State of Mind: The LA Times and the Business of Culture

by Casey Dolan

It’s almost too obvious what must be said about the recent promotions at the Los Angeles Times in Calendar. The media news and job resource website, http://www.mediabistro.com/, says “It’s not about slashing jobs so…we like it,” but even a cursory examination of the dual appointments of Sallie Hofmeister and Craig Turner should raise some concern.

Neither come from specifically arts backgrounds. In an office-wide memo sent by editor Russ Stanton yesterday, he gives away the game in his first sentence: “Entertainment is Southern California’s signature industry and biggest global export.” Hofmeister had been a Business reporter and editor. She is now the assistant managing editor/arts & entertainment and will report to the managing editor, Davan Maharaj, himself a refugee from the Business desk. Turner had been a metro editor and reporter, a Foreign reporter and the weekend editor. He will become the new arts and entertainment editor.

Of course, the familiar argument is that if you’re a good writer or editor, you can adapt to any situation. I don’t buy it. I say put people in positions in which they have some expertise, but this is beside the point. The question is one of emphasis.

Stanton clearly states that Hofmeister and Turner will oversee a unification between the Business and Calendar desks. 

Combining the teams in Calendar and Business will broaden the reach, breadth and depth of our multimedia coverage. The goal remains to produce a high-quality and unique base of content that can be distributed to different audiences through different mediums. We will continue to write authoritatively about industry trends for our large print and online audiences, and look for smart and entertaining ways to cover Hollywood’s movers and shakers and the celebrities who make Southern California their home. As part of this combination, we are bringing back Company Town, a package of stories and other data focused on the business of entertainment, to the Business section.

There’s no question that the Times has been missing in action for several years on the pop music industry front; the glory days of Chuck Philips, long before the Diddy debacle, are gone. The paper has needed that chair filled, but installing two hard news people in command of the arts and entertainment division  is like trying to atone for past sins by becoming a Trappist monk.

It’s far easier to talk about the dollars and cents of art than to look at its actual creative production. Journalism can attach itself like a lamprey to the great whale of economic ebb and flow because it is empirically reportable. Sure, there is a degree of mysticism involved in the prognostication of economies, but basically it’s a bunch of numbers. Making the editorial decision on whether something or someone is worth covering, perhaps in spite of declining sales or a degree of anonymity but based on quality, is far more difficult and exactly the kind of thing that makes people uncomfortable, exactly the kind of thing that a newspaper with shrinking space would tend to jettison. (Never forget that many journalists are squares. Get them to talk about music other than how great Bruce’s “60 Minutes” interview was and you are in for a dull conversation).

Let’s not mince words here. The Times has always had questions of what is newsworthy, relevant and meaningful in its arts reportage. The segregation of TV, film and pop music into “Entertainment” and thrusting the fine arts, theater, architecture, classical music and dance into “Arts” – neat, simple and dumb categorizations — should give everyone a good idea of what yahoos run that place.

An anecdote might be appropriate:

One of my several duties at the Times was to edit the Sunday Calendar letters. Last June, in response to a Rachel Abramowitz profile of film director, M. Night Shyamalan, writer Grant Nemirow complained about Abramowitz’ vocabulary and elitist perspective. He listed a number of words whose meaning he didn’t know (including “aesthetic”) and suggested that this was precisely the reason that the Times was losing readers. I didn’t agree with a single word he wrote, but I thought it was a good letter and addressed one of the single most crucial and talked-about issues facing the Times.

Sunday Calendar Editor Bret Israel thought so, too, and we decided to make it the pullout letter with (Bret’s suggestion here) a picture of a dictionary. I’ll confess that this amused me and was the easy retort to Nemirow — “Go get a dictionary.” Many readers who would respond to his letter said just that. I followed standard policy and wrote Nemirow an email asking permission to use the letter. This was on a Monday or Tuesday. Early afternoon on Wednesday was deadline.

By Wednesday morning, I had received no answer from Nemirow. Ordinarily, that would have kicked it out and I would have had to find another pullout. But I didn’t want to let this go; I knew it would create a furor. The photo had been shot, so I did some internet detective work and found the city for exactly one person with that name and we ran the letter without permission.

In my almost four years of editing the letters, literally hundreds of letters, I had done that about five or six times, correctly banking that the writer intended publication. When I arrived at my desk Thursday morning, the Sunday Calendar section had been on the street for about 12 hours and my red phone message light was lit up. I listened back and it was Grant Nemirow saying that he couldn’t believe I ran his letter without permission and to call him back immediately. I thought, “Oh boy, just my luck. OK, time to do some apologies.”

