The key to longevity is to learn every aspect of music that you can. — Prince
Prince changed music. Chyna changed women’s wrestling. But would we want either of them to be immortal?
Here we are again, mourning the death of yet another music legend. If I had any purple left in my wardrobe I might be wearing it today. Maybe. Earlier this week, I listed Purple Rain as one of the top five songs that everyone needs to hear. Now, that’s all anyone wants to play. Everyone jumps on the bandwagon when an artist dies.
There’s also a temptation to curse 2016 for being unreasonably evil in killing off people who mean a lot to our culture and in whom we have a great deal of invested emotion. I saw one tweet yesterday that claimed the aliens were calling all their spies back home before the disaster of this fall’s presidential election. While unlikely, that explanation comes about as close to making sense as anything else does at the moment.
Yesterday just plain sucked for everyone except, possibly, Queen Elizabeth II, who turned 90. And even if her day went as badly as everyone else’s, the Queen gets a do-over in June when her birthday is officially celebrated.
The rest of us, however, started the day with news of Chyna’s death. That was bad enough. Chyna was one of those people who always seemed to be struggling against public perception. Few people paid attention to women’s wrestling before Chyna got into the game, and she changed that. She made it more sexy, more entertaining. That wasn’t enough, though, and she kept looking for something I’m not sure she ever found, some level of acceptance that alluded her.
When the news began to filter onto the Internet that Prince is dead, the initial tone was one of disbelief. After all, he’d been the target of false death announcements before and having TMZ break the news is like asking for a giant here-we-go-again eye roll. Only when the Associated Press joined in on the story did the shock and sadness really begin to set in and spread a purple wave of sadness around the globe.
Were it a more quiet news day, we would probably be talking about the death of Brenda Soto, a 16-year-old Fairfax county, Virginia student who was beaten to death by other girls while at school. There are multiple issues there that need to be discussed, including the accusation that multiple students stood by and recorded the beating on their phones instead of doing anything to help.
Our collective attention can’t seem to handle more than one topic at a time, though, and for the moment, all our attention is on Prince. The rock star’s death is bound to become one of those “where were you” moments for a lot of people. I am seeing in the global reaction’s to Prince’s death a pattern similar to what happened when Elvis died unexpectedly in 1977. All the shock, all the despair, mostly coming from people my age and a wee bit younger, those for whom songs like Purple Rain, Raspberry Beret, and When Doves Cry influenced some formative part of their adolescence, is very similar to that of women of a certain age when Elvis died.
I remember being in the car with Poppa, on my way to a piano lesson, when the news of Elvis’ death came on the radio. I wasn’t of the generation that worshipped him, though, so while I appreciated the impact he’d had on music, I wasn’t necessarily a fan (which hasn’t changed). Similarly, teens today are not overly familiar with Prince and the various iterations and changes he went through. Those who are really into music appreciate his impact, but they’re not as likely to be fans and most won’t understand why their parents and the rest of the world are turning everything purple.
What I expect to come next are the conspiracy theories. Prince led a life that is ripe for speculation. After all, since his 2001 conversion to Jehovah’s Witness, Prince had acted less like a rock star and more like a delusional cult member (which is the most accurate way to describe all Jehovah’s Witnesses). Even though he had returned to performing and seemed to be in good form when he rocked Atlanta earlier this month, one has to wonder if the strange religious beliefs, particularly that part about not allowing blood transfusions or organ transplants, might have factored into his death.
There’s also the fact that Prince died a mere two months after one of his more famous girlfriends, Vanity. That there might have been some connection between their deaths is already a tale that is gathering some steam and, given the romantic twist, could quite likely take off.
Or maybe he’s out golfing with Elvis and Bowie in Bermuda.
With the tremendous number of deaths among music legends and other celebrities this year, one might find it interesting that just this past Wednesday The Guardian ran a story about the possibility of digital immortality. The theory here is that while it might be impossible to preserve one’s body forever, given the natural decaying of biological tissue, one might be able to digitally preserve all of one’s memories, experiences, personality, and wisdom in a digital form, and then present that back through some type of chat bot with an avatar resembling the face of the deceased. The name of the company is Eternime and the product isn’t quite ready for prime time. Their website says they hope to be in beta sometime “next month,” without any indication as to which “next month” that might be.
But what if we could preserve the personality, the spirit, and the essence of people like Prince or Bowie or Elvis? Would we really want to keep them around in that form? We have their music, which is influential on their own. Do we really need a digital Prince to repeat back some of his previous questionable statements? Regardless of how great his music was, this was the guy who said, “When I found out that there was eight Presidents before George Washington, I wanted to smack somebody,” and “Anyway, all these computers and digital gadgets are no good. They just fill your head with numbers and that can’t be good for you.” Do we really need that nonsense lingering around? I’m not sure immortality suits everyone terribly well.
And that’s why I might not wear purple today, even if I had some. All that was great about Prince happened before 2000. In fact, one could easily, in my opinion, make the argument that after his 1998 album Lovesexy everything else pretty much sucks. To return to an earlier analogy, think young Elvis versus “old” Elvis (he died when he was 42, so “old” is a matter of perspective). With both artists, the songs that made them famous and for which they’ll always be remembered are the ones at the front of their careers. Prince hasn’t had a number one hit since 1989’s Batdance.  After that, the highest any song ranked on the charts was The Greatest Romance Ever Sold, which topped at #63 in 2000. He hasn’t had a song hit the top 100 since 2004’s Call My Name.
So, as great as he once was, maybe it’s best that we let Prince and everyone else go. Immortality isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be and sometimes the more we know about our heroes and legends, the less likeable they become. We’ll miss what we liked about them, that part of them that touched our lives, but that doesn’t mean we should keep them around forever.
And hey, maybe the movie Men In Black was right: They’re not dead, they just returned to their home planet.
5 Things You Should Know: 01.13.2017
05:04:22Â 01/13/2017
Is Anybody Out There?
Here it is, the first Friday the 13th of the year. Of course, there’s trouble brewing as temperatures going into this evening sit right on the cusp of providing freezing rain or sleet and making everything a mess. Best guess at this point is that most of the mess is going to stay South of Indianapolis, but expect this evening’s rush hour to be a pain in the ass. Of course, why should traffic be any different from the rest of the day?
And that is why this is likely to be the last edition of 5 Things You Should Know, at least in this format. It’s too much of a pain in the ass for the few people who bother to read or view it. We spend at least six hours, often more, sorting through the news, choosing the right stories, and then selecting pictures. And for what? No one’s watching. On average, we have the same five people visiting every day. The past two weeks we’ve been asking for sponsors and gotten no response. Maybe it’s time to move on.
But did anyone notice?
Anyone who is plugged into any form of media the past twelve hours already knows that there was a ten-minute span yesterday when the C-Span feed was replaced with the feed for Russia Today1. Â The switch occurred about 2:30 Thursday afternoon as Congresswoman Maxine Waters was trying to convince her more ignorant colleagues why the Securities and Exchange Commission is actually an important part of our government. The feed cut Ms. Waters off mid-sentence and went to music.
You’ve seen this story all over the media because Russia Today has been implicated by US intelligence as participating in the Russian effort to interfere with and influence the presidential election. Could this have been more of the infamous hacking over which everyone has been arguing? Probably not. The private company that owns C-Span released a statement saying that it was much more likely that the error was due to a routing problem.
The question that is on my mind is how long it took before anyone actually noticed that there was an interruption? It’s not like C-Span is the highest-rated network in the country. Most the people who watch it are hard-core political nerds and reporters desperately looking for something resembling a story. If Russia wants to really undermine faith in our political system, perhaps they should consider hacking the feed for the inauguration next week. Although, once again, would anyone notice?
Applying a little lube
We know Congress is about to screw us. They said when they were running for election that they were going to screw us and for some stupid reason we voted for them anyway. So, we should not be surprised by the fact that Congress is about to make it easier for them to repeal the Affordable Care Act2. Assuming the House of Representatives votes along party lines, which is what they’ve been doing the past six years, they’ll change the rules today so that repeal bills can pass through the Senate without chance of a Democratic filibuster.
This is the type of action that you might think would be illegal. After all, the Consitution created the allowance for a filibuster so that the minority party could at least give the majority party a chance to think before they did something stupid. However, Republicans don’t like to think and they certainly don’t want to give the American people time to rally around a filibuster and express their disagreement with what politicians are wanting to do.
