Nov. 7, 2001
So Glad to Meet You, Angeles

So here I am, back from the TAXI Road Rally in Los Angeles. I spent a whole weekend listening to people talk about how to have a hit song, which is a very tiring – and trying – discussion. Shout-outs go to Summer and Daniel and all their cool friends who showed me a great time all weekend long. Honorable mention to Continental Airlines, upon whose sturdy aircraft I had the best flying experiences of my life. All the flights were on time, the staff was super-nice, and the food was even good. For a $175 Priceline ticket, it was quite a bargain!

I basically didn’t get anything done at the TAXI conference. I’m not a member of TAXI (I got my pass through Just Plain Folks, which you should totally join if you’re a folk musician), but I did know some people there from e-mail lists and stuff, and I promised myself I would actually talk to people instead of just lurking in corners. But I totally lurked and didn’t talk to anyone. I think I met exactly two people all weekend, and I didn’t get their last names or contact information. I thought that at least the lunches would be a good opportunity to talk to people, but instead I paid $15 for some of the worst food I’ve ever eaten and eavesdropped on other people’s boring conversations. I’m still such a good little student; I’m happiest with my notebook and pen out, taking notes unobtrusively in the corner. In the end, Daniel and I skipped out of the conference early on Saturday afternoon and went window shopping on Melrose Avenue. We went into all the crazy antique stores and animé stores and just generally had us a fine time.

As for the panels, most of them didn’t really apply to me. I was thinking of joining TAXI for the purpose of trying to get my songs placed in films or T.V. shows, but as the weekend went on I realized that TAXI is mainly a service for people who want to write hit songs for other people. I wouldn’t mind doing that, actually – it would be a blast to turn on the radio and hear the next Natalie Imbruglia singing a song written by me – but it would take just as much persistence and money and phone calls and annoyance to do that as it does to book shows. And if I have to play the hustle game, I’d rather spend my time and energy booking shows. The people who are serious about songwriting have $10,000 home recording studios and spend more time hiring arrangers and cutting demos in different styles than they do actually writing, and I really don’t have much interest in that stuff. So there you have it. I suppose it was worth it to go to Los Angeles just to decide that. And to realize that I really have to get to work and start playing out of town a whole lot more.

One of the songwriting panels featured a songwriter named Billy Steinberg. I had never heard of him before. Turns out, he’s the guy who basically wrote the soundtrack to a good four years of my life. Seriously. He wrote "Like a Virgin" by Madonna, "Eternal Flame" by the Bangles, and, most importantly, "Alone" by Heart. I loved "Alone" so much that I went out and bought the sheet music and learned to play it on the piano, and given how much I hated to play the piano, that’s really quite a compliment. I also remember recording "Alone" in a karaoke booth at Disneyland with my sister and our friend Sharon Disraeli during my only other trip to California, when I was fifteen. That song, and so many others on Billy Steinberg’s resume, contributed so much to my development as a songwriter and as a singer, and it was mostly because I saw these gorgeous women singing them. I can’t tell you how strange it was to look up and see this middle-aged white guy, and think, "He wrote the songs I used to sing along with in my room when I was pretending to be Madonna." Very surreal.

You know what, though? It just proves one of the only things I agreed with that was said by a hit songwriter all weekend, and that was to write what you want to hear, not what you want to write. No one cares about your inner pain. Write the songs that capture people’s imaginations and make them pretend they wrote those songs themselves. That’s if you want to have hits, of course. Me, I’ll probably continue to write silly songs about boys.

What’s in my stereo at home: