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Nashville, TN: The life of an artist feels like the one place it is actually cool to be an outcast. If you saw a man with no shirt wearing a pair of half pants / half shorts, you may think he's a freak. If he's a musician, however, he's considered an icon.
A woman with a broken bracelet and unshaved underarms: unkempt. The same woman who's a singer/songwriter: a musical muse.
I never knew what it felt like to be an outcast growing up. I had a large group of friends, was on the pom pon squad, made good grades. I was "normal" by the world's standards. But once I discovered and had embarked on a musical obsession in the late 1980s, I started to understand what it felt like to be an outsider.
I was a fan of New Kids On The Block.
For all intents and purposes, the New Kids were wildly popular and were clean, wholesome boys. Their music was fun and simple -- they sang songs written by other people, they danced with synchronized moves. But because of those very reasons meant that "real music fans" wrote them off. Because New Kids were so squeaky clean and "normal," they were cast aside as uncool. Which, in turn, meant their fans were also uncool.
Then, in 1990, rock and roll photographer,
Lynn Goldsmith, published a photo book of over 200 pictures of my beloved boy band, simply entitled:
New Kids.
Lynn had photographed some of music's greats: Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, U2, The Police, Patti Smith. She was the epitome of cool because she captured artists that people loved.
"They were not a group that had respect in the music industry. NKOTB was a phenomena. Their fans deserved a book worthy of their unconditional love. I was sick of ‘fan’ books that were poorly produced and took advantage of teenage America."
I remember buying that book and feeling that I was understood as an outcast. It gave me permission to embrace what I loved, even though they weren't the hip thing to like to most people's standards. If the queen music photographer could place photographs of this band along side The Rolling Stones and Michael Jackson -- who's to say they (or me) was any less cool?
Tonight, Lynn spoke and signed copies of her latest work,
Rock and Roll Stories. During her slideshow presentation of some of her favorite (and least favorite) moments in rock and roll photography, she shared stories of her work. Included in that list was her time spent with NKOTB. No disclaimers given, not apologies made. They are a part of her musical history journey and are just as worthy as any of the other musical icons she had captured in her 50+ year career as a published photographer.
I took my book to her and asked her to sign the NKOTB page. I told her that I was grateful to her for publishing that book and how it had affected me in a bigger way than I had even known until much later in life. And in the words of Lynn Goldsmith, "you are who I did it for!"
Thanks to Lynn for capturing such memorable moments in rock and roll history and for sharing it with all the outcasts like me all over the world.
