Sorry that I’ve been MIA the last few days, blame NERFA, a cold, and the weather. Online NERFA is not the all-consuming experience of in person NERFA I had time to write but yesterday my cold and rain stopped me from going out. I haven’t left the apartment in days and that got me back into the excessive sleepiness that I had before I started taking my daily walks. I slept away yesterday afternoon. My planned shopping expedition became running to the store two blocks away, so I’d have eggs for breakfast this morning. I tried to get more of the real NERFA experience by drinking coffee last night so I could stay up late. It’s just not the same online though. I don’t get the same adrenaline rush though I was up to 3 AM. I found myself doing other things as I watched. Sadly, as it was not an immersive experience, I won’t be writing my annual NERFA review. I don’t think it’s fair to the artists. I discovered some that I love, particularly last night, but was more about finding artists I want to hear more from. I wrote everyone that piqued my interest and asked them to send me music. I’ll be going through that over the next few weeks. You’ll here some of it on not the next Gord’s Gold which was recorded before NERFA but the one next week. No, that one is already planned out. There was a tech glitch and last week’s show was never aired so it will play this week, and the one I was working on before NERFA will air the week after that.
The parts of NERFA that worked the best were the zoom chats. Those personal interactions are what makes a conference different from going to a concert. I made new friends and reconnected with old ones. We had some of that in the showcases when people made use of the chats. I’m kicking myself now as I forgot the great line that Heather Lloyd made that connected with so many of us. I’m not going to talk around it. I wrote her an asked what it was, and I’ll tell you when she gets back to me.
It can get weird watching the showcases with people chatting. Nobody wants to say anything negative, so you get the feeling that everyone is loving everything. As I wrote on Thursday, 90% of everything is crud so it feels like I’m the only one that seeing the acts differently. Talking to someone privately I found that he shared my view of one act that many love. They are the definition of Twee. It just hit me that I should refer to them as Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum, even though they aren’t a duo. Which reminds me of another great line that I now forget, it was by Jud Caswell; I think he was quoting the great Jonathan Byrd. It was something to the effect that every song needs some insanity in it. I’ll tag Jud on this, and he can get it to me right. That is the essence of something at the core of my esthetics, for me to love an artist they must be distinctive, do things that I don’t expect. Call it crazy or weird, or whatever, it’s essential.
There was a fortuitous confluence of ideas. Cynthia Kaplan made a movie out of what was planned to be a stage show until COVID-19 reared its ugly head, Cindy of Arc. Cindy is a writer/comedian/musician. Cindy of Arc is a comedy/rock show, cock show for short. That’s very Cindy. I describe her as Eric Schwartz without a filter. She is of course friends with Eric. Many, perhaps most of the songs are political. Her political songs are funny, vulgar, and over the top, but most importantly they work. They make you think. They are filled with the necessary weirdness/insanity. “If you hate all Nazis, you’re a Nazi” is not just funny, it’s thought provoking. It’s so much more than what most political songs are, “I believe exactly what you do!” with the unspoken subtext, “that makes us morally superior.” Bad political songs can get positive responses for that reason. Good political songs are difficult to do, they need to go beyond a bumper sticker. The other singer my mind went to was Crys Matthews. The confluence came because she and her partner the delightful Heather Mae, won the NERFA Musician/Activist award. I haven’t watched that yet. I didn’t know about it until after the fact. Watching Crys with or without Heather will not at first remind anyone of Cindy. Crys is not vulgar and shocking, she’s gentle sweet and understated. In real life Cindy is gentle and sweet too. The common bond is that they both have unconventional viewpoints and don’t just cheerlead but make the listener think. I have told Crys that I feel a bond with her, she’s just transposed into a different key, same with Cindy. On the surface Cindy and I have a lot more in common, Straight New York Jews. Crys is a black gay woman from North Carolina. No matter, it’s still just transposing to a different key.
OK. Now to eat breakfast and then I have to get out of the house and take a real walk. It’s been ages since I went on a Donut Walk™.
Wise Madness 