AND NOW, THE ECONOMY (SORT OF)...

One of the interesting facets of the Failed Economy is people have become more comfortable talking about their personal financial problems. That’s particularly evident here on the Coast, where folks have historically been very private about their personal lives. But it seems that personal financial troubles have passed from the realm of private embarrassments to that of shared experience. Rather like a freak snowstorm—everybody’s been hit by it (and everybody knows everybody’s been hit by it), so everybody’s got a story to tell and is comfortable telling it.

Perhaps in the back of people’s minds is a search for answers: Did somebody figure out a way of dealing with this that I can imitate? (Please don’t look in my direction. I don’t have the answer, or even an answer. I’m looking, too, just like everybody else.)

That breadth of shared experience does mean there’s a market for—what should we call them? Failed Economy Songs? You’d be tapping into something everybody can relate to in one way or another—almost as good as love songs, or lost-love songs. (In fact, there should be a connection between lost-love songs and Failed Economy songs. The process—and the results—are awfully similar.) They have to be upbeat, of course, or at least uptempo; no point in making people more depressed than they already are. One focuses instead on that classic definition of country music: “Pain You Can Dance To.”

I have one of those—“Free-Range Person,” about the joys of being homeless, is a fast-moving bluegrass number that crowds definitely like. Stan Good’s “Gimme Couple Billion of Them Bailout Bucks,” which I set to music, is in the same vein, and so, I think, is his “Death of the Middle Class,” which I still have to musicate. (I wanted that one to be Death Metal—of course—but with me playing it, it’s guaranteed to come out country. “Country death metal”:? Could we do that?)

Wherewith, an Idea. Maybe it’s time to assemble a setlist of Failed Economy Songs, and—resurrecting Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney—“put on a show.” Envision an evening of Depression music: mine, Stan’s, some old Woody Guthrie (he was the voice of the last Depression), wherever else I could obtain performable material that would fit. Make it a benefit for (say) the Food Bank, with a cover charge of (what else?) cans of food. Make it clear everything that evening, including people’s time, is being donated to The Cause.

Need three things to pull it off, I think: a band, a place, and material. I think our band, one way or another, would go for this—it’s attention and exposure, and if we could do it right on the heels of the Big Bay City Concert in March, we might generate a big crowd. Place? If we couldn’t do it at the Arts Center, there’s plenty of churches with sizable meeting halls. Odds are almost any organization would want to be associated with an effort like this.

And material? Well, I do know a lot of writers—all over the world, in fact. I could ask them if they’ve got, or could they write, and can we use, songs that would fit the program Upbeat and/or uptempo songs that are about, or relate to, the Failed Economy, that a small blues/bluegrass/country music combo is able to perform. If it’s just lyrics, that somebody’d have to set to music, well, maybe somebody (me) could do that. One could promise those writers exposure, but not much more. (On the other hand, having your name associated with a Good Cause is worth a lot of business down the road.)

And if it worked—i.e., if there was a big crowd, and it did generate a lot of donations—it’s something almost anybody could imitate almost anywhere else. The Failed Economy is a widespread shared experience, after all. Lots of people need help, and lots of people know it.

Joe