Behind the Editor’s Desk

Complain, complain, complain. As an editor, that’s what I do all day long. Don’t do this, don’t do that. This chapter is fluff, this paragraph is redundant. Yank this, reword that, add this, rethink that.

It’s not an issue with Berklee Press authors specifically. They are great—smart, experienced teachers, generally with uniquely perspectives on both how to teach and how to make music. It’s just a part of the editing process. If we’re aiming to produce the best books on their topics ever published, we have to get deep down into looking at minutiae, which often, admittedly, the only people who really care (consciously) are other editors. But in making it better than necessary, we hopefully make it really great—useful to musicians trying to improve their craft.

Twelve or so years ago, in another job, I had a manager who once said to me, “You can come to me with any problem, as long as you also bring me its solution.” At the time, it made me so mad I almost quit, but there’s definitely some truth to it, in terms of a productive business model. So, rather than just writing, “This stinks, redo,” editors generally suggest fixes to the problem. “This is redundant, so delete this paragraph and replace it with an example, to liven things up.”

Which brings us to baseball, which I have always loathed. I was thirty before I attended a live professional baseball game. But an ex-friend insisted that it was my duty as an American to at least give it a try, so she dragged me to Fenway Park, where the Red Sox beat some other team. I’m sorry that someone had to lose the game, with so many people watching. Whether or not it was the Red Sox remains irrelevant to me.

It’s been nearly ten years since that boring afternoon (and since I heard from my companion at Fenway Park). But the Red Sox played a significant (to them) game a few days ago, and people keep trying to chat with me about it.

Rather than just complain, I will offer some suggestions for how to make the Great American Waste of Time less loathsome.

My Suggested Improved Rules of Baseball

1. Make it a rule that to be on a professional baseball team, you must have been born and raised in that team’s city—or at least truly associated with the city, in some way. At the game I attended, Mo Vaughn (actually born in Connecticut, but at least it’s New England) hit a home run. The man sitting in front of me was so excited, he said to his little boy, “Wow, now you can say that you saw Mo Vaughn hit a home run in Fenway Park!”

For a moment, I actually thought that maybe there was indeed something positive about baseball—some city pride in a local hero’s achievement. But then shortly afterwards, Mr. Vaughn got a better offer, and dumped Boston for Anaheim, and then later joined the Mets before retiring to sell hot dogs in Somerville. So, there is really practically nothing “Boston” or even “New England,” about the Red Sox, and I can’t imagine why anyone takes civic pride in how this team of carpet baggers fairs.

Also, it’s a bit discriminatory. The Dominican Republic raises the best baseball players in the world, but they don’t get credit for it because their native sons are signed up to represent teams all over the United States. Is Boston better than Detroit? Is a city famous for higher education better than one famous for making cars? Certainly, baseball is no indicator, because the teams purportedly from those cities actually have nothing to do with the cities at all. Making a “must be born and raised” clause would make the games much more relevant as reflections of society.

By the way, I call Mo Vaughn a hero not because he can whack a baseball but because of all the work he’s been doing in rehabilitating low income housing. For that, people should cheer him whether he’s at the plate on the field or the plate at the hot dog stand.

If we don’t make the advertised regional origins more real, then yank the city name from the name of the team, and just call it Red Sox Corporation. We don’t refer to other companies located in Boston with “Boston” in their name. Boston Fidelity? Boston Gillette? Boston Berklee? So, why “Boston Red Sox?” All that’s currently Boston about them are some file cabinets and some grass.

2. Make player salaries not exceed that of the snack vendors. Most of watching baseball involves waiting for something to happen, and the only way to make all the tedious waiting palatable is to drink beer and eat hot dogs. Therefore, I suggest that the vendors are actually more critical to the overall experience than the players are. Let’s give compensation where it is due.

3. Give the loafing players something to do while the batter and pitcher do their thing. Besides the fact that my parking lot’s fee goes from $17 to $35 a day when there is a game at Fenway Park, what I hate most about baseball is that it is such a waste of resources. So many highly paid, competent professionals just stand around, scratching themselves, waiting for a very small percentage of the team to do any work.

Everyone else might try juggling tricks, for instance. The shortstop, the left fielder, everyone in the dugout, and so on, could all juggle, and stop only when the ball comes their way. Sheesh, their salaries are high enough, they could at least toss around some clubs or flaming torches. Anything, to relieve the tedium!

4. Improve the food. Maybe Italian pastries? And how about some decent beer—like, a local microbrew, rather than the standard commercial swill. Boston’s Beer Works is right across the street from Fenway Park, so serving their beer in the bleachers would be a natural fit. Wheeling kegs across the street should be cheaper than trucking in Budweiser from the Midwest. And how about some true Boston fare, such as fried seafood and lobster rolls?

