One thing covering music in one city tells you is that good music and bands fail to find audiences for a host of reasons that rarely have to do with quality or talent. Peter Holsapple’s excellent series of blog entries for The New York Times document his life as a songwriter including today’s entry, “Anatomy of a Flop.”  In it, he walks through the making of the dB’s Like This album and particularly the song “Love is For Lovers,” which he felt was a possible hit. The story of how it didn’t become one has to do with band egos, weird relationships, rock stars and the business - some of the usual suspects when it comes to stomping out perfectly good music. In the piece, producer Chris Butler recalls a meeting with Bearsville Records’ owner/former Dylan manager Albert Grossman:

“In the drive to our digs on Albert’s compound, I gushed about to Albert how hard the band had worked in pre-production: how we had taken Peter’s great songs and worked them and re-worked them, and how we were going to make a great record and how grateful everyone was to get the chance to record in a world-class studio. After listening to me silently for a while, he stopped me mid-sentence and said in a rather nasal baritone, ‘Chris…all I am interested in these days are restaurants and wood.’ It was going to be a long autumn.” 

               

When Hurricane Katrina leveled Peter Holsapple’s house, he left town and hasn’t been back nearly often enough. He has, however, been blogging on songwriting for The New York Times. In today’s posting, “Thank You, Bob,” he talks about aging, making peace with collaboration and Bob Dylan’s Tell Tale Signs: The Bootleg Series, Vol. 8:

Dylan’s latest record, “Tell Tale Signs,” features three more versions of his song “Mississippi” that are considerably different from the version from “Love and Theft” that we’ve all known and loved for several years. It’s exciting to hear someone else going through the winnowing and polishing process, especially an acknowledged master like Bob Dylan. The confidence, the element of surprise, the ability to make an entire set of lyrics come alive in a whole ‘nother way simply by wholesale revision of the band’s arrangement… that’s what this new Dylan record represents to me, license for change.