Well, I don’t know. Maybe it does if you’re Eric Clapton, or Barbra Streisand, or one of the very few artists who have sold a ton of records and/or haven’t been divorced often enough to ever have to worry about money. But really, for most stars — even the ones who have been lucky enough to score some hits and earn some name recognition — music is still a job. It’s a really cool job, but still, it doesn’t keep you from having to worry about ordinary stuff like professional security, career advancement, and financial stability. It isn’t very glamorous, but it’s about the best anyone who’s dreaming about “making it” in the music business can hope for — a rewarding life, but one not without many of the same workplace anxieties the rest of us experience. Most of us don’t know what it’s like to hear ourselves on the radio. We do, however, know what it’s like to look for work, or lose a job without warning; it’s a nerve-wracking ordeal, to which many of the people appearing on our favorite albums can relate.

It’s a side of the dream we don’t think about or discuss much, and in order to explore it, I reached out to three musicians who have experienced the ups and downs of a career in music, and they were all gracious enough to take some time to discuss what it’s like for a rock star to lose a job — and where to go from there.

For Dawayne Bailey, rock & roll was a ticket out of the sleepy Midwest and into stadiums around the world. Born in Manhattan, Kansas, Bailey moved to Los Angeles in the early ’70s, where he gigged for over a decade before getting his first major break as the guitarist in Gerard McMahon’s band. (Though he isn’t a household name, McMahon’s work will be familiar to anyone with a deep love of ’80s and ’90s melodic rock; his songs have appeared on albums by KISS, Roger Daltrey, and Chicago.) This, in turn, led to Bailey being asked to audition for Bob Seger’s Silver Bullet Band. Bailey joined Seger on his tour for The Distance and played on Like a Rock before leaving to form his own band, Private Parts, which released one album before Bailey received another call to audition — this time for Chicago, which had parted ways with guitarist Chris Pinnick and was gearing up to tour behind Chicago 18.

Bailey stayed with Chicago for nearly a decade, touring steadily with the band and making limited appearances on three albums — Chicago 19, Chicago Twenty 1, and Stone of Sisyphus, which remained unreleased until last year — before being dismissed in 1995. In the years since leaving Chicago, he’s appeared on a number of albums for other artists (including Pat Boone’s In a Metal Mood) as well as releasing several solo projects, such as 2006’s Joyland.

Early in your career, you went from playing with Bob Seger to joining Chicago near the peak of their ’80s resurgence. Was this a shocking introduction to the business side of rock & roll, or were you prepared for it?

I wouldn’t say I was shocked. I grew up in Kansas and have always been close to Kerry Livgren and he always gave me advice about the business side of things — so I was somewhat prepared. I’ve also followed Frank Zappa’s advice by studying his interviews as well as reading lots of music biz books and keeping my eyes and ears open. I also hired music attorneys when I first moved to LA trying to sell my songs, and they taught me a lot about what to do and not do.

In addition to the Seger and Chicago gigs, you’ve performed in a hired hand capacity for other artists. Does working from that role affect the way you’re treated by performers? Does it impact your passion for the music?

It depends on the boss. I’ve been lucky. Bob Seger was a great boss and really fun to work with. Chicago was interesting because when I joined the band, I was the only sideman with seven bosses above me. It was fun but sometimes a bit frustrating. When they hired me, I had my own band where I was the boss and wrote and sang all the songs. Just 3 weeks before they hired me, I had just hired Martina McBride as a backing singer for my band.

As for the passion, that’s always been there, regardless of the business set up. The passion is what has driven me from day one. Performing music on stage and writing music off stage has always been very intense for me and not about the money.

Along those lines: you were a contract employee of Chicago’s for many years. How were you able to emotionally balance being an employee of a corporation with being a member of a — for lack of a better term — rock & roll brotherhood? Did it create any conflicts for you?

I was there for nearly a decade, so eventually as you negotiate your annual contract with the accountant, it could get tricky…having to stand up for yourself and not get trampled on.

There was also the element of the brotherhood, which I never really felt a solid part of. I understood, though — they go way back with each other — and I knew I was standing in the spot they were used to seeing Terry Kath stand in. Overall, though, it was a blast playing with that band. Every band has conflicts, no matter the business setup. We’re all humans trying to stay positive on the road and have a good time. You also have the band crew/techs who help keep things light with the daily ups and downs of constant touring.

Did you always look at your gigs for other artists as potentially temporary, or did you feel like you were “home”?

With Seger, I knew he didn’t tour that much anymore — not as much as he did in the ’70s. So that always felt kinda temporary, but Chicago felt like home. They tour all the time and you travel the globe. Even though I didn’t feel like a tight member of the corporate brotherhood, I felt like as a job, it was stable, solid and home-like in that we just kept working and working non-stop.

If a person in most career fields wants to find a new job, he looks at listings online or in the paper, but a musician looking for a new gig has to take a different approach. Are there established channels, or is it more of a strictly “who you know” type of situation? What were your first steps after leaving Chicago?

Old school places for musicians and bands to find each other like Musenet and Musicians Contact have been replaced with the usual social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, etc. It’s much more immediate — especially for younger, new, indie bands.

They can create an instant community with their fans who will house the band at their homes on the road instead of having to pay for some cheapo motel in the middle of nowhere. Musicians can find bands and vice versa much quicker than ever before. Older established bands still rely on the “who you know — word of mouth” model.

When I first left Chicago, I didn’t try to connect with yet another established road band as much as I tried to start a new band I was scheming while still on the road with Chicago. That evolved into working with an acoustic-based band (Shayna) that was a deliberate stark contrast to the brass pop of my former band. It was a healthy needed change of pace, and yielded new songs that are still some of my favorites today.

I discovered that world not online, but by networking face to face with bands in L.A. clubs and socializing with friends who knew someone who knew someone.

What are you working on now?

Love and positivity. Music has taken me away from my family way too much for way too long and I’m putting them first. That has also helped nurture the new music I’m writing and recording and given it more depth, meaning and purpose.

You have to cut out all of the BS and get to the core of what and who is most important in your life and for me, that elusive magic chemistry lies in family and friends. Not in some corporate band who will abandon you after years of service in the blink of an eyeball. I can’t think of anything better to be working on at this point in my life and career as embracing my family, which in turn enriches the music…and that ripple effect will resonate with everyone else.

Do you have any business advice for musicians who are just starting out?

Nice guys don’t always finish last. As a sideman or woman, hire an attorney to negotiate your contract, don’t do it yourself. As a songwriter, keep your publishing — just ask Paul McCartney. Invest in real estate — just ask Paul McCartney. (Always get a pre-nup — just ask Paul McCartney.)

Murphy handled lead vocals on a string of five Feat studio albums — including 1995’s Ain’t Had Enough Fun, 1998’s Under the Radar, and 2000’s Chinese Work Songs — before departing the band in February of this year. She’s landed on her feet, though, assembling the Shaun Murphy Band with Randy Coleman, Larry Van Loon, Mike Caputy, and Kenne Cramer, then heading into the studio to record the recently released Livin’ the Blues, a collection that includes rock and blues standards (”Hound Dog”), covers of a more recent vintage (John Hiatt’s “It Feels Like Rain”) and Murphy originals (”Rock and Roll Everynight”). On the road promoting Blues, Murphy paused to reflect on her time in one of rock’s hardest-touring bands, the tumult of 2009, and what lies ahead.

You started working with Little Feat after the band had been around for some time, and saw your role expand after Craig Fuller left. Because of the way you eased into the group — and/or because you were privy to Fuller’s departure — did you look at your position in the band as something potentially temporary, or were you prepared to finish your career there?

I actually found out about Craig’s leaving the day they asked me to join the band. I had been a friend of theirs for a number of years, and had worked on all the reformation CDs. I was extremely happy to find myself on a bus in the middle of nowhere with six guys…(12, if you count the crew.) I’ve always had hopes of sliding off for the occasional solo CD, but until this time, it hadn’t come to fruition.

Rock & roll can be a glamorous career, but it’s one in which artists can operate entirely without a safety net. Were you financially prepared for your time with the band to end?

These are such troubling times for everyone, and it has touched the entire world, not just certain groups, like it has in the past. I think we were about as close to the collapse of the planet’s economic systems as we’ve been since the Great Depression. So to answer your question, no — things were pretty stretched thin. But there was nothing else to do but hike up my high heels and start to steppin’!

What have been some of the positive side effects of the change — either expected or unexpected?

I would have to say that the people I’ve met, and who have helped me bring all these fantastic events about, are so uplifting and inspiring. All of us coming into this project with hearts open and with spirits so high — it’s been one of the best experiences I’ve had.

Now that you’re establishing yourself as a solo artist, you must be assuming more responsibilities for every aspect of your career. Do you find it more difficult to balance everything, or is it more liberating?

It’s very exhilarating, and a heady feeling, to say the least. Having been part of groups all my life, being the boss is like changing species almost…I have the best of both worlds. The guys in the band are down to earth musicians who’ve seen the whole gamut in the music world, and are very seasoned. They keep me very centered.

Can you give us a few words about the new album?

I’m so proud to be able to give voice to some of the most incredible, indelible blues songs around — some of which I’ve been singing for a long, long time, others I’ve always wanted to put to disc, and some from new friends that I hope will have more in their arsenal for my next CD. Maybe even a co-write here and there. The budget was small, but I think the sound, production, and playing transcends anything any big budget could provide. I’m so happy the emotion came across — through everyone.

Starting with 1992’s Aqua, Payne and Downes led Asia through five studio albums and almost 15 years of its existence before the original lineup reunited, capping off years of rumors and leaving Payne the odd man out. While the reformed Asia went on to record the reunion album Phoenix, Payne soldiered on with a new band, called GPS, before ultimately returning to the Asia name — sort of — through an agreement that allows him to record and tour as Asia featuring John Payne. It’s an unusual situation, to be sure — muddling band/brand names like this is what has gotten guys like ex-Toto vocalist Bobby Kimball sued — but one that oddly suits Asia’s strange and twisted path over the last 25 years or so.

Payne is currently prepping the release of a pair of new studio albums — one from GPS, and one from Asia featuring John Payne — but he made time to discuss the highs and lows of life as a professional musician.

Earlier in your career, you went from thinking about taking the “Jeff Lynne” spot in ELO II to taking over lead vocals in Asia. This must have put you in a position to deal with lawyers and paperwork at a pretty formative stage in your artistic development — how has this affected your ability to stay rooted in the joy of making music for music’s sake?

I started making music because it is my passion — I remember, at seven years old, wanting to be in a band. Lawyers and contracts, etc., are a necessary evil in this career. You can’t just bury your head in the sand and ignore the business side, otherwise you are left with no creative canvas to paint on.

I enjoy the music as much as I did when I started; in fact, I feel I have more to prove now — and I realise how lucky I am to have a channel to output my thoughts.

Did you always look at your time with Geoffrey Downes’ version of Asia as something potentially transitory, or did you approach it as more of a musical brotherhood than a business partnership?

It was a brotherhood. We worked solidly together for 16 years. It was a fantastically creative time and I’m proud of what we did — I did no external projects, only Asia. I learned and grew so much artistically in that time, and don’t regret a second of it.

Following along from the previous question, were you prepared when Asia’s original lineup reunited? I don’t just mean emotionally — I mean financially, which is something a lot of rock fans don’t think about. Put another way: For most of us, an unplanned career shift can have a pretty devastating impact on a person’s lifestyle. Is it any different for someone in your position?

When you have put all your forces into something for 16 years…when that form of Asia was over for me, it had a huge impact on me. I wasn’t prepared for it emotionally or financially. I knew it was always a possibility. However, it was fairly devastating on my life, as all of a sudden I had no touring income or recording income — and added to that, I had a couple of years of legal bills to resolve the name ownership.

What have been some unexpected blessings from the path your career has taken since the Asia reunion? What’s next for you musically?

They say every cloud has a silver lining. I had two paths ahead of me: One was to roll over and give up, and the other was to push myself further and grow. The first project I did was the prog band GPS. GPS featured my two Asia buddies, Guthrie Govan and Jay Schellen, plus Spock’s Beard keyboardist Ryo Okumoto. Our fist album, Window to the Soul, received a lot of critical acclaim, and we’re planning a new CD for next year. Next, I was asked to perform as the Parson (formerly sung by Phil Lynott) in a UK stadium tour of Jeff Wayne’s The War of the Worlds. It was an incredible experience, with a symphony orchestra and many of the original singers and musicians from the groundbreaking album.

Then, I finally finished legal negotiations over the Asia name — hence the birth of Asia featuring my good self. So far, we’ve toured successfully in the U.S.; I’m also pleased to announce that we’ve just finished writing a new Asia featuring John Payne studio CD to be released on Sony and a yet to be announced, high-profile U.S. label. The album is going to be called Arcana, bringing back the A to A titles again. And finally, I’m also working on an incredible project called Decoding the Lost Symbol, which is a concept album to be released within the special edition of the Dan Brown companion book. I’m writing, producing and singing on it, but there are also four very famous guest vocalists also planned for the album. The book’s author, Simon Cox, is a genius — he also wrote the bestseller Cracking the Da Vinci Code. So it’s been very liberating being fully in charge of my own destiny.

I first heard Bohlke’s work when I was working on my interview with One Life to Live music supervisor Paul Glass. Though our discussion focused mainly on the artists Glass has booked to perform on the series (a list that will expand to include Lionel Richie in September), Glass also uses a fair amount of songs for the show’s ever-popular musical montages. Most of them are by artists who, if they aren’t exactly established, still have some kind of label backing, but that changed when Bohlke’s “The Weight of Us” popped up on One Life’s May 22 episode:

It’s a hauntingly lovely song — and one that, in contrast to a lot of similarly moody, montage-friendly ballads you hear on TV, rests heavily on an acoustic guitar and understated lead vocal. It isn’t without its melodrama, particularly toward the end, but it reaches its crescendo sensibly and honestly. Television music placement has increased to the point where probably a fourth of the press releases I get say something about how the artist’s music has been featured on an episode of some show or other (usually The Hills), but most of those songs sound like they were made for TV; in contrast, “The Weight of Us” sounds like a stark personal statement that just happened to find its way onto the screen. Once Glass told me about the song, I was intrigued, and set about getting Bohlke’s perspective on his unorthodox career.

Since getting ahold of “The Weight of Us,” I’ve played it for a number of people, and they almost always say “I think I’ve heard this before.” This isn’t a case of mistaken identity; as it turns out, the song has been used by more than one ABC show: It has also been heard on Grey’s Anatomy and Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, and made enough fans along the way to inspire a number of YouTube mashups. It’s the kind of cross-promotional bonanza that artists like U2 spend months planning and pay out the nose for, but for Bohlke, things came very differently.

“I was overwhelmed,” he says during our phone conversation. “I wasn’t expecting this at all. I thought it was just a nice little song I was putting out. It just got into the right hands at first, and it was all — it was a lot of phone calls, where someone would say ‘Hey, you want your music to be on this show?’ And I’d say, ‘Yeah!’ So it was really kind of a fortunate thing.

“It wasn’t as planned out as it may seem,” he adds, “or as I probably would have liked.”

Of course, it didn’t all happen by magic. It helps that “Weight” is a drop-dead gorgeous song, and one whose mysterious sadness lends itself well to the tear-soaked travails of your favorite television characters, but there are lots of unsigned artists making plenty of wonderful music; the key ingredient, in Bohlke’s case, was working with the right people — and doggedly following his muse after releasing his self-titled debut in 2006.

“I’ve been on this journey to find the next record for three years now,” he says, “and have recorded all sorts of demos with different people, and it wasn’t coming together. None of it was cohesive, it was all different pieces, and part of it was a result of not having enough money to just go into a studio for a solid couple weeks or month, or whatever.” He eventually started demoing with a songwriter named Chris Keup, and those sessions produced “The Weight of Us.” “We gave it to the guy who’s producing my quote-unquote ‘record,’ and he turned it into what it is now,” Bohlke says. “Chris’ publisher got it into the right hands, and all these people latched onto it. It was one of those things where we have our little ways of getting it into the right hands, but we weren’t overly pursuing getting it onto TV. It was like ‘Okay, here’s a couple of songs, if you like ‘em, use ‘em’ — and it ended up being awesome.”

Part of what’s fascinating about all this is that it wouldn’t have happened 25 years ago — partly because the technology wasn’t in place for artists like Bohlke to give themselves free distribution, and partly because no serious performer wanted his music used in a commercial or as part of a serial drama. It’s a change Bohlke is acutely aware of. “As an artist, you don’t want to be the guy people remember as, ‘Oh yeah, that’s the dude from The O.C.‘ — I know I don’t, really. But at the same time, it’s great. It’s a great avenue for people to hear your music, and I’m for it. But you want people to buy your music because it’s great, and it does something to them, and buy the whole album and be a fan for life. And TV is a good way to do that, but it can be used in different ways, and you never know how it’s gonna be…people could see it on something that’s ‘not cool.’

“I think it’s a great way for people to hear it when they wouldn’t necessarily go find new music,” he concludes. “I put the first record out and thought it would be a stepping stone to the next album, but I never hired anyone to go and push it. We wanted it to be real grass roots. I like that way — people get attached to the stuff that they find on their own, that isn’t shoved down their throats. I like music that I find, more than music that comes through an outlet.” And along those same lines, Bohlke isn’t using his TV-derived success to try and attract the attention of the major labels. “We haven’t really been seeking a record label,” he tells me. “When it comes along, when people are interested, then that’s great, but it hasn’t worked out that we’ve had that. I’ve had some mild success without a label, and it’s been kind of neat not having that. The right label would be great — instead of just having people with a lot of money. Not a lot of labels have been pursuing us, which is fine, but we’ve just been able to do what we do and make a little bit of money at it.”

That “little bit of money” — which will no doubt multiply as the residuals from “Weight” start arriving in Bohlke’s mailbox — has been accrued through regular gigs, as well as the steady stream of downloads of his first album. Assembling a satisfactory full-length follow-up, however, has been problematic.

“We just continue to record music, and it keeps changing,” says Bohlke. “My style keeps changing, my writing — what I like and don’t like changes.” In order to give his fans some new music, and to make sure the strongest tracks actually saw the light of day, Bohlke decided to start releasing a series of digital singles (such as “The Weight of Us”) and EPs. Next up is a pair of songs, “Somewhere” and “The War,” that were written with former Remy Zero guitarist Jeffrey Cain. “We thought these songs needed to be put out, and I was getting afraid — with all the songs I’d done with Jeffrey — that they weren’t going to come out on an album,” Bohlke explains. “Because I lose interest real fast. If I record it and I’m real excited about it, a month later I can change my mind, and that’s what’s been happening. This way — you know, people are buying one song at a time now anyway, so this is a way to still have a cohesive EP or whatever you want to call it, while keeping people happy with short attention spans. The plan is to keep pumping out songs this way — this hodgepodge of songs that doesn’t fit, that are just songs.

“I haven’t really done anything else that sounds like ‘The Weight of Us,’” he adds, “and it would be kind of hard to put that on an album, so now it’s just a single — you know, ‘The Weight of Us’ is just ‘The Weight of Us.’”

Visit Sanders Bohlke at his MySpace page.

In front of me is a woman named Marcia, who is proudly displaying an album of photos she’s collected from her years as a founder of the “Tahoe Angels,” a group of fans that congregates at the American Century Celebrity Golf Championship every year. It’s a huge undertaking, as you can probably imagine, and one that would be an impressive feat of organizational tenacity even if Marcia were going for the golf, which she isn’t. In fact, for all I know, she actively hates the game; she’s just there to see one of the players. To my left stands a pair of men who spent the previous night on the floor of a casino. And to my right stretches a long line of people — mostly women that might be referred to as “cougars” — who have firmly committed themselves to standing, more or less stock still, in the middle of said casino for the next several hours. Next to me is famed producer and A&R man Peter Lubin, who is incredulously shouting, “You mean there are bootlegs of these shows?”

We are deep in Jack Wagner territory, we are in plain view of the stage where he will perform tonight, and excitement is in the air. It’s mingling with cigarette smoke and the scent of Social Security checks being pissed into slot machines, but it’s still there, and you can still feel it.

To explain how we got here, it’s necessary to travel back in time a little — 25 years, actually, to 1984, when anyone with a solid set of pipes and a decent power ballad had a shot at getting on the radio, and, perhaps more to the point, when ABC’s General Hospital was still just three years removed from setting daytime ratings records with the wedding of its quintessential star-crossed couple, Luke and Laura. It was an era when the soaps, though still the subject of just as much ridicule as they are today, were big moneymakers for the networks, and still — under the right circumstances — a valid platform for launching a pop singing sensation. Quincy Jones certainly thought so; his Warners-distributed Qwest label, then still in its infancy, was eyeing ABC daytime for a good old-fashioned teen idol to market, and they found him in the person of Jack Wagner, a Missouri-born actor who was brought onto the show as a sort of foil for the soon-to-depart John Stamos. With an impressive vocal range, an exquisite mullet, and an expanding role on daytime’s most popular show, Wagner was a star in the making.

Qwest set him up with Glen Ballard and Clif Magness, a production and songwriting team that essentially built the songs for Wagner while he taped General Hospital during the day, then recorded his vocals at night. With a team of session musicians, they completed an EP designed to tie in with Wagner’s on-set performances as Frisco Jones, with one song — the pillow-soft ballad “All I Need” — serving as the love theme for his character’s brief infatuation with a woman who eventually married his brother. (To continue the “singing daytime actor” theme, the character of Frisco’s brother, Tony Jones, was played by Brad Maule, who went on to release a number of country albums. Though Wagner departed GH repeatedly, Maule stayed behind, a loyalty that was rewarded when the show killed his character with a monkey virus in 2006.)

As a song, “All I Need” isn’t much more than a trifle, a moon-eyed souffle of synths and sincere, crystalline vocals with a dash of rock guitar; though certainly quite catchy, it’s no better or worse than, say, Bryan Adams’s “Heaven” or Survivor’s “The Search Is Over” — which is at least part of why it ended up becoming a #2 hit (prevented from reaching the top spot only by Madonna’s “Like a Virgin“). It was absolutely perfect for the era — and perfect for Wagner’s voice, which combined the elastic range of Daryl Hall with the polite Midwestern diction of Kevin Cronin. The type of song, in other words, that’s exceedingly difficult for an artist to follow up — something that became apparent the next year, when Wagner released his second album, Lighting Up the Night.

By this time, Wagner’s GH character was a beat cop, making cross-promotional opportunities less plentiful, and since Qwest had never commissioned a video for “All I Need,” he was nothing but an anonymous balladeer to anyone who wasn’t watching the show. By the time he put out his third record, 1987’s cheekily titled Don’t Give Up Your Day Job, he had flown ABC’s coop for the theater — he starred in productions of Butterfly, West Side Story, and Grease in the late ’80s — but his pop career had gone cold; his last charting single, “Weatherman Says,” petered out before it reached the Top 40.

Wagner continued plugging away at the musical side of his career for a few years — he signed a deal with MCA in 1989, around the time he returned to General Hospital, but left before an album was released, eventually ending up with the tiny independent label BFE Records for 1993’s Alone in a Crowd — but nothing much came of it, and given that he continued to find steady employment as an actor, going from Santa Barbara to Melrose Place to The Bold & the Beautiful over the last decade, music became less of a priority. He became one of those artists people say they’ve never heard of until they hear a few bars of the big hit, and he popped up on a VH1 retrospective or two, but that seemed to be it for his singing career. Until, that is, The Bold & the Beautiful asked him if he’d be interested in cutting a new album, one which would be bankrolled by (and performed on) the show, sold through its website, and — here’s the part where we start making our way back to that casino — promoted with a series of gigs.

That album, Dancing in the Moonlight, is now four years old, and the fact that you’ve likely never heard of it is all we need to say about its commercial fate, but a funny thing happened on the way to Wagner’s re-retirement as a recording artist: He reconnected with the folks who still remembered — and still enjoyed listening to — his records, and discovered that not only were they enthusiastic about coming out to the shows, but they were willing to return every year — particularly at the Mohegan Sun in Uncasville, CT, where he’s been booked every summer for a number of years now.

I’ve always thought (and stated publicly on numerous occasions) that Wagner deserved a fairer shake as a pop singer — partly because my mom’s afternoon viewing habits exposed me to his GH derring-do at that crucial, impressionable age when melodramatic pop songs were like catnip and Shatneresque acting was a pardonable offense, but also because unlike, say, Don Johnson or Michael Damian, Wagner can actually, you know, sing. His first three records were wholly in step with the trends of the day, not to mention impeccably assembled by top-shelf teams of producers and musicians; during the ’90s, when those records were only available on CD in Japan, they commanded obscene prices, even by the usually ridiculous standards of West Coast pop collectors.

As I said, I’ve written about all this before, which is why I was contacted last year by a Wagner fan named Pat who tried to interest me in coming out to 2008’s Mohegan gigs. I declined after learning that Wagner wasn’t interested in doing an interview about his music, but the more I thought about it, the more I became convinced that there was an interesting feature in all this, with or without Wagner’s input — and so, when this year’s engagement was announced, I got back in touch with Pat, as well as his friend and fellow fan J.B., and asked them if they could give the Wagner interview another shot — and, barring that, introduce me to some diehard fans.

