Letting the white whales swim

Plus Links of the Week, including why Cosby mattered, the late great PJ O'Rourke, and charming Wikipedia high-fivers

I enjoyed thinking about this Twitter prompt the other day:

dan chamberlain @amfmpm

what's your pop culture white whale? i mean unreleased/unrealized stuff like "the day the clown cried" - mine is the rumored jay-z blueprint 3 track "crispy benjamins" which supposedly sampled regina spektor's "chemo limo"

FYI, “The Day the Clown Cried” is an infamous Jerry Lewis movie from the ‘70s that was never released (and, to be honest, sounds like maybe it should stay that way).

I had a couple of pop culture white whales that I spent a lot of time searching for in my twenties. One was an extended mix of the U2 song “Two Hearts Beat As One.” At some point I owned the 12” single (remember 12” singles? Then you’re as old as me) but it got lost in between moves somewhere. I never could find another copy.

The other one was Prince’s “Black Album,” which was a famous lost artifact for a while — he pulled it from release just before it was supposed to come out in 1987. That was right in the deepest phase of my Prince obsession. I had to have that record. I finally found a bootleg copy on vinyl at a record store in Atlanta for something like $50, which was pretty close to a day’s wages for me at the time. A few years later, broke and between jobs, I sold it back.

All this was before the Internet. Now just about everything that can be uncovered has been uncovered. Thanks to YouTube, I can go listen to that U2 remix anytime I want:

And Prince, probably realizing everybody would now be hearing it anyway, went ahead and officially released “The Black Album.” YouTube has it, too:

The downside of the Internet (well, ONE downside of the Internet) is that it solves so many problems that maybe shouldn’t be solved. No matter how awesome the magic trick, there’s somebody online who explains how it’s done. No matter how obscure the work, if it ever made it to film or tape or print, somebody has posted it.

It was a thrill to track down that lost music that I didn’t know if I would ever hear again. But I have to say, the thrill wasn’t as strong as the feeling of wanting to hear it again. I still enjoy the music, but not as much as I enjoyed the search.

I used to think a lot about tracking down tapes of some of my favorite concerts — there’s a LOT of stuff out there now — or finding old short stories that mesmerized me as a kid. Maybe I’ll get a case of nostalgia one day and start looking again. But for now I’m inclined to let the mystery be. You don’t always have to chase the white whale.

10 things I wanted to share this week:

1. In case you missed it, I started a new series of music essays called Heaven is a Playlist. First up: a Little Richard deep cut that has haunted me for years.

2. This week on the SouthBound podcast, we did a reply of my 2020 conversation with the brilliant South Carolina writer Latria Graham.

3. My weekly for WFAE was on how so many people are trying to erase black history — especially right in the middle of Black History Month.

4. Given the name of this newsletter, you can imagine how excited I was to read about Larry Brown’s writing shack. If you haven’t read Larry Brown, you are in for a ride — I’d start with the short stories and go from there.

5. DOG NEWS: As I work on my book about the Westminster Dog Show and the bonds between dogs and their people, I’m dropping dog-related items into this slot on the countdown. This week: I somehow just learned that Patty Hearst was (is?) a successful show-dog owner.

6. Tressie McMillan Cottom, one of the best essayists in America, looks back at “The Cosby Show.”

7. Is Google search dying? It wasn’t until I read this piece that I realized how many times I do a search and then scroll down through two pages of ads.

8. RIP Valerie Boyd, a brilliant journalist, writer and teacher. I spent just a brief time with her — a couple of days at a workshop at the University of Georgia. I ran an idea by her, something I was unsure about, and her feedback was warm and generous and 100 percent honest. I can see how so many of her students and colleagues loved her.

9. RIP P.J. O’Rourke, one of those bylines I always looked for, from the National Lampoon and Rolling Stone on forward. I especially enjoyed this tribute from my friend Matt Crossman.

10. There’s a charming couple pictured in the Wikipedia entry for high-fives. This is how they ended up there.