journal . Ben Sommer

The Police

I've been scouring the KaZaA Peer-to-Peer Network lately compiling all the songs from the Police's first three albums. Sting in his day was - with the exception of Elvis Costello - truly without a peer as a pop songwriter. Hole in My Life, Born in the 50's, Bring On The Night, and others are just timeless. This is really my third experience of these songs - the first was when I was very young, learning them by osmosis from my older brothers and their record collections. The second was in middle school, during the back-to-seventies/sixties craze that lasted about 1 year, and saw the brief return of tie-dye's and The Monkees. Anyway, its just a shame how Sting has fallen from grace into this Adult Album Alternative wasteland, where his songs serve mainly to moisten the panties of undersexed suburban mothers.

Don't Stunt My Genius, Man

My opinion, stated in the past, on the status of the 'Great Pop Songwriter' is that he is mainly a talented but musically uneducated individual who knows how to make a virtue of his limitations. The old hippie idea that too deep a knowledge of musical theories may hinder a songwriter's creative impulse is one I usually shoot down as idiotic. However, I'm finding that there must be some truth to this. The creative impulse in music is basically a hubristic attitude that says: "I'll do whatever the hell I please, 'cause I know it'll sound good". How else can I explain the fact that I, a totally trained composer but with a rock-n-roll soul, am unable to break from my urge to write the most complex rhythmic/harmonic weird-o art-rock I can conceive, even when I consiously set out to just write a catchy tune? Education can be a plague.

Resolution: To make some more money.

Progress: Started some sketches for songs for the next album - "Yes, it'll be better next time!"

Renovation

My wife's father the former carpenter came out of retirement last week to help us begin the loathsome task of remodeling our apartment. We're almost done with the bathroom, then on to the kitchen, basement, second-floor deck, upstairs bathroom - and $10,000 later - put the place up for sale while the house feeding frenzy still lasts, and move on from there.

What a boring subject.

The New England house market has become so absurd, that they say people at upper-crusty Boston cocktail parties degenerate into conversations about real estate faster now than they do in Manhattan. So pardon me for commending my parents for hocking off their own house to some likely-soon-to-be-laid-off stockbroker schmuck and his family last week. Fat 7 figures. That's in my ex-hometown of New Canaan, CT (home of David Letterman and Harry Connick and the ex-Mayor of Mexico City, say it like Canaan and jut out your chin). Henry Thoreau said that at a certain time of life a man is accustomed to view every place as the possible site of a house. This, he said, is the natural urge to shelter. But I don't think he intended to describe the lust for square footage, Ikea cabinetry, and Sub-Zero Refridgerators that afflicts many of us today.

Resolution: None. To not make hypocritical utterances.

Progress: Began the slow but inevitable shift in my musical thinking toward the 3 minute pop song format.