Happy Traumatize Everyone’s Pets Day

Swimming In The Wake

It’s tough to gauge if Sheryl Crow’s upcoming Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame induction will pave the way for similar artists to gain entrance. Because she’s not as much of an innovator as she is someone who carries on musical traditions the key question is do voters intend to shut the door behind her or not. I suppose the closest comparison between her and a previously nominated artist would be the Dave Matthews Band. They failed to gain induction the year they were on the ballot, but they did win the fan vote that year. Because of that I am confident their candidacy will be reconsidered before too long.

Crow’s main lane falls within rootsy types of music. Does her induction mean that Wilco has a better shot? How about Lucinda Williams? Or Rosanne Cash? These are all highly respected acts who are major players in the Americana subgenre. I haven’t seen much enthusiasm for the nominating committee to explore that musical space. We’ll have a better idea next year if voters are more willing to consider these types of artists. Also, look closely to see who participates in the Sheryl Crow segment of the induction ceremony. That might serve as an audition.

If there are any acts whose chances may have improved a bit more with Crow’s inclusion I’ll look further back. I can’t think of an artist who has inspired Americana music more than Emmylou Harris. She’s one of the few participants in The Last Waltz who is not already in the Hall. This may also provide a good reason to reassess Gram Parsons. He’s been nominated multiple times in the past but hasn’t made it in yet. Country rock as we know it would sound a lot different without his contributions.

Exile At 30

There’s been a lot of press the past few weeks surrounding the 30th anniversary of the release of Liz Phair’s seminal Exile In Guyville. She’s been doing multiple interviews and later this year will begin a tour in which she will perform the album in its entirety. It’s a bit of an exaggeration to call Exile Generation X’s Tapestry as it had nowhere close to the commercial success that Tapestry had, but it does stand as a cultural signpost for a certain subset of young women from that generation.

The album was initially branded as a song by song response to Exile On Main Street, and although the parallel doesn’t completely hold it did provide a platform for female rock singers to champion their own sexual assertiveness. It’s one of those releases that feels so much of its time and place. On the other hand, it acted as a bit of an albatross for Phair herself. As her career continued she was no longer the woman who recorded Exile, yet all of her later work was judged by those standards.

The recording is extremely low-fi, which has in a sense served to preserve it in its own era. Phair was also a terribly shy onstage performer at the time; her stage presence has grown stronger as the years have gone on, but looking at performance clips from that time her discomfort is palpable. Finally, her vocal technique changed immensely in the succeeding years. On Exile she sang-spoke in a very low register. In later years she sang in a higher pitch with greater ability to ride the melody.

The sad irony is that for all of her no BS assertiveness she presented in her music at the same time she has probably had to put up with more misogynistic crap than most others. It’s not simply that all of her other work was judged against her debut but also the way much of the criticism was over the top. She made the mistake of preceding the release of her 4th album with public statements that she was seeking pop airplay. The horror! True, the sound was much slicker, but there was a song on the album titled HWC. I’ll let you use Google to see what that stands for.

Looking at the reaction from some of the mostly male critics you would think that she had kidnapped the Lindbergh baby. I clearly remember one review using the phrase “sold her soul.” I’ll admit that it’s tough for me to express an unbiased opinion about Liz Phair. I wouldn’t even call her a celebrity crush; what’s the level above celebrity crush that doesn’t sound creepy or overly lascivious? That’s my take on Liz Phair. So I’ll just say that Exile In Guyville is clearly one of the most historically significant albums of the 90s. There’s a lot to be proud about that.

A Long Overdue Dress Code Change

There’s one aspect of athletic attire that I never really understood - why does the overwhelming majority of female tennis players continue to wear dresses while competing? It’s one thing when the sport was much less athletic in an earlier time; match play looked like a simple stroll in the park. But nowadays with so much leaping players are constantly exposing their underwear to the world. Competing in shorts would appear to be much more practical and modest.

Additionally there is another issue that half of the world’s population never needs to concern itself with. There are a few days each month in which a player would not wish to wear a white uniform. For the longest time this has been one of those unspoken topics, it’s only been in recent years that more and more soccer teams have moved away from white shorts. Which makes this year’s Wimbledon tournament a bit of a milestone.

The tournament has had a long-engraved dress code, requiring the players to wear all white. Needless to say this could cause tremendous embarrassment for the female players. This year the tournament finally relented and is allowing women to wear dark colored undershorts. Theoretically it should remove one layer of anxiety for the competitors. Not having gone through this myself it’s difficult for me to know what the level of physical discomfort there must be to compete at such a high level during those few days; it’s gotta be much worse to have to worry about bleeding through white clothing in front of a worldwide audience. It should have been done years ago, but well done Wimbledon.

