Not Blue Enough to Move to L.A.

Song 228: For this week, the playlist song is Good Time Charlie's Got the Blues by Danny O'keefe, who also wrote the piece. As the summer of 1972 started turning into fall, this song started climbing the charts, and on first hearing, I liked it a lot, then liked it more as I heard it more. Ironically, I picked up some criticism then from a member of the older generation I knew who, upon hearing this track on the radio, accused me of copping my entire style from the singer. While I liked the song and the tone, over the previous few years I had worked at developing an original artistic style for all facets of my music, and though I could admit to some common points with Danny O, it surprised me that this particular personal critic could believe I was imitating a guy who had only recently popped up on the radio, and who I knew nothing about before his big hit came across the airwaves. It didn't occur to me then, but looking back, I would guess that the critic had no idea that Danny O's record was new, and that I had no prior knowledge of him. Currently some commentary floating on the web quotes Mr. O as indicating that he wrote the song about an imaginary character, but back in the '70s I assumed that he was singing about himself, and I figured that when he said everyone was moving to L.A., he meant all of his musician friends, since L.A. had by then become the center of gravity for the American music business, and almost every other town, with a couple of exceptions, would waste your time if you wanted to pursue a career in modern music. Knowing this, I still spent 10 years living in Oakland and Berkeley, only visiting L.A. a few times, at least in part because living in the S.F. Bay Area can feel so good that even the possibility of a more rewarding career in southern CA, only a few hundred miles away, can't necessarily compel you to try moving to L.A.