So sayeth Newton Minow

"I invite you to sit down in front of your television set when your station goes on the air and stay there without a book, magazine, newspaper or profit-and-loss sheet or rating book to distract you and keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that you will observe a vast wasteland."

Newton Minow, U.S. Federal Communications Commission , 1961

Josh Max's 6-word memoir

Harpo Beatles hurry publish sing bye.

B'loney? You? Me?

A waiter of about 20, a dancer on a scholarship (and that ain't exactly a stable surface!) , was taking my order at a restaurant the other night. We got to talking, him about dancing, me about writing and playing music.

He asked, "Which do you prefer?"

It was startling. No one has ever asked me that. No one asks me about music or writing, and up until that moment, I had not grasped that fact.

Rich Z. has everything I've ever recorded since 1993 on his iPod, I know that. A & T have all my post-1999 recordings on their shuffle. There are 12,000 bought copies of the album I released in 2000, "Make It Snappy" out there. Anyone listening? No idea, hon.

At the moment, I am about to sign a deal, my first, with a big music publishing company, for a disc I recorded over the last 7 months with 12 musicians at a Grammy-winning studio. The signing proves someone important cares. "Those with ears to hear, let them listen."

To answer the young man's question and get to the title of this post---

I like both music and writing for different reasons. But music wins, my friends.

I was born a musician. Zeus did not give me these perfect-pitch ears for the hell of it. Writing I came to naturally, later, but music is my heart and my love and my passion. If you want to know me, listen to my music, especially the last album.

The prose always has a lie in it and that is because I am a coward and don't want to hear people's negativity. I am toned down to the 10th degree in 90% of what I write, here and in public. I'm not talking about car stories. Even my first-person is raked to avoid hooking small minds, the minds that call your wife a cow and tell you you are in need of psychiatric help.

I have a book I'm writing called "Confessions of an ex-seeker". The aim? No lies.

A guy I used to follow, Paul Lowe, used to talk about people coming to his seminars wanting help in their life transitions, their relationships, their dealings with the world and existence.

He would say, "Just get through a single day without telling a single lie. That'll keep you busy."

Sunday quote

"...There are very few things in this world which it is worthwhile to get angry about; and they are just the things anger will not improve."

Hnery Jarvis Raymond, founder of the New York Times, September 18, 1851

Last night at Kenny's

A few notes from last night.

*When people ask me how any gig went, I usually say, "I played some good s--t and I played some crap." I don't know otherwise how it went because I am one of three, and I was not in the audience. It's not like a baseball game, either, where you win or lose. It went like it went and the audience liked a couple of songs in particular---"I'll Cry Instead" and "I Wanna Be Your Man". I liked it---got there early, talked to John M.'s Dad about his moustache, and it felt good to play electric guitar in public after all these months.

*The band made $XX in tips, which we split three ways.

*Bars carry a dark energy in them. If bars sold weed instead of alcohol, there would be an entirely different energy about bars and I'd probably like setting foot in them better.

I recently read that the reason loud music is played in bars is to A) Keep people from talking, which means all there is to do is drink and B) to upset people so they buy drinks to make themselves feel better.

So you play your set and no matter what sort of music you perform, a bar will usually follow your show with ear-splitting, heartless, soulless music piped over the system that completely and instantly destroys whatever vibe you've created. If people want to tell you how much they enjoyed your show, they have to yell.

*When a battery has been sitting, dormant, in an echo pedal for a few months and you test it out and it still works, it doesn't mean it'll work for an entire 45 minute set. You'll probably get 10-20 minutes out of it as I did out of mine last night. Note to self: buy a new battery every show, or better yet, plug it in the wall.

*The last time I played Kenny's Castaway's was in 1996. I hadn't been in the club since then.

*You meet the same people you met when you first started playing in bars--the pasty, reasonably friendly sound man with a single syllable name, the sullen doorman to whom there isn't any point flashing a smile to---instead, the Westchester quick upturn of the head and blinking of eyes serves as a greeting---the bar staff to whom a request for three waters for the band might as well be a request for a double half-caf vanilla latte, extra hot for all the (lack of) speed it takes for you to get it, and such.

*There is a particularly delicious and pleasing feeling you get when members of your family show up, especially when you know they have busy, responsible jobs and could otherwise be at home. A person's presence at times means more than anything they might say about your music.

