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This morning we received the following e-mail from a concerned Townsperson:<\/p>\n
Yo, Mod:<\/p>\n
Why is Rock Town Hall not providing dedicated coverage to the death of Amy Winehouse<\/strong>? Shouldn’t there be a thread on her legacy by now? I bet a lot of readers are coming to the Hall expecting our take on her untimely passing.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I thought I’d share my response to our anonymous Townsperson with you.<\/p>\n
Good question, and thanks for your concern. I can’t speak for other contributors, but when I heard the news this weekend I considered drafting something. My wife and I were sitting at the kitchen table, and I told her I’d be right back after posting the news. My wife said, “Don’t be mean!”<\/p>\n
My wife is “good people”\u2014one of the finest, most balanced people I know. She lets me have my rope, but she does her best to help me avoid strangling myself with it. She knew I would be mean. She knew the combination of my disgust with the years of\u00a0wasted critical acclaim and all-around media space she was given combined with my disgust over the fact that she made little effort to tackle her demons, as most of us are capable of at least giving a good effort tackling, was going to lead me to be nasty, maybe even do something like speculate on whether her “tragic” death immediately puts her ahead of Dusty Springfield<\/strong> and Annie Lennox<\/strong> as “Greatest British White Female Soul-Pop Singer Ever.” That would have given me a mean-spirited chuckle, but it wouldn’t have addressed how I really felt and how any of you may really be feeling. That’s why I decided to do little more than provide links to some pieces we did on Winehouse while she was alive<\/a>.<\/p>\n
A few years ago my Mom was over our house on a Sunday morning. I was reading the paper and as I folded back the section I was reading my Mom looked over and blurted out, “Oh, I’m sick of her!”<\/p>\n
“Huh?!?!,” I said, looking up from the paper. “Who are you talking about?”<\/p>\n
“That Catherine Zeta-Jones<\/strong>,” she said, referring me to a full-page phone company ad she was pictured in on the page of my newspaper I’d folded back. “She’s got a lot of nerve!”<\/p>\n
“Watch it,” my wife warned from across the room, “he gives her a free pass based on looks alone!”<\/p>\n
My Mom continued, undeterred, as is her wont. “Sure, she’s beautiful. She’s got enough money of her own. She’s going to inherit Michael Douglas<\/strong>‘ money in a few years. She doesn’t need to do those ads. She’s taking jobs away from all the beautiful young women who are still struggling to succeed in modeling!”<\/p>\n
This was a really weird point of view, but I got what she was saying. I am her son, after all. In some ways, I spent the last few years reading about Amy Winehouse’s latest drug-induced scandals feeling the same way about all the hard-working musicians who were edged out of what little available music coverage exists in the media. I’ve not heard more than 3 measures of the music of this Adele<\/strong> character, but\u00a0in interviews I read with her she\u00a0comes off as hard-working, caring, and\u00a0good-spirited\u2014not to mention, by all accounts, super talented!\u00a0Maybe I would have heard a complete song by her by now if I weren’t so burnt out by hearing about Winehouse, the Queen of British Soul,\u00a0passing out and pissing on the red carpet rolled out to her over the last few years for managing to make what was essentially the follow up to the Fine Young Cannibals<\/strong>‘ second album. At least Adele and Duffy<\/strong>, to a lesser extent, broke through. How many other sweet, chubby cheeked British soul singers’\u00a0records\u00a0got lost in the shuffle while the media chased Winehouse’s trail of vomit?<\/p>\n
I don’t deny that talent rules. Even I could tell that Winehouse was way more talented than Duffy, her safe, Cliff Richard<\/strong>-like alternative from a couple of years ago. But did that one album really promise the next coming of Bessie Smith<\/strong>, and is that what most of us were anticipating since its celebrated release?\u00a0And did a hit song thumbing her nose at efforts of loved ones to help her get her life together so quickly merit a\u2014what was it\u20144-year deathwatch? After reading a dozen articles on this woman stumbling through another concert or getting arrested or breaking up with her junkie husband, did any of us care about her or her music?\u00a0Did it take 2 dozen pieces in the atrocity exhibition to numb you? The whole thing bummed me out in short time.<\/p>\n
As someone who knows a little something about the ravages of addiction (take a look at my paternal family tree some day and see all the early exits taken by shot glasses, lung and nasal passages,\u00a0and mainlines), I hoped she would get a grip on herself. I truly wished the media would have stopped covering her antics and that awards shows and concert promoters would have stopped booking her until she cleaned up. It sent the wrong message, not to mention it showed no respect for a person who wasn’t going out of her way to harm anyone. Rock ‘n roll celebrates the wild and keeeerrrraaaaazzzy<\/em> side of life, but for the artists it should still be treated as some form of a job. Some other young artists would kill for their job, just as some pretty, young model would kill for Zeta-Jones’ old telephone company advertising campaign. One of the remarkable things about Keith Richards<\/strong>, for instance, is that despite whatever toxins he’s put into his body and hissy fits he’s had with Mick and knives he’s pulled on fellow scrawny rockers and drug dealers, he’s shown up for work just about every day for nearly 50 years! The man produces. Janis Joplin<\/strong> produced in her short, troubled life. Bessie Smith produced. Even the incredibly annoying\u00a0(and troubled) Scott Weiland<\/strong> produces.\u00a0Winehouse missed work for 4 straight years; she should have been suspended, if not “fired,”\u00a0from the media attention granted a “rock star” until she did something productive, “clean” or not.<\/p>\n
I wish Amy Winehouse could have found it in herself to get better. A lot of people loved her breakthrough album and looked forward to more tunes. Those tunes would have made her fans’ lives more enjoyable and meaningful. More importantly, she was a person. I’m sure she had a wonderful side to her under the rough surface. Clearly she had other real people who cared about her. A lot of us, though, had no ability to care for her. Therefore, we had no business reading about her troubles as frequently as we did. We had no business tuning into some awards show to see if she’d show. It was like that farce of a Sly Stone<\/strong> comeback from a few years ago, only week after week. The employment status of management and producer types who say YES to letting these acts stumble into an early grave should also be put under review. Back to work, folks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This morning we received the following e-mail from a concerned Townsperson: Yo, Mod: Why is Rock Town Hall not providing dedicated coverage to the death of Amy Winehouse? Shouldn’t there be a thread on her legacy by now? I bet a lot of readers are coming to the Hall expecting our take on her untimely […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[342],"tags":[485,170,308],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8427"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8427"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8427\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}