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A few days ago, on my radio show, The Deep End With Nick Michaels, I played a song by Jimmy Buffett. The song is called Death Of an Unpopular Poet. It has been a favorite of mine for a very long time. It wasn't until a Deep End listener heard it on the show and contacted me wanting to know who that poet was that I finally took the time to do a little research. One of the things I love about the Deep End is the connection we have via the music.I learn as much about the music from the audience as they do from me. It is a conversation not a broadcast. Jimmy gave the answer to a magazine called High Times in a 1976 interview. It turns out that it was actually two poets. Here it is.
High Times: Where did "Death of an Unpopular Poet" come from?
Buffett: I was watching Walter Cronkite one night, and he had a little blurb on there that Kenneth Patchen had died. That surprised me, because hardly anybody ever heard of Patchen except in small circles. He was one of my favorite poets. So I was thinking about him, and then I thought about Richard Farina. These guys contributed so much, but they died and we never appreciated them until afterwards. They starved their asses off and didn't get to stick around to reap their rewards. If you're going to go up there and try to make it, you're not out there totally for aesthetic value. Let's face it-you're out there to secure your future anybody that says they're not is totally false. I couldn't say that money doesn't mean anything to me. You have to pay your bills - I have to keep the band on the road. But you can still have a good time and write good songs. You don't necessarily have to prostitute your music, as long as you know how to handle it, put it in perspective. Those guys had a good time, but I'm sure they were miserable a lot of times. The success that they wanted, they never knew they actually reached it.
One of the best ways to take advantage of the intimacy and emotion of audio is to turn your broadcast into a conversation.
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