Diatribes by Joah

Black America Needs to Play More Baseball

I was having a lively discussion with two really good friends over dinner tonight, and I want to share some of my points. Although I have a 6 a.m. flight, this is the kind of heavy topic that prevents me from sleeping soundly.

I think there is something fundamentally wrong with the way Black Americans are educated from one generation to the next. The analogy I’d like to use, a timely one I believe, is that of a game of baseball.  Black Americans are taught – self-taught, primarily - to bunt and hit singles, but then our only options are to stand on the base waiting to be driven home or to steal our way across the bases. We have an outsized need of help from others, or we take what hasn't been given. Government or prison.

You're considered "special" if you make it to 2nd base in life: white-collar work. Seriously, do you realize how many runners reach 2nd base that never score runs? Second base is nothing. It's just a stat. If people want to get credit for stats, then they should go play in the minor leagues. The big leagues are for winners, through and through.

This isn’t an analogy I use lightly. I know this may rub some people the wrong way, because it will seem like a gross generalization and maybe Black self-hate or something else that is customarily lobbed onto anything critical of the standard m.o. in America. So be it. This here is a diatribe. 

Us Black Americans need to learn how to move across the bases ourselves. I believe in agency, and my life to this point has been my best attempt to be the best agent for my own level of success in this world. Sure, I've had help from plenty of people, Black and White, but I can't credit anyone other than myself for getting my where I am today outside of my mother for birthing me and my father for leaving me.

White Americans have dominated baseball for decades, centuries even. I’m not talking about the Yankees. I’m talking about the Waltons, the Romneys, the Kennedys, the Zuckerbergs. This is a game as old as any we’ve played in America. It's a game of bases, four total, that take a generational - team - effort.

The first base/generation has a sole purpose. That is to reach base. Bunting with zero outs is not ideal. Preferably, you have a good leadoff hitter to reach first base on a single. This is a speedy, hard working guy who doesn’t hit for power but hustles extremely hard. These are many of our parents, grandparents or great-grandparents if you're lucky (for those HBCU legacies).

Blue-collar work is the duty of a first generation. Scoring opportunities are significantly increased with a runner on base. You no longer have to hope for a home run, the rarest feat for a generation, to score. The lottery, the get-rich-quick-tips...these are home runs as rare as no-hitters. 

The next step is advance the runner. You can do this in one of four ways:

1) A stolen base. This goes back to the hustle. You have to have that in order to be able to move yourself ahead in the game. Whenever people mention things like “pick yourself up by your bootstraps” they’re talking about stealing bases. Some people can do this, but it’s not common. Less common today, in fact, than ever. The gap is widening, stolen base kings no longer as prolific as the days of Rickey Henderson.

2) A sacrifice play. This is far more common. Far too common, actually. One generation making countless sacrifices for another. The common perception is that single Black women make these types of sacrifices to raise their young children. This is true, but I don’t think this is a female-only fact. Men make sacrifices, perhaps of their professional ambitions and dreams, to provide for their families. Advancing their children’s ceilings from blue-collar to white-collar work.

3) A base hit. A good team may have a batting average in the area of .280, meaning out of 100 opportunities to reach base with a hit, 28 are successful. Does anyone like that average for young Black America? One hundred students walking into a classroom and 28 walking across a stage? I don’t think so. We need better hitting coaches in America’s classrooms and, in many cases, home settings.

4) Luckily, there’s a fourth way: walks. Walks require lots of patience. Often times there is an intimidation factor as well; the pitcher has to feel you’re a threat to get a hit at the plate. So that patience, coupled with skill as a hitter, make for a stronger case to walk the batter. Walks aren’t extremely common, but they are common enough to indicate there is some discipline involved in generation advancement. My mother didn’t graduate from college, but I did. She’s been a secretary or assistant for many years of her career, and I’m probably in need of one of my own.

Third base is hard. Stealing third base is really difficult. Double steals (where runners on both first and second base advance to second and third, respectively) happen, but very rarely. If the previous batter reached on a walk, a consecutive walk allowed is highly unlikely. Another sacrifice play is possible, but the field of play becomes smaller to achieve the intended goal of advancing the runner without risking giving up a double play. Ground balls are not your friends, either. 

Long story short, you need a decent bat on the ball, there needs to be some power and loft with any contact. This is where a lot of generations get hung up. The right contact is never made. They leave too many runners on base and don’t bring enough runs home. Generation after generation, runners are left on first and second, blue-collar and white-collar work alike, yet never reach home. 

Whether your paycheck is for $7.25 an hour at McDonald’s or $75,000 a year as an accountant, you may not have scored a single run yet. You haven’t won anything. Sure, you’ve shown signs of success…you have potential…but your scoreboard still shows zero.

Too many people confuse base hits, stolen bases, walks and sacrifices as runs. They are not. If you can’t get the runner over to third, you’ll never make it to the home plate. So what is third base if first is blue collar and second is white collar? Third base is creative professionalism.

It doesn’t mean you’re in Richard Florida’s “Creative Class” necessarily. You don’t have to be a web designer or writer or musician, no this creative professionalism is about how you utilize the hustle that got you to first base and the education that got you to second.

The combination of those skills and experiences is what has fueled a generation of tinkerers and thinkers whom are now creating their own jobs. Zuckerberg is a famous example, but there are millions of White Americans who've been able to do this for the last couple of decades. Sure, some of these jobs exist within corporations or organizations, but their existence is a result of the collective effort of many creative professionals. The pressure was applied to the pitchers so often that a pitch was met with a live bat. 

Unless you’re doing something you love, something you’ve been trained to do and trained yourself to master, and can make a living doing it, you’re not on third base. There are not many Black Americans on third base. I'm not saying there aren't any, I know quite a few actually like Johnica Reed and James Andrews and Coltrane Curtis, but they have thousands of Twitter followers and fans of their work because they are anamolies.

Black people: don’t lie to yourself if you’re on second. You’ll know deep down if the love and skill is there. No one else will tell you, but you should be honest with yourself and work harder.

Who knows, though, some people are happy with the stats of having reached base, gotten a steal or walk. But those stats fanatics aren’t the people winning the titles all the time. Sometimes, but not always. Why do you think Derek Jeter – and not A-Rod – is considered the Yankees great of today?

So reaching home is the pantheon of success.

You’ve hustled, you’ve been educated and worked hard, and you’ve been creative in paving your own way across life’s bases.

You want to score in this game? Score your run, congratulate yourself, then pick up the bat and hand it to a young Black American. They need us to help them learn how to run the bases too. My book “Real Role Models” and the numerous public speeches I give in classrooms and to youth organizations is my initial attempt to do just that, but I’m getting the itch to do a little bit more.

I can’t sleep on this one.

Why does 2012 matter? #TrayvonMartin #HungerGames

Between those two teen girls and their YouTube rant, this shit I posted recently, what happened to Trayvon Martin and this racist Hunger Games crap, I have had enough. I've written about my first experience with racial profiling, but that was nearly a dozen years ago and there is still far too much racial insensitivity abound.

People say “it’s 2012 for crying out loud”…”it’s 2012 for Pete’s sake”…”I can’t believe this is happening in 2012!” Fuck that. Who cares what year it is, this shit is just harmful, ignorant, and reflects poorly on our society. More importantly, it reflects poorly on our youth. Yeah, Trayvon Martin’s killer was not even 30 years old. These people complaining about the race of key characters in Hunger Games, the movie, aren’t even 20 years old. This is my generation and the next one; I’m embarrassed and afraid.

People were saying “we aren’t slaves anymore…” then they were saying “the Supreme Court said…” then they were saying “but the voting legislation was passed...” then they were saying “didn’t we already fight this battle in the ‘60s and decades before?...” but in the form of “it’s the 70s!” or “it’s  the 80s!” or “it’s the ‘90s”…or “it’s 2000!” … now we’re saying “it’s 2012” which has a special ring to it because you’d think that our society has advanced pretty damn far since some people think the world is about to end and all.

But then this shit happens. First, some bright idea called “Stand Your Ground” does the exact opposite…it prevents someone like Trayvon from being able to stand his ground in America. It forces him to be profiled, followed and, ultimately, killed.

Then there’s this Hunger Games shit, which may not seem on par with the priority that we as a society should place on Trayvon’s case, but I believe is directly linked. You see the people who seem to have a problem with Rue’s character being black are probably Trayvon Martin’s age. Only they aren’t black. They have the benefit of being on the bullying side of racial profiling. Kids like Trayvon are the victims of racial profiling.

People like Trayvon’s killer are part of the problem, but the bigger part of the problem comes from a less scrutinized audience and is far more subtle. It’s in our pop culture. It’s in the assumptions we allow young people [for the purpose of this blog “young people” means those in my generation or younger] to make about race.

Who cares if it’s 1972 or 2012, we should not allow people to make the kinds of assumptions about people – be they real people like Trayvon Martin or fictitious people like Rue from Hunger Games – that aren’t met with facts.

Trust me, I love assumptions. I think assumptions save us a lot of time. But assumptions need to be backed up with facts.

Trayvon’s killer didn’t want facts, it seems. He just wanted to pursue someone “suspicious looking” as if he wore a badge.

Those young people bashing Rue being portrayed by a young black actress rather than the white one they’d imagined while reading the book didn’t want facts either. That’s why they missed the part of Suzanne Collins’ novel that read, “she has dark brown skin and eyes, but other than that she’s very like Prim in size and demeanor.”

The facts are that George Zimmerman was explicitly told not to follow Trayvon Martin. If he wanted to play soldier, he certainly did not understand how to follow instructions.

The facts are that Rue’s character was written with brown skin and brown eyes. It just so happens that the casting director did a good job in finding a little girl named Amandla Sternberg who has brown skin and brown eyes (and can act).

Who cares what year it is. We either decide to accept the facts or ignore them. If certain people want to ignore the facts, then the law shouldn’t protect them over a 17-year-old with Skittles in his hands. Nor should it negate the tremendous movie roles played by black actors despite their wishes for racial homogeneity.

One minute a Florida teenager is watching the NBA All-Star Game, and the next minute he’s shot dead. One minute the movie industry is abuzz about Hunger Games’ $150-million-plus opening weekend, and the next minute Twitter is trending with racist sentiment about key characters in the hit movie.

When it comes to racial profiling and negative assumptions, the year we’re living in shouldn’t even matter. Hell, the month/week/day/hour shouldn’t either. This is a minute-by-minute issue.

I’m not easily offended by racial jokes if they come from friends, but I’m going to become more adamant that these things stop because I do see a connection between my own acceptance of these stereotypes and this negative trend that FB/Twitter/YouTube definitely exacerbates.

I will say this about it being 2012, though. It’s about time we trained our selves and our young people to put the proper value on facts in order to reduce the reliance on negative assumptions about race.

What I'm Reading

I read hundreds of articles and blogs each month, especially some of the ones listed on my blogroll here, but I'm always on the lookout for good books and subscribe to a dozen magazines. Here is a snippet of what's inspired me lately.

Referred to me by my boss, the COO of Bazaarvoice, after she read it. There's a big business book, share-what-you're-reading culture here. This book had so many a-ha moments for me and I look forward to applying a lot of this to my life. This is precisely why I took a job in the first place. It's humbling and rewarding at the same time.

Monocle is probably the dopest magazine in the world and I have to thank my oldest brother, Kahron, for this recommendation years ago. This particular issue has me even more anxious to visit Japan.

I happen to agree with former Def Jam Records president Kevin Liles who said, on the Oprah show no less, that hip hop has done more for race relations in America in the last two decades than anything else. I haven't started reading this one yet, but I'm sure to knock it out next week on a flight to New York.

No man about fashion can not read Vogue, it's just impossible. Sure, GQ, Esquire, Complex and the like give great guys' tips. But we all know fashion starts with what the women are doing.

Recommended to me by Bazaarvoice CEO Brett Hurt and a must read for anyone who fancies himself or herself an introspective type. Hell, I have an entire category of blogging dedicated to it.

Nylon Guys is pretty dope. It speaks to the more indie/preppy side of me while Complex speaks to the rap/street side of me.

 

Can't we all write along?

As a writer I'm confident in my abilities not simply because I've been writing for other people for 15 years and been doing this blogging thing for five years or I have one published book and another on the way, but also because I read a shit ton.More specifically, I read a shit ton from writers with whom I identify and/or hope to steal some technique from.

Ben Franklin was one of them because of his topical range. John Keats was another for his charm. F. Scott Fitzgerald (characters), Langston Hughes (context) and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (cause), are other historical literary giants for me. But when I'm thinking of present day greats, I Iook to the overly chagrined James Frey (A Million Little Pieces, Bright Shiny Morning) for his pacing, the ESPN favorite Bill Simmons aka Sports Guy for his humor, the informative and inquisitive styles of Richard Florida (The Rise of the Creative Class) and Malcolm Gladwell (Tipping Points) and Chuck Klosterman, the writer I most respect today.

I'm currently reading Klosterman's Eating the Dinosaur and, among many great chapters, there's a part about how the NFL is the most innovative and liberal league in all of sports. After describing former NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle as "the greatest sports commissioner in world history," Klosterman goes on to write, "he convincd America that football was conservative...He made football replace baseball in every meaningful, nationalistic way. And he did this while simultaneously convincing all the league's owners to adopt revenue sharing, arguably the most successful form of socialism in U.S. history. The reason the NFL is so dominant is because the NFL is basically Marxist. This was Rozelle's greatest coup, and everybody knows it." I remember finishing that sentence and getting that same tingly feeling I got after the episode of Mad Men when Don Draper pitches Polaroid or when Derek Fisher hit the 0.4 shot. It just felt perfect.

No living writer writes about more of the stuff that I care about than Klosterman. Music, society, TV, sports, pop culture, generational issues, film...basically all the topics I write about on this blog minus Austin, which can be justified only because he's from North Dakota. He even writes an entire chapter in Dinosaur about ABBA, which is a major win in my book not because I'm a fan of the group, but because I still ended up loving the chapter which is amazing because I'm pretty sure if 99.9% of writers out there tried to make me give a damn about Lynyrd Skynyrd or Right Said Fred I wouldn't unless Gladwell somehow connected it to the increase or decrease of idiots in the world.

Anyway, what I'm getting at is actually timely seeing as how we've just finished the World Series and the mid-term elections. I'm writing about how people in positions of power should be obligated to write to one another or have someone writing about their time in office to hand off to the next person in office. Sort of like Cliff's Notes for the job. I got to thinking about this because while reading Dinosaur on my flight back from Chicago last night I started to get excited about the idea that one day I'd have an email relationship with guys like Simmons and Gladwell and Klosterman the way they do with one another. It's one of my all-time favorite dreams to have, of one day being a peer of guys like that. I bet I'd see better writing in an email exchange with those guys than in 9 out of 10 books in Borders.

But this isn't just about my dreams and ambitions, but about the nation's. Where do we want this country to go? What role does a specific Senate or House seat, a state's governship or a pro sports commissioner have in shaping that future? I happen to think a lot. Not a lot as in every Congressman or Congresswoman is extremely significant to history, but a lot in the sense that every Congressional seat should be treated as if it were an important facet in the making of our future and our future history.

