Furious World Blog

Horses

May 1985, Manhattan

Last night, Migdalia, a beautiful Puerto Rican hooker was soliciting blowjobs on my stoop. This morning I see beard stubble coming up from under her makeup as she pisses in the tiny entryway of my Hell’s Kitchen apartment. Now inside, sunlight is glinting off what appear to be diamonds, millions of them. But on closer inspection, I see they’re just bits of glass. Somebody shot out my window again last night.

Out in the street, a car honks and I head downstairs. It’s a gold limo and my friend Wess is in the back in torn Levis, his knees poking through the holes. Today we’re going to the Caesars Atlantic City to meet with Jimmy Valenti. Jimmy’s heard my music and he wants to help. They say he’s got connections. The driver turns around.

“You guys need anyting you jus’ ask. We got shrimp cocktails and plenty a booze in the fridge”.

“Thanks” I say.

“Jimmy’s crazy excited to see the bot a yooz. He wants ya to know you’ll be flyin’ back in his chopper. That is, if weather permits”.

We arrive at the Caesars and four bellmen with small white towels draped over their forearms greet us at the door. Each towel is embroidered with my initials in gold. Wess and I trade looks as we ride the elevator to the penthouse.

“Enjoy your stay,” one of the bellmen says as he leads us into a room large enough for a soccer game. In the middle of the room, is a good-sized swimming pool overlooking the Atlantic. Draped over a lounge chair are a swimsuit and two enormous towels, both embroidered with my last name -spelled incorrectly.

Suddenly, the ornate double doors swing open and Jimmy Valenti enters.

“Sit down boys” he says.

I’ll have Scotty send up lunch. Do you like chops?”

He leads us to the chairs near the pool.

“You know the difference between a Stallion and a Gelding?
A Gelding is a horse with its fucking balls cut off.” he says, letting the thought hang in the air.

“Without capital you’re nowhere and I’d like to give you some. What do you need? 500k? A million?”

“Actually,” I say, “I hadn’t really thought about it.”

The doors open again and two long tables are wheeled in. There’s a platter on the first with a dozen lobster tails on ice alongside a trough of French fried onion rings. The other table has crystal bowl full of jumbo prawns, three Caesar salads and a tray with enough Porterhouse steaks to feed a dozen men. Jimmy spears a slab of meat with the tip of his steak knife and waves it in my face.

“Eat”, he says.

“Jimmy” I struggle to say through bites of steak, “I’ve already got a guy who’s helpin’ us out. He’s our manager.”

“Oh yeah? What’s he puttin’ in, -cash wise?”

“Well, considering his time and everything, probably around $1500.”

With a mouth full of meat, Jimmy laughs. In fact, he laughs so hard and for so long, I honestly think he’s going to choke to death but he catches his breath and says,

“I see you in a rock video with some big-titted broad walkin’ hand in hand near this giant globe they got at Epcot Center. You ever been down there? Epcot center? We shoot the thing for around a hundred, hundred fifty grand and then we pull some strings and get MTV to start playing the shit out of it. Whaddya say? Are you gonna be a Stallion or a fucking Gelding?”

Before I can answer Jimmy pulls out three cigars.

“Cubans” he says, and from under the table he removes a bucket of matchbooks. Each of the matchbooks has my name on them, embossed in gold. Each spelled wrong. He cuts off the tip of the cigar with the steak knife and asks,

“Peter are you a horse with balls -or no balls?”

As the questions lingers, I can see myself being forced at gun point to appear at Jimmy’s every wedding, every birthday, every Christening, every wake. Clearly I have no balls.

“Jimmy, I say, “It sounds amazing, I’ll just need a day to think it over”

He reaches for the phone.

“Scotty, can we fly these boys back to the city in the bird or is the weather too rough?”

Suddenly, a crash of thunder.

A week later, back in Hell’s Kitchen, I compose this letter:

Dear Mr.Valenti, thank you for your graciousness and your generosity. This past year I’ve been contemplating a new career as a stockbroker and today; regrettably, I’ve made a final decision to go that route. Should I ever decide to pursue a career in music again, please know you’ll be the first person I call.

