Wrap It Up

Haters be damned. I look forward to the annual sharing of Spotify’s personalized Wrapped initiative. I already know what I listened to in 2023, but I relish seeing other people’s lists of most-streamed artists.

My enthusiasm is ironic, as the streaming revolution killed my lucrative career 20 years ago. Everyone who protests about the ethical and sonic superiority of physical recordings is welcome  to visit my home.

I spent tens of thousands of dollars building a collection of more than 5,000 LPs and CDs in the 20th century. That era is over. Streaming is a dream come true for passionate music fans with broad tastes.

The brief thank-you videos popular artists provide Spotify aren’t coerced. A thousand artists earn more than a million dollars on Spotify every year. And Spotify pays 8,000 artists more than $100,000.00 every year. Not bad for a level playing field.

Oh, by the way, here are my December concert recommendations for KCUR.

Giant Steps

Original image by There Stands the Glass.

Between my unkempt hair, tatty attire and weather-beaten face, I’m occasionally mistaken for an indigent person.  Charitable do-gooders regularly offer me assistance as I wander the downtowns of America.  I fit right in when I visited the Central branch of Multnomah County Library yesterday.  

Two unhoused men were engaged in a violent clash over a shopping cart on the steps of the magnificent building in downtown Portland.  Rather than joining the mob of amused derelicts shouting encouragement to the combatants, I asked the three police officers stationed at the door directions to Carl Henniger’s photography exhibit.

I traversed a gauntlet of catatonic zombies, raving lunatics and menacing miscreants to reach the We Had Jazz gallery on the library's third floor.  The gorgeous black-and-white photos of jazz musicians taken in the 1950s affirm that Portland- then as well as now- is supportive of touring jazz musicians.

Subjects range from the first-generation jazz giant Louis Armstrong to a young John Coltrane.  A shot of Dizzy Gillespie and Count Basie studying a chess board in 1953 is my favorite image.  Almost all of the iconic musicians dressed to the nines.  I was by turns inspired and humiliated when I reentered the chaos outside.