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STRATEGY FOR THE DAY: test reality before stepping in it

I'm preparing for Week 4 (the final week) of my songwriting course at South Bay Adult School in Manhattan Beach, CA. This week it's publishing, self-publishing, song pitching, and internet promotion for songwriters. I'm reasonably familiar with all of this but it's been good to do the research. I've been able to fill in some gaps and re-discover some ideas and services I'd forgotten were out there.

I have a wonderful group of students in this class. They are talented, funny, smart, and supportive of each other. There was a lot of camaraderie by the second week of class which seems awfully quick for a bunch of total strangers. One played a song last week that she had just finished demo-ing and it was very good - emotionally moving, a memorable hook melody and lyric, focused verse lyric, contrast between sections; it was all there. She's a good singer and provided just the right vocal - innocent and honest. I was extremely impressed. Then another student shared an autobiographical poem that was highly emotional, genuine, beautifully written. He doesn't know if it should put to music or not. I don't either - it's excellent as it is. This quality of work from people taking a 4-week class at an adult school is unusual. I feel very lucky to have met them all. I'm sorry I only have one more week with them.

I'm reading "Stealing Time: Steve Case, Jerry Levin, and the Collapse of AOL Time Warner" by Alec Klein. How a group of people can be so smart and so stupid at the same time is truly amazing! Steve Case oversaw AOL's explosive stock growth: a perfect storm of opportunism, greed, aggressive salesmanship, and questionable accounting practices. Time Warner was viewed as staid and slow-moving, but then, anything would be by comparison. But even after reading most of the book what I still don't understand is how Time Warner's legal beagles could have missed AOL's stock price shenanigans when they did their due diligence research before the merger. Did AOL cover it up? If so, then their should have been legal fallout - the shareholders should be suing everyone in sight - but I've not heard about anything. Or was it just a case of the emperor's new clothes? Did Time Warner's attorneys really think that AOL was more than it was? Hindsight is 20/20 but still, the glare on the road ahead couldn't have been THAT blinding. Levin and Case have both been ousted (Levin quit but it's just a question of who made the announcement first.) Of course, the stockholders have paid the price for one man's wild ride to the top and another's vision that turned out to be a mirage. What a mess.

Thinking about starting another album. This time all dance/electronica collaborations.

Copyright 2004 Robin Frederick. All rights reserved.