I wish I liked the new album more. I gave it a good listen last week and it didn't do much for me. I can listen to the X-Ray Spex LP non-stop, though. So good!

It's an odd experience having Katherine Whalen as your lunch waitress.

It's an odd experience having Katherine Whalen as your lunch waitress.

Wow, no kidding. I feel like I should send her a ten dollar bill or something.

She's still playing music locally, in a couple of bands. My friend's bf is in one of them. And they play around a lot, but it's nothing compared to the heyday of SNZ. Which may be a kind of blessing, who knows. Actually, the friend I was eating with also knows her, they were chatting. Big times in a small town.

She was very pleasant and competant, btw.

It's an odd experience having Katherine Whalen as your lunch waitress.

As weird as having Aimee Mann as your cleaning lady? t /Portlandia

Actually, I *have* been waited on by Thalia Zedek. That was a little weird.

The message from all this, people, is that even though you think music pays well, it doesn't.

The message from all this, people, is that even though you think music pays well, it doesn't.

Shut up! Brittney Spears and Mick Jagger are rich!

There are these sort of rueful articles which pop up in Mojo periodically where they track down some relatively big musician from the 70s who's off in the country somewhere, scraping by, playing at local pubs.

Then there's the drummer from Iron Butterfly who made enough money from "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vidda" that he bought a house in suburbia and retired. Or Nick Lowe who made more money from one song being on The Bodyguard soundtrack than he did from all his other music combined. Or Tom Waits who made more money from suing Frito-Lay than he did with his music. Or John Doe, of X, who was only able to buy a house because people kept casting him as an actor in movies.

We just did a huge facebook fundraiser for a guitarist and songwriter (songwriters are supposed to be the ones raking it in, man, all those putative royalties) because he'd lost his house and he and one of his kids are having severe health problems, and he was so deep in the hole he was never coming out. One of the premiere players, from the 70's onward. And yet.

The revenue streams are all jacked up, man. There's flotsam and jetsam everywhere, and right when you think you've got it worked out, it turns out there's a giant dam. Someone's making money, but it's often not the musicians.

Or Tom Waits who made more money from suing Frito-Lay than he did with his music.

Didn't he also make a fair amount of money when "Downtown Train" got covered and became a hit?

Also, didn't Iggy Pop make a lot more money when Bowie released his version of "China Girl" than Iggy did off his own music? (Bowie and Iggy wrote the song together for an Iggy album, so he got royalties from Bowie's version.)