Another Treasure Trove

I’m not planning on doing the same deep dive in this newsletter that I have been doing with the old Mets yearbooks that I’ve found, but a pleasant smile came to my face when I opened up this box.

Oh yeah, years worth of old back issues of Baseball Digest. Younger readers may not appreciate how valuable of a publication this was. In the era in which there were few televised options - the NBC & ABC Games Of the Week plus local games - the articles & stats found in Baseball Digest covered the sport perfectly, and there was a plethora of features that covered the game’s history. Reading the sheer number of “why isn’t player X in the Hall Of Fame” really served to spur on my lifelong interest in the institution. You can bet I’m looking forward to thumbing through random issues.

The Purge Continues

I want to circle back to something I discussed a few weeks ago following the latest news that Paramount+ has joined the club in deleting more material from its library. This pruning stands out because one of the titles that was removed is Inside Amy Schumer, which is currently in the midst of an Emmy campaign. Yeah, Emmy voters can obtain screeners, but what’s the point of ordinary folks can’t watch it?

There are a myriad of reasons why the epidemic of streaming services deleting content for tax purposes is so disheartening. First, the big hook for signing up for a service in the first place is the promise of a deep library. The former HBO Max in particular heavily promoted their content. There’s still plenty to offer, but not as much as there was. Second, there is the danger that much of the content that has been scrubbed will be lost to history. Third, this constitutes a regression in our ability to access content.

Think back several decades ago. In the old days of the three channel universe our viewing options were limited to what was currently on. If we weren’t home when a show aired, we were out of luck. If two good shows were on at the same time, we would need to make the difficult choice. There was always the option of catching a show when it would be rerun, but that was dependent upon if the show was successful enough to warrant a second airing. If you missed episode 5 of When Things Were Rotten, too bad. And there was no chance of being able to binge watch Lucan.

Now with the threat of shows being pulled upon immediate cancellation that almost forces the audience to not fall behind. I’m like most people, the list of shows that I need to catch up on is lengthy. I suppose it’s no big whoop if I miss out on a chance to check out a show that faded away after one season with no buzz, but there’s no need to pressure me to watch something now or else. The promise of an in demand universe should have prevented this. Business realities take precedence, but it’s still disappointing.

A side effect of this rush to save nickels is that it makes it less likely that many of the great lost shows of the past can find their way onto streaming services. There are several outstanding old series that can’t be found anywhere unless someone uploaded episodes onto YouTube. Either because paying music licensing fees is too cost prohibitive, or because there are disputes over show ownership there are plenty of examples of our cultural history that viewers who weren’t around during their initial runs don’t have access to. Off the top of head I can think of such shows as Homicide: Life On the Street, WKRP In Cincinnati, and China Beach as classic series that need to have an outlet. I’m sure there are many more if I would spend a lot of time thinking about it. If a streamer doesn’t want to pay for shows it already owns there’s no reason to believe it would have any interest in paying for a season of WKRP with its original music intact. That’s terribly unfortunate.

The War On Pizza Ovens

The latest output from the Outrage Industrial Complex has come from those claiming that New York is allegedly instituting a ban on pizza ovens. It’s always precious to hear from out of town politicians who spend most of their time hating on New York suddenly pretending for a moment that they care about what goes on in the city. As they attempt to whip people in a frenzy, they follow the old adage - never let the facts get in the way of a good rant.

Because the facts are that this supposed ban is non-existent. What is actually happening is a new rule has been proposed that is attempting to regulate emissions produced by older ovens. Pizzerias that have opened since 2016 have already had this requirement; the new proposal calls for inspections of ovens installed prior to that date to see if it’s feasible to install the same emission reducing devices on the older ovens. If an individual restaurant can’t, then they can’t. There would be no penalties. That is decidedly NOT a ban on old school coal or wood burning pizza ovens.

It’s all a health issue. It’s not good for workers or neighbors to constant inhale fine particles, so this is attempt to improve air quality. One would think that this type of thinking should be encouraged; the past few weeks have taught us all too well how excessive smoke makes breathing difficult. But nope, it’s better to rant and rave about a non-existent issue. On a related note, the average worldwide temperature this past Monday was the highest ever recorded.

Cheerio

Thanks as always for reading, and please continue to recommend Tending the Herd to your loved ones. And what the hell, your arch enemies as well. See you on Friday.