The rule change does not require a presidential signature. Once both bodies have approved the change it goes into effect. Be sure, this is all about making it easier for the rich to avoid paying taxes and to eliminate things such as Medicaid expansion and subsidies to help pay for health insurance. This bill is nothing more than the lube being applied before we all get screwed. This is the Congress you elected. Don’t act so fucking surprised.
Fashion isn’t so profitable
We’ve talked frequently before about how fashion retail tends to be in a tailspin. Now, it would seem that at least some designers are getting caught up in the downturn as well. Bibhu Mohapatra, the New York-based Indian designer who has often dressed Michelle Obama, filed for bankruptcy this week3. Fortunately, this does not mean that the colorful designer is going out of business. Rather, the bankruptcy protection allows the company to restructure its debt and continue operating.
What this underscores is just how difficult it is for an independent label to survive in the current fashion climate. Mohapatra is one of a handful of small labels that operates on both sides of the Atlantic and has a reasonably strong following. However, with the general climate in fashion going toward more casual wear and a fast fashion model, designers like Bibhu find themselves in a position of having to alter both their aesthetic as well as their business model if they hope to keep up.
This also puts a light on how dependent small designers are on department stores. Mohapatra’s collection is available largely through upper-end retailers such as Bergdorf Goodman and Saks Fith Avenue, both have which, like many fashion retailers, have struggled to maintain their clientele. The struggles at the store trickle down to the designers whose operations are too small to open their own storefronts. The debt restructuring should make the small brand more attractive to investors. We know LVMH has been doing some shopping and the brand might fit well within that conglomerate.
Trying to find something different
Hedi Slimane seems to be having some difficulty finding where he fits best. The former creative director at Yves Saint Laurent, who left suddenly without explanation last March, was probably hoping that another label would want to take advantage of his often controversial design habits. They didn’t. While there were plenty of transitions throughout the fashion industry last year, none of the major labels even expressed an interest in Slimane. So, he has decided to become a photographer, instead4.
Now, to be fair, this isn’t totally an out-of-reach move for the now former designer. When he was at Saint Laurent, he would sometimes step behind the camera to shoot the brand’s campaign himself. However, we should also note that his doing so largely copied that same habit by Chanel’s Karl Lagerfeld and neither of them manage to actually impress anyone who knows anything about fashion photography. At least Lagerfeld has some experience behind him whereas Slimane has none.
So, here goes the designer into a crowded field of people who know a lot more about photography than he does, banking largely on the recognizability of his name to make up for a lack of talent and experience. What we’ve seen from him so far is a very high contrast black and white style that falls flat and fails to show any real imagination. While I never really liked Slimane as a designer, I don’t think photography is where he belongs, either. Perhaps he should enroll in a community college somewhere.
And finally …
All good things must come to an end, as we know, and often times those ends come without much fanfare or appreciation for what was accomplished. Many people retire and find themselves sitting alone on park benches talking to the pigeons while wondering if anything they’ve done in their life is worthwhile. Joe Biden will not be one of those people, however. After nearly 50 years of public service, the last eight spent as the ultimate sidekick to President Obama, Biden finally got some recognition yesterday in the form of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, with distinction5.
Almost immediately, video of the moment when the vice president realized what was happening went viral. Somehow, despite existing in an atmosphere where nothing seems to ever be secret, the president and his staff were able to surprise his friend with the nation’s most prestigious non-military award. I’ve no clue what Joe thought was about to happen, but he was clearly caught off guard and had to turn away and wipe tears from his eyes as the president made the announcement.
While vice presidents generally come and ago without much notice or notoriety, over the past eight years Joe Biden has become the nation’s favorite grandfather figure and his BFF relationship with the president has inspired thousands of memes and points of humor, which the pair have played up much to everyone’s delight over the past year. What we don’t want to overlook, however, is that Vice President Biden would be deserving of this award even if he wasn’t so chummy with the president. His is a record of incredible service and when he boards the train back to Deleware next week, we’re going to miss him very much.
And that’s it. We’re done. I have no idea what’s coming next, if there’s anything coming at all. What I do know is that the lack of response we’ve gotten to this format requires I take a step back and consider some form of change. I thought there might be value in cutting through all the mass media bullshit and fake news. Apparently, I was wrong. So, we’ll take the weekend off, re-evaluate what seems reasonable, and perhaps come back with something new. Or not. Either way, good luck and have a good day.
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