Making Music Matter Again - part one

One of my more obnoxious qualities circa 1985 (and there were many) was, upon hearing a song on the radio, reciting the song title, artist, album, year, album side and song number.  So, when a particular song crackled on WQFM, I might say something like, “Goodbye Stranger, Supertramp, Breakfast in America, 1979, side one, third song.” 

It goes without saying that I didn’t date much circa 1985.

At that time in my life, records weren’t just purchased; they were digested.  After all, an LP at K-Mart cost the equivalent of two hours of dishwashing at Seigo’s Japanese Steakhouse – I needed to make the most of my record-buying binges by not only listening to the record, but studying the album’s cover, lyrics and liner-notes.  (One of the biggest disappointments was purchasing a record that came in a blank white sleeve; it diminished the whole listening experience).  Even albums that fell flat initially called for repeated listens, as I forced myself to justify a poor purchase until something redeeming was revealed, and with the exception of Gregg Rollie’s solo LP, I always found something positive to take away from a record purchase.

Today, music can be accessed, purchased, copied and shared with one click, often a song at a time, so the idea of reciting an album side and song number has become an anachronism (and has probably allowed music geeks to land a few more dates).  More importantly, the access to free music has resulted in its devaluation.  Music has become disposable, no more valuable than a paper plate.  Unless you’re talking about sunsets, love and air, that which is free generally has little to no worth.

Recently, I’ve made strides to making music matter again in my life.  There are a number of steps a music lover can take to become more actively engaged in music listening.  Number one: listen to vinyl.

I am not a vinyl snob.  I never got into expensive stereo equipment.  I haven't refrained from purchasing CDs.  I love listening to music on the go.  And the lower quality of compressed music on-line has never been a big deal to me.  I don’t listen to vinyl for the so-called superior sound quality.  I listen to vinyl because I can only do it when I’m in my basement where there’s nothing else to do except listen to the music, and because there’s something magical about placing a needle into the groove of a record – it’s one of those mundane acts that transcends the act itself, forming a link to generations, artists, and eras gone by.

I asked  Chris Ellensohn, co-owner of Cheap Kiss Records in Schaumburg, Illinois, to explain why vinyl matters.  He said it was summed up best by an intern his company hired a few years ago: “I feel like you should have to work a little bit for your music so that it is not taken for granted.”

A good summary, but Chris elaborates more eloquently than I ever could.  “Retrieving the record, carefully removing it from the jacket, cleaning it if necessary, gingerly dropping the needle into the groove, perusing the liner notes as the first strains of that particular band’s attempt at a first impression greet you, are all moments of connection to the artist.  Compare it to a painting by your favorite artist hanging on your wall vs. having a picture of it on your phone.  Having something tangible can make a big difference. 

“The fact that we can hit play on iTunes and shuffle our way to hours of uninterrupted background noise just makes us more removed from the point of musical inception, that moment in time when a fleeting thought fleshed itself out into a melody, harmony and rhythm intended to worm its way into your brain and not let go.”

The idea that we’ve become “more removed from the point of musical inception” resonates in other areas of our lives: the clothes we wear, the food we eat and the furniture we sit on.  Listening to vinyl is akin to growing your own vegetables, building your own bookshelf, or knitting your own sweater.  There’s something pure, perhaps even noble, about listening to music like it truly matters.

Give it a try sometime.  And if you’re in the western ‘burbs of Chicago, come and join Chris and Cheap Kiss Records tonight (March 18) from 6-8PM at Cornerstone Used Books in Villa Park.  They’ll be talking – and spinning – records.  Tonight’s theme: 70s AM Radio Hits.

Revisiting College Planning

About a year ago I blogged about college costs and how the increasing rate of tuition has been a game changer for our teens as they approach college.

One of the guys I mentioned in that blog, Frank Palmasani, has a new book: Right College, Right Price. Here's the cool part - it's on sale as an eBook for a dollar.  Not too shabby.  True, a large reason this book is so cheap is because it's a self-advertisement for Palmasani's Financial Fit (TM) Affordability Program, which currently costs $49 for a year's use.  But after purchasing the book yesterday and finishing it in about three hours, I can say that it's a great read and hugely beneficial regardless of whether you buy into the full program.  I may do some of my own calculations with Excel for the time being, but in about a year, I could see ponying up the money for the program.

Palmasani spoke at my daughters' high school last year, and I was impressed with his approach to finding the right college because it was so logical, but as the exploding student debt crisis in the US illustrates, sometimes logic needs to be learned.  Palmasani's approach?  Find out what your family can afford to pay for college first and then focus your search on those institutions whose net costs fall within your budget. Obvious, right?  But until recently, it was nearly impossible to figure out what the net cost to your family would be.  That is, not until March or April of your child's senior year, when she was already gaga about attending her dream school.  

With the advent of Net Price Calculators that are now required for all colleges and universities (thank you congress and GW - apparently things CAN get done in Washington from time to time), you can now plan in advance and avoid taking trips to universities that aren't within your budget, and more importantly, avoid the heartache that comes with one of two very bad choices: 1) telling your child she has to go someplace else; or 2) take out mountains of debt to pay for her dream college.  Clearly, option two has been the preferred method for parents in the US as of late.  It's time to change that strategy.

This isn't to say that your child shouldn't aim high if he wants to.  Depending on your income, it's quite likely that an Ivy League education will cost less than your premier state school.  How will you know how much aid you qualify for?  It's not an exact science, but the FAFSA Forecaster might be a good place to start.  You can input your income and assets, and then change the numbers if you want to determine how, say, paying down your house more quickly or investing more money into your retirement account might affect your eligibility for loans.

Frank Palmasani has loads of advice regarding loans, scholarship searches, strategies your should be wary of, and the risks associate with various decisions.  Most importantly for me, the book gives a great summary of the entire college search process so that I have a better idea of what lies ahead.  I'm actually excited, because I feel that regardless of how my children do in school or how much my wife and I can help them with costs, there are plenty of opportunities for our kids.  And now, thanks to so many helpful online tools (and a good book), there are plenty of opportunites for parents to make the process more palitable.

Life on Film: Every Seven Years

The recent release of the film “56 Up” served as a reminder for me to catch up on the seven films that preceded it.  A magnificent achievement and a gift to those who are curious about life and all that comes with it, this documentary series began in 1964 and continues to record the lives of fourteen English people from various backgrounds every seven years.   I’d caught a bit of “42 Up” on PBS some years back, but with the advent of Netflix and Instant Watch, all are now available for immediate viewing, with the exception of “7 Plus 7” (though many clips from that episode are reviewed in the latter films, and it’s also available on DVD).  Remarkably, all fourteen people are still alive, and most are doing well with their lives despite the challenges that so many them – and so many of all of us – face: divorce, mental and physical illness, lack of money, losing parents, raising kids and career disappointments.

The premise of the movie is a quote attributed to St. Francis Xavier: “Give me the boy until he is seven, and I will give you the man,” and indeed, upon watching the film “7 Up,” it’s not difficult to forecast the lives of some of the kids with a degree of accuracy.  And as I continue to make my through the series (I’m midway through watching “42 Up”) I can’t help but put myself in the shoes of the subjects of these movies and wonder how my life would have looked on film at age seven (and every seven years after).  I’m quite glad it wasn’t, but I’m grateful to the people who’ve agreed to be filmed, for they’ve helped to reveal the humanity in all of us.

Making my way through the series, I find myself captivated with these rather ordinary lives and rooting for the happy endings of every one of them.  When we are shown a happily married couple in one film, only to discover that they’ve divorced by the next film, it’s a heartbreaking revelation.  This isn’t “The Bachelorette” or “Survivor”; these are real lives of common people doing the best they can with what they have.

It reminds me of my twentieth high school reunion, the last one I attended, when so many people came together with seemingly one collective thought: I hope you’re doing okay.  No longer did it matter who had been friends with whom, who had been a jock or a band nerd, or who had been cocky or humble.  Life has a way of humbling everyone, even the most successful among us, and it was gratifying to discover that so many of us had survived, had persevered, had found happiness, lost it, and then found it again, had endured the unimaginable only to come out of the other side stronger and more grateful.

Perhaps Roger Ebert said it best in the last paragraph of his review for “56 Up”:  It is a mystery, this business of life.  I can’t think of any cinematic undertaking that allows us to realize that more deeply.

I couldn’t agree more.  I’m rooting for the class of 1986 from Brookfield East High School, and I’m rooting for the fourteen people who have given so much of themselves to the study of life.  Not just their lives, but all of ours.

From Too Many People to Not Enough

Jonathan V. Last contributed a very interesting article in this weekend’s Wall Street Journal about America’s declining population rates and the negative consequences it’s generating.  Just when you thought that we were getting world population under control, you can now sleep uneasily as our country tailspins into zero growth for the foreseeable future. 

Today, America's fertility rate is at 1.93, below the replacement rate of 2.1, and according to Last, the United States has been leaning on immigrants and their higher birthrates for our continued growth and innovation over the past several decades.  This will eventually dry up, he claims, which means the United States will ultimately need to fix this mess.  How?  By having more babies, of course.

But fixing the problem isn’t as simple as just telling people to make more babies, because the author deduces – and this is a gem of a deduction – “the problem is that, while making babies is fun, raising them isn't.”  He writes, “A raft of research shows that if you take two people who are identical in every way except for childbearing status, the parent will be on average about six percentage points less likely to be ‘very happy’ than the nonparent. (That's just for one child. Knock off two more points for each additional bundle of joy.)”

Now they tell me.

But whereas Last is rather pessimistic about America’s future, (he concludes: "Can we keep the U.S. from becoming Japan? in the long run, the answer is, probably not."), I’m more optimistic, at least in this respect.

Last’s most interesting suggestion to help thwart the decline in population growth is revamping the University system, which is clearly broken and which has pushed off child-rearing years past what it was in the early twentieth century.  Last suggests encouraging education systems to respond to market demands and create opportunities for students to get basic “no-frills” degrees. 

This is already starting to happen.  Three-year degree programs are becoming more common, and on-line opportunities in education are spreading rapidly.  In Time Magazine’s October 29, 2012 issue, Amanda Ripley wrote about the influx of startup MOOCs (massive open online courses) like Udacity, Coursera and edX, who’ve put college-level courses on-line for – at least for now – free.  But even after these and other institutions rely on fees, Ripley concludes, “One way or another, it seems likely that more people will eventually learn more for less money.”

And what’s really cool is that on-line courses are teaching in ways that are more productive than the traditional methods universities have always relied on.  As part of her research, Ripley took an on-line physics course and was surprised to learn that the class was taught “according to how the brain actually learns.  It had almost nothing in common with most classes I’d taken before.”  The class included fast-paced videos, interactive opportunities for students to answer questions, positive reinforcement for answering correctly, opportunities to fix incorrect answers, and games to apply the lessons they just learned.

Regardless of where people get educated in the future - whether it's on-line or through brick and mortor establishments - the competition that on-line eduation programs provide will eventually have a big impact in how people are educated, how much it costs, how much debt they incur, and – ultimately – how many babies they have.

And look, even if we can’t fix our university system and if our current immigration dries up, we can consider the following: the United States National Research Council estimates that sea levels will rise 2 to 6 ½ feet by the end of this century.  If they're correct, perhaps we can rely on a new wave of immigrants to feed our need for population growth: the Polynesians.

Oh, The People You Know

About a decade ago, I met a man who went on a harangue about the moochers of society, and questioned why others felt they were entitled to receive assistance for things they could do themselves if they only set their minds to it.  He was a “pick-yourself-up-from-your-bootstraps” kind of guy who had gone to college, worked several jobs to pay for it, earned a degree and was now making a good living.

Whether this type of mentality and the politics associated with it have any merit is open to debate, but what I’ve kept coming back to after all these years is the degree to which we benefit from the lives we intersect with, and how a seemingly minor vicissitude can impact us in big ways.  Dr. Suess wrote Oh, The Places You’ll Go, but Oh, the People You’ll Know would probably have been a bigger indicator of our futures.  Anyone in Nashville and Hollywood certainly knows this, but you needn’t pursue dreams of stardom to recognize how who you know is a gift that keeps on giving. 

Just last week I went on a free trip to the Caribbean thanks to my wife’s employer – the wife I would never have met had I not had the money and education to get into grad school.  And grad school was largely the result of my parents’ ability to raise me in an upper middleclass neighborhood in Brookfield, Wisconsin with high quality schools and safe streets.  The people I met during this time have, over the years, assisted me in ways large and small.  They’ve gotten me tickets to Packers and Brewers games, provided legal and financial advice, walked me through home improvement projects, offered lodging in interesting places, given me tips on purchases, doctors, technology – you name it.  Sure, I had a job at sixteen and worked relatively hard during high school, but my grandmother’s inheritance paved the way to a loan-free undergraduate degree, which resulted in a modest loan from grad school, which allowed my wife and me to pay off our car loan sooner, which gave us an opportunity to save more for my children’s college funds…

It’s all connected.  There’s no getting around the fact that I’m still benefitting from the relationships I established well over twenty years ago.

I think of the free air conditioning maintenance my generous neighbor has given me, the major discount my wife and I received from an old friend when we set up a will, the crazy talented musicians who’ve helped me record numerous CDs, the friend who created my website, and the computer geniuses who’ve resuscitated my desktop from certain death a number of times.

This list goes on and on.  And while I’ve dug myself out of a few holes in my lifetime, to think that I’ve lived in some sort of cocoon and didn’t benefit – and benefit dramatically – from the people I’ve met would be absurd. 

But here’s the kicker: how much different would these benefits had been had I grown up ten miles east of my childhood home?