Monday, March 5, 2007

MAKING THE STORY: I wear my sunglasses at night...

-Paul de Revere (All Songs Considered)-

Have you ever talked to someone in the dark? It’s weird, right? It’s disconcerting, even a little disorienting. It might even remind you of David Lynch’s short film “Darkened Room”. But you’re not me.

ANYWAY, that’s how I spoke to “the Godfather of Go-Go” Chuck Brown last Sunday night. He was wearing sunglasses, too.

No need to re-read that last sentence. He was actually wearing sunglasses. At night. Dark room.

These kind of bizarre goings-on are some of the many kinds of things reporters have to deal with just to get 15 or 20 minutes of a person’s time. My IE (Intern Edition, folks! Get hip to it!) story is, appropriately enough, on go-go music. It’s musicological and sociological implications through its artistic isolation, more specifically. It poses some basic questions like, “How could this music exist here (Washington, D.C. metro area) without virtually anyone else knowing anything about it?”

By talking to some D.C. luminaries, George Washington University professors, black Go-Go musicians, white non-go-go musicians and so on, I feel I can get a good internal gauge of how this music has lasted for so long and why it’s still here… longevity and stationary.

Come with me on this journey, won’t you?

No comments: