsa for Anglos, though that doesn’t necessarily mean ‘salsa lite.’ Billing themselves as ‘LA’s newest salsa band,’ I reckon I can cut them some slack. They had some trouble with three-part harmonies, but did fine with simple lead and back-up. They had no problem with three-part trombones. That’s their strong point. This is a trombone lover’s band. They too played some pretty full-on straight-ahead salsa, but without a proper stage and sound system it just didn’t sound as good as Son Mayor. There’s something to be said for twenty years’ experience, and then there’s that sexy lead singer providing a visual focus… Give them a little time to tighten up. They’ve got gigs at El Floridita up here in Hollywood.

This week Macarthur Park is looking like the hot ticket again, with Very Be Careful- weird name (do Latinos study English in Thailand?), but good tunes; ADAAWE- female African percussion; and Yari More y su orquesta- hot sizzling salsa again, from Wednesday through Friday respectively. They’ve even got the jazz piano phenomenon Eldar Djangirov on Saturday, but I may be elsewhere, like the Rachid Taha show at Cal Plaza, a Paris-based Arab of long renown. Son de Madera, a son Jarocho band, is at Cal Plaza downtown on Friday evening and also at Macarthur next week. INCENDIO, guitar fusion, and Jessica Fichot, folk gypsy jazz, are at the Levitt in Pasadena and LACMA has their ongoing Friday and Saturday evenings of Jazz and Latin (at 6 and 5pm respectively), this week featuring Grant Geissman and Imaginacion. Then there’s Banda Brothers next Tuesday at Hollywood and Highland. There are regular shows out at Santa Monica Pier, Borders and Amoeba Records, Griffith Observatory, Getty Center and Autrey Center also, most for free, but they’re not all world music. Latin and jazz overlap so much here and in New York that I’ll mention the jazz too when convenient. They need all the help they can get to show people there’s a genuine Black American musical art form that’s fun, highly skilled… and not hip-hop.

MYSPACE REVOLUTION IS A REVELATION, WITH LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL

The biggest paradigm shift in the popular music industry since 1955 has occurred and is now a fait accompli. The previous cultural and musical revolution occurred when greasy long-haired redneck rock-and-rollers from the South knocked corporate crooners from the North off the charts and changed music forever. In 1954 when Bill Haley first poked his head on to the charts, Sinatra and Como, Page and Fisher, Clooney and D. Day (Rosemary and Time) ruled the music sales charts as they had for years. By 1956 they barely retained a toe-hold as Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, and Gene Vincent, all scored big hits, many of them right off the Louisiana Hay Ride as ‘hillbilly’ music become ‘rockabilly’ and ‘race’ music felt its way toward ‘soul.’ They would be joined in 1957 by Sam Cook, Buddy Holly, and Jerry Lee Lewis, and in 1958 by Ritchie Valens, the Big Bopper, and Eddie Cochran. The industry responded by signing its own version of watered-down rebellious youth music, much of it brilliant in its own right, in the form of the Everly Brothers, Bobby Darin, Paul Anka, Pat Boone, and ‘Little Ricky’ Nelson (not to mention Alvin and the Chipmunks), but by then the die was cast and the damage was done. The ‘old guard’ would never return. Pop music belonged to youth.

What does it all mean? It means that people reserve the right to create their own music and have it heard by others, without corporate interference or oversight. Not surprisingly this usually happens at the edges of corporate contentment where dissatisfaction takes root and creates fruit, freed from formula and following the inner cry for expression. That era in the South can hardly be described. Imagine families living in shacks dotting the countryside, with a dozen kids all going to school barefoot, cussing and fighting, never tamed by Church or State. And that’s the white people! The condition of blacks was unspeakable, one room shacks in open pastures, the wind blowing through the walls’ cracks, from which they share-cropped or ‘tenant farmed.’ I saw my first wood stoves there long before it became Foxfire hip, all this in the ‘richest country in the world.’ Whites there were consumed with their own inner demons and so were the blacks. The Civil War had never really ended and the Republican Reconstruction had yet to really begin. You either conformed or rebelled or you got the Hell out of Slidell. Or you sublimated those impulses into your art. That world ended with the Welfare Act of 1965.

Fast-forward fifty years and it’s happening again. It never really stopped happening of course. After the initial rock-and-roll years things settled back into a smug Tin Pan Alley predictability until the edges of the culture began screaming to be noticed by the center again, this time from the UK. Losing its colonies and its preeminent position in the world to the US, the UK was ripe for cultural revolution in the ‘60’s. Taking cues from the US and cross-breeding it with the existential fashions of the Continent, England came up with something truly original and brought it over to the US to remind us of what we had almost forgot, the boogie factor. Cross-breed that again with Beatnik poetry, a Harry Smith-inspired folk revival, ‘soul’ music and an unpopular war (sound familiar?) and the time was right for all Hell to break loose, the Psychedelic ‘60’s, followed in quick succession (and no certain order) by Southern rock, hard rock, soft-rock, and folk-rock. Once again the Industry raised its ugly head in the mid 70’s and incorporated beyond anything ever imagined, sending the Eagles, the BeeGees, John Denver, and disco music out to all corners of the world, all on vinyl and safe for public consumption. The New York ‘new wave’ and British punk rock said ‘fuck all that’ of course, and they were spot-on. So it goes in an endless dialectic between growth and contraction, thesis and antithesis, corporate crap and individual creativity, right up to the current day.

