
Once I had a friend who was a brilliant jazz musician. I have long lost track of him since he moved back to Philadelphia. As a composer, an instrumentalist and a singer he was as an absolute genius. This was not just my opinion, even those who hated jazz had to admit he was anything but mediocre. He had one tiny flaw; he could not sell his work. I remember accompanying him to a producer who had his office somewhere in Manhattan. After listening to the tape it was obvious the man adored the work. All went fine, despite the fact that my friend mistrusted any man in a suit. Well.. It went fine up to the point where the producer compared my friend’s musical talent to that of Stevie Wonder.
My friend was furious; I almost had to prevent him from attacking the poor man. All the way home he kept moaning. ‘This *always* happens to me! Whenever somebody is interested in my work they immediately start to compare me with either Michael Jackson or Stevie Wonder! Is it because I am black?’ It was 1981 and being compared to Michael Jackson was not such a bad thing. The producer was a black man, so the idea that my friend was being discriminated because of his skin color was not very likely either.
I guess he just could not take a compliment very well.
I would like to add to this anecdote that he married a Southern girl who had a well-balanced relationship with her parents and other family members — all people who were without exception members and strong supporters of the Ku Klux Klan. A psychiatrist would have diagnosed my friend as ‘destructive’ but I knew his behavior was based on instincts far more complex than that.
I could see why he did not like to be compared to Stevie Wonder because in the past he had occasionally earned the money for his musical education by pretending to be a blind man in a wheel chair, which was not a decent thing to do, but we have to keep in mind that he was brought up in one of the worst parts of that inferno he kindly referred to as ‘Philly’.
During his stay in the Netherlands he had many contract offers of record companies but the deals all turned sour. I guess there were more things than just being compared to other geniuses that stood in the way of his success.
Because of all these fights with managers, reps and producers, another friend decided to pay for the studio recordings of his work. I still have that tape. We played the tape in our favorite bar and a few of the regulars decided to put up some money to buy a camera and hire a video editor to make a modest but effective video clip.
In the end there were five of us and my friend generously offered to pay his own share which really was a quite a gesture since he was working as a street musician to pay for the rent of his seedy hotel room. Our intentions were sincere but after a few weeks we forgot about the video clip until his wife to be gave us a call to remind us of our commitment. Her voice sounded irritated and upset and she insisted that we would show up to hand deliver the money needed ‘to complete’ the video.
One day later all stood in that tiny hotel room and she was there, but our musician friend was missing. ‘Well, what about it?’ she said. Being Dutch we were not going to open our wallets before we knew what her contribution would be. ‘Well, the monitor is in..’ she said pointing at a small, rented TV-set that was tuned to a talk show.
We were too embarrassed with the situation to come up with good excuses; we just left.
Today I was reminded of that incident, when I had a look at my latest web project Amstelvisie that seems to be dead as dodo. Okay, I have my excuses, like a stay in the hospital and being ill for a few weeks, but it seems unlikely now that I will continue. I loved doing the interviews and there all still loads of unedited takes sitting on my hard drive, but I have to admit that I have lost most of my enthusiasm due to other projects that do pay the rent. On the other hand.. I may be slow but I am no quitter either.