The Good and The Bad: Social Media

Feef Mooney : photo, Mark Haussman

It was my friend, Fernando Perdomo, who really got me into social media. Prior to this time, I rarely visited Facebook and I had no Instagram account.

I'm sure this is a topic that is discussed, if not with friends, then inside one's own head.

Everyone will admit that once you get on a social media platform, it's hard to stop scrollng. This reminds me of the old days when, as a kid, I used to watch MTV: if I didn't like the video playing, the next might be better. Before I knew it,, hours had passed, and I remember watching late into the night. It was, in parts, calming and frustrating. You lose track of time, where you are, what you have to do, who you should be talking to, and how you should be taking care of yourself.

Social media is mesmerizing. You might be reading about a disaster, a political scandal, fighting, violence, depravity, bacchanalia, or you might be watching a musical performance that blows your mind. It's gotten to the point, I think, where everyone who puts their music up on Instagram isn't funning around. They know what they are doing. You get compelled and you check in.

And isn't that a good thing? It seems to me, some days, there is no end of talent, humor, passion, musicality, sexiness, beauty and bravado, energy and drive.

I am often left with a feeling of FOMO. Where was I? How did I miss that moment and that show? What kind of boring life do I lead that I am not swaying in a sweaty crowd downtown with those hipsters!

On the negative side: FOMO sucks. So does seeing girls in tiny shorts wowing a crowd, and feeling like sex appeal 20-something is required to get attention. But we all know that compare and despair is not a good thing.

We've been told that music is liberated from the big record companies now and that we can do it ourselves. This is an extremely positive feeling. Anyone can make anything and put it up for the world to see.

The problem is bringing the audience to your page?

It's now known that Facebook is for "old people." This may mean 40-something and up to ..80-something? Instagram is for millennials and maybe Z Gen.

And then Z Gen and Alpha discovered Tik-Tok.

So the socials are demographically divided? Yes, I think so.

We have also the algorithm to deal with. We don't understand how this works. Will we ever? Many put up teach-ins in learning how to bamboozle an algorithm.

While we are busy preparing "content" for our page, we might be having a jolly good time. And if we are, and if this motivates our creativity, how could this be a bad thing?

It's fun.

The problem can be in the needing to check and recheck to see how others are responding. If you post something meaningful to you, you have no guarantee that it will mean anything to anyone else. It's a crap shoot.

You also do not know how long anyone spends on anything.

And when you think of your scrolling self, you must acknowledge that your mind is constantly hungry for what is coming next. Could the next be even more interesting than what you just saw? Oh, but, hey, wait: what did I just see?

Is social media giving us a dopamine high? Does that high easily vanish? Is it affecting our attention span? Is our need to be stimulated taking us to extreme levels? So that we are only transfixed by the extreme, and thus perhaps becoming inurred to violence?

To wrong-doing?

Or does social media inspire activism? We might say that The Cinerama Dome was saved by one guy who was able to gather 30,000 names on a petition to save it.

And how was this accomplished? Social media.

Because all of us spend far too much time on it.

Checking our results. Searching for god knows what. Doomscrolling.

It is available to us at all hours.

It is perfect for any media source that likes to supply "BREAKING NEWS."

We've come to expeect catastrophe and death and evil events.

Is this healthy for a society? Is this how cults happen? People glued to repetitive information they get on social media that feeds their deepest darkest paranoia and rage?

We might also have the idea that social media will give us a career in music. It certainly takes a commitment, an investment in time and imagination. It may or may not affect a career. It's been said that the numbers of those who view your posts affects the business that might decide to book you on a tour or into a festival. Gather those likes, friends. Work your arse off for them, because the industry is watching.

But is this true?

I can't vouch for the credibility of this theory. I only know that most of the good that has come to my life and to my career is because I was out in the real and met people face to face. I saw and interacted and made decisions based on the vibe I got "in person."

And I was surprised when I was offered an opportunity. I do not think that any of my breaks came from social media.

But I will say that having music and quotes and ideas and photos has given people a sense of what I value. They might value and like similar things. And thus, we form a certain kind of friendship that is really nice.

There is community on Facebook and Instagram too. You just have to wade through the now prevalent ads that seem to target your predilections. If you can put up with those commercials, as we have had to on television, then you might see the good in spending time on social media.

I don't think that SM is a substitute for real people and real relationships. The kind where you can hug and laugh and cry, and argue and fight and make up. No algorithm can interfere with that kind of love.

Lest we get too self-involved and isolated, it's great to remember that showing up for someone in person is still infinitely more powerful.

Social media does keep us connected, and I don't think I can walk away from it.

It's not entirely good but it is not a bad thing.

I have to remind myself, each of us is worth way more than the sum of its algorithmic parts.

And that keeps me going.

Why Do We Have Nostalgia?

I've been trying to figure out why we are so enamored with the songs and artists of the past . When you hear someone sigh and exclaim, "No one writes good songs the way they used to," you might want to throw up your hands, especially if you are a songwriter and have been writing songs since you were ten.

All of us, who write, live to believe we could accomplish one song that might stick, or transcend us.

Someone I know in the UK expressed that The Beatles were both a blessing and a curse to British music. "On one hand, " he said, "they were sheer genius, and their music will live forever."

"But," he added, "on the other hand, it feels impossible to create any song that would be as good as what they did. We are forever in the shadows of their prowess."

I had the sneaky feeling in the UK that there was always a quest to find the next Beatles. Which boy band would it be? Blur? Oasis? NO pop band in Britain could escape the reference unless they were a punk band, or shoe-gazers or a part of the groove and beats scene.

Still, last night I participated in the annual Nilsson Sing-Along, an event that involves a string quartet, a full rock band, pianists, a xylophone, and vocalists who could sing the phone book. The intention was to honor the songs of Harry Nilsson. Everyone could choose a song, and request accompaniment, be it band or orchestral. Fern (Fernando Perdomo)and I chose "I'll Be Home," a Randy Newman song that Nilsson recorded. We chose to each take a verse, and contribute a guitar solo each between verses, asking only for accompaniment from a pianist. You might say we did the song our way, but we were attentive to the Harry Nilsson phrasing.

Everyone who performed took Harry to heart, and it was very clear that a lot of listening was done in preparation for the performance.

Thirty seven musicians were involved. There were two acts. All of this took place in a bar: Molly Malone's, on Fairfax, in mid-city Los Angeles.

What has always been fascinating about the Sing-Along is that no one sings along.

No one in the crowd talks over the music. Everyone listens to everyone and appreciates

the songs with a deep respect and collegial spirit.

Is this a nostalgia for a time we no longer live in? Harry Nilsson was a signed recording artist, but he certainly did not have to promote himself using social media. He didn't like performing, so he didn't tour. He wrote and recorded music with his friends.

Many people in the 70s who were lucky enough to be signed lived a life of community. In Laurel Canyon, musical artist had dinner, jammed, sang together, slept together, did drugs together. And they didn't have cell phones or computers or the pressures of high rents and multiple jobs.

For all we know, they had other pressures. But the wave of nostalgia is so sweet, we don't smell the hardships. We see a world without this notion of climate change, without AI and with greater privacy, and more connection to time, space and nature.

It saddens me to think that when we listen to the music of the 70s, we escape into a time period when people seemed to be having more fun than we have. Their gas was cheap.

Social programs were not threatened, they were expanded. Movements and change seemed possible.

But also to consider: the music of Harry Nilsson and others from the 70s is tuneful and unrestricted to genre.

A Nilsson song can feel like jazz, then folk, then something incendiary (like "Jump into the Fire") But it is for everyone: children, old people, beautiful people, awkward people.

I think our clinging to the music of the past has a lot to do with us yearning for what we don't have now. We yearn for rock festivals that everyone can afford. We long for everyone having a beach house, not just the uber wealthy.

The music of former times seems to reflect a society that, although tumultuous , was affordable for everyone.

And the music was crafted, and written for everyone. This is what has made it endure.

Everyone can find a Beatles song they love and can relate to. But in the uber-genre-specific world that Spotify makes us live in, there's too much narrowing of tastes and not enough risk. Having too music can mean that listeners create false groups and stay within them, never challenged to expand their tastes as the algorithm gives them exactly what they know they like. And songwriters write within a genre, forced to use streaming services to figure out where they can be heard and not ignored.

Funny that as we live in a world with too much, it feels we are starved and under-serviced and crave what our parents naturally had and didn't question.

It's hard to know whether there could be a wave of great songwriters, like James Taylor, Joni Mitchell, Carole King and Crosby Stills and Nash. There are too many to listen to, and radio is not the one media that drives and connects listeners.

