— Musings —02.11.2015 08:16 AM
I am (still) a confused teenager
I don’t know what’s worse: accomplishing nothing that is notable in your life – or accomplishing something when you are young, and never again repeating it.
Such were my reflections, yesterday, when I got word through my agent that a big U.S. TV series wants to buy the rights to two songs Pierre and I wrote: I Am A Confused Teenager and Invasion of the Tribbles. Songs we wrote when we were sixteen years old.
The latter you may be familiar with: British superstars Palma Violets play Tribbles at the end of every show (like here at Glasto), and released a special edition E.P. on which they covered it. The Summer before last, I joined them onstage in L.A. to play it.
Confused Teenager isn’t as well-known, but – as I saw to my surprise, when I went looking on the Internet this morning for a link to share with you – it has been played on just one link nearly 26,000 times. 26,000 times! When we were sixteen years old, we could have never imagined such a thing happening.
Anyway, it was nice that someone wants to possibly use the songs on their TV show. It isn’t the first time such a thing has happened – one SFH song (by Royal Niblet) is on the soundtrack for this movie, and another SFH song (by me) is on the soundtrack for this one.
What’s weird – what’s bittersweet – is that these songs I helped write, when we were kids growing up in Calgary, have become more noteworthy than anything I have done since. Like I say, I don’t know what’s worse: doing nothing, or doing something once and never getting a chance to do it again.
In that regard, I think I’m going put some stuff aside and reach out to Bob, finally. All this melancholy musical remembrance has me thinking life is, indeed, too short.
You are looking it all wrong WK. You are ahead of your time or the world needs to catch up to you.
It took almost 50 years for your Hot Nasties work to finally be recognized for it’s brilliance and possible commercial appeal, and it will probably take your recent SFH stuff to ferment that long before it is ready for the general masses. You have to be patient.
BTW, when is the new book hitting the book shelves?
Thanks brother. You are one of the great ones.
At work on a massive rewrite/rejig. Stay tuned. You, in particular, may like it.
Ain’t gonna lie. I peaked at 16 *and* I have no punk bands playing songs I never wrote to end their gigs. Sigh.
“I don’t know what’s worse: accomplishing nothing that is notable in your life – or accomplishing something when you are young, and never again repeating it.”
If you believe that it’s better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all….then I think you know the answer.
I think you are taking a far too narrow perspective on your achievements: you’re focusing too heavily on the inception of an achievement and not the entire life of it. You should celebrate both just as one does with their children: it’s not solely one discrete moment that counts (i.e. the instant they come into being), but rather the whole existence and its span.
There is an interesting Ted talk by the economics Nobel Laureate, Daniel Kahneman (who is actually a cognitive psychologist), on the riddle of memory vs. experience, the confusion and conflict between the remembering self and the experiencing self that kind of speaks to your struggle as a ‘confused teenager.’
Thanks my friend
I would look at this in a more positive light. Whether or not you feel you’ve done anything worthwhile since, the fact that you get some recognition for something you did, regardless of when you did it, is more than most people can say at any point in their lives.
On a slightly different note, I think people obsess a little too much about things like “legacy”. As a good friend once said to me a long time ago, “George, unless you are one of the 0.000001% of people that make a truly lasting impact on humanity – eg: Isaac Newton, Alexander The Great, Galileo, etc – nobody will remember you within 50 to 100 years of your death. That applies to many of our modern-day “celebrities” too, so don’t sweat it. Do what you love, love what you do, take care of your friends and family and enjoy the ride while you can. Being remembered is over-rated.”
Good advice, I think.
George
You have four amazing kids and you successfully got me to agree to marry you. Just five of the great things you’ve accomplished post-adolescence.
It’s your life and you can assess it as you choose but, unless you guage your success soley on musical accomplishment, I think Lala is on tyhe right track. I’d also kill to have a song performed by somebody famous.
1- you have and continue to raise some young un’s that by all indication will make the world just a little bit better in whatever they wind up doing . A little more significant than anything you can do in three chords in my book
2- Unless your bound by a non-disclose I’d love to know who’s interested
3- I still have a few original Ep’s stashed away and thinking it might be a bull market if they get on the show
4- I’m not the Bob you’re going to reach out to am I ? Cuz I didn’t know we had any issues ???
Not you brother. Although I am still wounded you didn’t come to my book reading!
Well Warren, would you prefer this happened after you were dead and you didn’t get to find out that you efforts didn’t stay lost on an old cassette and that damn you did have a moment, or multiple moments it appears, with one of your life’s passions? Lots of people have tried and never had that “moment”.
Or are you just bitter that the timing has negated the possibility of nubile groupies? I mean, imagine if this had happened when you were 17 and …………
Oh, I did okay on that front.