Patti Rothberg "Inside"

Call this the prequel, to Wednesday's and Thursday's posts . . .

My friends would jokingly call it "The Day Patti Rothberg Saved Your Life."

But the lasting effects of that day were less dramatic, if no less important.

I had been dispatched to Washington DC, because I had started a Rock The Vote chapter via our radio station in Abingdon.  We aired PSAs and ran voter registration drives, getting young people involved and engaged in the political process.

Rock The Vote was holding an event on the National Mall in DC, and they had invited "local" chapters to attended.

We were only considered local to Washington, if you had never seen a map.  In fact, it was a 6 hour drive from Abingdon to the Capitol.  But I was up for the drive.  (Besides, on the way home I could swing by Chapel Hill)

Patti Rothberg was the musical act.  She'd just put out her major label debut, we were spinning it, and I was looking forward to meeting her.

I had packed a Sharpie and CDs by the bands I'd be seeing on my trip, because I wanted to get a personal connection.

Up to that point, I'd never been an autograph seeker.  But this thought had occurred to me early in my DJ career:

I could play music by artists who sang about their most personal thoughts and feelings, but ultimately, there was no actual connection to the artist.  The songs were a one way signal that only traveled outward.  And literally, the physical CDs that contained the songs, were never touched or seen by the artist who created them.  They were completely divorced from their origin.

To get the artist to sign the CD kind of pulled the connection full circle.  They were singing the songs, they had held that disc in their hands.

Thinking about it today, I wonder if I would have that same impulse now.

Here in 2012, there seems to be greater access to artists, through social media and the proliferation of podcasts and youtube and music magazines and such.

But for me in the mid-90s, musicians that I loved were hardly more real than my favorite fictional characters.

There was a small stage set-up on the National Mall, really only a few feet off the ground, near the Air And Space Museum, and Patti Rothberg was scheduled to play, the Rock The Vote folks would make a few short speeches (and introduced us radio folk), and Jesse Jackson Jr. would give a keynote address.

So I got to hang out "backstage" (which wasn't really separated from anywhere else, as we were plopped down in the middle of the mall, with no fences around or anything), with my little cassette tape recorder, waiting for Rothberg to come off stage so I could interview her.

There were a number of technical/power problems on stage.  At one point during the show, while Patti was speaking about the importance of Rock The Vote, her microphone went out, and in fact the whole stage lost power along the way.

I tried to stay out of the way as the tech folks scrambled to get things powered up and rolling again.

Patti finished up her set and retired to an area of folding chairs, where we could talk.  It wasn't my first interview, but it was still early enough in my career that the whole process was almost surreal.  The voice on the record was talking back!

I hung around while someone from Washington DC's alternative station WHFS asked a lot of the same question I did, but also got her talking about touring with Paul Westerberg, who was my absolute favorite songwriter.  I was happy to eavesdrop on those stories.

Next on the event's agenda, was a speech from one of the Rock The Vote honchos, with radio folks like me standing in the wings to be recognized as volunteers and supporters.

I was leaning on the metal rigging, listening to the speech, when I felt a tap on the back of my leg.

It was Patti.  She was down on the ground looking up at me.

"Hey PJ.  I don't know if I'd stand there.  They . . ." (she looked back toward the tech guys, still messing about with cables and wires), "don't really seem to have all the power stuff worked out.  I wouldn't want to see anyone electrocuted."

I thanked her, and hopped down the little metal staircase to "safety."

Was electrocution likely?  Probably not.

Did Patti Rothberg remember my name for more than another hour of her life?  Probably not.

But for a small stretch of time, the one way feed from artist to listener looped back, and she was real to me and I was real to her and it felt like some kind of breakthrough in my relationship with all those artists that I was playing, day in and day out


Hear the song on Youtube.