Mayor Dean takes a Dump on South Nashville

By Peter Rodman

Here's the SHORT version of this blog: 
If you OPPOSE the arrogant way this thing is being pushed through, with virtually NO community input, you need to join the hundreds of citizens who plan to be at the downtown Courthouse tonight, to make themselves heard.
Sheriff Daron Hall has repeatedly poo-pooed any need for such input, saying "WE've already studied it!" and "The Council has known about this for a year!", as if the citizens are just garden variety pests, kicking up dirt in His Eminence's fiefdom, and slowing down an already-determined outcome.  He's not just confident or 'cocky' about it; he's downright irritated, that we-the-people have any say in the matter, at all. 
We don't need to move the jail.
We need to renovate it.  
Downtown needs a jail--as do all major cities in America.  Even the Mayor's favorite "model" cities--Portland and Seattle, after which he likes to model his growth--BOTH have downtown jail facilities! 
Be reminded, this is a mayor who hasn't even found a way to open a grocery store downtown yet--even though almost 100,000 new residents now live in all those massive new condos! 
Is there even a drugstore down there? A hardware store? Nope. 
He'll have none of it.
Just hotels, condos, souvenir shops, venues, and honky tonks. 
You'd be forgiven for thinking downtown Nashville now resembles a theme park, more than it does an actual city.

It would be just as cost efficient to tear down the jail and build a new one right there, where it's needed, as it would to ferry hundreds of prisoners a night, back and forth on a 20 mile round trip journey, forever after.


                                    [END OF SHORT VERSION.]
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Beginning of lengthy, detailed version:

Mayor Dean takes a Dump on South Nashville


By Peter Rodman


To be sure, a lot of great improvements have been made

to our city, during Mayor Dean’s tenure--but it could easily be argued that most of these projects were simply the "logical next steps" any Mayor would have taken, given the exploding profile a prime time series gave this town.
Unfortunately, the Mayor's penchant for 'bright and shiny objects' with instant rewards has often distracted him from securing the nuts and bolts of a truly major city, which Nashville has (rather suddenly) become.
The truth is, we are woefully unprepared for all this growth.
Mass transit is non-existent here. 
And major capital projects have been almost exclusively aimed at certain 'favored' areas, under Mayor Dean: 
The Gulch, East Nashville, West End, and Downtown.  
Even his proposed 'AMP' bus lane system--a poor excuse for 'mass transit,' if ever there was one--inexplicably shut out North and South Nashville, and became an entirely east-west proposal, linking the privileged, from West End to the Cumberland River.
This was particularly galling to the city's existing bus riders, consisting mainly of full time workers living on the north and south edges of town, who need real mass transit from the least wealthy areas, to downtown--in order to clean hotel rooms, serve dinners, bus tables, and work the cash registers that collect all those tourist dollars.

Those of us living and working in what I call 'Near South Nashville' --the area bordered by Franklin Pike on the west, Old Hickory Blvd. on the south, Antioch Pike on the east, and Thompson Lane/Murfreesboro Road at the north end--are beginning to see a pattern in this Mayor's "favored neighborhoods"...and for us, it’s not a good one.
The Mayor’s “chosen areas” get gilded over and over again, as though needing constant reinvention…while Near South Nashville has become his most neglected, and some might say even abused, stepchild.
Every section of town he has paid attention to has seen property values rise exponentially,  while 'Near South' area home values have remained relatively flat.
This, despite being less than six miles straight down 2nd and 4th Avenues (which both become Nolensville Road, to the south) from downtown. 
What is the reason why home buyers haven't flooded the area?  Crime isn't particularly high here--certainly nothing like North or east Nashville...so what could it be?
Neglect, that's what.
Codes are rarely enforced, so multiple immigrant families sometimes cram into single family dwellings, unbothered by Metro's useless 'statutes' at all. 
Corporate headquarters are planted either smack in the middle of downtown, or way out of the area--even though ample space (and unrivaled proximity) should logically favor the 'Near South' area.  

But the biggest problem is the attitude, coming from City Hall.
Because many citizens and immigrants don't speak English as a first language, it's assumed they are the majority here...which isn't so. 
As a result, the only projects allocated to us are always "ethnically based" tokens, to provide handy photo-ops for politicians, instead of lifting up the whole area.
Nothing new or shiny happens here, and that's a direct result of Mayor Dean's own preference, to go where developers tell him to go, and solidify his legacy by picking all the easy, low-hanging fruit...most of it, downtown.
Face it:  There were no residential buildings there to speak of, a decade ago.  It was easy pickin's, once ABC's hit series Nashville put the real Nashville on the map.


But as mentioned earlier, whenever a problem arises, it’s ours, here in South or 'Near South' Nashville. 

And whenever we need something fixed, it’s moved!
Greer Stadium?  Gone.  
These guys in the picture below lost their jobs, when the Mayor packed it in, and split for Sulphur Dells...

Workers at Greer Stadium, on their last night.
August 27, 2014
Photograph Copyright 2014 by Peter Rodman.

State Fair? Gone.
Now it's a lowly flea market, on its best days.  
Meanwhile, all we get down here is spillover--essentially the WASTE from other areas. 
The Nashville Speedway will almost certainly be the next to go. 

It's no coincidence that Green Hills Mall has been transformed into what feels an architect's drawing, with idyllic sidewalks and fake 'streets' to accommodate its pricey new specialty shops and restaurants, and people walking around like illustrations, next to its toy-like trees.  
But wither Bellevue Mall, or Hickory Hollow Mall?
Today they are massive ghost towns, and the reasons lead you right to Mayor Dean's doorstep.
Oh, sure...the internet has killed many indoor shopping malls nationwide, it's true.

Hickory Hollow Mall~ May, 2015 Photograph by Peter Rodman.
It should be re-named 'The Mayor Dean Mall,'
if only as a way of prodding him to pay more attention,
because THIS is as much his 'legacy' as any skyscrapers downtown.

But the surrounding, extremely dense condo development allowed outside Hickory Hollow Mall crammed  first-time condo buyers right on top of each other, so cramped and close together that even upwardly mobile families soon found themselves without enough space for their kids to find anything but trouble...much of it at that mall, just down the hill from their shiny, new, cheaply stacked, lushly carpeted, townhome-cum-ghetto.
Would ANY of that massive development have been allowed in East Nashville? 
Not on your life!
Even a single oversized home permit east of the Cumberland usually draws the kind of 'connected' complaints that find their way to City Hall, in many cases sending would-be developers packing. 
And where do they usually go?
To the area of least resistance: 
'South Nashville'...better known as Antioch.

This Mayor let developers run roughshod down there, ruining the beauty of the hills and creating a hangout for disaffected kids that ended the Hickory Hollow Mall, far faster than internet commerce ever could have--and almost all the surrounding retail, which was substantial, is gone too.
On Mayor Karl Dean's watch, this place became a ghost town.
But we’re supposed to celebrate Hizzonor's benevolence in bringing tiny patches of this vacant monstrosity back to life-- as an ice rink or a library, on a lot so vast that a recent citizens' meeting there--to protest the moving of our city jail--found even savvy media members flummoxed by its remote location, in the eerily haunted setting...the 'Global Mall,' a post apocalyptic movie set from another globe altogether, once known as Hickory Hollow.

Mayor Dean...YOU OWN THIS!

Birds swooped overhead, as a Channel 2 cameraman asked of the few passersby, "Excuse me...do you know where the meeting hall is? I sure wish there was someone to ask in here...but there's not even a sign, anywhere!"
All he got were shrugs.
Look around you.  You see a dying Antioch.
Property values? Gone.


There are malls that haven't quite closed, like 100 Oaks. Again, that one's in Near South Nashville--at least 10 miles closer to town than Antioch--and has become a wacky hybrid between off-brand 'doh-doh bird' retailers (Burlington Coat Factory, Electronic Express) and spillover testing facilities from Vanderbilt Hospital.
Even the hospital itself seems to have dumped just the most mundane, mind-numbing testing facilities in 'Vanderbilt at 100 Oaks.' 

It is against that backdrop that Mayor Dean and County Sheriff Hall dropped a shitbomb on South and Near South Nashville that nobody expected--and nearly nobody wants--the proposed importing of the City Jail to our suburban neighborhood.
After quietly commissioning a bogus 35 page "study" to affirm their already-made decision, they offered no other specific alternate locations to the one on Harding Place.
In all 35 pages, only generalities (like "North Nashville") are given, with guesstimate costs accompanying each one-- whereas  ONLY Harding Place seems to ever have been seriously considered, in actual detail. 

At the very outset, the most logical choice--staying put downtown--was discarded.
No comprehensive study of renovations at the downtown jail was ever done. 
That facility holds 2,000 prisoners...and handles up to 200 fresh ones a night, most of whom are arrested within a few blocks of the building...that's right:  Downtown.
Mayor Dean and Sheriff Hall--both 'no shows' at every community meeting about this--say it should be summarily shut down, and the building and property sold to the highest bidder. 
As mentioned above, they then propose to move the jail to Harding Place, in residential 'Near South Nashville,' where the South Precinct Metro Nashville Police Headquarters currently resides.
Now, get this...because it's an amazing sleight-of-hand:
After building a MASSIVE new prison facility there, they propose to move the South Precinct 10 miles further down the road, to guess where: 
Hickory Hollow, or thereabouts...in Antioch.

All of this is peachy, if you're a sheriff who's grown tired of his

Sheriff Daron Hall's empty seat at the 'Global Mall'
community meeting, May 27, 2015.  Claiming 'scheduling'
problems, he nevertheless found time to talk to all the
local TV stations 'live,' on that night's 5 o'clock news.
The citizens' meeting was attended by hundreds,
who had hoped to question him about his plans
to move the jail into their area. It took place at 6:30.

decrepit building downtown...or if you fancy the long, quiet rides with arrestees of all sorts each night, all night, back and forth from the courthouse and 2nd Avenue to Harding Place in Near South Nashville. 
Or...if you don't like oversight.  Which our Davidson County Sheriff's Department notoriously does. not. like.
 
Let's forget about how many cops it takes off the streets and for how long every night, as the uniformed taxi service ferries perps in and out of town--first at night, when all the action takes place; and then, the next morning, back into town for court appearances! 
Forget how many squad cars this will tie up.  
Forget how many fewer officers will be available to answer citizen calls.  
Forget all that gas, amounting to millions a year, when a 20 mile round trip accompanies every single arrest, 24/7/365, back and forth, back and forth, just so the Sheriff and his boys have a cushier place to call home.

The Mayor and the Sheriff have unilaterally (without almost ANY community input) decided to dump downtown’s nightly crime problems on Near South Nashville--muggers, thieves, drunks, rapists--every single night of the year, so our beloved tourists won’t have to look at them. But once bonded out of jail, where will they find themselves?

One of dozens of children who walked into
a recent community meeting about moving the jail
holding signs that said stuff like, "KIDS LIVES MATTER.'

They'll be stuck on Harding Place, surrounded by a host of new bond businesses which will follow the jail here.  And they'll be left to wait at one of a very few bus stops for our fabulous twice-a-day city buses to take them...somewhere. 
Roughly 7,000 new prisoners a year will be in this situation.
Do you think they'll sit patiently at that bus stop, waiting six or more hours?
Or might they...well...y'know..."look around a little?"
Maybe take a walk...maybe canvass the neighborhood for easy marks?
If it only happens one percent of the time that this results in a significant crime, that's SEVENTY significant new crimes, gifted to a suburban neighborhood that's struggled WITHOUT the Mayor's help (so far) to lift itself out of poverty and crime, and to build new alliances among homeowners.

Thanks, Mayor Dean.
Thanks for nothing.
Now, your problems--all generated downtown--will be well out of your lovely tourist area, and smack dab in the middle of ours.
You know...at first, with all your resources directed at downtown, the Gulch, East Nashville, West End, and Sulphur Dells--we felt like abandoned step-children.
But now it seems we’re just a toilet, for whatever waste you generate down where all the money comes and goes. 
 
Make no mistake:  This is all about 'image.'
In a city whose idea of 'planning' has created a downtown fantasy land for tourists (and naïve condo buyers) without a single grocery or hardware or drug store, we mustn’t ruffle the feathers of our city fathers!
“We know best,” the Sheriff tells us, over and over, but really…what does he know about cities? 
No other major city in America has a downtown living area without so much as a place to buy toothpaste, a loaf of bread, or (God forbid!)...a screwdriver. 
What kind of theme park has Mayor Dean created, down there? 
And now, you want no jail...
So you give it to us?

No, thanks!
It’s OUR turn to share in this city’s prosperity.  It’s our turn to have some REALLY nice projects, not “ethnically based” stuff so politicians can get a photo-op…but
We deserve prosperity-based projects, as gleaming and as gorgeous as all the stuff OUR tax dollars---and corporate tax breaks---have subsidized in downtown Nashville.
How about some of that stuff along Nolensville Road, and Harding Place?  
Jail, my friends, isn’t what we have in mind. 
We could use RAILS…not JAILS.

Just the temerity of exporting your downtown crime problems to an area which has struggled (without any help) to lift itself up from blight, is ranklesome.
We haven't done too badly on our own down here, either--despite being tagged as ‘Scary Walmart,’ in the (more than slightly racist) Hipster’s 'Map of Nashville' that floated around the internet, a couple years back.
I’ll tell you something:
When Harding Mall closed, that Walmart saved us.
It replaced all those jobs and then some--and to this day we know all the faces of the folks working there, because ours is a friendly neighborhood.
So while it may not be trendy enough for Five Points, it's a basic need this area had, after Kroger abandoned us.  Not everyone can afford to be so choosy about which life raft to grab.
Ours is a working class area, and it's on the rise.
But it can’t stay that way with handcuffs on--either figuratively or literally.
And we’ve gotten no help from you, Mayor Dean!

What’s even more insulting is that you propose to REPLACE our 'Near South' area police headquarters with that jail, and move the precinct 10 miles away...increasing call times by who-knows-how-much!
It seems obvious that moving the precinct we need here further away will unduly increase our police response times. It’s a lot longer ride from there to here.
Can I confidently feel like, say, a noise complaint...or a traffic incident...or a suspicious prowler will be caught in time, when squad cars are based ten miles away from my area?
Just because you lump it all together as 'South Nashville' doesn't make it so.
'Near South Nashville' is as far from Antioch as Bellevue is from the 5 Spot, in East Nashville.  You'd never group that whole area as one, and yet...we're all lumped together.

All the extra tourist money Nashville has attracted of late has been, as mentioned at the top of this column, a net positive.
But our beloved downtown tourist trap attracts not only business and buildings--it also 'attracts' our police force, stretching them to the limit and beyond. 
Leaving us...here in Near South Nashville…where? 
Nowhere.

Which is where that squad car will be, while transporting perps from downtown to the holding tank, to the court house and back.
Pretty soon we’ll be running a uniformed taxi service for crooks, instead of watching over each neighborhood and dealing with its problems locally, as we should, not centrally.  

I submit to you that this concept is a BAD idea, and only exports trouble from downtown to the Harding Place/Nolensville Road area, where we LEAST need it…and to paraphrase Taylor Swift, it  would "NEVER, EVER, EVER" be allowed in:
The Gulch, East Nashville, Belle Meade, or West End…and now...not even downtown…all of which are (not coincidentally) Mayor Dean's "pet areas." 

Please, stop using us a garbage pail, and WAKE UP! 
There’s much more to Near South Nashville than just pretending you tolerate it. 



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This opinion column and all photographs herein are Copyright 2015 by Peter Rodman. All Rights Reserved.  No portion herein may be copied or used in any manner without express written permission from the copyright holder.

Bob Dylan delivers "All the Truth in the World"

By Peter Rodman

Three Bob Dylan fans walk into a bar. First one says, “I’ll have a beer. Import, please…” Second one says, “No imports here; gimme a Bud Light!” 
Third one says, “Nothing here is of any import.”  

Bob Dylan at Tennessee Performing Arts Center, Nashville ~ April 27, 2015
 Photograph Copyright 2015 by Peter Rodman.

The most common kind of Bob Dylan fan still finds it charming to declare him inscrutable, mock his churlish ways, and happily say, “I’ll never figure him out, but I love him anyway!” 
A rarer kind thinks it’s much more simple to picture him as a human. What if the man just wants to live his life, entertain the people (if they’re entertained by what he does), get away from all the myth-making, and tell the truth, wherever practical?
These days, he often begins his sets with “Things Have Changed”:

“I’ve been trying to get as far away from myself as I can
Some things are too hot to touch
The human mind can only stand so much…”

Bob himself seems like that second kind of 'Dylan fan.'
He’s laid it all out there for everyone to see, but they still don’t see it. Or they don't want to.
And hey, that’s okay with him…you can only give so much.

“People are crazy and times are strange
I’m locked in tight, but I’m out of range
I used to care…
But things have changed.”

No wonder either, that his only early-period blockbuster in this whole concert (“Blowin’ in the Wind”) finally showed up second-to-last as a piano-based saloon song, bookended by standards. 
Personal Confession #1:
With every bone in my body (and I am serious here), I had to resist the urge to shout out “BALTIMORE!”  during a lull in "Blowin' in the Wind." (Referring to the week's unrest there...

...because things haven’t changed all that much, it sometimes seems.)

But Bob has, and quite frankly I’m happy I didn't succomb to the urge to make him be what he used to be, and no longer can be.  Besides, I hate people who shout out things at concerts. (Recent Jackson Browne tours have become so unbearable, I won't be back--no matter how good Jackson is.)

Think about this for a second:  Had he wanted to, Bob Dylan could have built his later years into a sports-arena farce, full of grandiosity, aided by audio tricks, and gilded with carefully ginned-up adulation.  In short, he could easily make a far better living,  pretending to be ‘Rope Line Bob, of Olde.’
But the truth is, that Bob never survived 1966.
This one did.
For many years during the ‘80s, he seemed to straddle the fence between his own image, flopping around like a freshly caught fish...and his growing personal reality.  Watch, as Stevie Wonder famously coaches him in How to Sing like the OLD Bob Dylan, on 1985’s “We Are the World”:

Probably the last glimpse of Ye Olde Bob was the Traveling Wilburys, done partly to appease his pal (and lifelong devotee) George Harrison, and partly just to see if he could dig a true collaboration.
Even then, the so-called 'Never Ending Tour' had already begun…and somehow, the carny-like lure of medium-sized halls, state fairs, county roads and classic diners ultimately won out.

Long Live Ye Olde Bob!  

Ye Olde Bob is dead.

The above is a National Lampoon radio parody, from the mid '70s.

And so it is, that 'Mr. Dylan' has enjoyed a steady rollin’ road life ever since. 
Nashville has venues galore.
Bob could play any of ‘em he wants. He’s done the Ryman, but no longer even does that.
Instead, he’s played every dump from Greer Stadium (former home of minor league baseball's Nashville Sounds) to the impossibly cavernous and outdated ‘Auditorium Theatre,’ one of those concrete cow palaces that would be better off razed.
So TPAC (The Tennessee Performing Arts Center) was this year’s (perfectly hoary) compromise between upscale comfort and neo parking garage ambiance. It normally hosts kitschy road companies performing Broadway shows, like Phantom or (good heavens!) Kinky Boots, and its decidedly churchy crowds don't seem to mind feeling dwarfed inside what feels like a carpeted Bundt-cake mold.
Audiences here are used to having their patience tested.
Besides, it’s virtually across the street from the last classic American hotel in town, The Hermitage.
Bingo. Bob's here!
If there’s one thing Bob knows, it’s classic Americana--and I'm not talking about some lately-concocted musical genre.
After spending the first five years of his career deifying the Dust Bowl (and then leavin' it, to rock a little), Dylan disappeared behind the Rolling Thunder Pancake & Folk Circus, which began a curious left-turn toward life as Repertory Bob, only to circle back later.

The Nashville show was no surprise to never-left-him Bob watchers, which made it a disappointment to others.

And it was a huge surprise to the tuned-out-but-still-curious Bob Watchers, who forgot that he hasn't played guitar on stage for years, thus their (slightly outdated) disappointment.
Still more folks can't understand why Bob won't adhere to his own melodies as originally written, choosing instead to rewrite them every single time he sings them.
I fall somewhere in between, but wasn’t too disappointed at all--other than not being able to take pictures…which has admittedly become my main hobby now, as a full time hobby horse (retiree).  
                   
The 'show' was more than adequate, by classic American standards. (All puns intended.)
If you're still happy merely attending a show, as are most TPAC patrons on most nights, presumably you weren’t  obsessing on cell phone pictures or making YouTube videos, selfies and texts. 
If, however, you are among the millions who now demand such self-generated amenities from your paid-seat universe, join the disappointed.
Over all, it cannot be denied: 
Bob aimed to please.
There was a nifty version of  “She Belongs to Me,” which always reminds me of a sexy trumpet player I briefly dated, in the ‘90s. 

(I don't care if it was written 30 years earlier...I choose to believe it was about her.  I also like imagining that Bob was talking about the 'Madonna,' when he sang "and Madonna, she still has not showed..." in 1965. Not possible?  You say. See? Myths are fun!) 
Another plus was his articulation, far more accommodating and discernable than it has been in years.
The point is, it may not look like it to a spoiled forever, I-want-it-all crowd, but he's really trying up there, the band is quite good, and for cryin' out loud...he'll turn 74 in a couple weeks!
If you’re pleased enough with a sit-there-and-listen atmosphere, this'll do.
Bob provides other accommodations, too. 
Ya want t-shirts and trinkets?  We got ’em! 
Dylan swag was reasonably priced, as were the show tickets (top price, under $150) and not much time or money was wasted on designing those shirts, because Bob clearly believes they’ll end up in your son’s dresser drawer anyway.
Is he wrong? I don't think so. 
Same for the $20 posters that say
“IN SHOW~ IN CONCERT” with a “your city here” spot filled in at the bottom, to (sort of) personalize them.

The top of the poster said
"IN SHOW~ CONCERT"
but that part is cut off, here...

This is the kind of traveling show that dates back to 19th century America …and Bob Dylan knows that.  He knows just where he stands.
He is "in concert," for some.
He is in “show,” (or on display, not unlike Buffalo Bill was) for others.
Bob wants you all to know, he knows all that. 

Whatever ya like, people…Bob’s here to please.
That the merch resembles tossed-off ephemera is no accident. It's good enough, for what it is.
Heck, even Steven Tyler lined up to buy some.

Let nothing distract from the here and now, right?
And right here, right now, Bob's gonna play us some songs.
So please…once again, if we may…no photographs, no movies, no cameras, no texting…just ignore the extra burly ‘help’ TPAC has hired for this occasion, to watch over you. (Lucky for me, on the few occasions when he parked himself directly in front of the blinding floor emergency light beside my seat, I could almost make out Bob Dylan onstage!)

Chinese Dylan Album~ Photograph Copyright 2008 by Peter Rodman.

I no longer ascribe 'evasion' to Dylan as a motive, at all. 
In fact, I think the opposite: He’s been trying to be himself for a lot of years now, but we still won’t let him. 
Though as smart and as thoughtful as any man on the planet, he’s a simple guy at heart.
Or at least he longs to be...I think.
At this point, Bob knows history doesn’t matter as much as it used to, including his own. (I wish I knew that, so I could avoid writing, now that I'm not getting paid for it anymore!)
But that's just it.
To illustrate just how much time has changed our perspective...
Back in 1977, famed 'Beat poet' and Dylan confidante Allen Ginsberg visited my radio show, and said modern day poets should never assume Dylan hadn't studied all that came before him.  "I mean, they shouldn't be too dumb," he said, half-jokingly. "It's like saying, 'Do you think Dylan should have heard some folk songs, before he started writing his own?' Well, naturally! 

