Bueller? Bueller? Anyone?

Remember the character played by Ben Stein in the movie, Ferris Bueller's Day Off? He was taking attendance in class and kept repeating "Bueller? Bueller? Anyone? Bueller?"

I feel the same way about my interest in forming a team of people who have a special set of skills. I want to create a new economic index. You know what I'm talking about, right? There is the Consumer Confidence economic index created by, I think, the University of Michigan.

I want to test the correlation between live performances of music and the health of a regional economy. Could you begin to forecast the business climate based on how much live music can be heard in a narrowly defined geographic area? This is really interesting to me.

I have often used the "canary in the mineshaft" analogy to talk about the significance of the arts as a barometer of the economic storm fronts -- to mix a few metaphors. But there has been no way to measure that barometric pressure, that I know about.

An endeavor like this would take a team of people designing an economic index that would be intuitive and sensitive to the realities and exigencies of the music business. And then there would need to be a cadre of field researchers to gather accurate information.

Does anyone reading this have any suggestions how to proceed? I want to take the initiative and would be happy to be responsible for most of the organizational work. Bueller? Bueller? Anyone?

Wisdom and where to find her

What passes for wisdom in the music business is usually the sad and brutal stories recounted by musicians who have endured long drives in the middle of the night to the next town on the band's tour. Last night, the Intro to Music Business class that I teach had the pleasure of hearing wisdom.

She was wearing black and had a leather coat and a pair of glasses tangled in her blonde hair. She spoke with a dead-pan alto voice that only exceeded the interval of a minor third when she would crank up her story-telling. Wisdom was patient and kind. Wisdom was not jealous as much as she was curious about the digital age and what was going on in the Twin Cities music scene. She did not boast -- on the contrary, she kept down-playing her accomplishments to the point that you might have missed that when she decided to move on with her life (and away from the Rock 'n Roll road show), she finished a Master's degree in creative writing. She began to teach. She had a family. She figured out how to be a grown-up.

After she had left class, we had a chance to process the words of wisdom. One student observed that she didn't seem proud enough of what she had done. Maybe she wasn't as happy with herself.

Here is what I think. Wisdom comes in small hand-made batches. It is not something mass-produced for consumption. That's why we shouldn't be looking for wisdom on the news or from our politics. Wisdom is personal and thoughtful and open-ended because wisdom is never complete. In class today, wisdom went by the name Laurie Lindeen.

Laurie's book, Petal Pusher, is something that rockers and jazzers and every other kind of musician should read aloud to each other. Wisdom resides there and it has got a sense of humor and a personal narrative that disguises its universal messages. I would suggest that those looking for wisdom about music, business, and life should take a few hours of thoughtful reading. It will be worth the effort.