October 13, 2019 – Collaborations are all the rage these days. Performers in concerts bring out their friends and do the friends’ songs with them. I don’t know, perhaps it’s just me, but if I go to a concert to see a particular performer, I’m not sure I want to see them cover another artist’s song and have that other artist come out. I’m not there to see that other artist; I’m there to see the performer I paid to see. Well, the exception being Led Zeppelin; I’d like to see anyone bring out Led Zeppelin. I probably should add Van Halen to that too, given all the rumors and stories lately, because Van Halen, as a unit, might become as much of a ghost as Led Zeppelin. Hopefully, not literally. Please get well, Mr. Edward Van Halen. And a note on that, I read the news this morning by TMZ (which I think is generally reliable) that Eddie has throat cancer and has been treating for five years. I don’t really know what that means because the treatments for cancer are not generally ongoing, so I don’t get that. But the survival rate on that is good (I looked that up too), and survival rates are really important in determining a patient’s future health. So I’m not going to worry too much right now. Mind you, I’m extrapolating based on what I went through with my dad. He still has impacts from cancer, and he still goes to the doctor all the time, but the actual treatments (meaning the chemo) ended in 2017, so hopefully Eddie’s treatments will be over soon, and he’ll heal nicely. And now back to my point. Collaborations.

This past week, Lana Del Rey played the Hollywood Bowl. The tickets were all really expensive, at least expensive for my budget, so I didn’t go. And from what I’ve read, I’m okay with my decision to not go because the set was full of collaborations. She did that same collaboration from the prior record with Sean Lennon that I wrote about before. She did one with Jack Antonoff, the producer to all these pop girls, and who produced her current record. She did a collaboration with friends of hers – singers who sing too much like her, for a Joni Mitchell song, Get Free. And she brought out Chris Isaak to do his song, Wicked Game, with Lana doing back-up vocals. A long lost friend of mine used to say Lana was channeling Chris Isaak. I could hear it, although not as directly as he could, because I think her voice is too different. I mean she is female, so necessarily different.

Oh and apparently, Lana wanted to do a collab with the Eagles for Hotel California. She said so in a Los Angeles Times article featuring her. It was long article, probably good, but honestly I lost interest when the article talked about her taking a residence in Laurel Canyon that had stairs. I can’t even tell you what the article said about that, but I’m not sure being in Laurel Canyon is going to turn anyone into its residents of the ‘60s and ‘70s. I’ve been here a long time, and it hasn’t happened to me. Maybe I don’t have enough stairs. Yes, that must be it. Honestly, it could be that I’m having a tiny bit of a falling out with Lana. I know, I know, shocking. But in my study of guitar, I was trying to think of songs I wanted to learn — a means of learning to play at a higher level. A few weeks ago, I thought of a song.

I got side-tracked with Taylor Swift, and with some songs assigned by my teacher, but the song I thought of, and I’m going to do but haven’t yet, was one of my favorites from the ‘90s. Again, ‘90s people, please don’t hold it against me, but I did like some music in that era. And I loved this song, Fade Into You, by the group Mazzy Star. In my revisiting of that song, I first played the official video, something I’ve never seen before. It’s pretty, has a desert feel, but it was a live clip that made me realize something I’ve never noticed before because I never watched videos of Mazzy Star and never saw them in concert, sad because I played this a ton back in the day. Like I said, I watched a live clip and almost fell over. For sure, Lana is channeling Hope Sandoval, the front woman of Mazzy Star. The similarities! It’s almost annoyingly similar. I used to think I related to Lana, but honestly, I think it was some crazy repressed memory of Hope Sandoval, someone I never even saw. And an extra plus for present day, watching Hope perform live made me feel like it’s okay to play when one isn’t some crazy outgoing person. Look at her. She has on tights and short skirt. That was my uniform in the ‘90s. She is so shy, doing this, and doing it well, but so shy. One Hundred Percent, that’s me. In my first lessons, my guitar teacher told me he would put on sunglasses so I didn’t have to look at him directly. I was that inside myself. But I’m getting better, asking for things, playing without too much skittishness.

And as for collabs, if Lana ever did a collab with Hope, I think people would just stop in their tracks. Okay, sure, Lana has made something of this, become a huge star, but this is bothering me. Chris Isaak, sure, I can see that as a similarity with Lana. But what Hope must think, really think. Lana so copied her.

And you know what else I like about Hope Sandoval? I like it that it wasn’t just her. I get that some people have to do that, you know, their band falls apart, they want it that way, all sorts of reasons to play as a solo artist, but Hope wasn’t Hope Sandoval; she was the singer of a band, Mazzy Star. A band, that means the sound was a collaboration of people with one goal, a sound for the overall band. It wasn’t a series of producers making a different sound out of one particular singer, which is what Lana has done now with producer Jack Antonoff. I said I was reserving my view of that, of Lana’s new work with Jack Antonoff, which meant I was a bit waffling on what I thought, but after revisiting Mazzy Star, I know that what I used to like of Lana was just as much her old production, which was not done with Jack Antonoff. That’s a collaboration too, a collaboration done behind the scenes between the producer and the solo artist that results in definitive sound. So I think Lana’s new collaborations on stage are not the collaborations I want. As great as Jack Antonoff is, I think I’d rather have her old team back.

I’m still listening to Lana, but not to the new record. The new record honestly doesn’t do it for me. And the sad part is, after seeing Hope Sandoval with Mazzy Star, I’m having trouble watching Lana. What does all this mean? Time to play some Zeppelin, I think. More on that later. And Fade Into You; I’m going to learn that one. For sure, I’m going to learn that one.