5. Get some diversity on the field. Meaning, mix up that monoculture of grass with a more environmentally conscious assortment of pasture plants that will support a healthier ecosystem. Maybe let some heritage breed animals graze on it when there’s no game on—traditional New England breeds such as Devon cows, Jacob sheep, Dominique chickens, Pilgrim geese, and such. And leave the droppings. It would make those dramatic slides onto base more heroic—particularly if there were some chickens flapping out of the way.

6. Improve the music. They have some pretty great artists doing the national anthem, and such, and I was heartened when Tiger Okoshi performed with his pickup band of taiko drummers and horn players, in honor of Dice-K’s debut. But surely, there are more opportunities for live music? With three conservatories (Berklee, NEC, Boston Conservatory) so close to Fenway Park that there is the constant danger of a stray foul ball damaging any number of Steinways, you’d think that the Sox would have the community spirit to give some of their neighbors some gigs.

Just be local, is what I’m saying. Local beer, local music, local players. Be Boston. Then, if a nasty city like Elizabeth, NJ or Waco, TX hacks up a team, I’d genuinely want the Red Sox to win.

By the way, Tiger Okoshi is a Berklee professor and a wonderfully creative jazz trumpeter. He was co-author (with Charles Lewis) of The Berklee Practice Method for Trumpet, which teaches trumpeters how to play in rock bands/small jazz combos.

See, this is a relevant entry to my blog.

Anyhow, I hope that these suggested modifications of the rules of baseball can be enacted right away, and thus lead to some much-needed improvements in the game.

To see the Red Sox schedule, and thus know when to avoid parking in my lot next year, click here.

It’s “hip-hop.” Lowercase h, use the hyphen. Feel good about it.

This is controversial, as are so many aspects of hip-hop. But I’m happy to lean on the big guns for this preference. It’s how The Associated Press, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal write “hip-hop.” Also Keyboard Magazine. BET doesn’t seem to care much, using both “hip-hop” and “hip hop.” The American Heritage Dictionary, WordNet (Princeton University), The Merriam-Webster Dictionary, and every other dictionary I consulted all render it “hip-hop.”

Lowercase is similarly accepted in other musical style names, such as jazz, blues, rock, classical, bossa nova, and so on. Motown, Latin jazz, and Delta blues get the capital only because the names come from place names, which get capitals, e.g., Roman numerals and French kiss (though these are also frequently set lowercase). “Bebop” is a minor monkey wrench; it lost its hyphen in most contemporary usage, but the b is decidedly lowercase.

All in all, I’m confident that “hip-hop” is a sound house style choice for Berklee Press.

One group that disagrees is Harvard University’s “Hiphop Archive”. This think tank is a treasure trove of rumination about “Hiphop.” Their argument for how they render the term (uppercase, no hyphen) is that it’s the name of a culture, not just a “cool dance,” (the likely etymological derivation of the term). Hiphop style includes language, visual arts, dance, and social practices, as well as musical genre(s).

Eh, maybe, they have a point. If one of our authors truly wishes to focus on these aspects, and feels strongly about the word choice, we might permit the anomalous rendering, though violating house style complicates the publishing process and I’d really prefer not to and would try to guilt the author into reconsidering. And the “Hiphop” preference just doesn’t seem to have much traction in the world outside Harvard University. For example, Beyond Beats and Rhymes, a provocative film by Byron Hurt, similarly discusses the social issues of hip-hop, but he renders the term as “hip-hop.” And not to pick on what is likely a sore point for the Hiphop Archive, even elsewhere on the Harvard University Web site, the term is rendered as “hip-hop.” Harvard, that’s just not good team spirit.

Anyhow, there is good reason to separate the culture from the musical aspects of the term, particularly at Berklee. Contemporary hip-hop culture is often problematic and even despised by its fans, with so much promulgation of aggression, the objectification of women, the romanticization of materialism, and so forth. This hasn’t always been the case; there are deep roots in hip-hop as an activity of peacemaking and a tool of raising social conscience. But that’s not what’s selling the most records, today, and there are good reasons to separate the medium from the current message.

Berklee hip-hop guru Prince Charles Alexander, one of my current guiding lights, suggests looking at hip-hop as essentially a production style, with emblematic sounds and groove characteristics. The music serves as a bed for the rap, the content of which can be anything. This, to me, is a healthy way to see it. You can love the sound of hip-hop, but despise many of its artists’ messages. For the record, PC was initially leaning towards the capital H, but I’m trying to talk him out of it.

I see his technocratic approach as a good teaching strategy, and the lowercase h helps us to divorce the evolving social elements of hip-hop culture from its essential musical/production elements in the classroom, as well as the printed page.

The homoerotic imagery, the desensitization regarding violence, the role of women—for now, I’m happy to let Harvard University sort these out. In a sense, it is more revolutionary to think about hip-hop in terms of shout choruses, Roland TR-808 drum sounds, and beat subdivisions. By presenting it in these terms, the tools of creating hip-hop become within reach of a great diversity of potential artists, who will hopefully rescue this vibrant, creative form from some of its current doldrums of content.