I guess what I'm saying is that if we had better information and knowledge of history we wouldn't be so freaking reactive when we head to the polls nor would be be so damn reticent in adding things to our ways of doing business the day Bud Selig has with instant replay and things like that in baseball while the NFL has stolen their fans, money and spotlight. I happen to loathe Congress - at least the way it's business is done (or not done) today - but I damn sure get myself out to vote. And I am a huge fan of baseball (mostly the Atlanta Braves), but know Bud Selig has not done a good job of protecting America's most important sport.

My suggestion is quite simple: people in high offices and potential significant historical positions (e.g. politicians, federal judges, sports commissioners, Fortune 100 CEOs, movie and music studio heads) should be required to write journals that are passed on to the next person in that position. Think of it as term-based memoirs of the position rather than personal memoirs. These guys like Selig and Rick Perry need help. Instead of just hoping they do their best, we should create a system to hold them accountable amongst their peers and predecessors historically. In order for your chapter to even count in the book of Texas Governors or MLB Commissioners, you'd better be great regardless of your specific era...or economy, right?

I'm not interested in marriages or personal finances and things like that as much as I'm hopeful that these positions would enable dialogue to take places amongst these individuals across generations and centuries. If George Bush had Bill Clinton's private notes on the Presidency, I wonder if he'd have been a better president, and the same goes for Obama following up Bush. I know that people think you can't learn from people who haven't done a good job or that you don't relate to or share ideology or leadership styles with, but that's actually the opposite of the truth. In fact, I'd bet you could learn more from reading about those people's trials, tribulations, successes, failures, challenges and opportunities.

The entrepreneur in me thinks this could even become a business where people get expertise directly from their predecessors...I mean wouldn't it be amazing if I had Ben Franklin's notes along with Langston Hughes' before I wrote Real Role Models? Or Klosterman's notes before I wrote Indisputable? Or if the future Fed Chairman had both Bernanke's and Greenspan's detailed notes?

I'm just a lowly, young writer who looks up to older writers like Gladwell, Florida, SImmons and Klosterman, but I have bigger ambitions...I think that there may be a day when some young writers will want to learn from me. I'm going to take notes just in case.

Life depends upon your ability to play the game

Since writing Real Role Models, I've spoken in dozens of public elementary, middle and high schools, even some colleges, and the most common thing I can tell any of these students is that you only get out of life what you put into it. It's a total cliche, I know, which is why I've decided to start using this intro from The Game's debut album, The Documentary, to start out all my speaking gigs.

I know it may not seem like the best message to share with some young, impressionable Black students...to say that life is just a game (especially when so many people think playing games like LeBron and Kobe is the only way to "make it out"), but there is too much truth in this statement to pass up. You hear it in sports..."you gotta play all four quarters"..."keep your head in the game"...but why not in life or in school?

Last week, while appearing on "Writers in Focus", a public TV show in Atlanta where James Taylor interviews authors, I had the opportunity to partner with Teach for America and speak in four different Atlanta Public Schools. First, it was Therrell High, then Best Academy then a couple classes at Frederick Douglass High. Now I've spoken in schools from Texas to North Carolina, and I'm partial to Austin ISD schools, but my last class at Douglass High was truly the best experience I've ever had talking about Real Role Models.

It was a senior physics class. I asked them if they planned to go to college and many raised their hands. Then I asked how many would, like me, be the first person in their families to graduate from college if they did so and still a few raised their hands. The classroom was 100% black from my recollection so this was no surprise for an inner-city school, but what was truly surprising was that so many of them seemed to believe they'd done what it took to get into college. Too often, kids want to go to college, but don't do what's necessary to make it happen...this class seemed different.

I was around 12 years old when I decided I wanted to go to the University of Texas and someday own my own business so I asked the class to raise their hands and share with me what they wanted to be when they were 12 years old. The kid I called upon said he'd wanted to be a video game developer since he was 8 or 9 years old and still does today. Others said they wanted to own businesses or be pediatricians or architects. All of these professions were commendable and the students answering exuded the kind of confidence in sharing their hopes and dreams that I once did at their age. That leads me to believe they actually know it'll take a lot of hard work and dedication to make it happen.