Which is how I ended up at the Mohegan Sun on July 31, hours and hours before the show, meeting folks like Marcia, or Chrissy and Caroline, the twins who have seen at least 40 Jack Wagner concerts since falling in love with him at a car show in 1984, or Kathy, the petite, doe-eyed blonde who unintentionally sent our pal Mr. Lubin into near shock when she started casually discussing the underground market for 20-year-old Wagner concert bootlegs. It is, in short, every bit the scene I hoped I’d find — I’m surrounded by people who have devoted their entire day to standing in line for a musical performance by a man whose lone hit is a quarter century old. It’s the kind of thing that fascinates me to no end, and even if I were the type of writer who dons sheep’s clothing in order to trick people into giving me quotes that will make them look stupid later on, I think I’d be too charmed by the Wagner fans’ extreme friendliness to ambush them. Is all this devotion a little weird? Indubitably. But none of these folks have that Squeaky Fromme glaze in their eyes; they’re perfectly aware of Wagner’s place in the pop culture universe, and at this point, they seem to be here almost as much for each other as they are for him. As Marcia puts it, “Whether he realizes it or not, he brought a lot of people together as friends.”

That friendly vibe extends all the way to the performer himself, as it turns out: Shortly after Wagner and his band start soundcheck, his manager informs me that Jack’s made time for an interview, and ushers my party — which now includes Michael Parr from Ickmusic as well as the still visibly incredulous Pete Lubin — into a booth where we can watch a final run-through of a set that includes originals as well as a few covers, some of which come off better than others. Watching a spectacularly square rendition of “Before You Accuse Me,” someone at the table remarks, “It must be hard to get the blues on a Bel Air golf course.”

Which is a pretty apt observation, actually; though his music career may not have had very long legs, Wagner’s been able to land an enviable number of high-profile gigs in an industry where lightning doesn’t often strike more than once. He’s a scratch golfer, he’s been on Broadway, he has a pair of healthy kids, and he’s reportedly engaged to Heather Locklear. Whatever disappointments Wagner may have shouldered, you’d expect him to be a guy who understands that his life is pretty good — and he certainly comes across that way in our chat.

“It was really based around the hopes of combining music and television again, like Quincy Jones and I did in the ’80s,” says Wagner of 1993’s attempted comeback, Alone in a Crowd. “It didn’t work out, and that’s where that album went. It isn’t that it wasn’t a good album, it’s just — you know, pop music had changed by that time, in ‘92 or ‘93, and the Jack Wagners and Richard Marxes weren’t on the radio anymore. So I kind of just stepped out, and then I started on Melrose Place, and I just had to let go of it. It wasn’t something I wanted to chase. I had young children, and to go out on weekends and play around the country 10, 15 weekends a year would just be taking a beating, especially if you don’t have a hit. Now,” he adds, “music for me is just a gift. It’s always been, but now I can just come out and relax. I’m not trying to sell albums, I’m not trying to get on the radio. It’s much more of an enjoyable process for me.”

Touching on the relative invisibility of 2005’s Dancing in the Moonlight — which isn’t available on iTunes at the moment, as rights to the recordings shift from the original holders to Wagner — he makes no bones about the impetus behind the recording, saying The Bold & the Beautiful “asked me if I’d consider getting back into music and combining music and television again.” Reflecting on the album and its commercial performance, he says, “It was a good attempt, and I think overall it was a pretty good record, and it was used a lot on the show — but the music business now is such a strange business. It isn’t like you get the deal, you cut the record, and the A&R people go push it; now, I don’t know what happens. The managers I run into now, and the guys I worked with in the ’80s — they’re confused too. We had pretty decent success — I think I did eight songs from the album on the show, and internationally, we tried to generate something, but there was never any real quarterback behind it to get it into Australia, or these countries where The Bold & the Beautiful has a 60 share, and that was really the goal. But at least from that, I started touring again, and doing some concerts, which is why I’m here; I think we’ve been here six years in a row now, and it’s one of those little treats that gives me a chance to go out and have some fun.”

Given that tying music into his television roles has been such a recurring theme — and because of my own familiarity with his time on General Hospital — I had to ask him how in the world someone who studied acting could wrap his head around the day-to-day reality of playing characters who manage to sing as they’re doing things like saving the world or running a fashion empire. It’s a question that probably should have been answered with a touch of defensiveness, but instead, Wagner laughs, “Well, on General Hospital, I played a guy who was in a band and joined the police force all of a sudden — the ’singing cop,’ we called him. And Peter Burns on Melrose Place was the chief of staff of a hospital who never did surgery. All he did was have sex. And now Nick Marone on The Bold & the Beautiful is a sea captain turned fashion mogul-slash-singer. So … you know what I mean? You just go with the flow on TV. ‘Yeah! I’ve got it. That’s what I am! I’m a sea captain!’ I grew out a beard for that role, and I had the alcohol and the cigar — you know, a real man’s man — and then, of course, he’s a fashion mogul now, and I went, ‘That’s absolutely what he is. That is absolutely what he should be.’”

Wagner seems to have carried that easygoing attitude over to his outlook on any kind of future for his recording career. When I ask him what the odds for another album are, he shrugs and says, “You know, there aren’t any plans in the works right now, and I don’t know what would really push me to do that. There’s nobody saying ‘Let’s make a record.’ I still write two or three songs a year, and demo them, and play them live sometimes, but … right now there’s nothing in the works.” He adds, “It’s great, though. I’ve accomplished a few goals I set out for myself. For instance, my kids have heard me play my music. Not that it necessarily means anything to them, but I just … you know, like a pro football player who wants his kids to see him play before he’s finished, it may not have an impact on them, but they’ll have an understanding of who their father was. That was a big step for me. Now it’s just about having fun. If I have fun, the audience has fun.”

When I tell him the angle I’m planning for my piece — the idea that even though we like to think an artist’s career is over once the hits dry up, fanhood often proves surprisingly long-lasting, and the fans who are lined up outside the theater to see him perform are an example — he hastens to remind me that he’s been luckier than most, saying, “Well, a lot of that has to do with the fact that I’m still visible. I’m still on TV, and you can never discount that. Everyone will tell you that you always need to stay on the boards. As long as you’re still out there, you’re still alive. If you’re not working, you’re easily forgotten — I don’t care if you had a hit or didn’t have a hit, it’s just a simple fact of the entertainment business.”

He’s certainly right. But as I return to the VIP booth secured by Pat and J.B., I can’t help but be impressed by the sheer good-heartedness of the people I’ve met here — we get a visit from one of the twins, at one point, making sure we’re having a good time — as well as the cuckoo devotion behind it all. One woman, we’re told, straps on a fake neck brace every year, just so she can try and get a better seat; not to be outdone, others fake injuries or disabilities to secure a motorized cart from the casino to make waiting in line more comfortable. Most of these people, as far as I can tell, have been following Wagner’s career for 20 years or more; many of them know each other, and they’re all screaming like lunatics by the time he takes the stage shortly after 8 PM.

Much as I’ve often defended Wagner’s vocal talent, and much as I think he could’ve made a bigger name for himself as a singer if he hadn’t been an actor, I can’t necessarily vouch for a lot of the stuff on those albums; I admit, I was expecting a performance that gave off the slight whiff of Velveeta. But here’s the thing: As I sat at that table with Michael and his wife, and listened to those people scream, and watched Wagner and his band grin and dance like ninnies, any sense of ironic detachment I may have had about the whole thing just melted away. Wagner said it best: If he has fun, the audience has fun, and that’s what that night was all about. Though the set list made room for a deadly run of “unplugged” tunes that included an extremely ill-advised cover of “Down by the River,” there were also a lot of high points, like the new song “John Wayne,” or the unreleased fan favorite “The Right Key.”

The last member of our party, Popdose’s own Jason Hare, arrived too late for the stronger opening set and too early to miss some of the more unfortunate numbers (including, yes, “Before You Accuse Me”), but he didn’t miss the undisputed highlight of the evening, a set-closing rendition of “All I Need” that Wagner performed in the original key — no small feat for a song that was tough to tackle 25 years ago — hitting all the high notes. Jason’s cynicism was running pretty high before the opening chords of “All I Need” — I was actually starting to feel kind of bad for getting him to come out from New York for the show, and I’m the guy who made him listen to Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music — but at the end of the song, when Wagner reached that fluttery falsetto run, Jason jumped to his feet, dropping his phone on the floor in the process and instantly creating an anecdote that’s already been re-tweeted several dozen times.

I repeat it here to embarrass Jason, and also to provide a sort of example of what keeps these folks coming back to the Mohegan Sun every year. Wagner isn’t the world’s biggest star, I’m guessing he probably isn’t daytime’s finest actor, and as a songwriter, he’s no Bob Dylan. But he most certainly is an entertainer, and one whose gifts have most likely never been given their due. I think there might be something sort of noble about that. And even if it isn’t, at least now I can say I’ve seen Jack Wagner floss his crotch with a sweaty towel and throw it to a woman who may or may not have been wearing a fake neck brace.

All of which is my way of telling you that, if you live in the Connecticut area, next Friday is your chance to do two things:

1. Meet up with me, Jason Hare, and our pal Michael Parr from Ickmusic
2. See television heartthrob Jack Wagner perform live and in concert

What’s that, you say? You didn’t know that the guy who played Dr. Peter Burns on Melrose Place was a singer? Oh, for shame! You must not remember his #2 hit “All I Need,” which clambered up the charts in late 1984 while Wagner was making love in the afternoon as General Hospital’s singer/adventurer/cop/superspy Andrew “Frisco” Jones. Allow me to refresh your memory:

Anyway, here’s the deal: 25 years after scoring his biggest hit, and more than 20 years after making his last appearance on the Billboard charts, Wagner — who currently spends his days playing the occasionally tuneful fashion magnate Dominic “Nick” Marone on The Bold & the Beautiful — is still packing ‘em in for his periodic concert dates. He’s mostly abandoned his music career (his most recent album, 2005’s Dancing in the Moonlight, was released as a sort of promotional tie-in with his B&B gig), but when he decides to get the band together and hit the road, his fans show up in droves…as they surely will on July 31, when Wagner makes what is becoming his annual pilgrimage to the Mohegan Sun in Uncasville, CT.

As I’ve mentioned several times before, I am not ashamed to admit that I spent my youth as an ardent fan of Wagner’s music, not to mention his globetrotting, bad-guy-busting antics on GH. (Okay, maybe I am ashamed. But when you’re 10 years old and the show your mom is watching when you come home from school features a character who foils Aztec treasure thieves, prowls the catacombs of a quaint New York burg while pursuing the head of the Chinese mafia, and scores a hit single, well, you’re pretty much done for.) I listened to All I Need, 1985’s Lighting up the Night, and 1987’s Don’t Give up Your Day Job more times than I can count, and interviewed him prior to the release of 1993’s Alone in a Crowd. Though I rarely listen to those records anymore, I still maintain that, had he not been saddled with the “singing actor” stigma — particularly in the era that gave us Don Johnson and Bruce Willis albums — he would have been able to score at least as many hits as, say, Glenn Medeiros. He can sing, after all, and although his ’80s records may sound…’80s now, they fit right in with the aesthetic of the day.

So my plan is to head out to Uncasville early next Friday and set up camp at the Mohegan Sun, where I’ll be talking with some of the Wagner fans who will be cooling their heels in line for (free) tickets, knocking back some libations with Jason and Michael, taking in the show, and maybe — hopefully — speaking with Jack Wagner himself. I come not to bury Mr. Wagner, but to give our readers a look at just how persistent fanhood can be, even for artists commonly regarded as footnotes. If you can make it out, we’ll see you there; if not, I’ll see you here in a couple of weeks with my report from the show. ‘Til then!

After a couple of years I started to take playing pretty seriously, and ended up majoring in music at USC. At my senior recital, Mel came up to me and reintroduced himself. We talked a little about drums; unfortunately, I never saw him again. A few months after I graduated, I got a phone call telling me that Mel had died and he had left me the Slinglerland kit in his will. So everything had come full circle, and I started playing on the kit that made me fall in love with the instrument in the first place.

That’s the beginning of the story of singer/songwriter Alex Kimmell, a.k.a. twodoggarage — and only the beginning. You’ve likely never heard of Alex, or listened to his music; in practical terms, he’s just another guy with a day job and a dream, one without the bucks or the luck to push his way through the crowd and into your stereo. Scratch beneath the surface, though, and you’ll find some uncommonly beautiful songs, delivered with a graceful hand and an open heart — the kind of songs you can tell have intensely personal meaning, expressed with the kind of universal sentiment that draws you back to them again and again. Songs like my personal favorite, “Everything Happens to Me” (download), from 2008’s Pinboy. This song has come up on my iPod dozens of times since I first heard it, but there’s something about it that strikes a deep chord in me. Every time I hear Kimmell’s clear, plaintive voice, the gently surging melody, and the way he sings the refrain…

I think there’s a solution
Love is evolution
Leave behind the disillusionment
I don’t mean to complain
Once again, everything happens to me
When blue skies turn to gray
Once again, everything happens to me

…I’m moved all over again.

As I said, those first paragraphs were just the start of Kimmell’s story; after graduating USC, he toured the jazz circuit in Europe for a few years before moving back to L.A. and becoming, in his words, “burned out on the whole scene.” He eventually wound up behind the kit for Stewboss, but when forced to choose between going back overseas for a tour or staying home with his pregnant wife, he knew there was really only one choice — and he made it, embarking on a solo career with the support of his wife and friends.

Gregg Safarty, my friend and the leader of Stewboss, sat me down and basically said, “You need to be doing your own music anyway. Do your own thing. You can do it.” I had recorded some of my own material on a four-track, but never had the confidence to be in front of the band — I was used to being behind the kit in a supporting role. But with Gregg and my wife’s encouragement, I started playing solo acoustic shows around town and putting my own band together. This was new for me, but I started to love it pretty quick. My bass player, Scott Burns, was a recording engineer and we used to go into the studio he worked at during off hours and started recording both of our original tunes. I learned a lot about recording from him. Adam Castillo, my guitar player at the time, worked at M-Audio; he offered me a gig as an Artist-In-Residence for them. They gave me a computer and some recording gear, and got me started on home recording.

“Home recording,” in Alex’s case, meant essentially moving his gear into a closet and recording after his family went to bed. Still a drummer at heart, he’d track his drums at a rehearsal space, but everything else was created in small spaces, at odd hours, as time allowed. Unlike a lot of DIY artists I’ve listened to, Alex has a sharp ear for sonic depth and color; rather than just capturing the performance — or refining it until nothing’s left — he knows when to bring the noise, so to speak, and when to give his melodies more room to breathe. Take “Gradually Disappearing” (download), for example: you can tell he’s given the recording some thought, but he uses his instruments to support and enhance his message, and gives you just enough of the sweet stuff — subtle synths, droning guitars — to keep you engaged without overwhelming the frayed charm of the vocals or the fragile beauty of the melody. It’s got an almost airy quality, which is somewhat ironic given the way he records.

I record using Cubase 5 and Reason 4 on my Mac through a TASCAM FW-1082 control surface at home. I also share a small studio/rehearsal space with my friend Brett Merritt and his band Hindge Creek where we have a TASCAM DM3200 and a Cubase system, which is where all of the drums were tracked. I don’t have any super expensive microphones or pre-amps or anything like that. For vocals, I use an MXL V-69 tube mic, which is amazing, and for drums we pretty much used SM-57’s on the snare and toms. The overheads were a matched pair of M-Audio Pulsar II’s and the kick mic was a Sure Beta 52, all of which went straight into the DM3200 into Cubase. I have a pair of first generation M-Audio Studiophile SP-5B monitors that I use, but since a lot of my recording is done at night and my studio is literally in my bedroom’s walk-in closet, I use headphones most of the time.

When I recorded my guitar parts I went straight into the FW-1082 and used Amplitube 2. Once again, I would love to crank up a Fender or Marshall stack, but with the limitations of recording in a closet, the virtual amps are incredible! If you take some time and mess around enough, you can get some pretty amazing tones out of those things.

Having worked with a number of indie musicians — and recorded albums of my own — I know how easy it is to let time lapse between releases. You’ve got annoying real life issues to deal with, of course, and then there’s always the problem of not knowing when the music is actually done. I’ve known guys who labored over albums for years — a decade or more — and ended up getting so close to the material that they couldn’t tell what they were hearing anymore. Point being, it helps to have some sort of external impetus to push you toward the finish line. Personally, I liked to schedule a release party before the record was actually in my hands; it had the negative side effect of often producing comical and unintended consequences, but once deposits were paid and plans were made, there was nothing to do but cut the umbilical cord on the stated day and date. The “external impetus” thing is something Alex Kimmell understands intimately — A Gross Display of Penmanship was recorded as an entry in this year’s RPM Challenge, and Pinboy came together because he wanted something to sell at a benefit show he was organizing to raise money for a service dog for his oldest son, who is autistic.

