And the Winner Is?

Next week is the Grammy Awards.  You and your Water Cooler Club watching?

I might.  I’m undecided.  I haven’t watched for the last few years. Some say it’s because I’m bitter ever since I lost my music industry job. Some also say that Pete Rose was bitter after they kicked him out of hockey, and he was a lot closer to the puck than I ever was to a Grammy, or the music industry, really. Trust me.

No, my “music industry” gig was playing “name that tune” for the radio machine, and selling playlists to the highest bidder. I was a sort of a radio & record James Bond, without the Martinis, the guns, or the women. Still, a pretty good gig while it lasted. It lasted till the same technology that brought you Shazam (the song identifier, not the super hero.) started naming all the music for me.

“Shazam! Shazam! Shazam!”

Yah, still wrong Shazam, Gomer Pyle.

And I, like Charlie Bucket’s father and the toothpaste factory, was out of a job. In a way I was bitter, but more like, “wow, that was a waste of time,” and not like “I’m with you Pete Rose! I hate music!”

Still, over the last few years, I’ve have kinda hated music, but that had nothing to do with my old job, Pete Rose or Gomer Pyle.  Okay, maybe Jim Nabors did freak me out a bit, but that was different.

“Well Sergeant Carter, have the lambs stopped screaming?”

Don’t remember that one? It’s a lost episode. Just like my music. 

Music has been on the downbeat for a few years.  There’s nothing new. That’s not to say there’s nothing good. I do like all the artists up for album of the year. Jack White, Mumford & Sons, Black Keys, Frank Ocean, and Fun.? All great. I don’t care who wins. They deserve it, but are they new? Not really. Not even Frank & Fun., who are up for the Best New Artist Award, don’t sound that new.  They sound like every other song on every other radio stations.

Good, but not new, and now it’s good and stale.

The good news is music is cyclical. For every down, there’s an up, and with every beat, there’s hope that things will get funky again and meet on the one. I’ve seen it happen before. When I was a kid, I was lolled into a stupor by disco, but shaken awake by punk and funk. That was the late 70’s early 80’s. The new music came as a backbeat to the gas crunch, high inflation, unemployment, and hostages in Iran. It came as a way to cope, and voice of dissatisfaction.

Then life got softer, and so did the music. Yuppies ruled, and money flowed. By the end of the 80’s a faceless army of hair-bands partied and rappers lost street cred. Paychecks written by mall rats paid for music’s soul and every musician danced to the same lifeless tune.

We didn’t worry, we were happy.

Then we went to Iraq, and woke up next to Tiffany and Debbie Gibson. A new high jobless rate drew us out of the mall in an early morning walk of shame.

“I hope I can get home before anybody sees me wearing Lycra.”

That’s not to say we sobered up, we just needed a new drug, different from the one Huey Lewis had sold us. Some found it the industrial haven of Nine Inch Nails, who built up a sonic wall, and preached the evils of God money. We were all game, until Trent told us what he wanted to do to us like an animal. Then we were really into him.

Nirvana came out sounding like a noise we’d never heard before. Something harmonious and brash and wailing, but always new, even compared to the grunge-clones we tried tying them to.

“He’s the one who likes all our pretty songs…”

“Shazam! Shazam! Shazam!”

Tupac gave us California Love, and we only felt a little dirty for accepting it, and Oasis built us a Wonderwall. It was nice a gift.  Then life got better and the music suffered again, and it has been nothing but the same ever since.

Now, we’re enduring the worst recession, the mortgage industry has failed us, and jobs are harder to find than a long term Taylor Swift relationship.

“Shaza—“ It ain’t happening, Gomer. Give it up.

I’ve gone through the old pain and suffering, again. Now where the heck is my new music? Where’s my “Hell yah, that’s how I feel!”?  Where is my frackin’ consolation prize? Something is horribly wrong when so many American’s are unemployed for so long that we have to give them a name (the 99ers), and the only consolation that they get is Carly Rae Jepsen patting them gently on the back and saying, “Call Me, Maybe.” At least with Trent we got a reach around.

“I lost my home in 08 and all my banker got me was this Justin Bieber T-shirt.”

Now it’s Grammy time. I just don’t know if I have the heart to watch, because I don’t know if they’ve got the heart to make new music.

Lost Gatherations

So you’re standing at the water cooler.  Theo, from accounting, the dude with the bad breath, but a really sweet fire-orange Vette steps up and grabs a cup. In fact, if it weren’t for the Vette or the fact that Theo supplies the office donuts, you might not talk to him. I mean he did hit on your sister at the office party last Christmas…

But anyway, I digress. You, Theo, water cooler: It’s Monday, what do you discuss?

The Superbowl?

The Commercials?

Intense Beyonce Barbie, with the kung-fu action grip?

Jenny McCarthy’s new foot tattoo?

The recent discovery of Richard III’s bones?

Ahhh, the water cooler. The time honored opinion hub of the office space.  It’s like the coffee room, but cooler people are less jittery and don’t jump topics like derailed trains, because the caffeine has hypercharge their ADD.

“Farmers…Ram Trucks…Clydsdale…Flacco…Harbaughs…touchdown…Squirrels!”

I know! Add some hashtags and you might as well be reading a blog. Not my blog: I’m not coffee topical.  I’m highly untopical, unless you’re talking ointment, then yah, rub a little on the rashy spots. I am an irritant, but I too avoid the coffee corner.

Especially when that pseudo-intellectual goth-girl, Kat, is there. She’s the temple of conversational doom, because she knows so much more than everybody else, except her musician boyfriend. He’s a freakin’ genius. He’s so indy he’ll never succumb signing with a record label, even if they did ask…

Yeah, you talk a lot about Kat at the cooler. She’s never there. The worst irritant at the water cooler, other than Theo, who never leaves (making him a close second), is Cal.  He’s a slosher.  He can’t seem to talk without his hands. Learned that the hard way, right? Last time you’ll wear silk to the office again, huh? Still, Theo, Cal, and even Barb, from HR, are good people. They know a lot about the world around them, and talking to them is much better than anti-social living through Twitter.

Water people are cooler people. They’re local. Their concerns are your concerns, and yeah, sometimes Cal breaks into Goo Goo Dolls’ classics like he’s wailing bar anthems, but that’s just cuz it takes him back to college. Cal was also the one who got you to understand the “fiscal cliff” using sugar packets and Dixie Cups impaled on stirrer straws. And Barb says so long as he stays away from the feminine hygiene closet this time, corporate will allow him try to explain Obama Care again. 

“I just want you to know who I am!”

“Damnit, Cal! You sloshed me again!”

The best thing about water coolers over Anti-social Media? Nobody at the water cooler, including Nina, the self-proclaimed grammarian, uses the word “trending.”

Nothing trends at the cooler. It’s life. It happens. Conversations flow. They don’t follow pre-forged rails designed by marketing analysts, and anti-social media experts. The water cooler never burbles with the meh, unless the topic is meh.

“Barb, what’s up with the new co-ed bathrooms?”

“Nothing. It’s just PC meh.”

“Meh, isn’t used like that, Barb.”

“Carful Nina, or she’ll ‘meh’ on your performance review.”

…

Nina’s a good know-it-all.  She knows when to shut up.  That’s the other thing about the water cooler.  Everybody knows when to talk, and when to listen.  Yah, Theo’s a little wordy, but you all know that about him, and you know when to avoid him.

“Did you see how they ruined the new Star Trek?”

Sometimes I’m jealous.  I don’t hang out with your get-along-gang.  I’m a loner. I get my news from the media, without the personal touch.  I translate how it affects my life, but I don’t get Cal’s extra special insight, or Nina’s intense corrections.

That’s why I worry about those who came behind the great white caboose. On the caboose, we were still part of something, a collective. When it derailed, it left many of us looking to make something of ourselves. The only element of capitalism we pulled into our hobo sack before disembarking was the bundle of “me.”

We took that we were all special stars and turned that into enterprise. Facebook, Twitter, they’re all about the “me.” It’s no longer about the give and take at the water cooler, it’s about me saying what I have to say, whether you’re listening or not.  It’s the great wall of “me.”

On the one hand, it’s good. It removed the gatekeepers, like Kat and her friends, who blockaded the doors, and never let any of us play their reindeers games, because they’re still bitter about what happened in high school. 

What happened to “what happened in high school stays in high school?”

Why did my generation carry the cross of being unpopular only to plant it in everybody else’s front yard with a placard saying, “None shall pass”?

So Hooray! The next generation broke through, but only to lose themselves in the Social Media mirror. 

I Tweet, therefore I am.

Where is the age of the ensemble?  The choir singing together? Where is the community? Where are the relationships that forge us like sharpening swords? Now we can’t revolt, because we can’t even figure out what revolt over.

“We have met the enemy, and he is revolting.”

Until we come back together, it’s gone. And if it continues this way, we may even lose the cooler, and I think we’ll all be a little lesser for that. Except, Kat.  She’ll get by.