Your intrepid writer, at the opening
of the Country Music Hall of Fame's
'Dylan, Cash, and the Nashville Cats'
exhibit. ~ March, 2015

He started by adapting (very old) folk songs. And nowadays, what he's got on his book shelf is A Child's Ballads, which is a collection of classic English ballads, put together in the 18th or 19th century. What Dylan knows, is that everybody should know as much as they can.  They should certainly not be dumb."
I sometimes wonder what Ginsberg might say about that today, in our post-historic, glorify-the-dumb society--giddily riding out its descent, without a concern in the world...or for it.
"Nowadays," as Allen once called it, we live day by day...by idiotic day.
Bob knows this. 
And unlike Ginsberg, he has lived to see it all.
Back when the above National Lampoon parody was done, it was literally unimaginable to think Bob Dylan might "go commercial," which is what made it so funny. To hear it today, you can almost believe it's real. 
By today's standards, Bob hasn't sold out at all--though there were those TV ads for Greek yogurt, Victoria's Secret, Chrysler, and Cadillac. 
So why not a Christmas album?

Why not an album of Sinatra covers, even if his voice croaks more than croons these days, making even Leonard Cohen seem melodic?

Can't a man have any fun anymore?
As John Mellencamp once put it (in the world’s greatest-ever album title):  Nothin’ Matters…and What if it Did?

This is where we are in America, circa 2015.
Unlearning lessons that took 200 hard years to learn, about everything from vaccines to unions, and gun control to governance itself.  If that's not the "decline and fall of," I don't know what is. All I know is, there seems little need to learn anything anymore, in a country that would rather cave in to stupidity and bigotry than open up to the world around them.  The idiocracy values selfies more than science, and web page construction more than sentence construction, giving every nut with a so-called smartphone the chance to chime in like they've suddenly got a better idea. 
Yes, I am 'a walking antique.'
But even taken in that context, Bob saw all this coming way before I did. 
“All the truth in the world," he sings......

".......................adds up to one big lie.”

He knew interviews no longer mattered by the late ‘60s, long before I'd ever done my first one, and two full decades before the one above. He already knew images would fade, and should fade--including his own.  He knew that success is a temporary gift, usually given (and taken away) way too soon before the last breath is drawn--and carelessly wasted, unless you truly are more careful than you used to be.

They say he’s inscrutable.  Elusive.
Mysterious, and all that.
I no longer believe that for a minute.
It’s all right there in front of us. 
In fact, the guy’s pouring his heart out, right there on stage, and it’s ours for the taking...until the show’s over.

This is a Big Picture guy.  He’s thinking in terms of the universe, knowing his own (universe) is small, consisting only of what can actually be seen and heard and touched, in a single day.  These days Bob goes for walks, unrecognized in almost every city he plays. More than once, however, he's been mistaken for a vagabond. (Could that be more perfect?) Once, he was picked up outside Bruce Springsteen's boyhood home, staring into the yard, late at night.  

Just after finishing his reinvented version of “Blowin’ in the Wind” (which I somehow identified, in less than a minute!) he closed the show with a straightforward plea to the audience, lifted right off an old Frank Sinatra record:

“Should my heart not be humble
Should my eyes fail to see
Should my feet sometimes stumble on the way,
Stay with me.”
It very much recalled his own song, “Beyond Here Lies Nothin’,” which had shown up earlier in the night:
“Just as long as you stay with me
The world is my throne
Beyond here lies nothin’~
Nothin’ we can call our own.”

See?  Bob’s soul was right there all along, for the taking.
His warts 'n all mortality freely admitted, but no longer of special concern. Better to wear out your welcome than to flame out, as per Neil Young's instruction.
We've been mighty lucky to have heroes like Bob--as self-aware and unimpressed with his own hype as possible, given the fun-house mirror we insist he use. In his last years, he seems eager to rejoin and physically touch the world around him, dutifully lowering expectations, decades after serving his time in the Stuperstar Army.
Though it does not sit well with souvenir seekers, I like this approach just fine. 
"Since you went away the days grow long
And soon I'll hear old winter's song
But I miss you most of all my darling
When autumn leaves start to fall..."

If you enjoyed spending some idle time in a dimly lit room  with Bob the other night, you probably loved the show.  If you were looking for idol time, well...maybe not so much.


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This Opinion Column is Copyright 2015 by Peter Rodman. All Rights Reserved.

Michael Muirhead, Boulder's Hypnotic Radio Voice of the Early '70s

By Peter Rodman 


Somewhere in everyone's memory is a person so charismatic, so inscrutable, and so cool, you'd have trouble explaining why you even knew them in the first place.  

I've only known a handful of full-on rogue characters in my life.  They are fugitives from convention, answerable to no one, and able up 'n leave any setting, no matter how comfy or for how long they've been there, and completely reinvent themselves someplace else entirely, never lookin' back.  I guess that’s how true 'outlaws' usually define themselves, but like most people...it seems foreign to me.  

Still, there's always that person, somewhere in your past.  

One such person, for me at least, was Michael Muirhead.

Photograph Copyright 1975 & 2015 by Peter Rodman. 
All Rights Reserved.

But let me stop right there.  
All that 'rogue' talk doesn't even begin to explain how he ushered me into radio--eased me in, really...either purposely or accidentally...and I'm still not sure which. 

When I first met Michael, he was THE coolest DJ in Boulder, on the remarkably Pacifica-like ‘underground’ FM  radio station, KRNW.  They were known for being uniquely 'Boulder,' at a time when all the downtown shops were local, and there was no 'Pearl Street mall.'  (Even a new Earth Shoes outlet was looked upon as some kind of corporate sell-out.)

At that time, the town was unselfconsciously setting the pace for counter-cultural living, and America-at-large was only just beginning to notice.  Against that backdrop--and the crisp blue skies and wafting pine-sap, mixed with the occasional stench of patchouly oil and 'b.o.'-- KRNW held court, roughly 18 hours a day.
But the prime time for radio, in that late-sleepin', alternative lifestyle town, was Michael Muirhead's shift. 

Every afternoon from 2 to 6, he’d assemble 40 minute sets ranging from Les McCann to Bad Company to Foghat and back, fairly challenging the listener to even hear him when he spoke, as though somebody just woke him up and he had better things to do, anyway.  My very first in-person 'radio lesson' was this:  
Dead air works, for the best on-air talents.  