When I called, he began the conversation with the classic ominous phrase: “Do you know who I am?” I admitted that I didn’t and he proceeded to tell me that he was the president of the second largest media advertising agency in the country, Terry Hines and Associates, and the principal vendor from whom we received all our movie ads in Calendar. Universal, Warner Brothers, they all went through him. I recall thinking, “Right. I’m about to lose my job.” (As it turned out, I was a month premature). The conversation which followed was more like an obscenity-laced harangue during which he took pot shots at every aspect of our arts coverage.

He couldn’t understand why we were even bothering to review dance or opera (“Nobody goes”), why we cover obscure Polish films at the Cannes film festival (“Nobody cares about that shit”) and not do more blockbusters. He accused the writers and editors of being in ivory towers and said that if you asked anyone waiting in a line for a film in Hollywood whether they knew those words, they would universally say “No!” He said it was no wonder that advertisers were pulling away from the Times; nobody understood what we were writing about. He said we were putting him out of business, that he was forced to lay off staff. He said, “Am I making you sweat? I’ll bet you’re sweating.” He said that he had weekly meetings with Lynne Segall, the vice president of entertainment advertising. He wanted the firewall that existed between advertising and editorial to be breached. Etc., etc.

When I got a word in edgewise, I actually was able to make him laugh. I tried, unsuccessfully, to pursuade him of the necessities of keeping up cultural standards and that part of our mandate in the media was to inform the public on everything of importance and that no one had a monopoly in deciding what was most newsworthy, certainly not him. The conversation ended on a conciliatory note for both parties, but the call lasted well over an hour and I was drained at the end. It was definitely an example of crude, boorish power throwing around its weight.

After a few days of thought (there was nothing to do about the letter, it was a done deal), I went to Leo Wolinsky, then Features Editor, and told him what happened. If anyone should be apprised about this little dust-up, he should. Leo sat back and said, “Hmm…Grant Nemirow, Grant Nemirow, why do I know that name? Ohhh, I know! I’m meeting with him tomorrow!” I was later told that it was a standard meeting, but my name was brought up and Nemirow did give one of his lectures on what was wrong with the Times. 

I mention this story only to suggest those who hold the real purse strings at the L.A. Times and what level of sophistication is in their profiles (Nemirow had never been to Disney Hall). Film advertising is directly concerned with the business of art (film is an art to me) and when that advertising is run by yahoos and the firewall between the editorial and advertising divisions is breached, then you will start to see yahoos making the editorial choices.

When Russ Stanton suggests a merger between Business and Calendar, it will be more than just an increase in box office stories or filling a gap in industry coverage. It will be a slant, an emphasis. It will be more than looking at the third quarter earnings of Paramount. It will be a loss of coverage for independent films, small dance companies, independent record companies and struggling bands, painters and poets. There is already that but, under Hofmeister and Turner, I predict it will increase.

Both Hofmeister and Turner are respected journalists. They are anything but yahoos. Stanton made a point in his memo for Turner being an advocate for arts-oriented Page One stories and Hofmeister had the TV and cable business beat for a long time when she was a reporter on the Business desk. But the fact is that they are assuming roles of directing all arts coverage and their backgrounds imply that they will stress the business of the business and not the art and that’s not good news for critics or writers who want to write about something beyond what is the biggest grossing movie three weekends in a row. And, most importantly, it won’t be good for readers.

From the Mitch Mitchell Family

by Casey Dolan

The Mitch Mitchell family has issued the following message in response to the universal outpouring of grief by fans of the drummer following his death last November:

Mitch’s death has been the most devastating blow to all of us.  We miss him so much, and of course life will never be the same without him.  The only comfort to us has been the wonderful warmth and love from friends, and all the fans who took the time to contact Experience Hendrix and express their feelings. We thank all of you.   Mitch would have been so touched.

We were asked some time ago to put down the names of charities Mitch supported for people who felt they wanted to send flowers or do something in his name.  So I have listed two below, one a local lifeboat station and the other a very good animal charity.  People can have a look at their websites to see if they too, would like to support them.  

Although both charities can use support, we feel it is important to add from our point of view, your kind thoughts, a kind action done with Mitch in mind or a little prayer is every bit as valuable to us.

     Thank you all -
     The Mitchell Family

International Animal Rescue
Lime House
Regency Close, Uckfield
TN22 1DS
www.internationalanimalrescue.org
 
Royal National Lifeboat Institution
West Quay Road
Poole, Dorset
BH15 1HZ
www.rnli.org.uk

A fan website — http://www.mitchmitchell.de/ – contains some of the best and rarest photos of Mitchell I have seen. Worth going to.