Though he’s nominally a one-man band, Kimmell stresses that his records couldn’t get made without the support of talented friends: “Adam Castillo, Jon Mesh, Jim Maloy and Gregg Sarfaty played some incredible guitar solos and added textures that enhanced the songs in ways my abilities would never have let me do. Scott Burns has been my go-to bass player and good friend for years — he literally reads my mind and plays what I need without me even needing to tell him. Getting the record mastered made a huge difference as well — my friend Jim Bailey over at Random Precision worked painstakingly hard on getting the record to sound just right and I am forever indebted to him and his incredible ears.”

As I said before, you’ve probably never heard of Alex Kimmell or twodoggarage, and it’s altogether likely that — presuming you listened to the two songs I included in this post — today marks your introduction to his music. But he’s a guy making records for the right reasons, and doing a damn fine job of it, too. For that reason, I asked him if he had any advice for other DIY musicians, and I think his words do a perfect job of summing up what I like about his music:

Surround yourself with people who are honest. Even if you work very hard on something, and put your entire heart into it, it may not sound very good. You need to be sure that your friends or partners are willing and able to tell you the truth and not let your feelings get hurt in the process. Unfortunately this is probably the most difficult part of being an artist. But it’s also the most important.

Also, spend as much time as you can with other artists while they do their work. Spend time in recording studios and watch how other professionals get sounds and tweak sounds and experiment. Read recording books and, most importantly, spend time recording. Make recordings that you never plan to play for anyone and intentionally fuck up. Make mistakes. Put the microphone too close to the guitar. Sing into a shoebox.

I’ve never taken a recording class, but I was fortunate enough to have been a session musician and was able to be in studios a lot. After I lay down my drum parts, I would just hang out in the room and watch the rest of the session. I learned something new every single time.

Not long after Popdose launched, we realized that the old design, while functional, exposed a fairly serious (albeit awesome) flaw, which was that we had too much content. Most weekdays, we were publishing a new post every two hours between 7:30 AM and 3:30 PM EST, which meant that nothing stayed on the front page longer than a day — and prevented us from effectively promoting “event” posts, like interviews and staff collaborations. The only way we could really get around this was by “pinning” posts to the top of the site, which had the unfortunate effect of making it look like we weren’t updating, or making everyone take a vacation, as we did when the Popdose 100 and Mellowmas ran last year.

Being that I read just about everything the site publishes, this design flaw has pissed me off for months, and patching it was my top priority when I set about redesigning the site. Taking inspiration from Salon — not, as a couple of snarky fucks have suggested, the AV Club — I spent a few months coming up with a new look that would allow for more content, more effective promotion of that content…and, well, open up more real estate for ads. Thanks to the coding wizardry of our pal Rahul, I’m happy to say that Popdose 2.0 accomplished all of those goals.

Of course, progress comes with a price, and our new digs have not escaped criticism, either from the writers who constantly pester me about putting the pill back into the site logo or from the aforementioned snarky fucks who have accused us of trading a “colorful” design for a pale imitation of the AV Club. I know we’re never going to be able to make everyone happy at once, but I am very interested in how our readers feel about their browsing experience here, so now that everyone has had some time to explore the new design, I’d like to open up the floor and get your thoughts on what you do or don’t like about the new look.

But before you give me your gripes about the way the site looks, I’d appreciate it if you could cast your votes in a poll. In the constantly changing stream of content Popdose produces, we’ve seen a lot of series go by the wayside during the last year. Some of them had to be put down — sorry, Cassingle Vault and Cutouts Gone Wild! diehards, they’re gone for good — but others have taken unplanned trips to column limbo, and I’m curious how you feel about that. Take a minute to check a box or six, and I’ll meet you in the comments!

I try to do right, I try to do right, because I only got, only got, only got, only got…all that I have is one life to live.

These are the words that greeted viewers of the long-running ABC daytime serial One Life to Live when they tuned in for a pair of episodes last May, thanks to a remixed-and-revamped version of the show’s theme song performed by Snoop Dogg. Yes, that Snoop Dogg. You may have seen blurbs here and there about Snoop’s OLTL appearance and chalked it up to a joke, or some of the hard-hitting investigative journalism the Internet is known for, but no — Snoop really did tape a two-episode guest stint that had him rolling into the fictional Pennsylvania town of Llanview to perform at a bachelorette party. As far as musicians-on-scripted-TV crossovers go, it was both utterly ridiculous and eminently believable — of all the multiplatinum veteran rap artists in the world, who would be more likely than Snoop Dogg to take the microphone for a small club filled with screaming women in a random Philadelphia suburb? — and far less awkward than, say, the Counting Crows showing up to play in a bar during an episode of Boston Public:

As any Ricky Nelson fan could tell you, musicians have been taking advantage of television shows’ built-in audiences pretty much since the dawn of the medium. But the slow, painful death of Top 40 radio — hell, of radio in general, at least as a reliable conduit for new music — has given rise to a new breed of TV music supervisors who actively work to connect their viewers with songs and artists. One such music supervisor is One Life to Live’s Paul Glass, who has used his position with the show to help turn it into a surprisingly popular destination for musicians promoting new releases. Many of us still tend to think of daytime television as the last refuge for cheesy strings and organ music, but when Mary J. Blige booked an appearance on One Life to Live in 2006 — and enjoyed a 40% bump in sales the following week — OLTL quickly became the Ed Sullivan Show of the soaps, with Glass booking and producing a succession of artists that now includes Lifehouse, Nelly Furtado, Simply Red, Erykah Badu, Timbaland (with the loathsome OneRepublic), and, uh, Puddle of Mudd (you can’t win ‘em all).

Though Blige’s 40% bounce remains the peak example of OLTL’s sales power, its audience is clearly receptive to the artists Glass books. Earlier this year, the Plain White T’s used an appearance on the show to promote their latest single, and although sales from their most recent album have been underwhelming since its release — at least in comparison to the band’s debut — the single immediately appeared on iTunes’ singles chart, where it’s remained for the last couple of months.

Actors on daytime dramas, generally speaking, do a lot of work for comparatively little pay and even less recognition, and the shows’ music supervisors aren’t much different. In some cases, the job entails little more than acting as, in Glass’s words, “a go-between for the director and composer and also the record label that may be releasing a soundtrack,” but his responsibilities are broader. “In my case,” he says, “I compose music for the original score (along with a number of other composers that I commission music from), select source music for background in clubs, et cetera, and also license songs for feature uses. I also book and produce the guest performers.”

It’s on that last front that Glass has found his niche. Though he admits that ABC has suggested guest performers in the past, the network has never dictated an appearance, leaving him free to channel his love of music into his work — for example, the April 2 episode that’s set to feature a performance from Rachael Yamagata, an artist who isn’t a household name, but one Glass has been a fan of for years — since 2005, to be specific, when he used her song “I’ll Find a Way” for a montage in another episode of OLTL. This time around, Yamagata will not only be featured, but she’ll be performing her new single. “I didn’t think she’d agree to do the show, but she did, and it was amazing,” says Glass. “She and the band performed ‘Elephants’ completely live. Her musicality both vocally and at the piano is so delicate and focused. I can’t believe how solid her pitch is singing in those hushed tones — she’s a very special artist and I hope that our audience enjoys the segment.”

The segment in question comes with a twist, too: “It’s basically a montage that we performed live, something I’ve wanted to do for a long time. We move from the club through various scenes and back to Rachael. Mary Ryan directed and edited and did a really great job — you feel something with every shot.”

Obviously, a show with dozens of cast members and a constantly shifting series of storylines can’t always make room for live performances, even if it is on five days a week, 52 weeks a year — but Glass also gets to play DJ during OLTL’s montage sequences, as he did on the show’s March 18 episode, which highlighted a track from former Rock Star contestant Ryan Star. Fast-forward to the 5:30 spot in this clip — it’s long:

In this case, the song in question, titled “We Might Fall,” stayed in Glass’s mind for awhile before he had a chance to use it; it was originally in the running for the show’s 10,000th episode, which aired in August of 2007, but he “wanted something a little more introspective.” He didn’t forget it, though, and when the right opportunity presented itself with the March 18 montage, he went back to the Star ballad. “I thought it had the right balance of sadness and regret but still enough power and a little tension to carry those moments,” he says now. “I think you can feel the life-changing events throughout that track.”