The traditional record industry is dead or dying and something else has come and taken its place. This time the medium is the message, the medium of Internet, and it’s not about stealing songs by download. It’s about choice, supply and demand. The pop music revolution that started in the US and got cross-bred with the UK, has caught fire in the rest of the world as well. Increasingly widespread affluence and its ironic counterparts, discontentment and artistic release, has spread to even the smallest countries. Art is something to be created by the ambitious individual, not handed down from corporate boardrooms. IPod and other MP3 players are but the visible symbols of the change. MySpace and other Internet social networks are at the heart of it. There you can listen to anything, if not everything that’s ever been created, all for free. Some die-hards grumble, but radio was always free, wasn’t it? Just like love, you don’t pay until you want to possess it, or see it performed live.

Sometime around 2005 the word got out that something was going on by Internet that any band could use to its advantage in this cut-throat industry. Those who signed on first might reap the largest benefits, of course, so by 2006 the race was on, ironically many times by the fans themselves, making sure that ‘their’ band was represented with its best songs. It was chaotic of course but fun to watch as it evolved. Chaos slowly organized itself and most bands have an ‘official MySpace site’ by now, sometimes to the exclusion of all others, sometimes to the exclusion of its own website, all this in a medium that barely even existed a decade ago. I got my first e-mail address in 1999, before most of my friends, but not all. Any band that doesn’t have a MySpace site by now just doesn’t care much about its future. It’s not that hard.

So what does it all mean? In short for me it means that ‘plays’ and ‘views’ of a band’s MySpace songs and site are a valuable look at a band’s level of popularity. When I was looking to book bands in Arizona, that’s the first thing I looked at. The numbers of plays and views tend to be similar, rarely one as much as twice the other, but that in itself tells a tale. A band with more views than plays seems to be ‘breaking out,’ with a surge of publicity as cause and effect. A band with more plays than views tends to be stable with long-term fans looking to listen. There is still an element of chaos, of course, multiple sites for many bands, etc., so the figures are somewhat provisional and any conclusions should be approached with caution, but are nonetheless enlightening. So what do the numbers say? Surely they must be skewed toward youth-oriented groups and hip-hop, right? Do country music groups do MySpace? The results are interesting. I see them as a reliable gauge of popularity, not money, but popularity. I’ll tell you next week. Do your own survey if you like, and we’ll compare notes. Stay tuned.

Kusun Ensemble and Quetzal rock Pasadena by Starlight; Son Mayor and Hawaiian Music coming to McArthur Park in LA

Oh, I could almost fall in love with Pasadena. It’s so clean, and neat, and quiet, a microcosm of America, and I don’t McCain’s America either. I mean Obama’s, liberal and optimistic and forward-thinking. Part of that beauty is its multi-cultural background of course, percentages of Anglos, Latinos, Blacks, and Asians almost identical to those of California as a whole, coming together in one big mixed neighborhood. While this may not sound much different from LA proper, the difference is in the details- the back streets that don’t reek of piss, a city center that is well-planned and coordinated, and no happy campers rounding up the shopping carts in a circle to ward off the elements of the night. As my Thai wife of three months’ US residence puts it, “it’s another world.” And it’s only an hour and a $5 day pass by metro line from Hollywood. Celebrate the bucolic!

There’s no better place to experience this harmony than the summer concert series at Levitt Pavilion in Memorial Park. Starting with last week’s ‘Make Music Pasadena’ and continuing on through the summer months, Levitt will play host each week to Children’s Night, American Night, World Night, Latin Night, and Jazz Night, from Wednesday to Saturday respectively. American night is no joke, either, with the likes of Laurie Lewis, the Blasters, Lisa Haley, and John Doe making appearances. Ditto for jazz, with Ernie Andrews, Billy Mitchell, Charles McPherson, Red Holloway and more all showing up before the summer’s over. Jazz is so refreshingly timeless. I listen now to jazz stations on the radio for the first time in twenty years and guess what? More than half is the same stuff! And I like it too, but here we’ll only go into the world and Latino offerings.

Last weekend featured Kusun Ensemble and Quetzal, playing Ghanaian and ‘Chicano’ music respectively. Kusun Ensemble is led by singer, composer/arranger, and percussionist Nii Tettey Tetteh (try saying that three times quickly) and flanked by guitar and bass and numerous other drums and objects of percussion. They play a sort of neo-highlife style of music they call ‘Nokoko’ (‘something’ in Ga language) that is equally jazzy and traditional. But that’s only half the story. Kusun Ensemble is equally a dance ensemble as much as a musical one. Now I’m typically a little skeptical about dancers accompanying bands, bringing back memories of ‘go-go’ and ‘chorus’ girls and such that I’d rather forget. I really got sour on the concept of ‘pretty young girl singers’ while living in Thailand. Music is music; if it needs models to sell itself, then I’ll pass. When’s the last time you saw a female country singer plain of face or lacking grace?

World music can be guilty of ‘tourist kitsch’ also, putting on a little song and dance, supposedly ethnic/indigenous, that makes you wonder when your guide is going to come and herd you off to another location to claim your free drink with a little sombrero impaled upon a swizzle stick. But Kusun Ensemble is no nonsense. These girls, and guys, including members of the National Ballet, can really dance, leaps and pirouettes, together and individually. The several costume changes were rewarding also, tending to evoke a certain mood indicative of the song being played. These guys play to a lot of cultural and educational centers in addition to music venues. Check them out live some time; the dancing gives it that little extra ‘je ne sais quoi’ that separates them from the also-rans.

Quetzal is a self-styled Chicano group hailed as ‘local heroes’ in the ad blurbs. Created by Quetzal Flores and fronted by vocalist Martha Gonzales, they offer an eclectic mix of Mexican and Latin rhythms, nothing if not ‘alternative,’ complete with a not-so-subtle political message of thoughtful revisionism, including a child named ‘Sandino’ for Ms. Gonzales and a picture of Noam Chomsky as one of the Top Ten MySpace friends. She must have layed it on a little thick at one point, inspiring some minor heckling, but didn’t lose her cool, settling only for, “quiero que me escuches.” We all do. We all want to be heard, but that is a double-edged sword. I even heard one of the Death Cab Cuties once say that interpreting politics for the masses “is our job.” That’s nice work if you can get it (just ask ‘W”), but I don’t think it’s part of the job description for a pena folclorica. An entertainer’s job is to entertain. Whatever else you can get away with is icing, or gravy, or something else fattening.

Quetzal’s music is good, if a little bit scattered by genre. It has all the makings of a Mexican son band, complete with various guitars, jaranas y requintos Jarochos (of Veracrucian style, from whence they just came) played by Flores and Cesar Castro, and this is probably what they do best, much to the audience’s appreciation. But they become generically confused with the neo-gospel stylings of keyboardist Quincy McCrary on the Hammond B3. Despite his considerable talent and welcome back-up vocals, the mix-and-match is a mismatch for me, not to mention that McCrary apparently is the only non-Latino in the group. Andy Mendoza on drums and Juan Perez on bass round out the group, with the addition of a violinist for whom I have no name. If she’s provisional, then they should keep her. She rescued their sound from mediocrity, shades of Scarlet Rivera. Still, if you’re looking for sones Jarochos, then wait for Son de Madera. They’re the real thing.

The fun continues this week. If Pasadena sounds a bit far away, then you’re in luck. LA has a Levitt Pavilion at McArthur Park and they’re starting their own series this week, similar to Pasadena. I’ll be there tomorrow for the big band salsa sound of Son Mayor, with Punta Cartel opening. The next night is Hawai’i night, with Keali’i Raichel and Na Leo. If I knew they’d play traditional Hawaiian music I’d go, but the easy listening stuff is a bit sappy for me, making Barry Manilow look like Iggy Stooge on meth (is that redundant?) I might head back to Pasadena Saturday night for Bandidos de Amor (Argentinian folklorica, Jamaican roots, and alternative?), but haven’t heard them so not sure. Then there’s the Hollywood Bowl next Tuesday. It’s not world music, not really anyway, but the LA Phil is doing Carmina Burana, based on the medieval poems which prove that the Dark Ages, to paraphrase Stephen Hawkings, “weren’t so dark.” Do I dare?

ABOUT ME AND WORLD MUSIC

Hi! Welcome to my new world music blog. It’s good to be back here writing, not playing with widgets and gadgets, so I hope the new layout is pleasing enough. I think it’ll only get better. As I make the transition from a travel blog to a music/film one, there are other changes that are both cause and effect, undercurrents and overtones to the most obvious one. One is the transition from a personal blog to a professional one. Related to that is the transition from a non-commercial site to a more commercial one (I hope). Hey, I got bills to pay and habits to feed. The difference is also more apparent than real anyway, one of degree not kind. I get no salary for this, so any pocket change is welcome. If you’re thinking of buying something from Amazon anyway, I could use the commission. Thanks. If it’s starting to look like Chinatown here, well that only adds to the ambience, right? Lastly there’s the transition from a nomadic to a sedentary lifestyle for me. (Pssst! Don’t go there, Hardie…) Okay, so let’s move on to other things. So, for those of you who don’t know me, and maybe some who do, maybe you’re wondering what qualifies me to pontificate on world music and film?

I’m no musician and though I studied some film and video and made at least a few, my experience is not vast. I never even heard the term ‘ethnomusicology’ when I was going to school, and Putumayo was a river in Colombia where I went looking for yage in the steps of my patron saint Uncle Bill Burroughs. I never found the vine (though it’s now available over Internet), but I did meet Mr. Burroughs at Naropa in 1982. Now that doesn’t qualify me as an expert in music or film, so I guess I’m just a fan, hopefully an educated one. I’ve traveled in fifty some-odd (some very odd) countries and kept house in a couple of them, worked in even more. I got into world music at a slow point in my career while listening to my stepson obsess over the Thai group Carabao. I liked Carabao a lot a decade ago when I first heard them, but understanding the lyrics opened up a whole new dimension, like the first time I heard Dylan or Costello or Cobain. There are very few lyricists that good. It’s mostly about the music. I felt that they deserved a larger audience, and still do, and I even adapted a few songs to English, but it’s not that easy to create entire new dimensions or wormholes between worlds.

So, though I’ve long liked ‘world music’ I’ve only been serious about it for just a few years. I like the ‘indie’ and ‘Americana’ genres just as much probably, and the terms are all equally vague and subject to interpretation, but world music deserves special care and attention. We’re talking about real people here, rare specimens at that, and if left to the whims and fancies of the American marketplace, world music could easily die on the vine. If you don’t believe me, just look at the current status of world arts and crafts. Once-flourishing cottage industries now lie abandoned as fashions change and the natives don’t, so income is lost; or they do change and traditional culture is lost. Fortunately except for Britain and Ireland Europe has little music of its own, compared to America, so is world music’s main patron. France deserves special mention for the help it gives, especially to its Francophone former dependencies in West Africa. So now that I’ve learned a bit about world music over the last few years, it never ceases to amaze me that many people have no idea what it is. That’s understandable, since the term gets tossed around very loosely even by its main protagonists, to the detriment of us all, in my opinion.