*When three are equal onstage, it's different than when it's you and a few hired guns. I like being the boss of The Maxes but I also enjoy being part of an equal trio where everyone sings.

*It's nice to be able to play the music of the Beatles with two others who are steeped in the catalogue, and to twist and turn the music as you see fit and still have it accepted.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn and my parents

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Nobel prize-winning Soviet writer whose tales of totalitarian Russia under the Iron Curtain brought him worldwide recognition and who was expelled from his country for his writings, is dead at 89.

That I even know who this man is is because of my parents, Stan and Jean.

I remember the name from when I was very, very young. I even learned to say it---"Sol-schzen-EET-sin".

The house I grew up in contained hundreds of books lined up neatly and not-so-neatly on shelves in what was known as the Library. Not pop culture books either; these were classic works of literature, books about political systems and philosophy, religion, humor and subjects which constantly expanded my young, open mind in between the Flintstones and Felix the Cat.

At no time were any of these books forced upon me; my natural curiosity led me to read "The Death Of A President", "The Communist Manifesto", "Why England Slept", "The Sea Wolf", "Greek Mythology", The Bible, "Lord Jim" and dozens of other books which are still in print dozens or in some cases hundreds of years after they were published. And, of course, works by Solzhenitsyn.

A friend from the second grade I recently reconnected with said, during our hourlong conversation, "I remember you could read the New York Times." I read it because it was made available. We three boys may have smashed, burned, hit and run over through most of our childhoods, but never once did we harm a book.

It never occured to me that other kids' houses didn't value reading, the mind, intellect.

Neither of my parents really gave a damn about making money to the extent that some adults let that pursuit drive them. Dad spent what he had, Mom saved what she earned. The development of the mind was most important, but even that concept wasn't hammered into me. The message was, "This knowledge is here, right in front of you, when and if you are ready."

I chose to be a musician first, a writer second. It is writing that has brought me the most success thus far. Thus far.

I have my parents to credit for my love of words, the ability to use them and make a good living from them.

When I brought home a Bentley several years ago, my father thought it was fun and such, but he was more impressed when I got my first full-page story about Minnie Marx in the Daily News. He cut it out and put it up on his wall.

One of the last things my father said to me before he died two years ago was, "I think you're ready for a book."

If I'm ready, it's because he and my mother prepared me for it from my earliest years by surrounding me with knowledge.

It's all green, mon.

No eggs, butter, meat, fish, fowl, cheese, yogurt. Nothing animal.

7 months today.

"Well, Jesus, don't I get a gold record or knighted or nothing?" John Lennon, watching a loaf of bread he'd baked being eaten

Nonetheless, the rewards exist.

For the past few years, I've had acid reflux so intense that I finally grabbed Dr. L by his lapel and demanded something, anything. He prescribed a drug that gave me a Franklin Delano Roosevelt "I've got a terrific headache", and I stopped taking it.

But if you looked in my desk(s), shoulder bags and pockets a year ago, you would find Tums and other, more powerful anti-holy-effing-shabadoo-my-goddamn-stomach-is-on-fire drugs.

I take none of those stomach acid remedies today. My belly loves beans (even wit' hot sauce and Beano)






...all the veggies in the spectrum, big blocks of tofu with wasabi, cashews, peanuts, almonds, fruits of any kind, brown and white rice, sorbet, etc.

I feel, physically, pretty damn good. Yesterday I downed a cup of coffee, an enormous dollop of peanut butter, a bowl of brown rice, drove 40 miles out of Manhattan, and biked up a ten-mile hill, after which I drove to a gym and pumped the ol' chest.

Clearly, the vegan way isn't costing me any energy.

My eyelids, a constant source of redness, itching and such, have calmed down considerably.

Asthma's about the same. I thought quitting dairy would cure it, but nope. That's ok.

Nothing but positive things to say about veganism. I should also add that by adopting this way of eating, approximately 28 chickens haven't died because of me, nor have any fish suffocated in agony, nor have any cow's udders turned red and raw from overmilking. Nor have I ingested any feces-dotted, decaying meat.

Sure, my broccoli may have fallen on the floor and my lettuce ridden in an open truck, exposed to the grit and shit in the air of New York.

Somethin's gonna kill ya eventually, and I ain't dead yet.