It’s quotes like that that really underscore what makes Glass such a unique asset for One Life to Live, as well as a good example of where the long marriage between original music and scripted television might be heading. (Glass hastens to add that he enjoys a terrific rapport with, and support from, his executive producer, Frank Valentini: “We work very closely to find the right performers and scenarios for these shows, as well as for the montages. Frank and I have been working together for over 10 years and are almost always on the same page with what we like. He’s such a huge part of making what I do possible.”) For most Popdose readers, the “good old days” of Top 40 radio may not have been as wonderfully eclectic as FM’s infancy, but they still allowed us to hear a blend of genres that you can’t find on terrestrial stations today. Survivor sharing playlist space with DeBarge? Bon Jovi and the Beastie Boys? You don’t hear the same variety on major stations today, and the lost art of creating a comfortably eclectic listening environment is part of why the radio has lost so much of its hitmaking mojo.

That spirit survives, albeit in a different, more limited form, in the work of music fans like Paul Glass. As we’ve discussed here before, the old methods of delivery are — to pinch a phrase from Tommy Keene — places that are gone. If the music business is going to survive in any meaningful form, it’ll be through the development, adaptation, and strengthening of new (or at least new-ish) ones. And scripted daytime television, an industry that’s in no small danger itself these days, stands only to benefit from the mainstream exposure it gains from these collaborations. Creative expression through corporate synergy…on the soaps? As Snoop might say, it’s a brizzave new world.

Anyway, back to young Miss Lovato. I have the good fortune of being too old to worry much about my hipness quotient — and when I was younger, I was dumb enough to think writing four-star reviews of Toto and Bruce Willis records was the epitome of brave iconoclasm — but I’m still aware of the rock-crit parameters: There are acts that have cred, and those that don’t, and never the twain shall meet. I can’t pretend this hasn’t colored my outlook at least a little, and I think any writer who denies the same is either a liar or delusional; this is why, when we hear that one of the designated uncool bands has a new album coming out, we know it’s okay to mock it without hearing it. This isn’t what we’re supposed to do — it flies in the face of a discipline grounded in the idea that art can be appraised at least semi-objectively — but deep in the heart of most critics is a scrawny middle school kid who desperately wants to be cool, and stepping out of line is not what we do best.

I suppose the above paragraphs make it sound like I’m presenting myself as a brave exception to the rule, but I’m not. If I do step out of line, it’s because I’m not Chuck Klosterman or Rob Sheffield, and I don’t have much cred to damage; I’ve been fortunate enough to build a certain level of mild renown on the Web, but not enough to have to worry about scores of negative comments from people who think my work sucks — and perhaps more importantly, my livelihood doesn’t hinge on creating the impression that I have cutting-edge taste. If paying my bills meant acting like a big Menomena fan, then I have to be honest — that’s probably what I’d do, even though I’d suck at it and hate myself, and — here’s where I get to the point of this whole post — I would certainly never admit to not being able to come up with an argument against the Fray’s self-titled sophomore effort.

In all honesty, I approached The Fray with an acceptable level of that unprofessional sarcasm I was talking about; I had dodged most of the band’s debut, with the obvious exception of “Cable Car,” a song that always reminded me of Grey’s Anatomy even though I’ve never seen an episode of the show. I wanted to hear The Fray for the same reason I own the collected works of Asia and Kansas — and the same reason I got into this racket in the first place, really: I love hearing stuff, even if only once, and even if it sucks real bad. (Sometimes especially if it sucks real bad, but that’s another story.) But the more I listened to the album, the more I…well, not liked it, exactly, but I certainly started to appreciate its glossy, monolithic competence.

If you’ve somehow managed to avoid hearing the Fray for the last four years, I’ll try to describe their sound for you here. You know how when Coldplay came out with its first album, people made fun of them for taking the most easily marketable aspects of Radiohead’s sound and turning them into midtempo music for secretaries and asshole college freshmen? Well, imagine a band that takes the most easily marketable aspects of Coldplay’s sound, crosses them with Mike & the Mechanics’ greatest hits, and sprinkles two scoops of melodrama over the whole mealy mess. It’s pop by numbers, for people who can’t count higher than three.

Except here’s the thing: Even though I know I’m supposed to, I don’t hate it. I’m not even indifferent to it. In fact, I find it sort of comforting, even if I’m not really sure why. My friend and co-worker Mike Farley thinks it’s because I’ve written songs of my own, and I know how difficult it is to write something that sounds so easy, but I’m not so sure — partly because I’m secure in the knowledge that I was barely a songwriter, and partly because I don’t respond to the Fray’s songs on an intellectual level. No, it’s worse: I can actually feel a few of their songs pulling my emotional levers. I see what the band is up to, but it doesn’t matter — when I hear the new album’s strongest track, “Ungodly Hour” (download), I feel pretty much the way they want me to feel. (Specifically: melodramatically morose for no good reason whatsoever.)

True story: I was halfway through writing this piece when I flew out to Arizona to be a part of my younger brother’s wedding. Imagine my surprise when the bride and groom danced their first dance to a Fray song (”Look After You” [download]). At first, I wasn’t even thinking about my editorial; I was too overcome with surprise that someone who shares my DNA would decide to kick off his wedded life with something by a C+ pop outfit like this one. And then all of a sudden I fucking got choked up and I finally, totally understood the peculiar genius inherent in this type of music: It’s designed to make you feel like your whole life is a wedding reception, or a funeral, or anything more meaningful than whatever it is you’re doing in your cubicle right now. We heap scorn on this stuff because it tries so hard and so obviously, but really, pop music has been suffering a pretty severe earnestness drought since the early ’90s. Oh, you can still find it — in fact, you can damn near kill yourself on it, providing you’re a fan of adult contemporary or country — but the salty tidal wave of irony and anger that swept over Top 40 radio 15 years ago still hasn’t dried up completely; these days, if someone scores a hit with his heart on his sleeve, it’s the exception (Alicia Keys’ “No One”) instead of the rule (Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies”).

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing at all, and I think it’s important to remember that it needed to happen — by the end of the ’80s, your average Top 40 listener’s only source of musical humor came from Phil Collins videos, and millions of people were perfectly willing to accept that Richard Marx meant every word he said — but it’s just as important to remember that music is supposed to make us feel something, and even if groups like the Fray are frequently embarrassing in their attempts to take us to that special place, I can at least understand their appeal to someone who’s surrounded by Lady Gaga and Flo Rida. When you’ve numbed yourself to anodized lab creations like “My Humps” and the Pussycat Dolls, even an awkward attempt to trigger honest emotion feels refreshing, doesn’t it?

Of course, it’s easy to make the argument that people whose musical diet consists of whatever the radio or television happens to feed them don’t deserve to hear anything worth listening to, but that’s just snobby — which brings us back to the beginning of this piece, and to Popdose’s reason for being, really: the idea that popular culture is its own reward, and our shared experience of it would be richer if it weren’t colored by fear. And what’s more, “pop culture” encompasses a deeper, broader spectrum than we tend to think. This is esoteric stuff, I admit, and I sort of hate each member of the Fray for inspiring me to type it, but on the other hand, I have to admit it’s kind of perfect. Now, would I admit this to a room full of bitter, failed musicians who look like Elvis Costello? Probably not. But I’m working on it.

I think most music lovers over the age of, say, 25 can feel Stevie’s pain. Our readership skews slightly older here, so I think I can say with confidence that my early listening experiences mirrored many of yours — hours spent poring over an album’s artwork (either vinyl or cassette, natch), reading the fine print in the credits, memorizing musicians’ names, looking for hidden meaning in the lyrics. (Or just trying, and failing, to understand them at all.) Each major label had a different feel to me back then — from the cool blues of Reprise’s distinctive cassettes to the cheap, bare-bones packaging of MCA’s titles. While other kids my age were diagramming sentences, watching Nightmare on Elm Street movies, and requesting Bon Jovi on our local Top 40 stations, I was learning names like Joe Chemay, Jeff Bova, and Judd Miller.

And although music was portable back then — I never started my walk to school without my Walkman — it wasn’t the bite-sized commodity it is now; if you bought an album, you were probably going to develop more than a passing acquaintance with its contents, whether or not you liked every song. This happened for two reasons: One, because fast-forwarding through a track was a tedious, inexact process that sometimes took half as long as just listening to the damn song; and two, if you spent $10 to $15 on an album, you tended to feel like you needed to spend a little time with it.