To some promoters, especially on the US West Coast, ‘world music’ is a new market-savvy term for reggae, simple if not pure, like calling granola ‘muesli’ for new sales hooks. On your favorite airline’s in-flight play list it’s likely a very smooth version of foreign pop music or light jazz. To drum circle and percussion enthusiasts, it’s totally different, anything but smooth and heavily oriented toward Africa. For Europe it’s heavily oriented toward Africa and Europe’s own ethnic and cultural minorities, especially in the Balkans, East Europe, and Spain. The US East Coast follows much of that logic and adds a strong Latino and Caribbean emphasis, including the US’s own rich Louisiana heritage. It’s a categorical mess, with ethnicity crucial to some, meaningless to others. The best definition I’ve heard goes something like, “non-English music from all over,” to which I would only clarify ‘non-English SPEAKING’ and add minority CULTURES regardless of language. Ghana and Nigeria should not be excluded because of English proficiency.

For the uninitiated I’ll give a quick history lesson. World music first come to the public’s attention around twenty-five years ago when somebody, probably inspired by Bob Marley’s success and untimely death, decided that Africa was ripe for the picking. Thus the ‘scramble for Africa’ began, and ‘world beat’ was the catchword. Oil-rich Nigeria was relatively prosperous and numerous bands had long caught the fever of pop music from the US and UK. From there Fela Kuti and King Sunny Ade were quickly signed, and enjoyed wide success, spawning many imitators. Many Western rock legends such as Paul Simon, David Byrne, and Peter Gabriel at this point were inspired to get involved and facilitate the process, creating record companies, festivals, and collaborating, a process which continues to this day. Ry Cooder went even deeper and resurrected almost-dead genres in his collaborations with Buena Vista Social Club and Ali Farka Toure’ and in the process helped move world music beyond its original slick ‘world-beat’ phase into something more meaningful. To this day Cuba and Mali are the shining examples of world-music’s ability to transcend its circumstances.

Fast-forward to the present and world music stands at the cross-roads, like all minority interests, torn between purity and loyalty to its roots or assimilation into the mass culture developing rapidly with the global MySpace generation and widespread use of English language. It’s a delicate balancing act, made more difficult by its own proponents’ almost stubborn refusal to develop it into one commercially viable genre, and its inability to make much sense in the wake of its conglomeration from too-numerous sub-genres, far too many to even mention. While one music blogger derides the term ‘world-beat’ as ‘cutesy’, I find it useful, basically dividing all music into two categories- fast and slow. A more elaborate analysis might settle simply on the American nomenclature of rock, jazz, blues, folk, pop, modern urban and country styles, to which I’d only add ‘traditional classical.’ Almost all world music could fit into one of these categories, albeit prefixed with the country of origin.

Obviously the term ‘world music’ is something of an Anglo-centric one; that’s a given. English language is the de facto international medium, neither rare nor well-done. Nevertheless world music festivals can and do occur in non-English-speaking countries to broad audiences. Most people ‘get it,’ but the promoters don’t always, booking a US blues or bluegrass or straight-ahead jazz band just to be ornery I think, maybe smirking, “I figure the US is part of the world, isn’t it?” This is not helpful. We want different music with different rhythms in different languages from different cultures, plain and simple. Is that so hard? Nevertheless a play list and Top 40 of sorts is emerging, which I think is good. Some blogs will go on and on about Bob Marley, Paul Simon, and Ry Cooder. That’s old news. Others will tell you about bands so obscure that they don’t even have a MySpace site. Enlightenment lies along the middle path. To experience the depth and diversity of what’s currently happening in world music, listen to the following, if you haven’t already, and then see what you think. These acts are all alive and kicking and coming soon to a city near you. Here goes (off the top of my head, in no certain order): Tinariwen, Dengue Fever, Manu Chao, Lila Downs, Angelique Kidjo, Vieux Farka Toure’, Orchestra Baobab, Etran Finatawa, Seun Kuti, and Ozomatli. That’s just for starters. Who says World Music has no hooks?

WORLD MUSIC WEEKEND IN LA—TOO HOT!

The first weekend of summer here in LA last weekend was one for the record books, temperatures climbing way up into triple digits in the valleys and not much better downtown. I usually avoid such temperature extremes, but you get used to it after a few days and weekends aren’t so bad anyway what with less traffic and turmoil. The Seun Kuti show Friday night at Cal Plaza was even a bit warm though quite tolerable, considering the immense talent of dad Fela’s ‘Egypt 80’ band and son Seun himself. Saturday would be a challenge, though. Pasadena sounds cool whether it actually is or not, so my wife Tang and I said “damn the torpedoes” and charged with little trepidation out into the noonday LA sun. The choice of Pasadena was fairly easy since I’m a huge fan of Dengue Fever and also wanted to check out the Mexican groups there. Otherwise I might’ve seriously considered the ‘Bayou Fest’ in Long Beach, featuring the likes of zydeco stars Terrence Simien, Savoy Doucet and Geno Delafose, with plenty of Cajun, creole, jazz, and blues also for their diverse populace. Those bayous run deep after all, way up into north Louisiana, too. Downtown there was a major Latino reggae/ska fest called LA Sound Systems going on also, featuring groups from seven countries, including Maldita Vecindad and Anti-Doping (I expect names like that from Thailand, not South America). I’m no huge ska fan and never heard of ‘Reggae en Espanol’ (not to be confused with Reggaeton), and that festival was fifty bucks a head, so you know…

