Hundreds of black T-shirts, thousands of CD coasters
A belated Happy New Year! Here it is March already and I’m just getting
back in touch. Does time move this quickly for everybody, or just those of us
who do not plan well?
Our new year started off with a week of moving. For some reason, I kept thinking about the pioneer women who were forced to leave most of their household possessions behind to make the trek West.
They often had to discard even more items along the trail. I’m sure there were many who never recovered from this sort of loss.
We moved to a beautiful place less than five miles from where we were living and, believe me, left almost nothing behind.
If there was any trauma in this move (other than the exhaustion), it was leaving a neighborhood we truly loved, along with the friends we’d made there, and facing the daunting task of sorting and organizing our belongings.
It occurred to me that leaving everything behind might have some merit.
When I moved here in 1990 to be with the man who is now my husband, I arrived in my battered old car with my guitar and banjo, clothes and jewelry, a crock pot and a basset hound.
The rest of my belongings were in a storage unit up in Arcata. Eventually Greg and I retrieved my possessions from up North, and I was reunited with cherished household items, knickknacks, books, records and cassette tapes. (More on these later.)
The first house we shared contained lots of dishes, pots and pans and all manner of cups and glasses left by various roommates who had come and gone through the years. Not to mention the funky furniture.
The last roommate departed; and when we got ready to move, we realized just how much stuff we had accumulated, a third of which had not originally belonged to either of us.
So we packed and sorted and stacked and hauled for days. We managed to get rid of most of the cups and glasses we did not want and all of the awful furniture.
I foolishly thought that we had streamlined our load of possessions for the move into our next residence, which was one side of a very small duplex. Hah!
The real problem is that we both inherited the pack-rat gene. Merging two households can be difficult at best. But when two pack rats unite, it can be a recipe for disaster, if neatness is on the list of priorities.
The duplex did not have enough room for all our books and other items, so we stacked them throughout the small rooms. For the entire time we lived there, we were constantly shoving boxes aside, cramming them into the closets or into the tiny storage closet outside the back door.
I worried that we would end up like those old people you read about who make tunnels out of stacks of papers. They’re found dead under a heap when one of the stacks finally topples over on them.
Now we’re in this new, larger place and many of these same boxes are still packed, which is to say that there are many items I have not seen, or in some cases thought of, since we moved into the duplex.
Unpacking and unwrapping can either be like opening Christmas gifts or opening a bill from a credit card company. You just don’t know what you might find — unless, of course, you label the boxes.
Our stuff problem is made worse by my careers as a recording artist, folk music DJ and occasional small concert presenter.
Every week I receive at least two or three CDs. These days they are mostly intended for airplay, and I simply take them to the radio station. Once in a while, I receive songs from someone hoping I will choose their material for my next recording.
Most recordings submitted these days are on CD, and they have alternative uses: CDs make lovely Christmas ornaments. The mirrored side is already bright and cheery and will reflect the glow of holiday lighting.
CDs also make great mobiles, pieces for art cars and coasters. A friend told me about a guy who covered a wall in his basement with CDs, mirror side out.
Thankfully the era of the cassette tape is almost at an end. Artists who make their own recordings and wish to receive airplay understand that the vast majority of DJs will not play cassettes on the air. This is for good reason, trust me.
We have three drawers and several boxes filled with cassette tapes, most of which I did not purchase or ask for. They have just accumulated over the decades. I think they mate and have offspring.
I have boxes with the complete promo kits and song lyrics that accompanied some of the recordings. Then there are songs lyrics collected, along with the notebooks and pieces of paper with songs I’ve started and not finished.
There are boxes with envelopes I plan to re-use for sending out CDs with my promo material. There are boxes with pamphlets from tourist attractions, maps, newspaper and magazine clippings, e-mails (what paperless society?) and other ephemera. We even unearthed an old-fashioned reel of 2-inch recording tape from a demo I made in 1990.
Most of the boxes are stacked 10 feet from me here in our office, although sometimes they seem to be creeping closer.
Then there is the issue of black T-shirts.
My husband ran the stage lights at the Catalyst for 10 years, and it was not uncommon for him to receive two or three T-shirts a week from the bands passing through.
These are tokens of appreciation bands give to the sound, lighting and security crews at each venue.
Greg has so many T-shirts they cannot all fit into his dresser, so there are bags of them in the closet.
One day in the early 1990s, I was doing our laundry at the Ultra Mat on Laurel Street. I had a tall stack of folded black T-shirts sitting on the counter when I looked up and saw another tall stack of folded black T-shirts at the other end of the counter. It was our friend Dave, who handles security at the Catalyst, doing his own laundry.
It occurred to me that if people across the street from the duplex were watching us carrying things out that, they might have been reminded of numerous clowns pouring out of a tiny circus car.
We’re pretty much settled into our new abode.
We still need to hang pictures and do some painting. A few of my books are still not accounted for, but I know they’ll turn up.
I just hope I find them before we move again, because I can’t fathom doing this again for many years.
Other thoughts:
# Has anyone else noticed that during the Napster uproar the artists who make the recordings in question have been for the most part overlooked?
Record company executives, the Napsters, online users of Napster, people on the street and even clerks in record stores have been interviewed by the print and broadcast media.
But I have not seen one interview in which the opinions of the artists themselves have been solicited.
Think about it: Metallica voiced an objection to Napster’s practices, but how many other recording artists have you seen or heard interviewed about their positions on this controversy?
Their musical output is, after all, at the heart of this matter.
# There are lots of great performances coming up over the next few months.
Snazzy Productions, Henfling’s, the Catalyst and Lea Lawson Productions all have killer lineups in place. Check with them, you’ll be glad you did.
By the way, thanks to all who have taken the time to respond by e-mail to this column. Somehow it’s so easy for me to put off something as simple as e-mailing back, and time slips away. So please know that I thoroughly appreciate every greeting I’ve received.
That’s about it for now. Happy trails.