I’ve talked before about how I feel like the advent of the CD sort of destroyed our relationship with music — how the ability to push through a song with a single tap of a button, and let a machine randomize an album’s running order, snapped the first tether between us and any kind of consistently deep emotional response to a song. But that isn’t what this column is about — not really, anyway. Today, I want to talk about where snapping that tether has led us — specifically, to a place where we can carry music with us literally everywhere we go, but really listening to it is damn near impossible.

I know my perspective as a music consumer isn’t totally unique, but I think my progression — from a typical ’80s kid who bought albums sparingly (and listened to them for years on end), to a writer who spent the late ’80s and early ’90s gorging on scads of free music (and discovering much of it wasn’t very good), to a thirtysomething critic with 200,000-odd mp3s in his library and an inability to remember enough favorite albums to fill out the latest Facebook meme — reflects the way our relationship with music has changed, and how our untrammelled access to cheap or free songs and albums has backfired on us, specifically those of us who really love music enough to spend time seeking it out.

You see, wanting is better than having / Because having leaves you wanting more / No matter what you expect, you’re gonna get more or less than you bargained for. –Fred Wilhelm, “Sea Monkeys”

As I see it, the problem stems from two things — let’s call them volume and playback. Volume, in this case, refers to the sheer number of songs and albums on the market, which newly affordable home recording equipment and Web distribution ramped up to mind-boggling levels in the late ’90s — and it’s still growing exponentially today, thanks to the major labels’ (admittedly quite late) entry into the digital reissue market. Whether you spent hours trawling MP3.com for listenable indie artists in ‘99, or years downloading gigabytes worth of catalog recordings from Napster/Audiogalaxy/Bittorent clients, paid pennies on the dollar for CD-quality rips from the Russian mafia, or (God forbid) spent market price at iTunes and Amazon’s mp3 store, you’ve partaken from the ever-rising trough of cheap, instantly available music. The Internet has democratized music collecting to the point where we don’t even think about it anymore — my grandfather spent his life acquiring a room full of LPs, then scribbling his notes for each one on several filing cabinets’ worth of three-by-five cards, all of which could be collected today with a few months, a $100 hard drive, and a cracked copy of Excel.

Of course, that’s assuming anyone would take the time to write those notes, which brings me to the “playback” part of my argument — specifically, that music’s evolution from a “let’s all go sit in the parlor and sit around the stereo” activity to a byte-sized portable commodity has created a less fulfilling listening environment. We listen in the car, at our desks, while we’re out, even when our cellphones ring — in short, while we’re doing other things. As it’s become more pervasive, music has turned into less of a focal point — less of an emotional touchstone and more of a commodity, a thing. As I’m writing this, I have my Gmail inbox, Facebook updates, Twitter feed, and RSS reader open. I’ve left a comment on a Popdose thread, answered the phone, and looked up directions to a record store in Phoenix — and I’m also taking notes for my review of the new Kelly Clarkson record. I’d like to believe listening to an album this way isn’t typical, but really, I think the only unusual item on that list, for most people, would be the note-taking part — and I am, of course, taking them not because I have any real connection to the music, but because I know it’s the fastest route to fulfilling a professional obligation.

The obvious solution to all this would be to just shut it all down — close my browser, put on a pair of headphones, and just, you know, pay attention for the duration of an album. But my brain — like some of yours, I imagine — no longer processes music that way. Even when I have the opportunity to focus on an album, I find it exceedingly difficult to stay focused. Maybe if I spent a year following the Noel Murray path, my neurons would realign themselves, but that isn’t financially feasible, and anyway, I like my job — a job that keeps me firmly threaded onto the pop culture spigot.

It’s a problem, and one that I’ve finally started taking steps to try and address. As a critic, I can’t do anything about the volume, and as a stay-at-home dad whose office is smack dab in the middle of a chaos-filled house, I can’t do much about the playback. But as a music lover, I can do a better job of reconnecting those broken tethers. For starters, after years of making fun of my already-indoctrinated friends, I’ve hopped on the GTD bandwagon, and have found that keeping a list of writing assignments really helps me organize my listening and finish reviews faster. I’ve also adopted another trendy affectation of creative types, the Moleskine; I purchased a pocket-sized notebook a month or so ago, and have already filled up a quarter of it with notes I’ve scribbled while listening to albums or watching movies I’m reviewing. It seems like an obvious step, particularly for the folks who have been swearing by Moleskines for years, but I’ve never been that disciplined with my writing — I’ve always just turned on the music, sat down at the keyboard, and trusted the reviews to write themselves. In the last couple of years, though, I’ve found it increasingly difficult to write anything about an album without listening to it a dozen times, which is obviously not the most efficient way of doing things.

Between Google Tasks and the Moleskine, I’ve started moving through the music I have to listen to at a pretty good clip, and spent many more hours getting back to an unfamiliar pleasure: immersing myself in music I want to listen to. Perhaps as a direct result, 2009 is shaping up to be one of the best years for new music I can remember: January brought Steve Martin’s terrific The Crow: New Music for the 5-String Banjo, February gave us N.A.S.A.’s Spirit of Apollo, and I’m pretty sure I’m going to spend the next several weeks listening to the Damnwells’ One Last Century more times than I’ll be able to count. Of course, this doesn’t mean I think everyone should start making lists of albums to listen to, or annotating their listening habits — I’m just saying that no matter how hard and fast technology pulls us away from our old listening habits, there are ways of adapting to the new paradigm. We’ll probably never get back to the days of lying on the floor and going over a new album with a magnifying glass — but then again, back in the old, pre-Internet days, we never would have been exposed to the genius of someone like Henry Hey. It all evens out in the end, right?

If you aren’t a longtime reader of this space, you may not even know who I am, so let’s start with an introduction: My name is Jeff Giles, and I’m the editor-in-chief of this establishment. Popdose rose from the ashes of my old site, Jefitoblog, after it was cruelly eaten by a ne’er-do-well hosting company by the name of Jatol (which is, I believe, Latin for “motherfucker”). I was all set to cash in my bloggin’ chips, but due to the gentle persistence of some friends and colleagues, I asked some of my favorite writers if they’d be interested in joining forces. Voila! Popdose was born.

Anyway, the thing is, Jefitoblog was basically an accident. When I started the site in 2004, I was five years removed from a career in music journalism that had seen me go from a young, wide-eyed music fiend to a jaded, not-as-young crank in the space of a decade. Jefitoblog wasn’t supposed to be a continuation of that career — it was just a lark, a way of talking about music with people who loved it as much as I did. I really only had my own domain because I couldn’t track stats through my LiveJournal account — and I’d only opened that because there was no other way of leaving comments on my old friend Ben’s journal.

And now look at us. Hell, Ben writes for Popdose now! (He’s the man behind our excellent Test of the Boomerang series, which would be one of my favorite weekly reads even if I wasn’t involved in publishing it.) In just a dozen short months, our cheery gang of pop culture mavens has steadily expanded its ranks and its stats, to the point where we are now reaching over 5,000 unique visitors a month — and over 3 million hits. To celebrate our birthday, we’ll be giving the site a facelift, turning the front page into more of a magazine-style table of contents that will allow us to give you easier access to the heaping loads of awesome content we’re churning out on an hourly basis.

All of which brings me back to my point, which is that it’s been a long time since I rapped at ya. Getting Popdose off the ground has been no easy task; without our army of terrific writers, and the tireless assistance of Senior Editor Robert Cass and Managing Editor Jason Hare — not to mention innumerable instances of above-and-beyond aid from everyone on the staff, as well as the vital backing we’ve enjoyed from our benefactors at Pressing Needs — it would have been simply impossible. A lot of hours have gone into the more than 2,800 posts in these archives — hours that have slowly but surely kept me from doing what got me here in the first place: talking about music with people who love it as much as I do. When Jefitoblog went off the air, I was posting twice a day; these days, most of my work for Popdose is behind the scenes. I’d like to change that a little.

So here’s the deal: from here on out, I’ll make it my business to communicate with you guys via an ongoing series of Letters from the Editor like this one — letters which will address a wide-ranging variety of topics, just like I used to. It’s my plan to get them out on a weekly basis, but I know better than to make promises I may not be able to keep. Point is, you’ll be hearing more from me in ‘09 — and oh man, the site is going to get even better, just wait and see.

See you soon!