After the reactions to last year’s more formal (as opposed to background for a Pink Elephant) playlist honoring people who passed away that made an impression on me. I tried to keep better, more methodical track, and good lord. So many people who changed how I heard things or turned me around on a genre, who deepened my connection with a kind of music or got me interested in a genre, who connected me with people. The person the track stands for who passed away is in parentheses.
On that same note, there are people who aren’t musicians or producers who have as great an impact on my understanding and love of music who should be acknowledged. Lane Campbell, who I probably knew less well than 50 people on my friends list, but who I met at Twangfest many years ago and still remembered me well enough to see me on my front lawn during the pandemic when he and his partner were visiting Columbus and stop to say hello. I thought about him a lot after that chance meeting, and more after he passed away, often revisiting music I loved that I hadn’t gone back to as often in recent years.
George Wein, who created the contemporary music festival, and certainly helped create the versions of it I still love even as I grumble about the ubiquity and encroachment of the festival as a thing: it’s easy to draw a line that there’s no Big Ears without Newport Folk and Jazz Festivals, no Nelsonville without New Orleans’s jazz fest. I finally read the great autobiography co-written by Nate Chinen this year and it made an impression on me.
Wrapping this up on January 3nd, with a second case of COVID, and grateful to meet another day. Thankful for anyone reading this, anyone who turned me onto any of these artists, and anyone I might talk about them with. I’m sure I’ve missed some, I always do. That impossibility is one of the things that keeps me going. Continue reading if you’re interested in my rambling.
Screen of Distance 