The others were free, including a ‘solstice’ 60’s festival in Santa Monica featuring Cubensis and other nostalgia groups. The first-year Pasadena fest was the only one with a ‘world’ stage, though, logical since it is affiliated with the multi-national ‘fete de la musique’ and partially sponsored by France through its local Alliance Francaise. It wasn’t exactly another Festivale Internacionale in Lafayette, Louisiana, but still a good start. For those who don’t know France is a major supporter of world music, part of its on-going efforts to promote Francophony and French-speaking countries around the world, most of them in the West African world music heartland. Unfortunately the world stage got the short end of the stick, located far from the others, and without proper shade, no small consideration on a triple-digit day. I hope that’s improved for next year. World music has enough problems without suffering promotional slights.

But the show must go on of course, so we all persevered in the heat. I got there in time for the acclaimed Tijuana group Nortec Collective, but found the experience, though not the music, disappointing. There’s something to be said for a group going Euro-style with a guy on stage tweaking the knobs of his laptop computer, but two of them, hunched over like a couple of video-game geeks? This is uninspiring. I go to a festival, or concert, to hear live music, not ‘sampling.’ A video display doesn’t help much in the bright daylight either of course, so this show would’ve been much better in the dark and indoors, where DJ’s have long established their turf with similar displays. Fortunately there was a continuous live accordion accompaniment with occasional horns, so that helped keep things lively enough for the mostly Anglo crowd. Make a laptop shaped like a guitar for on-stage use, though, and then you might have something.

Dengue Fever came on next, looking like assorted apostles, fishermen and farmers following Cambodian lead singer Ch’hom Nimol to the altar of entertainment, there to make sweet and savory offerings to lesser gods as they play out their fantasies in real life until it becomes legend. For the uninitiated the story goes that these guys discovered 60’s Cambodian pop while on a backpack tour there in the 90’s and subsequently delayed while recovering from… guess what? Dengue Fever. I myself listened to and watched old ‘Cambodian Bandstand’ videotapes for hours while in Sihanoukville; they’re killer. From there the Holtzmann brothers perused the Cambodian clubs of Long Beach looking for a lead singer, until they finally found Ch’hom Nimol. The rest is history, a slow climb to stardom, though poor Nimol’s flower looked ready to wither in last Saturday’s heat. Nevertheless it was a typically brilliant set, complete with encore. These guys write their own songs now, in Khmer and English, and are ready to break big on the world stage.

AfroBeat Down followed with some danceable rhythms, but by then I was hot and hungry and ready to get back to the main action on the other side of town. There the Raveonettes were finishing up their rave-on set to audience applause, so we grabbed a pizza to await the Kinky show. Kinky, like Nortec, is a Mexican group, this time from Monterrey. Like Nortec they play their own unique brand of fusion techno/ranchero, but unlike Nortec, it’s all live, and they had a large appreciative crowd. Considering there were six stages scattered around town, it was impossible to see everything, and world music is a large umbrella (more about that later), but Bobby Rodriguez’ large band closing the show at the jazz stage was probably the highlight for me. For one thing acts like this are hard to find these days. These guys, many advanced in age, were right out of the fifties and the heyday of Cuban-inspired Latin jazz. I almost expected a wacky redhead to wander out from the wings at any moment. For another thing, these guys are good, a sound as crisp and full as the rapidly cooling evening air. You can go to Hollywood Bowl and hear similar yet more famous more expensive music, but I don’t think you would hear much better. Arturo Sandoval’s got nothing on these guys.

This weekend may be a little less festive, but there’s no shortage of music. Gilberto Gil, Brazil’s Minister of Culture and veteran musical journeyman dating back to the Bossa Nova days, is headlining the Hollywood with quirky Indie-Folksters Devendra Banhart as part of KCRW’s ‘World Festival.’ They didn’t call it ‘World Music Festival’ so I won’t waste any space questioning their motives right here right now, but I’ll probably check out Kusun Ensemble and Quetzal at the Levitt Pavilion in Pasadena on Friday and Saturday nights respectively. Like most of the best things in life, it’s free.

Wanna' buy a MP3 download for a buck, buddy? (See you in MySpace)

Okay my dear friends and readers, here's the deal: as you can see the old blog is being converted to my new world music/film blog, so please stay tuned if you're interested in such things. Meanwhile, I'll try to continue a personal blog over at MySpace, which could be interesting since it has enough members now to rank as about the fourth most populous country in the world, depending on whether they can continue to grow faster than Indonesia can reproduce. MySpace is more than a social network, you know. It is simply THE best place to listen to any kind of music in the world, and it's improved so you don't have to click on individual songs so much. Check it out. And don't rule out the possibility of networking either. I know there's a generational divide on this, most of us old flatulaters preferring to actually sit down and look each other in the face, not on the screen, but this can be more than a fashion statement, you know. Aside from 235 million members and upstart counterparts at YouTube and FaceBook, etc., the fact that so many people (OK, mostly kids) see this as a way of life, it derives an unparalleled potential from that very fact. Be my friend over there! I'm tired of Tom! Wanna' see some dirty pictures? That's

http://www.myspace.com/karges

See you there! (hey, somebody download a MP3 song from here and tell me if it works!)

BLOGICIDAL TENDENCIES- Putting the Family Blog to Sleep?

Well, things are not going smoothly for the new world music/film blog. You’d think you get what you pay for, but actually the paid service through TypePad is causing more problems than this blog by Blogger, which is free. WordPress is also free, but allows no advertising, though they do envision it at some point in the future. At my age the future is now. The problem here at Blogger is that third party services confuse the new and old blogs. That’s why you see all these extra ‘widgets’ (click buttons) in the upper right that are supposed to be on the new blog. It’s starting to look like Chinatown around here. The idea is for the new blog to be more professional with ads and sales and services and… (drumroll here please) MASS READERSHIP. I’m not greedy you know but… I could use a job, and selling Thai girls by Google Ad isn't working out. I thought about just killing this blog to remove the confusion but then you guys my friends and faithful readers might lose track… so, what I might do is just convert this blog to a world/music film one and start a personal non-commercial blog elsewhere, or not at all. This blog’s name might even change but the URL stay the same. Please send me an e-mail if you’re confused as this blog gets chaotic, but it should work out within a few days. My personal life’s pretty boring these days anyway, pretty much just Tang, Tang, and Tang, my mother wife and child a full-time job mentally if not physically. Some people think I shouldn’t be talking about her here since she can’t read it, but believe me you don’t know the half of it. Anyway, pardon our dust as we work out technical details and make executive decisions. STAY TUNED! (And I’ll post the new blog here just for a teaser, heh heh… on second thought, maybe go ahead and subscribe to the new blog address above just in case; can’t hurt)

LA’S MALAISE (part 2)- GRACIAS A DIOS POR LA MUSICA!

If you drilled a hole through the center of the Earth, starting at Thailand, where do you think you’d come out (yes, I actually do stuff like this)? Wrong. Guess again. Wrong again. Okay, so pull out the globe if that’ll help. No, you don’t have to actually drill the hole, but you could pull a string around the widest point then mark the half-way spot and do it again. It’s probably easiest to just check the co-ordinates and do some simple math starting with base sixty Sumerian multiples that have been handed down as the number of degrees in a circle. Disregard the fact that the world is not a perfect ball, actually somewhat pear-shaped, and pretend that the center could actually be defined as a certain exact point. If you’re lucky you’ll come out somewhere in Peru. If you’re unlucky you’ll come out somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, depending on your specific starting point. Thailand’s a big country. So is Peru. If you started around Chanthaburi, you’d come out in Lima. You might be disappointed. It ain’t pretty, most of it, outside the Plaza Mayor and Plaza De Armas. Neither is Bangkok in my humble nature-loving opinion. Try to find a park there! For much of it though you probably wouldn’t notice much difference. You’d see the same brownish swarthy skin all over punctuated by a lucky few much lighter. You’d see the same noisy streets. In small towns you’d see the same crowded pungent markets. Until you listen to the language being spoken and the food being eaten, they could be almost interchangeable. In terms of cultural evolution the language is the main thing. But what a difference when you go outside the cities! The rice fields of Thailand are gone and potatoes reign supreme in Peru, all two hundred varieties of them. The pine trees and mangrove of Thai coasts are gone and the desert rules eternal in Peru, some places that haven’t seen rain in a hundred years. The lowlands of Thailand are gone, the Mekong Basin only a few hundred feet high a thousand miles from the sea, and the Andes shoot straight up from the Pacific Coast, only to fall off again and forever into the endless green expanse of the Amazon Basin.

Still the natives of both places are not so dissimilar, perhaps because of their common origins, whether via a land route or sea, though long separated in both time and space. They’re two of the most enigmatic cultures in the world, however lovable, though they know little or nothing of each other. But they’re all here in LA, and for the most part have little to do with each other, people largely staying within their own group for social intercourse, Asian women and Anglo men being the most likely exception to that rule. It’s a pity, that the various cultures of the world connect what little they do, only via the predominant English-speaking one, by insinuation if not actual assimilation. In the process indigenous cultures get lost and the dominant one maybe becomes more diverse racially but not culturally, people lost in the shuffle in a nation ‘of laws, not men.’ I’d like to change all that, and music seems the place to start, being the universal language in my opinion (equations don’t express emotion). LA’s wealth is that of its immigrants’ diverse ethnic origins, and I’d like to devote some of this time and space to bringing them a little closer, at least to us if not each other. That’s always been my goal as traveler and trader, so it must be part of my make-up psychologically (where’s my mascara)? So if evolution loves a mass extinction, then so does this blog. It has to reach the end of its current trajectory before it can become something else. And so it shall I hope. Given its current scatter-shot catch-all forum for whatever I happen to fancy expounding on at any given moment, this is good. Though part of this catch-all title was to gain rank in the Blogosphere by using keywords and meta-tags where and when such things matter, much of it was simply my own lack of focus and assumption that it would be a de facto combination travel/ex-pat blog which seemed feasible and which has defined my life for the last few years, hyper travel (while dabbling and indulging in world music) with a base in Thailand. Both travelers and ex-pats are fairly avid bloggers and readers and forum participants, perhaps intrinsic to their circumstances for lack of other outlets in which to merge their urge to ‘stay connected.’

