…of all outlets, has discovered the music industry’s profit-focus shift from recordings to tours.

…to William J. Bell, cocreator (with his talk-show-host wife) of The Young and the Restless.

When the soap began in 1973, some critics called it a daring experiment in adapting the format to a hip young audience. Not quite. Bell, who’d apprenticed under the pioneering soap creator Irna Phillips, had simply added a veneer of Hollywood glamour to a classic daytime-drama formula.

In the show’s early years, its sets were small and dimly lit. This was a throwback to the first TV soaps of the ’50s, whose studios were tiny and whose settings were cheap to the point of abstraction. When Bell invoked the same look on a larger budget, it emphasized the characters and de-emphasized all other visual elements.

Before the show expanded from a half hour to an hour in 1980, its cast had as few as 16 regular characters, almost all of whom belonged to just three families. The hour-long format necessitated larger casts and more complicated plotlines; but Bell still emphasized his traditional themes of romantic and class conflict. He mostly avoided the other soaps’ digressions into espionage, weird/kinky crime, and improbable fantasy.

Bell continued as Y&R‘s head writer into the ’90s, and as its senior executive producer until his death. As fads came and went, the show remained constant to his vision. It remained a low-key, ploddingly-slow affair. (Some episodes would open with a minute-long shot of a woman pacing back and forth in an office, waiting for a phone to ring.) It eschewed flash, noise, hit-song samples, and everything else Those Kids Today were supposed to like.

(It even kept its original theme song, borrowed from a background track in the Stanley Kramer film Bless the Beasts & Children, and which became a top-40 single in ’76 after ABC Sports used it in a profile of Olympic gymnast Nadia Comaneci.)

The reward for Bell’s intransigence: Y&R has been the highest-rated show on US daytime television for more than a decade.

Nirvana’s Nevermind album has just been added to the Library of Congress’s National Recording Registry. That’s a list of music and spoken-word recordings deemed worthy of govt.-funded preservation, because they “are culturally, historically or aesthetically important, and/or inform or reflect life in the United States.”

Nevermind even has its own “making-of” documentary on DVD now. It includes an interview with the former infant cover model, who’s now 15. (No, I don’t know which deodorant he uses.)

And you can make your collection even more complete with some novelty label’s track-for-track sting-quartet cover version of the entire CD.

…can rap acts be when they’re selling product placements in their songs?

…but there’s a list of Canada’s top 50 pop songs that includes nothing, absolutely nothing, by Nardwuar the Human Serviette!

…of you who offered suggestions about digitizing tapes and LPs.

Unfortunately, I should have further explained my hardware situation.

I’m on an iBook with no apparent audio line-in port. Thus, I’d need to either borrow the use of someone else’s hardware setup or cobble something together that’d work on my USB or FireWire ports.

…in helping compile a CD of 1984-92 Seattle rock, I’ll need some help digitizing tracks I’ve only got on vinyl and cassette. (This is just for in-house use—not for illegal purposes.) Can anyone help me out on this?

I’ve gotten a gig curating a CD compilation about the early “G-word” years in Seattle music.

I seek your recommendations of speficic, individual songs that should be on it (not “anything by so-and-so”), from the pre-Nevermind years (say, 1984-92). Remember that tracks that weren’t on major labels, and bands that didn’t eventually go multi-platinum, stand a better chance of making it onto the CD.

Send your suggestions to this special email addy.

…in Four Columns Park on east Capitol Hill probably refers to a young man who died in a freak auto accident under the Alaskan Way Viaduct in early March. The photocopied essay taped to the barricade is a statement by the Dalai Lama, asking his followers to pray for the people of Tibet.

In happier events, dozens of fans gathered outside the Paramount Theater’s stage door Friday night, hoping for a glimpse of that pushing-40-but-still-hawt Eddie Vedder.

Who sez scientists are unsentimental? Not the Pacific Science Center bosses who lit up the arches for St. Patrick’s Day.

In the “it’s not a bug, it’s a feature” department, Greyhound’s boasting of a service “improvement” resulting from its recent axing of hundreds of small-town destinations, some of which now have no public transportation whatsoever.

…since we’ve posted pix here. To atone, here are some acquaintances who held a li’l conceptual-art spectacle called The Brides of March last Saturday, in front of what you must still call “The Bon Marche,” or at least “The Store Formerly Known as the Bon Marche.”

Yes, I’m absolutely certain the Moore Theatre management knew what it was doing by this juxtaposition of posters in its box-office window.

This mullet obsession is annoying enough in places, such as Seattle, where it’s a retro-ironic fad. But in other places, such as this warehouse near the Everett commuter-train station, the metalhead hairstyle never went away.

Just a couple of guys in miniskirts and deliberately torn stockings, dancing to the Fame soundtrack on Broadway last week.

And to conclude for today, something we ran years ago, in a reader-submitted photo. Now we have our own visual document of the mighty MISC shipping line. This stoic cargo ship was seen docked at the Interbay grain terminal, wihch is now operated by the Louis-Dreyfus Corp., commodity merchants and traders since the 1850s. (You might have heard of a certain heiress to that family fortune.)

…gets any older than it already is, I’ve gotta run down the Kim Warnick retierment roast last Sunday night at Neumo’s.

The 22-year Fastbacks singer-bassist, and more recent Visqueen sidewoman, announced she’s giving up the music-biz grind. Some longtime pals, particularly promoter (and Warnick’s fellow ex-Sub Pop office drone) Kerri Harrop, staged the big shindig to mark Warnick’s long service to the local and global music community.

The event was emceed by former local TV phenom John Keister. He’s apparently spent at least part of the past four years in low-rent exile in Ellensburg. He also looked as if he’d been eating very well lately. He opened with a short monologue about the Seattle music scene, or what passed for it, at the time Warnick began playing—one or two midweek club nights at bars that normally catered to the leather crowd.

Warnick’s father showed up, told his own Dean Martin-style roast jokes, including one in which he referred to the Fastbacks’ most famous touring partners as “Strawberry Jam.” He then narrated a slide show of Kim’s peaceful childhood years in north Seattle.

A succession of other ol’ pals (including Joe Meece from the Meeces, Dave Rosencranz from Sub Pop, and Visqueen leader Rachel Flotard) then took turns on the podium with anecdotes about wacky experiences on tour, in practice, and at day jobs with Warnick, and about her philosophy of life (“ALWAYS make your bed in the morning”).

Warnick’s longtime stage fraternal twin, Fastbacks songwriter-guitarist Kurt Bloch, attended the event but didn’t speak live. Instead, he and the band’s third permanent member, Lulu Gargiulo, appeared in a pre-made video projection, singing Fastbacks songs without Warnick’s vocals and starting but never finishing funny tour stories. (Gargiulo must have a Dorian Gray-esque painting of herself at home, ‘cuz she’s hardly aged a day in the past quarter century.)

That was one of several video segments interspersed through the night, including two vintage Fastbacks music videos from the early ’90s. (One day, we’re going to have to tell our perplexed grandchildren what “music videos” were. They’re fast becoming a scarce commodity, even on the TV channels created to show them.)

All in all, it was a quite pleasant and entertaining evening. Those of us who’d listened to Warnick’s music-making since the bitter start had a wunnerful, wunnerful time reminiscing about the (not necessarily “good,” but fun) old days.

I arrived at the notorious “can of Spam building” on Howell Street, across from Re-bar, promptly at 7:15 a.m. Entercom now runs four stations from the building, including KNDD, where I was supposed to speak.

The 16th floor entrance beheld a permanent sign on the glass doors: DOOR IS LOCKED. RECEPTIONIST WILL OPEN. Only there was no receptionist. There was nobody in sight. Here it was, commercial radio’s most competitive day-part, and the joint seemed deserted.

After fifteen minutes of this ominous/glorious silence, Justin Chamberlin, KNDD’s morning show producer showed up at the door, let me in, and guided me down a thin, steep spiral staircase to the studio.

