Mary McCaslin's Roundup

June 2, 2001

MOVING

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 and 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 re-united with cherished household items, knick-knacks, books, records and cassette tapes.(More on these later.)

The first house we shared contained the lots of dishes, pots and pans and all manor of cups and glasses left by various roomates who had come and gone through the years. This is not to mention the funky furniture. The last roomate departed and when we got ready to move we realized just how much stuff we had accumulated, a third of which 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 truly 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 somewhat 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 of 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. Sometimes I worried that we would end up like those old people you read about who make tunnels out of stacks of papers.They end up being found dead under a collapsed 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. Surprisingly some things that were presumed lost from that move surfaced during the move into this house. Unpacking boxes and unwrapping things 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 still receive songs from someone hoping I will choose their material for my next recording. Then there are still always the recordings that just do not qualify for more than one hearing.

At least most recordings submitted these days are on CD and they can have altenative uses: CDs make lovely Christmas ornaments. Simply decorate the side with the title and credits. The mirrored side is already bright and cheery and will reflect the glow of holliday lighting. CDs make great mobiles, pieces for art cars and of course, coasters. A friend recently told me about a guy he knows who covered a wall in his basement with CDs mirror side out. Think of all those AOL CDs actually coming to some use.

Thankfully the era of the cassette tape is almost at an end. Most artists who make their own recordings and wish to receive airplay have finally come to 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 truly think that they mate and have offspring. My plan is to pry them out of their housing, dip them in bright paint and make decorative streamers with them. Or I might try to macrame some of them. You may see me selling these unique works of art at the flea market any week now.

I have boxes with the complete promo kits and or song lyrics that have accompanied some of the recordings sent to me. Then there are songs lyrics collected or printed out from the `net, 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 pieces of paper of every dimension, pamplets from tourist attractions, maps, newspaper and magazine clippings, emails (what paperless society?) and various 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 about ten feet from me here in our office. Sometimes they seem to be creeping ever closer..

Then there is the issue of black t-shirts. My husband ran the stage lights at the Catalyst for over ten years. During those years it was not uncommon for him to receive at least two or three t-shirts a week from the bands passing through. These are tokens of appreciation often given to the sound, lighting and security crews at each venue by band members. Greg has so many t-shirts that they cannot all fit into his dresser drawers and so there are bags of them in the closet. Of course he has many in other colors besides black. It does seem that the glory days of the black t-shirts with band logos have passed and lighter colors have come back into vogue, but somehow they just don't have the same impact as the black shirts.

I remember one day in the early 1990s I happened to be doing our laundry at the Ultra Mat on Laurel Street in Santa Cruz. I had a tall stack of folded black t-shirts sitting on the counter when I happened to look up and see another tall stack of folded black t-shirts at the other end of the same counter. Then I noticed that our friend Dave who does security at the Catalyst was also doing his laundry that afternoon.

Of course I also have lots of clothes, too. At one point during this move after lugging seemingly endless armloads of clothes, I made a promise to look through my closet before I ever again declare that I have "nothing to wear".

It also occurred to me that if someone across the street from the duplex was watching us carrying things out that he or she might have been reminded of numerous clowns pouring out of a tiny car at the circus.

We're pretty much settled into our new abode. We still need to hang pictures, do some painting and some other things. 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 entire Napster uproar the artists who make the recordings in question have been for the most part overlooked. Everyone from record company executives, the Napsters, on-line 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 in the next weeks and months. Snazzy Productions, Henflings, the Catalyst and Lea Lawson Productions all have killer line-ups 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 email to this column. Somehow it's so easy for me to put off something as simple as emailing back, and time slips away. So just please know that I thoroughly appreciate every greeting I've received.

That's about it for now. Happy trails.

Mary McCaslin can be reached by mail at PO Box 3394, Santa Cruz, 95063 or by e-mail at roundup@marymccaslin.com.

Mary's radio show, the Fat Farm is now in its permanent time slot on Thursdays, Noon to 3 pm on KZSC 88.1 FM.