The new course is underway and I met with the teaching assistants to discuss what we are doing. I realized soon into the zoom they just want me to order them around. it is understandable considering they are graduate students busy with graduate studies which of course I am too, but I was hoping we might be more collaborative. So it goes. I am the bossman goo goo ga joob. I saw a t-shirt online that said expert texpert choking smokers. I want that t-shirt. I designed the new course, the one about the music business, so that it is about stories instead of Socan’s payment schedule. It is my belief music business stories arm a person better than insisting these are the rules. The first week was expecting them to subscribe to four regular online dispatches of music business coverage and/ or opinions, Bob Lefsetz, Exclaim, Billboard and Amplify Her Voice which is dedicated to women’s issues in the music business which I knew not about until a student last semester brought it up in class. Then they have to discuss just one thing each week from all these subscriptions. That’s it. Talk about the stories, get your feet wet in deciphering, querying, considering or rejecting. So far most of them just want to defend Taylor Swift from whatever disparaging opinions of her Bob Lefsetz has had in the past. I hope by the time our three months is up they make more interesting leaps of understanding, but then again it took me years to realize that of the four different ways to voice a major seventh chord, the three not in root position are still that same major seventh chord and worth remembering in that light or to put it another way it took me years to realize farinata is just chickpea flour and water.