But things change, and so must this blog. I’ve learned some things by affiliating with Technorati, Feedburner, and Google, etc. the last half year. If you google the words ‘Thailand’ and ‘Timbuktu’ simultaneously, we’ll still come up #1. We might still twenty years from now. These are messages in bottles that don’t always wash up. That’s OK. And it takes some time to write over a hundred pages in a few months for something that’s a labor mostly of love. But above all it’s always been a personal blog, and so it shall remain. The new off-shoot will not be. It’ll be a world music blog, based in and around LA, for now at least, and hopefully bound for glory, or at least greater professionalism, links to Amazon and all that jazz. Hey, you gotta’ have dreams. As I’ve already mentioned such acts as Seun Kuti, Tcheka, Son de Madera, and Ricardo Lemvo are scheduled for Grand Performance at Cal Plaza this summer, and that’s not the half of it, much of it for free. In the last three days I’ve seen no less than Seun Kuti, Dengue Fever, and Mexico’s Kinky, and missed no less than zydeco’s Terence Simien and Gene Delafose. There were Pasadena’s ‘Make Music’ Festival, Long Beach’s Bayou Fest, Olvera Street’s Latino reggae/ska festival, Santa Monica’s solstice hippie-fest, and even a Mariachi blow-out at Hollywood Bowl, ALL IN ONE WEEKEND. I chose Pasadena, partly for Tang to see the ‘real America’ of white people and picket fences and of course the music, including everybody’s favorite Cambodian band that I missed last week because the blue line to Long Beach is undergoing repairs. What I’d really like to do is penetrate the seamy Latin underbelly of music here and hear the stuff coming through from Latin America that maybe never even makes it to MySpace. Much of that is late late night at the Hollywood Park Casino, way off the bus line, but there’s El Floridita not far away and maybe I’ll check out GuateLinda in Hollywood soon. Hopefully it’s still got some Latino stuff, though it’s now trendy with its Thursday night ‘Club called Rhonda’ for the emo-, metro, poly-sexual crowd (cracker anyone?).

So the new blog’s up and running, ‘synesthesia’ at http://hardiek.blogspot.com/ , so check it out. Meanwhile I’m busily tacking on widgets and trying to make it look and maybe even sound good. That’d be nice, since it’s about world music and film. There are plenty of both here in the entertainment capital of the world. The music aspect will focus on world music in general, but particularly what’s playing in LA and from a west-coast perspective, i.e. closer to Latin America and Asia. Most world music is more likely to be East Coast/Europe/Africa-oriented. I’ll be more ‘occidented.’ World film is huge, also, and hugely overlooked, so I’ll try to toss some reviews in as I come across them. ‘Opening weekend’ is hardly an operative concept for foreign films anyway. It’s interesting to be back stateside US after a decade and see what happened to all the cutting-edge musical acts I was listening to in the 90’s, before I got world religion. Grunge is dead, of course, along with its chief protagonists, but Himmelman and Michael Penn are now scoring movies (and rewards), and Lanois and T-Bone are the hottest producers around. Sam Phillips is doing some gigs now while T-Bone is touring with Alison and Robert Plant, same as Penn and Aimee. On an even more Hollywoodish note, Juliette Lewis has a band now, likewise Billy Bob Thornton; too bad Juliette’s band isn’t composed of Brad’s exes. There’s some powerful connections there with Jennifer now Jon Mayer’s main squeeze and Gwyneth the Cold Play girl. So Sheryl Crow and Sarah Jessica battle it out on the billboards for ‘big hair mama’ of the month, with locks that would make the cowardly lion blush and the rest of us just flush. Aren’t you glad world music’s nothing like all this paparazzi pap that dominates the Hollywood scene? And who’s Marie Digby anyway? But I still like Death Cab for Cutie. Stay tuned. And don’t try drilling that hole through the earth just anywhere. It’s mostly water. You could get lost out there.

p.s. While this blog was sitting in the can the last day or two I just got notice that I have another poem being published, coming out in December at http://languageandculture.net/. See? I told you I was a writer. Not surprisingly it’s less of an inner-circle poetry e-zine than most, and considering they carry translations of heavyweights like Apollinaire I could almost get giddy (git getty?) imagining the possibilities, like me some modern-day Rambo e-mailing in his poems to Verlaine from SE Asia… (There, I’m better now.) So that’s cool and now I can refer to my publication credits in plural, but the funny thing is that the poem being published is based on the same little thought experiment of the first paragraph above. Now that’s spooky; or is it sympathetic magic? You decide. And don’t forget my new world music and film blog. Check it out if you got time. That’s http://hardiek.blogspot.com/ and since I’m feeling a surge of self-confidence, remember http://hkarges.wordpress.com/ for you hard-core m-f’s who like really pretentious stuff. SUBSCRIBE!

p.p.s. Well, all these new widgets up above certainly make it easy to subscribe to the other blog, but I didn't intend it that way, so it's problematic with third-party services all confused. So I guess I could commit blogicide on this one, or go back to the original 'new blog' I first started at
http://worldmuse.typepad.com/world_muse/ . Any opinions?

LA’S MALAISE- HEAT, INDECISION, AND THE SUMMER SUBLET FROM HELL (part 1)

Okay, so it’s not exactly fear and loathing in Las Vegas, but you get what you pay for, hopefully. Or at least that’s what I thought when I decided to pursue a summer sublease in the general environs of Hollywood and Thai Town, ‘Hollywood adjacent’ in renters’ jargon. Hotels here won’t let you stay longer than 28 days for reasons unstated, and even those weekly rates go up precipitously come June (not to mention the stigma of being ‘transient’). A micro-wave oven and a mini-fridge does not a kitchen make, either, almost but not quite. Furnished apartments are almost unheard of, witness box springs on the sidewalk the first of every month, and likely not cheap. Ditto for less-than-one-year leases, almost unheard of. Buying a house in LA is not for the faint of heart either, a cool half million just to get started, and don’t forget the security system. They say prices are down 30% from last year, but fail to mention that those prices are still 70% over 2000. Do the math. So a ‘summer sublet’ seemed like an inspired idea for anyone who knows how to log on. The print press ain’t got jack. It’s time to look to good ol’ Craig’s List, right? Even Internet bozos should be able to handle a simple sublet, right? That’s a so-called ‘no-brainer,’ isn’t it? It seems others have the same idea, so the competition is fierce, even though there are probably two hundred new listings a day for ‘greater LA’ (don’t laugh), and those list for a week, so some thousand listings at any given time. Those aren’t all around Hollywood of course and many are well over a thousand a month. They can get weird, too, renting out the master bedroom while major tenant sleeps on the living room couch, and so on. Such is the dream factory. Rooms for rent in a shared house are ubiquitous, which is good if you got no credit, but we didn’t want that. Still I responded to half a dozen before I even got a call-back; small units may not want couples.

Finally I got a response and things seemed amenable to both parties, an inexpensive sublet through the busy summer months right off the red line metro train in Hollywood. I might have known something was flakey when she wanted to meet first to make sure we were ‘cool enough’ to hang out with her neighbors, but I didn’t. Fortunately we passed or my self-esteem would have reached unfathomable lows. So we signed a little pro-forma lease, I giving her a lump-sum deposit and monthly rent including utilities, and she’ll handle the actual bills. That sounds simple enough, right? What could be easier? There’s only one problem, one at a time, that is. She mentioned nothing of this arrangement to the landlord or apartment manager. Now I haven’t rented a crib in the US for some twenty years, since before the days when you had to pay to apply for such, but even I kinda’ knew that subletting wasn’t OK unless you OK’d it first. But even then you might slide through like somebody’s big brother AS LONG AS YOU PAY THE F*&^%$# RENT ON TIME! Well of course anybody would go that extra mile for their guest sub-lessee wouldn’t they? Naah…

First I knew there was something wrong was the evening of the third day of this month when the apartment manager stopped me as I returned in the evening and asked who the Hell I was. I explained to no good effect. Then the apartment owner (yes, OWNER, he of some two thousand rooms) wakes me up the next day at 6am to tell me I’m out of line and out of time, get on the lease or get out. Well, this will blow over quickly as soon as the rent gets paid, right? No way. He wakes me up the next day, too, threatening to change the locks before another day passes. After a little flurry of stop-payments on my part and late fees on the original lessee’s part, I finally ended the little mini-crisis by taking over the lease myself, agreeing that we could do the same thing in reverse again in August per our original agreement. Fortunately the apartment’s original renter was actually still in the area, at Mommy Dearest’s house in the valley, her only problem one of cash flow, or we’d’ve really been screwed. But anyway, problem’s over, right? For that to happen the check would have had to ACTUALLY CLEAR, THOUGH, WOULDN’T IT?! Unfortunately my replacement check to her HAD cleared (after an earlier stop payment), so my only collateral was her furniture which I’m currently using. At that point I was certain she had cleverly and sneakily manufactured the whole scenario as a way to rid herself of apartment and furnishings at maximum benefit to herself. I was actually surprised when she coughed up a money order (with penalty) to clear the little rent crisis and I realized she wasn’t a sneak, just a flake. But at least all’s well with the place now, right? All WAS well until I got the ‘final notice’ in the mail yesterday to pay LADWP ASAP or face shut-off of power and water, this bill going back three months. Fortunately in a flash of insight I had insisted on opening the bills myself and paying them or I’d’ve never known till the lights went out. It’s just another day in Paradise.

So the temps here hit three digits Fahrenheit for the fifth day running in this heat wave from Hell. It’s enough to make you miss Celsius. Forty just doesn’t sound so bad. Still life goes on and I’m still a transient, a nomad, and an ex-pat in Thai Town, looking for a job, looking for a reason for the season, albeit with my name on an apartment lease and a marriage license, still far from God, still close to Mexico. But I can’t go. I have to baby sit my wife, she of little English lingo and my name on her visa, which just passed the initial three months entry. I sent in the ‘green card’ papers, now a thousand bucks a pop, but at lest a three-in-one pop, with concurrent applications for right-to-work and ‘advance parole’ to leave the country with proper permission. The work permit will be nice since she’s been working without it for two months. Maybe the ‘advance parole’ will be multiple entry so we can go to TJ some Sunday and fill up the tank with gas. Just kidding, as I don’t have a car, not here at least. No, I’m still stuck until I can drop her off in Thailand for a spell and recuperate with a trip to Ethiopia. It’s not fair here. If we have a fight I still have to baby sit her. I can’t just stomp off saying, “see you later,” then resume the conversation in bed, older but wiser. I have to be responsible even when I’m pissed off. That, my friends, is simply not fair. At least she’s on her best behavior her, right? Yeah, right. And when we are getting along swimmingly, if I tell her I love her, she’ll ask me for a diamond ring, the silly Thai girl. I’m damned if I do, damned if I don’t. At least she’s paying her half of the bills, the same gal who once had illusions of being housewife-for-life. And I waste time worrying about what to do with this silly blog, while NPR tells the good news about a slackening in the ‘rate of increase’ of oil prices. Thank God for small miracles.