Sincerely,

Peter

Don Smith

August 1987. Calabasas, California.

I’m driving to the San Fernando Valley to meet an engineer who’s in the running to mix my new record. A guy with dark skin and an Afro greets me at the front door. He’s not black though, more like Polynesian or Indian. He puts on a record by the Eurhythmics that he’s just mixed. It sounds great and what really endears me to him is the way he holds his daughter on his lap the whole time we’re listening.

We meet next at a recording studio in Nashville. Since I’ve recently become an Observant Jew, I’m unable to join Don in the control room until after the Sabbath ends. On Saturday evening in the parking lot, Don and I scan the sky for the three stars, which will signal a return to the workweek. With a Tiparillo in the corner of his lips he mumbles,

“I’m not sayin’ this isn’t a little odd, but it sure beats looking for three grams of blow for Stevie Nicks.”

The next night Don is running through the bushes outside the studio. All I can make out is his shadow and the glow of his cigar.

“I’m catching fireflies to send back to my kids in LA Fed Ex,” he says.

Now it’s spring 2008 and the record business, as we knew it is almost finished. I’ve just completed a new CD and I decide to call Don to see if he’d be interested in working on it. Don who’s worked with Tom Petty, The Rolling Stones, and U2 agrees. He’s completely absorbed by the process, forever bopping his head in time to the music as he works out the details of the mix.

Less than a year later, Don Smith is dead. At the memorial service the room is filled with over 300 musicians, sound engineers, and loved ones.

“Don had the best ears in the world,” one says.

“He took me into his home even though I was a heroin addict” says another.

“The man gave me hope when I had none.”

Now after the memorial as I sit in my car, I feel I’ve lost someone irreplaceable. Don was a devout believer in the awesome power of music. He made me feel like I counted for something and that all my dreams were still possible.

A few weeks ago I flew back east with my daughter to get her settled
into college. The experience was bittersweet as you might expect.
Replete with several trips back and forth to Bed Bath and Beyond, a
student/parent bag lunch, and a slightly teary farewell. One of the
unexpected consequences of the trip was that I was nearly disabused
of this nagging sense that I’m still twenty two years old -in fact,
I’m turning fifty one this November.

It’s hard to carry on the fantasy that everything’s still possible
and that youthful dreams are for fulling when you’re looking at your
grey headed balding self hanging up your daughter’s skirts in her
dorm-room mirror. I’m not complaining at all, I promise. My sense of
pride and love for her is nearly overwhelming. It’s just that I’m
dumbstruck with the powerful sensation of so much time having passed.
It’s not something you notice often. It’s not as if there’s a part of
the body that works for sensing time passage -like the nose does for
detecting odors or the ears do for detecting sound. Becoming suddenly
cognizant of the dissapearance of twenty five or thirty years is an
incredibly potent human experience that can only be brought on by
accident it seems.

And what about putting youthful dreams into motion -long past youth?
Is it wise? Is it appropriate to try? Platitudes like “it’s never too
late” or “life begins at fifty” might be better printed on
refrigerator magnets than put into actual practice. And yet, there is
something in me, that keeps soldiering on, constantly trying out new
shapes and ideas, and assiduously looking to connect. I respect that
it could all well be just an irritating compulsion. Nonetheless, the
impetus is there.

This week marks the second anniversary of my rock and roll internet
variety show, The Furious World http://furiousworld.com , a youthful
dream into which I’ve genorously poured resources both spiritual and
financial. I can’t count the number of times I’ve decided to quit it
and yet, something promising always comes along to rescue it from
oblivion. A sponsor, an adoring letter from a fan, or an especially
inspiring guest. My hope is to build it into something that keeps
growing and continues to engage a larger audience.

My father passed away at fifty four years old. When he was my age, he
didn’t appear to be thinking about pursuing his youthful dreams, he
was simply fighting to survive. In the back of my mind, I’m always
thinking about him. I’m always thinking about the blessing of being
alive and the opportunity of being able to drag ideas from the
ephemeral to the manifest makes almost every hardship bearable.

So for now anyway, I’m going to ignore that image of me in my
daughter’s dorm-room mirror. I’m going to allow denial to do it’s
work and let me believe it’s all still possible.

In the midst of the tumult that goes on before a regular show… and I say -regular- to imply that today’s show is anything but. Due not only to our amazing guest, Simon Jacobson of the meaningful life center (and a close friend of mine) but to Marc Jacobs’s (our handsome and wise producer) new baby daughter. Her name is Samantha Rae and she’s amazingly cute, smart, and full of life. I’m in the editing bay doing things that Marc usually does like setting up the films and editing promo pieces. It’s almost too much work but there’s really nothing that can be done. The show must go on. Mazal Tov to Marc and his lovely wife Jen on the birth of their little baby girl. She is the very essence of what blessings are. I’ll see you tonight, after I finish up in here.

www.furiousworld.com
7pm PST LIVE

Peter

In the beginning there was music. It happened all by itself and it went completely unnoticed. The sound of thunder echoing off a distant canyon. A waterfall pouring down into a clear deep pool. Dragonfly’s wings beating the night air. Then early man began banging rocks together and later, he stretched some hides over hollowed out logs. After a while, the gut string harp and a wooden flute came to be.

Those were simple times. The music was there for the hearing and when the hands and the mouths of the players stopped beating and plucking and blowing, everything went quiet. Several thousand years later, -give or take a few- Alexander Graham Bell comes around and decides he’s going to do something that’s never been done; he’s going to trap a moment in time and preserve it as though it were a fly in amber. Invisible sound waves that for years had existed in the domain of the mystical could now be preserved forever in wax. Thus began more than a hundred years of begging a question that up until that time had never been asked, namely, who owns these captured sounds? Sounds that exist long after the music stops; oftentimes long after the musician who created them ceased to breathe.

Those who’s job it was to preserve the sounds; to copy them, and to exploit them, have had a good long run. They’ve used those captured moments to provide for their children. They’ve fed themselves well and perhaps had occasion to sate every last desire, but now something’s gone wrong. Entropic forces have been unleashed that eroded empires, and swung the hands of the clock backwards as it were, -even as the technology grows wiser and more complex.

You see, it’s hard to trap the sound waves these days, or at least to claim ownership when everything’s been converted into ones and zeros -and everyone has access to them -and the only safeguard that remains, is people’s respect for the sanctity of intellectual copyrights… which is to say no safeguard at all. There are those who resist the shift and long for the days when any person between the ages of twelve and fifty five who isn’t brain dead couldn’t figure out how to get just about any piece of music for free off the internet. But times have changed and what’s an artist to do about it? Well for one thing, he or she needs to go back and discover what hasn’t changed. People’s love for and need for music. If anything, the ubiquity of music has made it more valuable and more essential to people’s lives. It’s an axiom (at least I think it is) that the more valuable a thing is, the more of it there is and the less it costs…start with air and water for example. Perhaps by stripping music away from it’s embodiment in wax, or vinyl, or plastic and letting it revert to it’s spiritual essence (which in a sense is what the ones and zeros really are), listeners might develop a new respect for the artists who create it. Now I’m no utopian and I’ll admit I’m mostly pretty cynical, but when all the protections are lost, and the way technology is progressing, it seems likely they soon will be, it’s still possible that people might continue to pay something for music they love if they feel a connection to the one who created it. It’s possible that by building a real sense of trust and community, an artist may still ask for some form of patronage for their recorded music from fans -and receive it. Patronage!? Isn’t that the same as begging money? Not quite, but if access to free music gets easier and even more unpoliceable -as I think it will, those artists who develop this deep and lasting connection with their audience may be the only ones still able to make a living. Wait, I think I hear the dragonflies…