PLAINFOLK MISTAKEN FOR STARS

I was just looking at these photos from Nick’s Los Angeles appearance as “DJ Catchdubs,” and thinking – do you guys remember when Steve Aoki used to put out all only extremely radical political music like RADAR (who I really dug)? Yo, Planes Mistaken For Stars! Can’t really envision them on the cobrasnake. (Do you think they meant the dirty rap definition when they titled their album “Up in them Guts”?) Peoples’ unexpected career trajectories are infinitely fascinating.
My first-ever business cards as an editor included the impassioned tagline, “Art Before Commerce.” (That was before I ordered a set that included the perhaps ill-advised tagline, “BOOM! I Got Yr Boyfriend.” Still have some of those.) Anyway, “Art Before Commerce” – I wrote a lot of manifestos about that, rigid young ones, idealistic anticapitalist ones about art and integrity and never the-twain-meeting with the dirt of cash lest they sully the intentions. Now I wasn’t like “people shouldn’t get paid,” but I was (and still am) like “be mindful of who pays you and why.” I knew less then about the demoralizing nature of late-stage-capitalist workplace, the privilege of a certain definition of “integrity,” and while I definitely know something about working poverty, growing up worrying about money, eating the last thing in the cupboard two days before payday and you don’t even wanna know – particularly working poverty of the western rural states, a state of being which isn’t probably as well known as urban poverty- I have been fortunate enough not to have lived in real, consistent poverty, knock on wood and bless everyone who has and is.
Art Before Commerce. Five years later I’m working at Viacom International, cheering in triumphant unison with 1200 employees in the lobby as ousted vice CEO (or whatever) Tom Freston makes his final exit. Total end-of-movie, secret-of-my-success, alex-p-keaton-at-the-NASDAQ moment, cheers, tears – even tho I was only present at his exuent cuz me and Joey and Gideon got stuck on the way back in from having a coffee / cigarette break and couldnt get to the elevators cause the Freston loyal were like, presenting him with a Carvel ice cream cake in the shape of an MTV Moonman popping a giant boner in the shape of a dollar sign.
But whatever, I respect Tom Freston’s G – he wrote like a six page travelogue in the Africa issue of Vanity Fair (which includes this line, i swear to god: “The Buffet Hotel de la Gare [in Bamako] was the Malian version of Max’s Kansas City.”)
In the piece, Tom Freston and his G were able to just you know, call up Toumani Diabete (the amazing kora player who I am obsessed with who Joanna Newsom imitates flagrantly) on the telephone and get him to play a show for them with his gigantor-piece band. I mean the writing is tepid but I respect Tom Freston’s G.
(Out of 20 possible cover combos of Vanity Fair’s Africa issue, i bought the Chris Rock/Maya Angelou one. Chris Rock’s essay on traveling to Africa to meet Mandela, entitled “The UGLY (African-) American” is worth the entire cost of the magazine, i.e.
“The flight kicked my ass. My wife, my two kids, and I flew 20 hours from New York, which gives you an idea of how long it took the slave ships to get to America. The flight felt like the Middle Passage to me. When we landed I had lost my religion, my culture, my name.”
Chris Rock! Art before Commerce, you gotta do like Chris Rock and put the truth up in the Vanity Fair under the guise of comedy.)