 

Mourning Mitch Mitchell

by Casey Dolan

Yesterday, the original drummer for the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Mitch Mitchell, was found dead in his Portland, Oregon hotel room. He had been relaxing after a tour promoting the music of Jimi Hendrix. Early reports are that he looked healthy on the tour.

The County Medical Examiner said he died of natural causes, although one has to question what could possibly be “natural” in a man dying at the relatively young age of 61.

It is difficult to overstate the importance this man had for both rock and jazz. He brought a jazz sensibility to his playing behind Hendrix, almost never sticking with the usual kick-snare backbeat pattern, but instead utilizing his entire kit. He divided simple 4/4 or 3/4 meters into syncopated triplet figures and his solos were early examples of virtuosic improvisation. Much of his inspiration came from hard boppers like Art Blakey and Coltrane’s powerhouse, Elvin Jones.

I saw Mitchell three times in concert, the most memorable instance being at the Fillmore East, May 10, 1968, with Sly and the Family Stone opening (Sly, who was phenomenal, was inexcusably booed by the audience of Hendrix freaks; not many knew who he was then). I was dead center, orchestra level, and even though this was 40 years ago I have a good memory of Mitchell’s playing. He was astonishing, aggressive but with finesse, shifting between a standard grip and a matched grip. It all seemed effortless, certainly moreso than Hendrix himself who agonized over keeping his Strat in tune and seemed intent on astonishing us with sounds more than skill.

There was no one in ’60s rock who played like this. Ringo Starr and Charlie Watts worked around simple backbeat patterns and Keith Moon was a human windmill with a ferocious attack (not a putdown at all; the Who benefited from Moon’s madness). The majestic John Bonham had not yet appeared and even Ginger Baker, the only other drummer working in a power trio format at the time, Cream, and also influenced by jazz drummers, tended to play just a mite more conservative. The under-appreciated Spencer Dryden with the Jefferson Airplane was pursuing a similar style, but he had five other bandmates to compete with.

Mitchell’s effect on the jazz world was reciprocal. Miles Davis was brought to Hendrix’ music by his wife, singer Betty Davis, and Mitchell participated in the recording of an unissued album of hers as well as some jams with Miles and John McLaughlin shortly before the “Bitches Brew” sessions. It’s clear that Tony Williams was influenced by him when he put together his own trio, Tony Williams Lifetime, with John McLaughlin and Larry Young. In this confluence of drummer greats, fusion was born.

And like Tony Williams when he started with Miles, Mitch Mitchell was very young when he joined Hendrix: 19 years old. Early shots of the Experience, the Mason Yard sessions of Gered Mankowitz for example, reveal a Mitch Mitchell who looked like a 16-year-old schoolboy.

He never stopped playing — the tour before his death reveals that — but never again attained the same status that he had with Hendrix. It was obviously a hard act to follow, but one for which he will be remembered by all who love the art of the drums.

State of Mind: The Los Angeles Times and Me, Pt. 3

by Casey Dolan

[I name a lot of names in the following. I'll forego the hyperlinks; you can find them easily by Google or another search engine. I want to be clear, however, that although I am critical of some of the decisions and policies of my former colleagues, I bear no one any bad will and am still very proud of having written for the Los Angeles Times].

In 2000, I was lost in the Valley, but I began to get lucky and forge new trails. The former San Fernando Valley edition editor, the generous Lewis Leader, put in a good word for me to do an advance obit on actor Peter O’Toole and helped with some final editing (the obit has since been replaced and Leader was marginalized to such an embarrassing extent that he finally had to leave the Times). John Corrigan, now Deputy Editor on the Business desk, gave me business briefs to write and suggested that I apply for a features desk assistant job downtown.

Under the new rationalization emanating from the paper’s new owners, the Tribune Company, it was becoming clear that the Valley edition was doomed and that the Los Angeles Times would be centralized downtown.

Downtown accepted me, but it was merely a lateral move from one hamster wheel to another. It was downtown where I truly discovered one of the cardinal corporate principals: Position is everything. You could be a graduate of the London School of Economics with a brilliant dissertation on aggregate production functions in Post-Keynesian economics but God help you, poor wretch, you are NOTHING but a “features desk assistant” in the eyes of a page designer on the features design desk. “Fetch me my page dummy, Casey.” Potential is not part of the equation. You are defined by your “job definition.”

This entrenched caste system was rigorously enforced, as I was about to find out. Those like myself, who transcended the divisions, were not universally loved. The prevailing attitude was “We worked our butts off on the Metro desk of the Fayetteville Observer for six years before coming to the Cleveland Plain Dealer! Pay your dues.”