I saw it for myself, and that counter-intuitive adage still holds true, to this day.
Which leads me to Lesson #2:  Bosses don't know anything about broadcasting.  Break their rules--and let your listeners in on it--and you will forge a stronger bond than any programmer can break.  That too, still holds true.
I could swear nobody else in America played Little Feat more than Michael, but that may well be because they had a ten minute track he loved ("Cold, Cold Cold/Tripe Face Boogie"), and at a station where nobody else is even there but the DJ, long cuts can be a very helpful thing.
(Especially if you have to pee.)

And now, for a personal detour...
I was a skinny, hyper New York guy, fresh out of years in retail and wholesale records, and full of as much knowledge as a fella could glean, from liner notes and headphones. 
On my first day in town--June 1,1972--I'd landed a job managing ‘Budget Tapes & Records’ “on the Hill.”  Unbeknownst to me, it was the sole company-owned 'flagship' store for 163 outlets in the west.
Right around the corner was a unique venue named ‘Tulagi’ that booked national club acts, six nights a week. 
I quickly realized that every single show dovetailed perfectly with my musical tastes, and got to see Doc Watson, Mance Lipscomb, Linda Ronstadt, Joe Walsh’s Barnstorm, and too many more classic acts to mention there, up close.
The booking genius behind Tulagi was a mercurial guy named Chuck Morris, who made his mark booking a remarkable string of national acts there between 1970 and 1972.  

Under Morris, Tulagi lured college kids in search of a ‘3.2%’ beer high to $5 shows, wherein the likes of  Earl Scruggs, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, and Bonnie Raitt held court.  Word quickly spread about this venue, one of only six or seven in the nation serving up the Ry Cooders and Linda Ronstadts, for an intimate party like no other. Those college kids never knew what hit ‘em…and pretty soon, every act--no matter who Chuck booked--was packing the house, for two shows nightly.
As fate would have it, Chuck had the inevitable 'falling out' with the owner, Herb Kauvar…and left town to open a new club in Denver, named Ebbett's Field for his beloved Dodgers’ foresaken Brooklyn home.
Kauvar was happy to be rid of a guy who’d outgrown him, and even knew how to book the place himself--but being an older man, with little to no knowledge of rock or roots music, Herbie had no idea who to book.  Once he ran out of 'repeats' from Chuck's act roster, Herb was lost.
He began showing up at the record store to ‘pick my brain‘ every week, trying to figure out how to book Tulagi without Chuck.  Though he canvassed the whole neighborhood, he always ended up in my store, trying to make a final decision. “What do you think of Tower of Power?” he’d ask. “Who’s Claudia Lennear, anyway?” 
After several months of this, I decided to make him an offer: 
How about if you pay me for all this information?  Why don't I come to work for you?  In truth, I knew nothing about how to run a major  nightclub.  I was 21, for God sakes!
But he was desperate, and soon enough I left the store to run Tulagi for Herb.
I had no idea what I was in for.  
For one thing, the job entailed overseeing three places:  Herbie’s Deli and ‘The Sink’ were The Hill’s most popular hangouts and lunch spots--and Herbie owned them both, in addition to Tulagi.  
As his 'General Manager,' suddenly I was in at 7:30 every morning, ordering massive amounts of salami, and dozens of kegs of beer (which are always delivered just after dawn, for some reason)…and never got home 'til after midnight. No wonder he didn’t wanna do it! 
I began to gently remind Herb why I was hired in the first place, and pretty soon I was mainly just booking Tulagi, and managing the staff there.
Now the onus was on me, to SELL the shows I’d booked. (“With my money!” he always reminded me.)

Thank you for your patience. The detour is now over.

One of my standard ploys in promoting Tulagi shows was to arrange radio interviews for my acts. (Today, that's a given;

Michael Muirhead, manning the board at KRNW in Boulder, Colorado.
Photographs Copyright 1974, 1975 and 2015 by Peter Rodman.

back then, a rarity.) 
Whether it be Asleep at the Wheel, Elvin Bishop or Tim Buckley,  I needed to ‘get the word out’ any way I could--and Boulder’s ‘underground’ FM radio station (KRNW) seemed like a great place to start.  For one thing, it literally echoed through the streets--as every single boutique or head shop played it inside (and sometimes outside) their stores!
Part of the reason for the station's popularity was the diversity of music you could hear--from droning Indian sitars, to country rock; from David Essex to David Bromberg; from John Fahey to 'Mahavishnu' John McLaughlin.
Its DJs  all had very specific tastes, so you kinda knew what to expect from each one…but then again…it was ‘free form’…so…not always. 
Truth be told though, the main reason for its ubiquitous presence in Boulder was probably signal-related. 
Boulder sits in a very dramatic valley, backed up against a stunning wall of mountains (the ‘Flatirons’), which are its trademark. FM radio is, by its nature, almost a 'line-of-sight' (technically called a 'straight line') signal.  Ergo, the puny 55 watt KRNW was omnipresent in town, while Denver’s mega-hit FM stations never quite cracked the ‘hipster bubble,’ there.
So now I began ferrying acts (in my ‘66 Bel Air) to KRNW in earnest, focusing on the afternoon show, which was most closely associated with those hip retailers, and where I’d first heard it…places like ‘The Co-Tangent’ and ‘The Carnival Café.’  It was 1973. 

Sitting behind the microphone every afternoon was the most matter-of-fact, dismissive, likeable, charming, smug, handsome, preoccupied, engaging, conceited,  rockin', nefarious, articulate,  condescending, lady-killing rogue I’d ever met. 
Michael Muirhead, it turned out, was also the nominal 'Program Director' for KRNW.  (What that meant, I'd find out for myself, later on...)
That calculatingly cool voice I’d heard throughout the town, veritably murmuring his 'back-sells,' after disturbingly long (but somehow addictive) pauses was Muirhead, who went beyond being just the ‘arbiter of hip’ in town. (Which he clearly was, at that time.)
In truth, he was almost more like a ‘code-talker,’ or some kind of Pied Piper…and (most impressive to this lifelong radio fan) his listeners followed him, wherever he took them.
Few will remember that Michael almost single-handedly elevated Boulderite Tommy Bolin to ‘Rock God’ status, by playing the obscure James Gang track “Alexis” in such ‘high rotation’ it became, for a time, a kind of default Boulder, Colorado theme song.  The cult status that track--and in turn, Tommy himself--achieved in town was truly Michael's radio invention. And Bolin's wider success began, in large part, with the three-story staircase waiting lines, to see his local band 'Energy,' just one floor up from KRNW, at The Good Earth niteclub...because listeners flocked to see him.  The rest, as they say is...well, forget the cliches. Listen:

Though well known as the former guitarist for Zephyr, there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that Tommy Bolin’s international career as a 'guitar icon' got jump-started on Michael Muirhead's show.  None.  Michael's afternoon program was Ground Zero, for Tommy Bolin's launch into infinity...and eventually, sadly...oblivion.

Anyway, back to me for a moment--the long haired neophyte club manager, still anxiously peddling radio interviews to sell tickets, lest he be canned from his gig--a seemingly daily threat from his nervous club owner. 
Though it sometimes seems to have been pre-ordained, my entry into radio was quite by accident.   

Illustration Copyright 1973 & 2015 by Amanda Rodman.
Graphic Design/Lettering Copyright 1973 & 2015 Peter Rodman.

KRNW was the first radio station I had actually ever even  gone to, in person.  Suddenly, I’d fallen back under a spell begun by Murray the ‘K,’ back when I was 10, listening to the radio in my father’s woodshop, and imagining I had my own radio station.

Strangely enough, Michael Muirhead already had designs on what to do with me, but for the moment, my main concern was “Will he pull it together, and focus on Ray Benson, here?  I need to sell some tickets!”
Being ‘cool’ requires distance.  Muirhead had cool down to a science--but in the case of interviews, his slightly detached, always unimpressed manner could either click…or not. 
Eventually I realized, it was either hit or miss with him. 
He really didn't care if an interview went well or not. Leon Russell could kiss his ass, if he didn’t like it. No star, big or small, was ever bigger than Michael Muirhead, on his show. 

My primary job for Tulagi (let’s call it booking and ‘artist relations’) became even more challenging, when my only viable conduit for radio promotion (Michael) was either 'down the hall' being naughty, or just said “Peter, why don’t you do it?” and left me alone at the station, to do just that! 

Peter Rodman at KRNW, 1975
Photograph by Michael Muirhead.
Copyright 1975 and 2015 by SNPR/Peter RodmanRadio Archive.

In truth, Michael Muirhead was a sun, not a planet--and if you could cop a decent rotation around him, fine.  If not, that was fine, too.
Every time I thought I was maddeningly pissed at the guy, he’d basically sit there, staring at my innocent face, waiting for me to get a hold of myself  (he knew I would)…and man, he could wait! 
That may be 'a cool guy’s' greatest gift--waiting out the rest of us.  He didn’t need.  But he sure knew I did.

Michael Muirhead carried the first ‘Anvil case’ I ever saw. 
Brought it to his show every afternoon, and never spoke about what was in it. 
In fact, if I was there--whether with an artist or just visiting, as I had begun to do shortly after I first showed up--he’d often ask me to leave the room, if somebody more important came in.
“Listen.  I gotta do some business here.  Can we have a few minutes?”
I acted like I knew what was goin’ on--you always did, around Muirhead--but really, I had no clue.  Sometimes he’d up and leave the station altogether. “Take over for me.  And don’t mess up!”
Pretty soon this was happening almost daily.
RADIO, at last...I was home!

  
By the end of 1973, Herbie decided to sell Tulagi--but I had  already found another purpose in life. 
For whatever his other peccadilloes might have been, Michael Muirhead gave me that.  He saw something in me (beyond just my availability, I like to think) and nurtured it, even as he kept me at arm’s length.  Michael effectively groomed me to be his personal substitute...and eventually, his successor...before I even knew what was goin' on.  

He never tried too hard. 
Talent, like looks, came naturally to Michael.  (I, on the other hand, have spent a lifetime doing nothing but trying too hard.)
You can actually hear these opposites, on an early tape I found, wherein--just before taking over his show for good--Muirhead decided to have me on as a performing guest.  

The Boulder Daily Camera had done a feature on me, headlined Closet Songwriter Comes Clean, to promote a gig I had at Shannon’s--and probably just for his own amusement, he mumbled offhandedly (almost derisively), “Why dontcha come on tomorrow...and play some of your 'songs'?”
Talk about pressure!
A rarely heard link to that moment in time (February 26, 1974) exists on cassette, and is a priceless encapsulation of our relationship.  It begins with Muirhead's trademark laid-backness, with...several.......seconds of......pure..... silence....after an album cut ends:
MM (in low tones): "Anyway......that was, uh......let's see w't we got.  Peter's, uh...gonna make his, uh...performing debut, after uh........"
PR: "...a three year hiatus?"
MM: "A three year absence. (chuckles)  Or as it says, uh...Closet Songwriter Comes Clean..."
PR: "...so to speak."
MM (perking up more formally): "G'd afternoon, Peter!"
PR: "Hello, Michael...it's good to be here on KRNW."
MM: "...as always. Peter's gonna be down at, uh...Shannon's.  On Sunday night...for uh, like we said...the first live performance, in a...in a while. Scared?" 
PR: "Yeah..."
MM (suddenly snapping at me) : "How 'bout now...?"

This was like a tourist getting in the ring with Muhammad Ali, but instead of fakin' it...he was throwing real punches.
So I ducked, bobbed, and weaved my way through it. I had to.
He was the confidant Alpha Male; I the goofy, but anxious-to-please Court Jester, repeatedly saving my ass with quips, filling in awkward silences after each song, and answering questions he never even bothered to ask. 
It’s very obvious from the tape, who had the confidence and who didn’t, at that point--or maybe, on some deeper level, in retrospect...it isn't.
And while he may have let me flail a little too much for comfort, he never quite let me drown.  In fact, though I was totally wrung out at the end of an hour on the air, sparring with him and playing live originals, deep inside I knew he’d actually just taught me how to swim.  (Via the 'dunking' method, but it somehow worked.)

