Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes!! Or What's Normal Anymore?

 So, it looks like widespread vaccination has stopped the pandemic in its tracks and our time of pause may be coming to an end.

 

Are you ready to go back to normal or, like Bob Dylan are you unsure what normal is anymore?

 

Like many you may be rejecting the old order and refusing to return to work for dead end wages.

 

While economists scratch their heads about this state of affairs, why rush back when wages will rise - if raw capitalism is allowed to have its way? 

 

Employers have held the whip hand since union membership and middle class income began shrinking over 50 years ago. Meanwhile the Great Recession of 2008 only reinforced that great corporate adage – don’t ask for a raise, be grateful you have a job!

 

And still employers wonder why so many people have opted out of the workforce? 

 

It’s simple. Some can’t afford to return because of low pay and the lack of affordable childcare. To add fuel to this fire, many seniors of working age now look after grandchildren, thereby allowing their daughters to work.

 

And then there are those who are rethinking their priorities and considering a change in their lives. There’s no better time than when things are really in a state of flux.

 

Take the music business.  It changed irrevocably in the years following 9/11 but such was the competition for gigs very few musicians even noticed.

 

However, two far-seeing Irish-Americans, Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning, had just founded Napster, whose credo was that all music should be free and available.

 

This revolutionary concept was perfected by Spotify and other streaming platforms on a two-tier basis.

 

For a small monthly fee you may now lease all the music in the world, and even get it free if you don’t mind being interrupted by advertisements.

 

This has resulted in the .01% of the world’s top recording artists taking the lion’s share of streaming income, leaving an infinity of lesser-known artists to share the remaining income between them.

 

Of course, this roughly mirrors what has happened in broader society where the top .01% controls much of the world’s wealth.

 

The end result for musicians has been the shrinking sales of CDs – the one really profitable item of merchandise that helped subsidize their performance fees. 

 

The lesson is – worlds change after cataclysms. You’ll never figure it all out, but if you’re thinking of making a change, now is the hour.

 

And yet, I can think of only one instance when I made the correct choice during a life crisis. Back in the 1980s, Pierce Turner and I founded a New Wave band called Major Thinkers (not a great name to dangle in front of hard-bitten music critics).

 

Nonetheless, we scored a big record deal with Epic Records and toured the country with Cyndi Lauper and UB40 – glory days, indeed.

 

We had a radio/dance hit with Avenue B is the Place to Be and recorded Terrible Beauty, an album still to see the light of day. To make a long story short, we were summarily dropped by Epic, who knows why, who cares anymore? 

 

Hardly a cataclysm, though it seemed like one at the time. We returned to Ireland for Christmas and one night in my parents’ house I had what Graham Greene might call a “dark night of the soul.”

 

No matter how I looked at it, I could see no future in the music business.

 

As a grey, rainy dawn broke over the grim spires of Wexford town I resolved to chuck it all in and become a playwright. 

 

Out of the frying pan, into the fire, you might think, but I wrote, directed, and produced every day thereafter, and eventually cleared my head of the music business. Four years later, Chris Byrne and I formed Black 47 and that kept me busy for the next 25 years.

 

Still, I continued to hone my playwriting craft and last week I got word that Paradise Square, a musical I conceived and co-wrote, will open on Broadway next year.

 

I guess you could say that dark night back in Wexford finally paid off. 

 

Whatever, in these post-pandemic times, the world is changing faster than you can imagine.  If you’re thinking of making a change – do it now, there’ll be no better time.