Tuesday, April 17, 2012

We don't know what we've got till it's gone


It's easy to forget the music

Amid a radio landscape marked by "downsizing" and consultants, generic playlists and stations threatening to sue their listeners, it seems to be about everything but the music. On an Internet fractured into a billion subcultures, interest groups and -- yeah, this is about right -- tribes, it seems to be about nothing other than a virtual Tower of Babel.

It is what it is; we are who we are. And everything -- everybody -- is off key in this world of discordant notes. It's not about the music. And then you see this:

Levon Helm, the revered multi-instrumentalist and singer for the group the Band, is in the final stages of cancer, according to his family.

A heartbreaking note appeared on the musician's website Tuesday announcing that he is terminally ill:

Dear Friends,

Levon is in the final stages of his battle with cancer. Please send your prayers and love to him as he makes his way through this part of his journey.

Thank you fans and music lovers who have made his life so filled with joy and celebration… he has loved nothing more than to play, to fill the room up with music, lay down the back beat, and make the people dance! He did it every time he took the stage…

We appreciate all the love and support and concern.

From his daughter Amy, and wife Sandy


SUDDENLY, we are reminded of the music by its absence. It's the story of life.

As Joni Mitchell put it:
Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got
Till it's gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot
OR. . . perhaps you might prefer Don McLean's take:
I met a girl who sang the blues
And I asked her for some happy news
But she just smiled and turned away
I went down to the sacred store
Where I'd heard the music years before
But the man there said the music wouldn't play


FRANKLY, I prefer to curse the passage of time and the ravages of cancer and culture. I prefer to not look in the mirror. I prefer to delude myself that I'm still 18 and my future is an endless horizon.

But we can't do that forever, now, can we?

Godspeed, Levon. And thank you.

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