Meet Me in the Boardroom

Like an old country jukebox, this collection includes four decades of top requested hits heard in honky-tonks and diners across America.

May is here and almost gone! The spring has sprung upon us, as would a lurking, habituated degenerate. I like spring, with caveats. I'm never sure about spring. Its larger intentions are never obvious. To get warmer yes — but what is this? — a sudden thunderclap of rain on your daily jog? That's the kind of bullshit to which I am referring. Spring tells its truths — and its lies. 

Lets digress a bit and discuss a couple of my May-adjacent favorites, before we swing the ponderous hoe of the newsletter proper:

“Mayfly” by Belle & Sebastian

This track from 1994’s If You're Feeling Sinister is one of my all-time faves. Racing up and down the scales like early-Costello if he were produced by Joe Boyd. A wonderful, funny, sad lyric by Stuart Murdoch. This verse is particularly great:

“Your diary's looking like the bible with its verses lost in time

And lost in meaning for the people who surround you

It's a crying shame

You know it's a crying shame”

A song about gaining and losing love and faith, which arguably is the same thing. We must all cling to whatever piece of the solid rock you can still grab onto, before this whole ship finally goes down. Hold on, as Alex Chilton once implored.

Roger Mayweather

Even non-boxing fans probably know the name Floyd “Money” Mayweather, who retired undefeated and still makes the exhibition circuit commanding massive appearance fees. Great fighter, all timer, no doubt. But the most exciting Mayweather was his uncle Roger, who held junior lightweight and junior welterweight titles during his career in the 1980’s. Roger was tall and lanky, a lower-weight off-brand Tommy Hearns, whose pulverizing right hand was as capable of one punch knockouts and his shaky chin was guaranteed to be susceptible to them. Roger Mayweather, who passed away a few years back, will probably be best remembered for his on again-off again role as his nephew’s trainer. But his own career was a wild ride of memorable, frequently mesmerizing fights against top level competition. Check out this 1988 banger against Harold Brazier as a representative example.

Rest easy, Mamba, and thanks for the thrills. 

Alright, back to business.

How have you been? Comfortable? Getting rest? Excellent. It’s time to get loose with the newest edition of my hectically periodic newsletter “Please Take My Advice.” Folks, we’re going to cover a lot of ground here. Grab your downhill skis. 

But first, of course, make room for the red pen regulators with their surfeit of small print. 

Please Take My Advice bears no resemblance to Johnny Unitas during his sad, fading years as a San Diego Charger. Suggesting as much is a callous affront. Please Take My Advice gets the same deal on custom furniture as anyone else. Any loose discussion of price fixing will be interpreted as libelous. Speaking of loose talk, Please Take My Advice is certainly not a part of some “new tech cabal” which economists privately agree could crash the global banking infrastructure at any moment. You’re completely hysterical. Complaints should be written on postcards and be addressed to: Bar/None Records, Hoboken, New Jersey.

Wow! Glad that’s over. And I do apologize. Byways on Bylaws! The world of paperwork has gone berserk. Never mind all that — let's jump in. 

Q: Hi Beth. So you’ve been busy. 

A: I have! Lots of irons on the fire. Spinning plates here. 

Q: Do you think sometimes you try and do too much?

A: Sure! Of course. I have porous boundaries and the energy level of a six-year-old on meth. What do you want from me?

Q: Just being cordial. You wrote a little something about the recent Ed Sheeran plagiarism case for the Washington Post. Was it good?

A: Wait — you, my internal dialog, didn’t read it?

Q: I don’t subscribe to the Post. Can you provide a link?

A: Yes, I can. 

And yes, I thought it was good. I published this a couple days before the case was settled in Sheeran’s favor, and I feel strongly that this was a crucial bulwark against exploitative behaviors towards artists. Here’s an excerpt:

“Greed has already ravaged a once thriving, if highly imperfect, ecosystem of songwriters and performers. The streaming economy has systematically disassembled that infrastructure — suffocating the revenue streams of all but the most bankable entities and selling off the entire history of recorded music as a loss leader to peddle cellphone data plans.

This trial is the next horizon. If artists must pay a tax for employing the most common modes and tones of composition, the process of grinding popular music down to a consensus-driven pay window for tech entrepreneurs and corporate opportunists will have reached its apotheosis.”

Q: Strongly worded!

A: I told you!

Q: Did you cover the PGA Championship for the Ringer?

A: I did! Damned exciting stuff. Many implications for the future of the sport as well.

Q: Cool — do you have a link? 

A: Wait — you haven’t read that either?? The Ringer is free.

Q: I mean… it’s Spring. Barbecues. 

A: What the fuck? Yes, here’s a link.

Q: Excerpt?

A: Fine. Take a long drink of this:

“And so, at the end of these mesmerizing four days, the outcome of the 2023 PGA Championship feels as prismatic as its countless story lines. Unquestionably, LIV Golf is a big winner. Blood money has purchased many of the best golfers the game has to offer, and it turns out that any potential trouble with their consciences is not going to prevent them from contending and winning at golf’s biggest events. But in Michael Block, the underdogs have a victory too. The teaching pros are the bricks and mortar of a sport that still possesses a working ecosystem outside of Gulf money and gluttonous guarantees. In one final tear-drenched, post-round interview with Amanda Renner, Block dedicated his performance to “the 29,000 PGA professionals around the world,” referencing, essentially, golf’s hoi polloi. In working-class Rochester, it felt like a tonic. LIV may be here to stay, but this week’s barn burner of a PGA Championship proved there’s still room for the little guy too.”

Q: Good stuff, but why do you keep trying to smuggle socialist ideals into professional golf? You keep tilting, always tilting, at these same windmills.

A: That’s bitchy.

Q: You interviewed Joan LeMay and Alex Pappedemas about their great new Steely Dan omnibus Quantum Criminals. I watched it. It was amazing. 

A: Thank you for actually watching something. It was a great conversation about a book I love and recommend, and you can catch up with the whole thing here through the miracle of YouTube here. Thanks again YouTube!

Q: Let’s talk Paranoid Style. New record almost finished?

A: New record almost finished. It’s taken the grand efforts of Timothy Bracy, William Corrin, Peter Holsapple, Jon Langmead, Billy Matheny, Jason Richmond, myself and a whole crew of others working in tandem to make something we feel incredibly proud of, and news on the first single should be pending. We kid and have fun on Please Take My Advice, but I want to earnestly acknowledge all of my collaborators and all of the fans of the band that have been so incredibly encouraging throughout this process. Recording a record is weird. You write it with one very specific idea in your head, and then you have to let some significant part of that go as it takes on its own personality. In the process, you must trust the people around you. That part is extremely vulnerable. I couldn’t ask for a better team, or a better result. 

Q: You’re playing Twangfest on June 10th in Saint Louis. What do you have to say to the Archway to the West?

A: Look folks: buckle up and take the ride. It’s Town Cars before us and Waco Brothers after. You know they are going to deliver. We’ve got a few things planned too. Have a little faith, there’s magic in the night. Get your tickets here.

Alright, I think this went well. Thanks to all the subscription Advisors that make this newsletter go, and I’ll be checking in in June to recap the month that was. Until then, hang in like a desperate mountain climber. I will if you will too.

Love,

Elizabeth