Bish-nifick!

So, last night we went to see Stephen Bishop at The Cutting Room. At close to 30, we were a solid 10 years everyone's junior in the entire establishment, which we expected to be the Bish demo. There's always a second upon entering such a situation, and this happens quite frequently to us, where you think "damn, why isn't this a more diverse crowd?" But then you realize that there's really been no good music produced in the past couple decades, and everyone wants to be seeing and listening to the next-big-thing, so the only one's left to appreciate the master song-crafters like Bish are basically the Boomers. It's really a shame.

The show was great. He played everything we wanted to hear: almost everything from Careless (Careless, On and On, Never Letting Go, Madge, Save it for a Rainy Day, Little Italy) and a few jams from Red Cab to Manhattan (of which there aren't many...just keeping it real) like Send a Little Love My Way, "It Might be You" of course, which he prefaced with a kind of crass story about Philippine women at a massage parlor asking him to sing the song in the middle of his massage (it was more the vocal impersonation of the women that was crass than anything). It was just him and the guitar, which was perfect, because it really makes you see clearly how well-crafted the songs are. I don't know enough about chord structures and whatnot to say exactly what was going on musically that impressed me, but you could just see the intricate work going on and how perfectly it complemented the vocals at every second of the song.

This was basically just another example of how far our culture has fallen musically . . . something I experience frequently, but not usually this potently. It's really not THAT difficult to write a melodic jam if you know your instrument well and actually try to sing, but if your focus is solely on being famous, which is primarily the case these days, then the melodic jams become cheap, thin and empty. Let me tell you something, if Stephen Bishop arrived on the scene today sporting some kind of Justin Timberlake ensemble, I don't even know what would happen . . . either he would be hailed as the instant-legend savior-of-all-music OR completely ignored because it would have been so long since a decent singer-songwriter has been on the scene people wouldn't know how to begin to appreciate it.

That's it for the Bish recap.