In some respects I understood the resentment. There’s a prescribed route and an expected profile. Journalists, particularly those who do the daily grind (not the feature writers), fit a type. They are earnest and square. They were presidents of the Politics Club in high school and wrote for the school newspaper. They had exceptionally high grades, but could not, under any consideration, claim to be intellectuals. Many lack imagination. They are expedient at processing information and useless at creating it. Of course, this is an extreme generalization and there are many exceptions, but one might be surprised to note the similarity between this metro reporter, that national editor, this business reporter — the same creased chinos and button-down shirt, the same lives spent prepped for this newsroom. 

Coming from the outside, without having gone to journalism school, without having had a stake in the highly competitive world of professional journalism, without having been hired by a paper immediately upon graduation from college, I hadn’t a clue what any of this was about. I had not been president of the Politics Club.

Some kind and, in a couple of cases, brave editors bucked the system and offered me some opportunities. Steve Wasserman, the Book Review Editor, let me do a 700-word writeup on a coffee-table book on punk music. Robin Abcarian, as editor of the Southern California Living section, took a very bold step, aided by, I believe, Sherry Stern, then Calendar Weekend Editor, and allowed me to edit the weekly letters to the section. The copy editor who had previously edited them, Mary Forgione, graciously showed me the ropes and all the intricacies of copy flow in the system (a system which was soon to change). That quickly led to me doing the letters for the Thursday Calendar section and, eventually, the Home section (for which I give thanks to Michalene Busico and Barbara King respectively).

I enjoyed editing the letters. I was still a man in search of a vocation, but it gave me a chance to interact with the public who were, on many occasions, correct in pointing out our shortcomings as a paper.  I also began to do some of the listings for the short-lived Outdoors section, commanded by Tom Curwen, still my favorite writer at the paper.

Understand that all this was in addition to my desk assistant duties and my boss was not pleased that I had taken on the extra work. I had broken the ancillary rule to the first tenet of “Position is everything” – Know your place.  You think you’re some lowly sub-altern in a British novel set in the Raj, but, no, this isn’t Kipling. It’s the Los Angeles Times.

This boss, who suffered the same fate as I did in July, threw up as many roadblocks as he could. I didn’t receive a raise in wages for nearly three years and at one unforgettable meeting, he looked at me and said, “You’re never going anywhere. This job is a dead end.” Other editors (notably the Deputy Entertainment Editor Betsy Sharkey and Sherry Stern) had considerable problems getting him to free me up.

Ultimately, they succeeded and I started editing the Sunday Calendar letters page (when Kelly Scott was first editor of the section, followed by Bret Israel) and then writing short features for page 3 of Sunday Calendar. The insightful Deputy Sunday Calendar Editor Donna Frazier was my guiding light. The short pieces were enormously gratifying and, by column inches, I started to conceive of myself as a writer again for the first time since Ireland.

Music had not disappeared entirely. I had been playing in a pop band at the same time, a good band headed by Steve Barton, the former lead singer/songwriter/guitarist for the San Francisco band, Translator. That band had called it quits in the late ’80s after four albums for CBS and several important singles, but Steve had not stopped writing. The problem was that our band, Steve Barton and the Oblivion Click, was not playing nearly 1/10 as much as we should have. Everyone had an excuse — we were all middle-aged men — and mine increasingly happened to be the L.A. Times…

Which didn’t trouble me because I was enjoying my work. Circumstances had changed radically in late 2005. I was promoted to Editorial Aide, assisting the Entertainment Editor, Lennie LaGuire, and, best of all, writing two weekly music columns: “Surfacing” and “Downloads.”

This was enormously significant for a couple of reasons: 1. I had been told for years that I could not write on music because it would be a conflict of interests. In fact, longtime pop music editor Robert Hilburn (another supporter who deserves special mention, although he opposed my writing at this stage) had meetings with Lennie LaGuire and Betsy Sharkey on that very subject. I am still unclear to this very day how those two columns slipped by acting pop editor Randy Lewis (Hilburn had just retired), but the previous writer for the columns, Chris Lee, had said, “Do you want them?” and of course I did; and 2. Very few people in the past 25-30 years had risen from support positions to writing for the paper on a regular basis — at least that was the case in the features sections. Kevin Crust had done it for film, but it had taken him something like 15 years. Before Kevin, you had people like Kevin Thomas, Jon Thurber, or Narda Zacchino, but these figures almost take on the quality of myth, so long ago are their success stories.

