“Can’t Let Go” by Randy Weeks

Singalong 013: Biting the dust

"Don't make me sit all alone and cry"

I got in a fight with my beloved one day. It happens. Tension had been high for a while so it blew out: we said all the things, yelled and cried etc. Then we made up and settled into a post-fight vulnerability, feeling our way around the corner and away from the shitty feelings.

But it had gotten loud for a bit, and we were very angry. As we became less angry we both started taking stock of what we could have done better.

She and I have pretty dramatic fights occasionally, but I am less and less alarmed by them over time because we accept that we are both hot-blooded people. Things blow up and then blow over. We always learn something and we rarely fight about the same thing for very long. In our tenth year together, we can barely recognize ourselves from the people we used to be, and I mean that in a good way. Our life is good. I still feel like I won the lottery with her.

But the real reason I bring it up here is this:

Later on, I was looking online for a nearby luthier who might be able to cut me a new cello bridge, and I wound up on Facebook.

“I got a big chain around my neck”

I usually get served ads for things like "Signs you might have ADHD", fitness routines for men over 50, quirky string instrument gadgets, cute girls jumping off cliffs, etc. But suddenly, after this argument, I started seeing taglines like "Is it possible to repair broken trust with your partner", "Make no mistake: a separation will end your marriage" and "Is there life after a middle age divorce…", each one autoplaying a handi-cam video of some Hey Bro video guy, telling it “like it is".

The truly crazy part was that while we were fighting, our phones had happened to be in the other room.

But somehow the Machine detected emotional rumblings in the vicinity anyway. And it deduced, perhaps by listening and maybe also by inferring from some snippy texts we’d sent to each other, that we were in rough waters. So it decided that this would be a great moment to offer me some relevant predatory brainrot.

Creeptown!

“I’m like a fish out of water, a cat in a tree / you don’t even wanna talk with me”

Whatever this new world is, I'm telling you it ain't brave.

Do you remember when the computer was just an excitingly efficient administrative tool?

A new wave of labor saving devices for moving our information around?

If only it were just that.

The techscape, this “Revenge of the nerds” seemed harmless enough in the beginning. I could get with the computer craze for a while, but at this point the nerds have been getting their revenge for long enough. As it turns out, it wasn't just the jocks who were making their nerdy little lives miserable, it was all of us: humans with souls and feelings. Characters who somehow aren't obsessed with quantitatively modeling every single heartbeat, who can function culturally without digital guardrails.

These days they’re coming for your very personality. We quantify or die.

“See I got a candle and it burns so bright / In my window every night”

As a musician who works with my hands, I feel truly hated by the Machine. We were the first marks, fodder for the enterprising bootleggers who can’t play a note. They lifted all our tracks and built what eventually became the spotify streamscape. Our greasy, bubbling world of creative music and grinding, howling, bopping humanity got sucked into the nerd matrix, the gridded-out hot dog factory of digital content. Money got a lot tighter and the scene constricted.

“It’s over, I know it but I can’t let go”

I remember my last road gig, by which I mean the last time I played a show under my own name as the indie road gig business model was dissolving. A guy was chatting me up in the post-show glow next to the merch table. Folks were filtering out and he was monopolizing me a little, which kept me from connecting with more folks during the critical window of audience departure when all merch sales occur.

But I indulged this guy’s patter because he and his wife had really loved the show, and she was fingering my $80 “complete discography” package on the table. Maybe I could seal the deal by indulging him.

I might have lost some sales as I hoped to land the bigger one, and that’s on me. I believe something like two other CDs were sold, but this couple really looked like they were going to go for the package. He went full-podcast on me, asking me about my career, my journeys. He felt a connection, I was hopeful, and then as they finally turned to leave (they were the last ones out the door) he shook my hand and said, “so is your music on Spotify?”.

I answered in the affirmative, he replied “so we’re good then” and that was that. They left without spending a single dollar on merch. Another one bites the dust.

“You don’t like to see me standing around / Fell like I been shot but didn’t fall down”

This is what people don’t understand: if you wanted to make original music and build an audience for it, the way to do that was in person. And in order to eat and fill the gas tank between shows, as you made your way from town to town, selling a handful of CD’s was the way to fill the tank. For most emerging artists it’s not “making a living”, just a critical link in the chain. But this little market was what made a lot of music possible. Now that market is no more.

We cultivated a network of trust between clubs. But today, in order to book those little road gigs, a talent buyer will look only at your spotify numbers. They must be in the tens of thousands or you will not get the gig. Meanwhile, even if you do get the gig, no one will buy your music at the show because they already have spotify. You’ll make your bottom line by selling a t-shirt or some other product, anything but your music.

OK. There might have been too many indie songwriters on the road in 2010, but these days there definitely aren’t. They’re on the phone now, just like you, and if they weren’t able to pivot to “Reels™” then they’ve likely dropped off the map.

“You turn off trouble like you turn off a light / Went off and left me, it just ain’t right”

Of course I know that microbrewed independent music still happens out there, but there used to be so much more of it. In every town in America. People had more time for it. Music - the kind people make with their hands - floated from open doorways. Now it does not.

Music is still everywhere, but it’s mostly there to sell you things. Everything except itself. We get tracked, surveilled, analyzed and seduced with clickable caramel. And while I can (and do) minimize my social media use, just having any kind of active social account is apparently enough to open my whole life up to a whole new strain of robotic psycho-spying. Now my phone thinks I’m headed for divorce after eavesdropping on a single argument.

I know I clicked "agree" to the terms and conditions but man, oh HELL do I object.

“Round every corner something I see / Bring me right back how it used to be”

I wish I could say I saw it coming. As a gen x’er I got to witness an unprecedented tidal wave of convenience washing over everybody. We had some heady times, watching the miracle of touch tone phones beget answering machines and then texting. We hopped from tapes and vinyl to CDs, minidiscs, mp3s and now Tidal. Postcards used to fall out of magazines at the dentist’s office, now AI spies on our domestic affairs.

I swallowed it like most. But after the x-posts, reels, opinion columns and podcasts have been duly delivered, consumed, liked™ and shared™, I still need an honest-to-God song to set me straight.

So here’s this one: