Sometimes Things Get Better

I've been involved with the music business since I was a college kid. Most of the musicians I've become friends with, from the Fugs and the Jefferson Airplane in the '60s to Joni Mitchell, the Dead Kennedys, The Clash, Rickie Lee Jones, Ice-T, and Green Day more recently shared some degree of a common political perspective. Occasionally I would come to deal with right-wingers as well, especially when I became an executive for Warner Bros. Some of the artists I disagreed with politically, I liked personally, such as Johnny Ramone, an inveterate right-winger, and Chris Isaak.

I remember this one baby band whose name I'd rather not mention and whose music I liked a lot. They had one alternative music "hit," and it was written by the guy in the band that didn't quite fit in. They were all evangelicals, but part of some strange Christian sect that had excised Jesus from their beliefs and replaced him with Hatred and Bigotry. It's more common among Christians these days, but back then it was disconcerting. I remember one year they all gave each other Rush Limbaugh books for Christmas. Except the one guy who wrote the hit.

They decided to fire him. Not because of Limbaugh, but because they realized he was gay. He was the outgoing guy in the band that all the radio djs and journalists liked. And he did write the one hit. They were recording their last album with him in the Bahamas, and I went down to check on the progress and hear the music. At the wrap party, the young child of the studio owners suddenly went missing. Then there was a scream, and someone realized he was facedown at the bottom of the pool. The gay band member, a former lifeguard, dove in, dragged the kid out and resuscitated him.

That brought on a great deal of confusion among the evangelical Limbaugh-Christians. How could the spawn of Satan, they thought, be doing God's work? So they offered him a chance to stay in the band by renouncing the gay thing. He passed. They fired him. The record failed dismally. We dropped them and hired the gay ex-member to run his own subsidiary label.

I'm retired now, but bands still contact me when they can't get in touch with real record-business executives. I don't understand why. But I figure I owe it to the universe to talk with them. A few years back I met a bunch of Texans who had come to L.A. to make it. They weren't from Austin or even Houston. These were the real thing, and at least a couple of them could not understand why a nice guy like me was always saying all those mean things about George Bush and Dick Cheney. I really liked their music, and they were nice enough guys. Eventually they found a singer from New York, whose worldview was more like my own.

The band broke up long ago, but the singer, Vinn, is in a new band, and he sent me a song they just finished. In the note he said, "I've been becoming increasingly frustrated with what I see happening in the world and my writing has begun to reflect thoughts of peace, revolution & healing... I've become passionate about being involved in making a change." The song is called "Pale Moon in the Troubled Sky," and the band name is Pilot Touhill. It sounds like a good way to kick off the 4th of July weekend: