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Better Ed than Dead

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(Steven J Wilson)

Ed Sheeran - He looks like Van Morrison, kinda, huh? Check the tats.  

Ed Sheeran is the highest paid entertainer on the planet. I think. I don’t know. They say he’s worth 65 million. Anyway, I read that somewhere. God knows he travels light and doesn’t have to share that dough with an orchestra or anything.

I saw Ed once. At least that I’m aware of. He opened for the Rolling Stones in 2015 (or was it 16?) at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City. Just me and several thousand of my closest friends. He came out with a guitar in front of that throng and mesmerized the crowd. Okay, not really. Some kids seemed to like him. Old people, eighty percent of the attendees, treated him as a curiosity or mild irritant, not uncommon for a warmup act served up before the Stones’ Lions and Christians, bread and circuses exhibition. Later, he sang “Beast of Burden” with Mick. He was better than Dave Matthews.

I see his ruddy little mug and tousled ginger top here and there in the social media. He seems like a nice fella. What little of his music I’ve heard I found inoffensive, innocuous, fairly musical. But nothing to get hung about.

But context, you know, can be everything. Last night I was driving home from having seen If Beale Street Could Talk, which put plenty on my mind, about white privilege, the souls of black folks, and all kinds of stuff. I located the FM station with the best reception for the KU (Jayhawks) basketball and distracted myself with the talents of young African-Americans (mostly) performing for proprietary white (mostly) people. Go, team.

I’d tell you that I’m semi-retired and I just work at my encore career as a library flunky at Lawrence High School because I want to stay active and give back to my community. That would be 1/3 true. The other 2/3 is I need the money because life in the music business left me where it leaves most people in the music business – nowhere. I get social security; which Mitch McConnell wants to take away from me to pay for David Koch’s appropriation of National Public Radio. But I digress.


Alright, cut to the chase, I’m driving to work at 6:54 in the morning and the radio is tuned to the same station as the night before, only now the station has returned to its usual programming of ‘hits.’ And on comes “Castle on the Hill” by Ed Sheeran. I caught a fragment of lyric that was pedestrian, but evocative in its way. Attached to it was a sort of melody. Surrounding it was this predictable wash of “I, too, treasure my original copy of The Unforgettable Fire sounds.” And you know, it wasn’t bad. It told a story (you know, like country music … doink, doink, doink) and as I listened I was transported. Specifically, to being the age most of his target audience is. To not having a million prejudices and the weight of the western pop music canon on my temples. To hearing this not charmless little graft of “Brown-eyed Girl” and “Summer of ‘69” (without, perhaps, ever having heard either) and thinking … I like this.

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(Steven J Wilson)
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