Pretty soon after that,  I was doing more afternoon shifts than he was. I knew something was up, but I didn’t know what…at first…until one day later that Spring, Michael got busted for something drug related...I think.

Michael Muirhead ducks offstage,
after taking a rare turn as 'emcee'--very
likely for Tommy Bolin, at The Good Earth.
Photograph Copyright 1974/2015 by Peter Rodman.

To know him though, I'd have to say he was more into the Anvil case and the intrigue,  than the drugs themselves. I never saw him out of control.

To this day, all I know is that he ‘went away’ a few months later.  His afternoon show fell into my lap, and KRNW’s owner (Robert N. Wilkinson) adopted me as his new boy--to hand out paychecks, do all the scheduling (including showing up to cover shifts at all hours, if/when others didn’t) and be the (de facto) ‘Program Director,’ for what turned out to be KRNW’s last three years.                              

Michael Muirhead gave me my radio career. After he resolved his legal problems a year or so later, I didn’t see him again, although I heard he was still in town.  By this time things had gotten pretty busy for me, and the new show was high profile enough that you couldn't miss it...so I know he was aware of it, but I always wondered what he thought of  Sunday Night with Peter Rodman on KBCO.  Still, during my next eight years in Boulder, I never heard from him again.

Peter Rodman on the afternoon shift at KRNW, 1976
Photograph Copyright 1976 & 2015 bySNPR/The
Peter Rodman Radio Archive.  All Rights Reserved.

Eventually I moved--first to Chicago for seven years, and then to Santa Barbara in 1991.  
One day out in California, I was hosting my sister and her husband for a visit from back east, so we stopped in to the most infamous tourist joint in town--Rocky’s, on lower State Street, near the beach. 
You know the scene... Very high ceilings; a deafening cacaphony that challenges your lip-reading skills over drinks;   goofy illustrations of local celebrities on the wall (like they have at The Palm, only more risque); tall tables and stools, and a vast back room for dining.
 
I went to the bar to order a round, and there he was...
Michael Muirhead--and he was runnin’ the place.
“Wow!” I said, reverting to my naive, 21 year old self, from two decades earlier.
“Hey, Peter…how ya been?” he said, barely moving his lips.
It was like he'd never left.  Cool as ever. 
Behind him, on the wall, was a perfect caricature, of... Michael Muirhead.
“How’d you end up here?” I began.  “Wow, Michael…What have you been doin’ all this time! Where’d you disappear to?"  Now I'd worked up a head of steam, and was fairly gushing with enthusiasm. "Are you still with Caroline? What ever happened to you, when--”
He’d heard enough. This outlaw cut me off at the pass. 
“Peter, listen: These people know nothing about my past.  I’d like to keep it that way.  I’m happy to see you. We’ll talk another time, I promise…I’ll tell you all about it then. Enjoy your drinks. Tell everybody you’re my friend; they know to take care of you, I promise. I gotta go now.”
And that was it.  1992.  Last time I ever saw him.

Michael Muirhead died last week.
Hit by a tractor trailer, in a small town in upstate New York, crossing the street…or maybe not.  His obit doesn't mention the accident.  It simply says he died "after suffering from years of severe anxiety and depression.” 
Which makes you wonder.  (If anyone would want to choose his own way out, or leave on his own terms...it would be Michael.)
    Update, 3/31/15: Michael's death has been ruled a suicide.
The saddest part was to read about the depression.  I could never picture Michael suffering.  Most unlike the Michael I knew was the part about 'severe anxiety.'  His exterior was so convincing, I just assumed he took everything in stride. 
Kinda makes you think about 'cool.' What's it good for?  I'm sure Michael thought about that a lot. 
Right ‘til the end, he had world-class movie star looks--square jaw, perfectly symmetrical features--like a sort of Errol Flynn for hippies, back in the early '70s when I knew him.

Michael Muirhead, in his later years
(Photo from newspaper obituary)

But behind every swashbuckler lies a mere mortal--as we all are.  I'm ashamed to say I never found the vulnerability behind the mask.
Lesson #3: 
Look harder next time.
Because if anyone ever followed the adage, ‘Never let ’em see you sweat,’ it was Michael Muirhead.
I think the good part is, he knew people were drawn to him.  He knew they automatically loved him.  He knew they didn’t understand why he’d take them out to the edges of reason and test that love, but he knew he could do it, and they’d love him anyway.  Michael enjoyed bein' on a roll, and he usually was.
This was one cool cat. Though he could be maddeningly aloof, I always liked him a lot. (I can picture him now, saying "What's not to like?")
One top of it all, I’ll always be deeply grateful to him--for the generosity he showed, in jump-starting a three decade radio career for me.  He certainly didn't have to help me--his direct opposite, in terms of being 'cool'--out. 
We were an unlikely pair, that's for sure. 
All these years, I've kind of felt like I 'snuck in the back door,'  to get that radio career going--but now that he’s gone, I know his was my best possible training, as squirrelly and nefarious as it sometimes seemed, at the time. I had to learn on the sly, but he trusted me to do it.
I was only two years younger, but couldn't even conceive of what his life was like...and in many ways, still can't.
Say what you will about him (and I know I just did), but it doesn’t even matter. Any of it.
Whatever anybody (including me) thinks, or ever thought about Michael Muirhead…he knew who he was, and he played the game of life like a guy carrying  four extra Aces in his inside pocket.
He had a damn good run, for life's first couple acts. That much is clear.  I'm especially saddened, to hear about those painful later years...and I've just gotta bet that his time at KRNW--that long gone, small-time radio station in Boulder-- was a highlight of his life...though I have no real way of knowing that.
All I know is, at a certain point in time--that being the early '70s--Michael Muirhead was the reigning Arbiter of Hip in Boulder, Colorado.
And yeah, I keep coming back to that one word...'cool.' Whatever that is, he had it. 
And if I said it was 'hard to know how to say goodbye' to such a person, I'd be lying...because Michael taught me well. Listen.
...it's a cinch, man:

Ciao, Michael.

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This opinion column and ALL photographs herein are Copyright 2015 by Peter Rodman, except as indicated. All Rights Reserved. No additional publication or copying of this material is allowed without the express written permission of the author/photographer.  
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