I was a true anomaly and proud of it. I had beaten, or redefined, the golden principle of Know Your Place. But I came up against another form of prejudice more topically within the pop staff: music writers vs. musicians who write. On one unforgettable occasion, Randy Lewis said to me, ”You’re too inside.” I was so inside, I was outside, certainly in the eyes of my pop staff colleagues.

As unbelievable as it seems (and it is unbelievable to me), those who are most informed about the art they write on are regarded with suspicion and derision. There is a prevailing opinion that a musician will alienate the general reader with arcane knowledge and that, just possibly, the musician will not have enough distance from the art to properly assess it. Or else, that musician should write for Guitar Player, Modern Drummer and not the Los Angeles Times.

This is, of course, absolute crap and many musicians who write have proven it so, from Elvis Costello to John Darnielle. The jazz world, of course, has had many brilliant writer-musicians, as my iRoM co-conspirator, Don Heckman, exemplifies. And the classical world, or, pardon, the film-scoring world, could include my own father. 

Here is the down and dirty truth behind all of this, the truth that forces these pop writers to close ranks – most pop music writers don’t know the mechanics of music and they resent those who do. 

To counter-balance their lack of musical knowledge, they will stress the lyrical content in a song — words, something they do know something about. Or they will write from a generically sociological, historical context (“The Ramones took a black leather template from Link Wray and the Velvet Underground and updated it to express the yearnings of their Forest Hills teenage youth, etc. etc.”). They will assert that the phenomenon of pop music is, in its very essence, as much of a social movement as a musical one…if not more.

This legacy of pop criticism has had a long history, so long that it has become codified and freed its practitioners from the kind of scrutiny most informed readers would direct upon, say, the L.A. Times’ classical music critic, the exceptionally trained Mark Swed. From the earliest writings of Robert Christgau through the hell-for-leather rantings of Greil Marcus, from Robert Hilburn’s three-decade catalogue (I’m reluctant to mention Bob, to whom I owe a great deal — no one is a greater enthusiast — but he’s a primary architect of the modern critical style) to Ann Powers’ ironic musings, the stress has been on cultural movements and impacts, macro instead of micro.

The result is that musicians rarely find the writers credible, hold them in contempt, and regard all criticism as just another form of publicity. Writers don’t want to be told that and they will dismiss it, but it’s the truth. That’s the situation.

In my small way I tried, not always successfully, to fight some of this in the Downloads column and bridge the two worlds. I never became quite as analytical as the liner notes for a ’60s Blue Note recording, but if I heard a bouzouki enter on the third verse, if a triplet figure became a motif, if there was a reference, a musical quote, conscious or unconscious, I mentioned it.

I was also, perhaps more than my colleagues, suspicious of hype and I think that came precisely from my practical experience as a musician, producer and songwriter and not as simply a music consumer. Because of this, I held some minority opinions on some very popular artists. I quickly saw how the dots were connected.

Conversely, I spotlighted quite a few unknown acts that I felt showed real promise. This didn’t go down well with my editor who wanted more recognizable, popular artists. I gave him those names, but with criticism. I peppered the column with hip-hop, country, jazz, electronica, R&B, indie rock, black metal, noise, even a cylinder recording from the 1890s! 

In one memorable meeting between me, one of our major critics and the pop editor, I argued for increased coverage on new artists in the section (and not in the industry-driven “Surfacing” column). The critic disagreed and said it was not our task as a paper and, besides which, he/she did not feel entirely qualified to do that. “Qualified” was the word used. I was stunned, almost speechless. It reminded me of the old joke of a&r staffers in a club all watching each other for a reaction to a band before they would react. Or “How many producers does it take to screw in a lightbulb?”

Pop staff meetings left me enervated and, frankly, depressed despite the double cappuccinos that I brought in. They sometimes lasted two to three hours around an oval table in a book-lined conference room that either felt too warm or too cold. Ann Powers and Geoff Boucher were always loaded for bear and usually came in with a quiver of pitches and ideas (I often marveled at Geoff’s ability to work on about five stories simultaneously. I can’t do that). Richard Cromelin would sit back with a myopic grin, silent for a great while, then utter some withering barb. He was great for the gallows humor. Randy Lewis tried to bring a dry levity, although Boucher regularly had the funniest lines, but so often seemed overwhelmed as acting pop editor. Chris Lee and I would end up writing notes to each other (“This is so bogus” “I’m falling asleep”), and I often felt that the only way I would be heard was if I verbally fought for space. I didn’t feel like fighting nor did I feel like I should have had to fight.

