It's a shame Linda Chorney didn't win that Grammy. Her acceptance speech would have been worth sitting through a dreary award show to hear. Chances are, it would have been pleasantly vulgar; without a doubt, it would have been funny. Chorney redefines irreverence. If, as her new book demonstrates, she possesses neither a filter nor tact when she's writing, imagine what she's like when she's speaking off the cuff.
It is tempting to see the Linda Chorney story as representative of the plight of the indie musician, or the importance of networking, or the emerging digital majority and the democratization of showbiz. Really it is none of these things, and that is because Chorney, a total original, is representative of nothing and nobody but herself. This is a personal story told by an uncommonly lucky individual, an insouciant bullet-dodger, and you are advised not to try any of this at home.
The singer was born in Massachusetts a half-century ago, but as many irrepressible characters do, she's washed up on the Jersey Shore. There she was given by her husband a subscription to Grammy 365, a social network that allowed participating musicians to interact with award voters. They lobbied them hard on behalf of her "Emotional Jukebox" album, and scored an upset nomination in the Americana category. She had no label, no publicist, and no manager, but she'd landed herself a ticket to the music industry's biggest dance. Predictably, not everybody found her underdog story charming, and "Who the [expletive] Is Linda Chorney?," her 400-page behemoth of a book, is in part a settling of scores with her detractors. Or, as she puts it in the book's subtitle in characteristically pungent prose, those who tried to poop in her glass slipper.
To that end, Chorney reprints pages of mean commentary from message boards and venomous e-mail from buzzkills who opposed her nomination. The singer responds by changing the names to various expletives -- some of them quite inventive in their sheer immaturity -- and responding in turn, Mystery Science Theatre-style, to each accusation and insult. This is the behavior of a woman who needs to have the last word; in fairness, however, Chorney is a lot more likable than the resentful purists who treat her nomination as an affront to the nebulous Americana segment.
She also includes positive notices, sometimes shortened, but more often unabridged. As it turns out, yours truly is in the book, too: She excerpts the last few paragraphs of my Ledger review of her performance at Light of Day. I wasn't asked permission, which is more than okay; after reading every word of this modern-day chapbook, I'd be disappointed if it ever dawned on Linda Chorney to do something that polite. These sections of the book are framed by blow-by-blow accounts of the making of "Emotional Jukebox," old weblog entries, detailed stories of the singer's checkered romantic history, photos of Chorney with famous musicians, and not-atypical tales of musicianly excess on the road. These parts read like a rock star autobiography written by somebody who isn't a rock star, and that alone makes them more compelling than the standard Behind the Music narrative about the cost of success.
A competent, and therefore useless, editor would have wrecked "Who the [expletive] Is Linda Chorney?" by striking most of this stuff, thereby neutering a book that benefits from its wild yo-yoing between ecstatic self-congratulation and defensive rage. But Chorney's refusal to be edited -- or to be told what to do at all -- is a major theme of the book. She's not interested in following anybody's rules but her own, and should you tell her to pipe down, as her beleaguered but possibly insane publicist does, she's going to come back twice as loud and aggressive. Although she makes many references to hoary classic rock icons, she demonstrates neither interest in nor knowledge of contemporary pop, and she'd rather pawn her guitar than deliberately follow a current trend. All of these traits are common enough in independent musicians, even if they aren't often taken to such extremes.
Yet here's the tragic core of this very funny story: While Chorney's attitude is unbudgeably indie, her aspirations couldn't be more mainstream. She loves Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm, digs Angelina Jolie, and dreams of appearing on Jon Stewart's talk show. She wants to snatch a Grammy -- the very symbol of middlebrow, careerist achievement that most indie musicians either scorn or pretend to scorn. There is nothing subversive or anti-establishment about her. Either she doesn't see the fundamental incompatibility between the way she behaves and the world she wants to join, or she thinks the contradiction is hilarious and intends to keep it up as long as she can (I'm betting heavily on the latter.)
That contradiction keeps Chorney's book from degenerating into another tedious screed against the corporate-controlled music industry. "Who the [expletive]" is at its worst when it attempts to expose the fiendish practices at the heart of Grammy consideration, all of which anybody who has ever participated in a sixth-grade student council election would take as a given. That the Grammys changed the rules to prevent a Chorney-type story from happening again is not quite as compelling a read as the singer's petulance that she hasn't been given platinum seats to the ceremony and thus stands no chance of being photographed with Paul McCartney.
Linda Chorney has no sustained beef with big showbiz. Instead, she saves her opprobrium for the po-faced guardians of Americana. Often her objections boil down to a demand that they loosen their collars, and surely that would be healthy for everybody. But it never quite occurs to Chorney that most people who take refuge in the Americana community have done so because they already feel like outsiders, and thus they will instinctively circle the wagons against an interloper, or come-lately -- especially one who blithely claims to have submitted her album for consideration in that category just because. Chorney comes barging in to the clubroom and expects a hug, which is very human of her; when she meets resistance, she lashes out, which is even more human.
In the wake of the nomination, "Emotional Jukebox" receives some bad reviews, which is something that everybody from the Rolling Stones to the bar band on the corner has had to face. Alas, the singer takes every discouraging word way too hard. Chorney, who admits she was a prom queen, is thin-skinned in a way that is only possible to be if you haven't been calloused by years of social rejection. This feels like further proof that Chorney is a woman who has always had the charisma, interpersonal skills, and tart tongue to get by, and has never had to face alienation. Her assertiveness and self-possession was bound to rankle people who identify as outsiders. Given that alienation is the common thread -- and maybe the only common thread -- that runs through the eclectic Americana category, her project was always going to be a tough sell.
As unlikely as it was, it's arguable that Chorney's Grammy nomination wasn't even the singer's biggest break. As she details in the book, "Emotional Jukebox" was bankrolled by a fan who gave Chorney a blank check to make it; when she hires top-drawer musicians and producers to make the record, he doesn't flinch a bit. She makes friends wherever she goes, and most of them rush to do her favors: A chance encounter with a woman who becomes a close pal leads to six years of subsidized airline travel all over the world. Chorney's husband, a former trader on Wall Street, is completely devoted to her cause.
It is reasonable to wonder why a free-spirited independent artist who has been the beneficiary of such outrageous good fortune craves even more of it. But the heart wants what it wants, and Chorney's desire for validation and acceptance is rendered so candidly, and with such a wide and welcoming smile, that it's hard to begrudge her her appetites. Even when she's at her worst, she expects you to love her, and that confidence gets her halfway there. Chorney is a woman fully alive, in touch with her emotions, and repressing nothing: She's animated by anger and desire, love and disappointment, thirst for adventure, fame, experience, and cosmic justice, and she pours it all out in a passionate, profane torrent. Linda Chorney will read from her book at Watermark in Asbury Park on Wednesday night at 7 p.m.. If that doesn't make for an entertaining evening, I will ingest my chapeau.