People always ask me if I get nervous when I enter these classrooms, but I never do. The only time I get nervous is when I get the feeling that the students are genuinely listening to me and taking in what I'm saying and identifying with my background (which is always one of the most important parts of my appearances). In this particular classroom, it seemed as if every single student was hanging on my every word and looking at me as their role model. I know that it seems like this is the purpose, given the title of my book, but honestly I try to emphasize the stories in the book...of doctors, lawyers, journalists, etc. Seldom do I focus on my own story after I've established a connection with the audience.

On this particular occasion, it was different. When I was done talking about Tracie Hall, a librarian from Compton, and Tim George, a pediatric brain surgeon from Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, and Bev Kearny, the women's track coach at Texas who overcame paralysis, I was looking at a classroom full of attentive Black students with their arms raised. And what questions did they ask? 'How did you get to college?' 'What did you want to be when you were in high school?' 'How hard was it to write a book?' 'Why did you decide to write about role models?' ...

I was both astonished and honored to be getting so much interest from this classroom of future executives, graphic designers, doctors, and, yes, video game developers. It just goes to show that these young Black students understand that this is a game we're living in...and real role models - perhaps myself included - know how to play it.

Just a Tuesday in the Live Music Capital

Susan Antone, Grupo Fantasma, Fun Fun Fun Fest, Ray Benson and Asleep at the Wheel, Zeale, Continental Club and H.A.A.M. are just a few of the people, places and things mentioned in my upcoming book Indisputable: A Fan's Guide to the Live Music Capital. I should probably make some room in the book for this past Tuesday night.

What makes Austin's live music scene so amazing? With the exception of the festival weekends, it's not the Friday and Saturday nights. No, it's those weekday nights that seem to host more live music than most other cities have room for on weekends. Case in point, last night featured The Derailers and Doug Moreland at Threadgill's, Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings at La Zona Rosa and Malford Milligan at Antone's for Blue Tuesday. Not that I saw any of those shows.

I was too busy enjoying the Austin City Limits taping with John Legend & The Roots. Black Thought wasn't there to bring his MC skills to the stage, but John Legend channeled Bill Withers, Donny Hathaway and some of the other great R&B legends of yesteryear while ?uestlove played the drums with that familiar and distinct high-hat of awesomeness that I've loved for the last 15 years and many have come to appreciate since the Philly-bred hip-hop group became Jimmy Fallon's late night band. The crowd was a great mix of Austin's scenesters, movers and shakers, from power couple and new parents Jon & Amy Pattillo to Brad Spies of SXSW and John Liipfert at C3 Presents to Knuckle Rumbler's Aaron Berkowitz and Austin Ventures' Ken DeAngelis.

While Ashley and I experienced a free ACL show on the UT campus in the soon-to-be-missed studio, many of our friends were at Stubb's, the best-known outdoor venue in Austin, for a heated performance by electrofunk fan favorites Chromeo. In what was said to be the hottest day of the summer in Austin, Chromeo's show further stoked the fire burning in Austin's live music scene on this particular Tuesday evening. By the time we left the taping and made our way down Red River, we were being greeted at Red 7 with an hour-plus set by DJ Digg, my personal favorite in a talented field of turntablists here in Austin.

By 11:30, with plenty of friends (from both the ACL taping and the Chromeo show) in close proximity, I started what would become a 100-degree, 150-minute, dance and sweat fest sponsored by none other than ?uestlove, drummer-turned-DJ courtesy of Knuckle Rumbler, Proper Entertainment and the other laps this particular last-minute booking fell into. As ?uesto introduced each sample, we listened and danced intently before turning to friends with our best guesses at which song would be next only to be surprised/emboldened when we heard Jay-Z/T.I./Kanye/M.I.A./Wu-Tang Clan/Busta Rhymes/A Tribe Called Quest/Camp Lo/ and every other classic hip-hop cut he played.