In a time when we can choose, we are nostalgic for a time in which curators chose for us.

Nostalgia can conflict with new creators who are simply not heard because they are new and not familiar and not doing cover tunes.

I think if we are to advance the next greatest songs of all time and begin in the 2020s, we have to curtail the nostalgia a bit and take some chances.

For the very young, this may be no problem.

For those who have discovered the past and have a love and romance for it, there may be a gentle escapism that is not unhealthy. Nostalgia provides historical connective tissue and helps us to listen and know where we came from. It inspires our writing.

But if we want new songs, we've got to also be adventurous and dare to believe that greatness is not necessarily a thing belonging to older generations.

To love, to know, to absorb, but then to leave too and to venture out, to make mistakes but to create something new that others feel and need.

This is what must drive us.

If not, there are always wedding bands. And THE VOICE. And American Idol. And corporate cover gigs.

Obviously this is a deep subject. But thanks for reading along so far. TBC

Something About You

photo: Michael Harris

When I think about why I hunker into loving a musical artist, my answers are eccentric and personal and might not make sense.

I remember when my mother first bought a

Joni Mitchell album, and left it on the dining room table. I discovered it.

I played it on the turntable, as a child, and the voice I heard was so pure and so pretty

I fell in love with it, the way you would find a bird in a pet shop and want to take it home.

I didn't tell anyone, but when my mother was away, I listened to her record.

At ten, I appropriated her guitar. Quietly, it became my guitar. I sat on my bed and strummed it. I played chords and made up songs, by myself. But my discovery of artists, ones my mother loved, was my own, and they lived in my private world. Our parents' music was cool music.

It was my father who introduced me to The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Miles Davis, and Sly and the Family Stone. And it was my mother who loved Simon and Garfunkel, Joan Baez, Judy Collins and protest music.

But growing up, my musical loves were MY artists. They didn't belong to other people.

In school, when I discovered Richard and Linda Thompson, I was completely enamored.

Part of the reason was that they were my secret.

I had a private disdain for charting artists like Duran Duran and Tears for Fears. Why? Because everyone liked them, and everyone knew them and played them and referred to them.

When I wrote songs, I went into my own world. I didn't try to write anything for anyone but myself and my musical heroes.

I tried to choose music that was not popular or known. For a while, I thrust myself into the Allan Lomax Folk Songs of North America, or the Elizabeth Cotten song "Freight Train." I checked books out of the library and learned songs from old country and folk songbooks, songs no one knew or sang.

As soon as a musical artist became popular, I seemed to lose interest. I loved Billy Bragg when no one had ever heard of him. When he joined with Wilco, the secret was out. He was no longer mine.

When I grew up and went to college, I had the chance to meet Richard Thompson and even talk to him. I do think this changed my life. I was 18 and remember seeing him backstage. He even played a song for me, and was kind, and told me to keep playing my guitar.

I ended up seeing him play in various small pubs in England, and even selling t-shirts for him.

When I found out he had a massive fan club, I felt embarrassed that I had had such a crush on his music. I was not unusual. Many people do. They are called fans!

And now, flash forward to myself as a musical artist. I feel I am still writing for the few, the people who are like I have been, those who want to find someone that very few know about or celebrate.

Obviously, it is in the interest of the Artist to be famous, to have millions of fans, and lots of money. But these factors are why I have never bothered to get in deep with Taylor Swift. She doesn't need me. My relationship with her music could never be a private thing.

I still live to discover an artist that other people don't know about or like or follow. When I do, it's kind of like the way I feel about an author. I want the whole collection. I want to absorb myself in every album.

I am not a playlist person, I guess. I can listen to the same album over and over and over.

This week, I have been obsessed with PM Dawn. Don't ask me why. Set adrift on memory bliss.

Paper Doll. I'm positive that few people are playing this CD, one I got for $6.99.

But I love it. I love every detail of it. It's my private thing.

And that's how it goes and how I listen. One obsession at a time. I love that I love like that .

I love that I can have such a weird and private relationship with the music I love. It has nothing to do with Spotify or streamers or who is getting big reviews.

It's my personal Zeitgeist. Something about you that's exclusively mine.

And I make music hoping to be someone's special friend.

And of course I will never even really know about that.