Down on the fifteenth floor were all the usual radio-station wall decorations—”goofy” promotional displays, Gold Record Awards honoring the station’s part in promoting assorted silly corporate-rock hits. After a short walk we were in the studio, overlooking I-5 and the west slope of Capitol Hill. DJ No-Name briskly introduced himself. I sat at a vacant microphone, quickly donned some headphones, and the interview was underway.

This is an hour at which, if I’m awake, I’m usually incoherent. Nevertheless, I managed to speak at least semi-lucidly for twelve uninterrupted minutes (a rare privilege in bigtime, morning-drive-time commercial radio, as I don’t have to tell you).

I talked about how Cobain wrote that he’d wished he could have been as audience-lovin’ as Freddy Mercury. I listed a few of the most important people in NW music history, such as early recording engineer Kearney Barton. I plugged Loser and The Myrtle of Venus. I mentioned my attendance at Neumo’s for Kim Warnick’s “retirement roast” the previous night. (More about that later, perhaps.)

Then it was time to play another Green Day oldie or whatever. Chamberlin efficiently saw me out the door. My bit to help save an endangered industry was through.

Yr. ob’d’t web-editor will be heard on KNDD-FM, 107.7, this Monday morning at the ungodly hour of 7:15 a.m. Interview topic: The past, present, and future of Seattle music. (I still predict a huge hammered-dulcimer revival in the 2010s, which will cause kids in the 2020s to yearn for the good old days of techno.)

…to Gwendolyn Knight, the grande dame of Seattle painters, whose work only received “serious” professional attention following the death of her more famous hubby Jacob Lawrence.

I GET TO SPEND this sunny Saturday all inside, giving a fourth thorough scrub-down to MISC Towers in preparation for its open showing on Sunday. Yes, you can view this lovely little jewel of a hi-rise condo, and then make it your very own. It’ll be open 1-4 p.m. There’s nothing worthwhile on TV then (I’ve checked); the ski slopes will all be mushy and gross; you’ve really no excuse not to come down. A professional representative of the real estate industry will be on hand to answer all of your concerns.

BILL WHITE BELIEVES “there needs to be a new genre created to describe Seattle’s country music. It is as different from Americana and alt-country as Burgundy is from Chablis. Closer to European folk music than the hard-kicking roots music of the South, [Jesse] Sykes and the Sweet Hereafter evoke a Scandinavian sense of dread that savagely denies itself the merriment of a Tennessee waltz.”

There’s a reason for this uniqueness, and it’s called Glitterhouse Records. Thanks to them, many of Seattle’s leading alt-country acts (the Walkabouts, Terry Lee Hale, et al.) have typically had great distribution in Europe but a spotty (if any) market presence on our own continent.

Thus, Seattle alt-country’s been defined less by attempts to re-create the pre-Opryland country sound, and more by an intellectualized, upscale, English-as-a-second-language Euro audience, and by Euro-influenced imagery of the American open road, American isolation, and American detachment. (Cf. the US-set films of Wim Wenders and Lars Von Trier.)

IT’S NOW A MONTH since my father died. I’ve got more to say about that, and might post it soon.

In the meantime, please be edified by this remembrance of the mother of an acquaintance of mine.

SOME REPUBLICAN LEGISLATORS are suggesting that Eastern Washington secede into a separate state. I wouldn’t mind that, actually. When the original Oregon Territory was split in two back in the mid-19th century, it should have been cut east-west instead of north-south. Under the new scheme, we’d keep our two U.S. Senators; the realm of Hanford and the Gorge Ampitheatre would get two of its own.

I’d also like to see statehood for Washington DC, and for certain “blue” territories that sometimes get dominated by their “red” outskirts in state and federal elections (NYC, Chicago, etc.).

…this past week, instead of posting to this blog:

I’ve finally moved most of my possessions into storage, so the condo can be made all pretty and saleable. It took four truckloads and one carload. Thanx to Todd and Sean for the assistance.

Arranged more freelance gigs, and potential new living spaces.

Dealt with my mom’s continuing health issues, including a long-put-off bunion surgery that’ll keep her off her feet for the next month.

Attended various picturesque events, which I’ll put up on the site one day very soon.

Until then, here’s a site that claims to offer
“the worst album covers ever.”