At one point in the night, probably around 1 a.m., I turned to my good friend Niraj, who owns Apothecary Cafe & Wine Bar, and in between rapping lyric after lyric I shouted, "This is a f*cking Tuesday!" Pretty please excuse my language, but sometimes it's difficult to find the right words to celebrate the fact that I live in the Live Music Capital. Especially after using up so many of them in the book I just finished writing.

One more thing on LeBron

My book Real Role Models touches on the qualities of black role models who aren't famous in order to help young black students understand what qualities they should be looking for in the famous people they believe are their role models. One of the chapters is dedicated to self-esteem and this whole LeBronathon has me re-reading it.

I've read tons and tons on this LeBron thing and I have two final points to make (for now).

1. His lack of a father figure is huge in shaping the person he is today, which is unfortunate. As someone who grew up without a father, I can fully relate to the desire to compensate by relying more so on friendships - which LeBron did in middle school and continues to do today - but that doesn't at all justify his lack of self awareness of point #2.

2. He's 25 years old and still acting like a teenager trying to fit in. How else do you explain him listening to his "team" rather than genuinely seeking legitimate outside advice. Sure, he talked to the other teams, but he didn't talk to Kobe or Michael Jordan and I heard Kobe even talked to Wade and Bosh about their decisions. Sounds like LeBron is too insecure, possibly because of his lack of a father figure, to fully understand the value of honest and open perspective compared to simply relying on young friends to make your decisions or guide you into bad ones...as he did by joining Wade and Bosh once they signed with Miami and doing a TV program that was the single-worst PR play I've seen in sports history.

This is all very sad because LeBron is someone who is in a position to be a role model to millions of young black kids who are also fatherless and yet he's shown to us that the foundation he's built for himself to actually become a real role model someday isn't that stable. And without a stable foundation, the lack of self esteem is hard to mask even if you are the greatest athlete to play basketball.

Learn more about Real Role Models here.

He's 25 years old, but his recent moves are rather immature.

Indisputable: A Fan's Guide to the Live Music Capital

Speaking from recent experience, the hardest part about writing a book is getting into a good flow or finding your rhythm as some call it. Usually what happens is you start with some idea for what the book will be, maybe a title or a thesis and after about 10 different versions of the opening chapter you finally get to a place where you feel comfortable moving on to chapter two. Over the last six weeks, after having already put eight months into the book, I can finally say that I got into my rhythm…writing something like 30 chapters in the last 45 days. That said, I’m now comfortable sharing at least one of those intro chapters that I wrote back when I started out.

If you were to pick up Indisputable: A Fan’s Guide to the Live Music Capital, you may not read this exact introduction, but I imagine it’ll be something close even after the editor chops it up.

This City of Austin resolution says clearly that Austin is “the Live Music Capital of the World.”

However, slogans of this nature are typically tongue-in-cheek only. For example, is New York really the city that never sleeps or does it just keep its bars open later? Does everything in Las Vegas ever really stay there or does it end up on Facebook the next week?

But Austin isn’t being cute with its title. The slogan resolution goes one step further than those of other cities…it says “indisputably.”

There are quite a few points to back up Austin’s claim. It has not one, but two major music festivals in Austin City Limits and South by Southwest. A third festival, Fun, Fun, Fun Fest, has quickly emerged as an up-and-comer in indie crowds.

Austin venues such as Continental Club, The Broken Spoke and Stubb’s are nationally known and Austin is said to have more live music venues per capita than L.A., Nashville, and New York. Oh, and Austin City Limits, the PBS program that debuted in 1975 with a set by Willie Nelson, was around before U2, perhaps the biggest live music act in the world, was even formed.

The last point of the resolution, however, is the strongest: Austin’s live music industry provides the basis for employment, economic development, creative and cultural growth and greatly enhances our quality of life.

For these reasons, which are analyzed, dissected, and elaborated upon – from a fan’s perspective - in this book, Austin’s status as the Live Music Capital should be Indisputable.