Fan Letter

I'm probably way too old to be writing fan letters. The only one I've ever previously written was to Mad Magazine. I was eleven. Here is my second, forty-nine years later:

Dear ———

I saw you play at the festival last year. On the surface, you were just a bunch of kids, intent on playing your quiet music for a group of jaded strangers- mostly music junkies like myself who were beyond redemption. We were an audience who had seen it all before but were still seeking that ephemeral "high", that special moment when all internal barriers dissolve and the music becomes internalized- ego dissolves and only beauty, truth and love remain; a form of magic as old as humanity.

When you played, and the form and emotional content of your songs became apparent, my defenses were shattered. Yours was not an "act" nor was it a "show", it was just you. Later, when I got your CD and could listen to the songs carefully, I was just as taken.

Now you are in a new phase- working, working hard, working with other people, and giving up some control in order to reach a wider audience. I wish you the best of luck. You've got new songs too, I'm looking forward to hearing them. Songs are ideas, and they are sort of like children in some ways. Gestation, birth and nurture: then out on into the world to live or die on their own merits. And if the idea is a true one, the world becomes a better place for having them.

I don't know any of you personally, that's probably for the best. Your world is different than mine in so many ways, but the one way in which it is the same is that we are all trying to communicate: you with your songs, me with my blog. The modern music biz is peculiar. Beyond a certain stage it ceases to be communication and becomes commerce (there's little danger of that happening to this blog!) It is hard to avoid, but it doesn't have to happen.

I won't be seeing you play this year (although in the internet age there will be other "eyes' and "ears" to give me a sampling), and beyond that, who knows? "Time will tell", a wise person once wrote to me, a simple platitude but a true one. The life of any musical group is uncertain, as is life itself. But your music, which has become a part of my life, has already worked its magic.

Your Fan,

PB