Eventually, Kevin Bronson (who knows more about the local indie rock scene than any other writer in this city) was “excused” from attending these marathon sessions (Kevin might claim he was banned for attitude problems). Bronson was running the early Buzz Bands blog, later trumped by Soundboard (now Pop and Hiss) whose staff began to make appearances at the pop meetings. I was only invited sporadically. I’m not sure why that was true. I think it was clear that I felt we were always behind the curve and whenever someone like myself would suggest doing a story that could be ahead of the curve, it was either too risky or not quite right for the L.A. Times.

Jazz was always risky. As Don Heckman has written, the Times paid scant attention to jazz. I was the sole person on staff who cared. It received secondary consideration before. Today, there is no coverage at all.

My status changed dramatically when Randy Lewis returned to being a writer and Gina McIntyre was drafted in from being the Assistant Entertainment Editor to head up the pop music desk. Gina threw open some previously closed doors and let me loose. By the time I left the Los Angeles Times on July 15, I had compiled over 120 bylines for both the print and online edition. I had become the go-to guy at the paper for many publicists who felt stonewalled by the more established writers. In my last two months during Gina’s reign, I wrote 12 stories of varying lengths. Our pop coverage was narrowing, but I thought I had become the golden boy. The world was my oyster and, after another promotion last year, there was nowhere to go but up. To use Richard Farina’s word, I felt “exempt” or blessed.

I was seriously mistaken. 

The existential kernel is that I had made a transition, almost unconsciously, from pursuing a musical career to a career in journalism. I would not stop being a musician, but I knew that music writers badly needed someone like me in their ranks. The transition, however, was all in my mind and not in the mind of those above me and on July 15 I was told that my position was no longer required.

Since that time, I’ve moved through several reactions — bafflement, sadness, anger. Strangely in contrast to several others who were let go at that time, I was not angry, but the anger finally did surface some time in September and October. It does seem incredible to me that I should have been cut down right at a time that I had found my wings.

But we move on and the Times continues to sink in the vortex of diminishing coverage like a doomed ship caught in the whirlpools of Charybdis.

State of Mind: The Los Angeles Times and Me, Pt. 2

by Casey Dolan

In the early ’90s, I made two trips to Zimbabwe. The first, organized by Nancy Covey, the wife of Richard Thompson and a force in Los Angeles music herself, enabled me to make field recordings of village music in South Matabeleland near Hwange National Park. The music was later used by John Hockenberry for a special edition of his program “Heat” on NPR devoted to the 10-year anniversary of Zimbabwe’s birth as a country free from white rule. This was the inevitable result of a 13-year dirty war, but has sadly devolved into corruption and economic ruin thanks to the brutal policies and mismanagement of Robert Mugabe’s government.

The African music adventure wasn’t that odd for me — I had been a fan of that continent’s music since “long before it became fashionable” — but I later discovered that the music I recorded from the southwest of Zimbabwe had been rarely documented by ethnomusicologists. Sad to say, I’m unsure of where the original DAT recordings may be: possibly in a box in the garage, sodden by leaks or ruined by mold.

On the first Zimbabwean trip, I met Tim Rostron, now working at Random House in New York but then a pop writer for London’s Daily Telegraph. Tim moved around a bit at the Telegraph, eventually transferred over to Toronto’s National Post as arts editor, then returned to the Telegraph as deputy editor at the magazine. We shared a certain bemused perspective in Zimbabwe, although his was sorely tested by the government because, fool Rostron, he put down “journalist” as his occupation on some sort of entrance document. An undesirable alien, they made him leave early.

After my second trip to Zimbabwe two years later, I wrote a little sketch (really just the opening paragraphs of what I thought might be a story) called “Life on the Veranda” about a white family in Harare who had sold their 20,000 acre farm to the government. They had been told that the land would be used for village relocation schemes, local farming and the building of schools. Nothing happened and the land went to ruin. They were understandably bitter in their small suburban home in the Mt. Pleasant suburb of Harare. I made notes about the framed drawings of settlers’ ox-carts on the walls, the editions of “Jock of the Bushveldt” on the mahogany shelves, the kitchen staff lined up greet me, “Hello, baas.”

Tim thought it was good stuff, passed it around the Telegraph and I began to pitch ideas to the weekend arts editor, but I quickly learned that American journalism and British journalism were different breeds and there was a great deal of misunderstanding — no fault of Tim’s who did his best to advocate me and who I put into the consistently awkward position of middle man. Such was the lack of communication that I can’t remember if I was ever paid or if anything was ever published (I certainly never received clips). Three stories were completed — a review of Lollapalooza II, a feature on oddball museums in Los Angeles and an interview with singer Maria McKee, who was trying to revive her solo career after making an enormous splash with Lone Justice.

With my amorphous relationship with the Daily Telegraph continuing like a ghost reality, with several album projects in which my production responsibilities were denied (and one project in which I was fired), I spent much time holding Italian video movie festivals in my living room and drinking Guinness. Clearly, I had no idea what the hell I was doing or should be doing.

In 1993, my neighbor in Silver Lake, Dave Bassett, suggested we put together a band. Dave had been the main singer-songwriter in the pop band Lost Luggage. The band had received some buzz over their live performances, had an album produced by soon-to-be producer stars, Tom Rothrock and Rob Schnapf, and Dave negotiated a publishing deal with Warner/Chappell. After their return to their native Chicago, however, the band broke up and Dave, alone, elected to come back to L.A.

My initial response was “Why me?” I was thinking of our ten-year difference in age and how I hadn’t been playing my guitar regularly for a while, but I accepted his offer and helped to form the best band I was ever in — 3 Day Wheely. We released one EP, had many songs placed in film and TV soundtracks, did three tours (with Aimee Mann and Semisonic; Gin Blossoms, Odds and Figdish; Modern English), recorded a full CD, “Rubber Halo,” and would have had it released if Miles Copeland had not closed the I.R.S. label one month after recording in 1996.

During the search for a new deal, the band broke up in bitterness, pouts, sulks and sarcastic snipes. I remember meetings with our manager in which we talked about such time-wasting issues as whether someone should wear a white t-shirt on stage or not, or whether I should shut up and let Dave do the talking in interviews. But if you ignore the nasty conflicts between some personalities, there were few weaknesses. Musically, we had few equals in the Los Angeles pop/rock world of the mid-’90s. The live show had developed into a tight, loud killer and Bassett’s songwriting was at a very high level of craftsmanship. It is fair to say that I am still not quite over the breakup.

Adrift once again, I returned to the Los Angeles Times in 2000 as a desk assistant in the Chatsworth office. The Valley plant was an austere granite and marble neo-fascist structure. With a parking lot designed to serve four times the staff, it felt like a property lost in a north Valley industrial park, already a haunted sub-genre of the urban landscape. My morale was low and the job, which demanded so little from me that I literally had nothing to do from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. except sit at my desk for possible contingencies, didn’t help. I went into numerous trances watching sunsets outside of the picture windows.

My boss had expected a fixit-gogetter-do-it-yourselfer and got a depressed, slightly academic, wonky daydreaming musician. But I was willing to give the Times another shot. I didn’t have many choices. I now had a mortgage and I needed a job. What kind of a shot the Times would give me became clearer in the next few years.

to be continued…

State of Mind: The Los Angeles Times and Me, Pt. 1

by Casey Dolan

(This is a chronicle of sorts. I’m dividing it into three parts with the third part making up the largest, and weirdest, portion).

I’ve deliberated long and hard about writing the following since I was laid off by the Los Angeles Times in July. Many memories of working there are fond and it was a turning point in my life, but this week we hear of 75 more layoffs in editorial, bringing the total this year to somewhere around 250 and reducing the entire editorial staff of the paper to 660, roughly slightly more than half of what it was when I came (back) on board in 2000.

How this will affect music coverage — all arts coverage – is easily imagined.

I don’t intend to regurgitate the familiar arguments of Internet vs. print, dwindling advertisement revenue, the folly of Sam Zell’s stewardship and the ESOP construct. Nor do I intend to point many fingers at those who have, willingly or unwillingly, done wrong. (I’m a firm believer in the inevitability of karma. I once worked at a real estate investment trust headed by the most disturbed, corrupt Caligula I have ever had the displeasure of meeting. That man, who continues to mask his evil with a veneer of philanthropy, has sidestepped several federal investigations into violations of securities laws, but someday the courts won’t go in this guy’s favor. I know it).

When I was let go, I had been writing regularly on music, mainly pop and rock. Every so often I would slip in the odd jazz thing or two. I had not been hired as a writer (my dear friend Kevin Bronson once unkindly reminded me of that after one of our exhausting pop staff meetings), but that’s part of what makes the story interesting and reflects a curious light on how the mainstream press chooses to cover popular music.

Being hired in 2000 was a strange comeback for me.

I had done a 6-year stint previously at the L.A. Times in the ’80s as a “wire attendant,” ultimately ending up as the foreign desk assistant. It was just a job to me — an absorbing one, but really a means to pay for rent, food, transportation and recording time and musical equipment. My real vocation was as a musician/composer/producer juggling several projects and I was on a committed career track.

Making music has always come easy to me; making a living from it, far less so. My father, Robert Emmett Dolan, had been a successful film composer, but he never wanted me to get into the business. I began piano lessons at age four, but it was clear early on that I was undisciplined and lacked the sort of drive that propelled him as a child music and mathematics prodigy (he attended college at 14). In my teenage years, he encouraged me, instead, to be a writer. He was a hyperliterate man and recognized that I had some talent with words. Thus began a split in focus which has lasted my lifetime.

After some amazing luck in having poems published when I was young, I burned out on writing while doing a degree in English Literature and minoring in Politics at UC Santa Cruz. When I traveled to Ireland after graduation to write a novel, I wrote myself into a neurotic stalemate. I returned as a failure.

On my wise mother’s suggestion, I commenced studies in harmony, counterpoint, orchestration and, lo, excelled! Soon after, I formed a band, Red Sneakers, with some college friends (including the highly-regarded multi-intrumentalist/composer, Doug Wieselman) and we dove into the hotbed of the 1979 Los Angeles punk and new wave scene. The band played constantly for two years (too often by today’s standards) but fizzled out more or less because of my drunken antics on the stage of the Troubadour in front of a packed house of hundreds. Another band began and ended, then…another…and finally a solo offer from a major label ended in sordid sexual contingencies and poverty in a New York loft. I came back to L.A. with that now-familiar feeling of failure. Sitting in the adjoining seat, Dennis Quaid comforted me on the plane home. This was 1983.

I took the above-referenced low-level job at the Los Angeles Times to survive, during which time I played with and produced an instrumental band, the Satellites 4 (with the varied lineup of Doug Wieselman, Marvin Etzioni, Danny Frankel and me), co-wrote songs with Michael Steele (bassist of the Bangles), produced records by Milo Binder and a fabulous songwriter named Kyle Johnson (whose unreleased album featured performances by Flea (Red Hot Chili Peppers), Richard Thompson, Al McKay (Earth, Wind & Fire), Bruce Fowler, Walt Fowler (both from Frank Zappa’s band and Bruce is one of the major film orchestrators today), Jerry Donahue (the Hellecasters) and Bruce Kaphan (American Music Club)). I was sober, organized, taking meetings and boring Gary Gersh (then A&R at Geffen) with all my projects.

How I managed to do all this and hold down a full-time job is beyond me, but I did. The bubble burst in 1990 when I quit the Times on the hunch that Geffen Records was about to sign me as a staff producer. The hunch was wrong and it never happened (my hiring would have been tied to a specific project I was working on. The artist elected to blow off Geffen Records, who elected to blow off me).

I ate rice and beans for three years, worked on two or three more album projects but gradually dimmed from industry sight. Pride kept me from returning to the Times.

to be continued…

Casey Dolan: State of Mind

By Casey Dolan

I live in a slim canyon in the west San Fernando Valley area of Los Angeles and woke up this morning to the smell of smoke. Locals regard that smell as most fearsome. The density of oak, sycamore, pepper, Chinese elm, eucalyptus trees in our sliver of paradise would ensure that we’d all perish in a conflagration should a fire break out here. It’s a veritable forest and there is little a fire brigade could do to stop the spread of the flames.

Happily for us, the fire is in the north Valley, near Sylmar and Pacoima, but the high winds (gusts have been measured above 50 mph) have floated the smoke southwards across the valley.

None of this is unusual, of course. It’s fire season, and, as Mike Davis wrote in “City of Quartz,” burn it must. Part of the Los Angeles karma. A disquieting subliminal threat that festers in our consciousness, much like the threat of nuclear armageddon in the fifties and sixties.

But if imminent immolation is not enough to satisfy your sense of unease, listen to Frank Zappa’s late synclavier compositions, assembled into the “opera-pantomime” “Civilization Phaze III.” Composed shortly before his death, a sense of Beckettian desolation permeates everything; the stoned surreal dialogue (about such things as finding space inside a giant piano), amusing on “Lumpy Gravy,” is now sad, empty and alone.

Performing this cellular music are Zappa on synclavier and the German group, the Ensemble Modern (so brilliant on Zappa’s “The Yellow Shark”) on various reeds, brass, strings and percussion. There are whiffs of Messiaen, Schoenberg and Webern. George Crumb? Maybe Elliot Carter, too? (Apropos of nothing in particular, Carter will be 100 years old this coming Dec. 11). But comparisons have limited usage. Zappa stands alone, for better or worse.

This is not a review (I am writing a large piece for an “outside” publication on the who or what that most chameleon of composers Frank Zappa may have been and on the continuing efforts to ensure his legacy), but I noticed this morning that the synchronicity of the fire, wind and music all pointed to a similar charred landscape, both of the mind as well as upon Southern Californian hillsides.