Hello, Chordstrangler--

I wrote a local history column for an LA Times subsidiary for about three years before the bean-counters in Chicago closed the whole operation down.

I am not conscious of that having any effect on my prose style. When I went to work, I said, "What do you want, style wise?" They said, "Read Fidleydee; we like her." Three years passed. I never read any of Fidleydee's stuff. As John Pryne once wrote,

"Disgusted, Disgusted, you have no complaint;
You are what you are, and you ain't what you ain't."

As for an effect on writing music, well, I wrote a song once. Check that off. I'm happy to re-work traditional stuff, and actually I figure the odds are on my side. Singer-songwriters can knock themselves out for years and never get a real winner. I play stuff that's been around for a century and a half, I figure it must have something going for it or it wouldn't have lasted, and pretty much, the audience proves me right.

The only effect I can readily see in myself is to become rabidly, excitably, lividly outraged at the MANY distortions of history laid upon us by newspapers and politicians. I'm trying to engage a local editor right now over a matter of historical accuracy. I say trying, because the paper isn't dialoging with me at this point; I believe they are hoping I will just go away. Marx was wrong about a lot of stuff; he was right on with, "History is a pack of tricks we play on the dead."

Chicken Charlie