Posted on February 3, 2012 at 1:02 pm

I got a weird and huffy comment this morning on yesterday’s blog about “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant.” Perhaps this guy was annoyed by my incessant Twittering about the Billy Joel project, perhaps he doesn’t like the sound of my voice, perhaps my guitar playing justifiably drives him to distraction. Who knows? But this is what he wrote:


I’m trying to remember how I subscribed to this blog. If I recall correctly, this used to be a blog about a composer and the music he wrote. Also, I love Billy Joel, who doesn’t, but NO ONE decides they want to listen to Billy, and then listens to a cover instead. I hate to say it too, but this is affecting my enjoyment of your music (LFY in particular). Now all I can picture is Jamie writing Hardy Boys fan fiction in his 40’s.

I was baffled by this line of thought, but then I realized that perhaps other people were feeling a similar frustration with this particular detour on my always-amusing career path, so I responded thusly:

When I was 11 years old, Simon & Garfunkel reunited for a concert in Central Park which was broadcast on television. I didn’t know the songs all that well, but I clearly remember being moved by the two of them singing the Everly Brothers’ “Wake Up Little Susie,” a song which had obviously inspired them as kids and through which they communicated a genuine if complicated affection both for each other and the music they grew up with.

Likewise when Joni Mitchell released Both Sides Now, we got to hear a singular artist bringing her own soul to the music she loved in her youth. I could also mention Todd Rundgren’s Faithful album, or Shawn Colvin’s Cover Girl, or, oh let’s get crazy, Stravinsky’s “Pulcinella” or Brahms’s variations on themes of Haydn and Paganini. As a composer, my own act of creation mystifies me – why do I pick that chord? why do I want the melody to go in that direction? – and interpreting the work of other artists at best helps me to understand my own creative impulses, and at least comforts me that such mystification is part and parcel of the process.

But hey, if none of that is interesting to you, there are only five more songs left on The Stranger, so this probably won’t drag out for too much longer. In the meantime, there are more than thirty other songs on my SoundCloud page available for you to listen, free of charge. And if you feel inspired to reinvent one of them for yourself, perhaps you’ll find that some people are encouraged not just by your finished products but by the sounds of your explorations and inspirations.