#VoteYerMusic - The Legacy

In 2007, I did something that I thought would be fun.

Chris Dodd had launched a Presidential Campaign and on his website, he did a neat thing, he asked supporters to send in listening suggestions. Wonkette picked up on it, and while Dodd didn’t take it down, he did obscure it after it went viral. Not before I recommended Hank Williams III, Gogol Bordello, and the Kronos Quartet to him, though.

I saw Dodd a couple of times in 2007 and was able to ask him in person what he was listening to. He was a good sport, said Pearl Jam and James Taylor, acknowledged he knew Paul Simon (Dodd had dated Carrie Fisher) and the biggest bomb was that he told me he was friends with Bono.
I started a website which is almost entirely lost to the Internet tubes, but I asked all of the major and many minor candidates what they were listening to. This was way before Spotify playlists, but we were moving into the Golden Age of the iPod, and a couple years removed from the downfall of the compact disc.

I went to the Presidential candidates’ webpages and quite simply asked them. In retrospect, I probably got a better response than one would expect.

I doubt people give much thought to John Edwards these days, but he did finish second in Iowa back then (beating Hillary). He was also the biggest candidate I heard back from. Edwards actually had great taste in music. At the time, he was sending a mix-CD to anyone who contributed $50 to his campaign with a can’t miss mix of musicians like Merle Haggard, Gillian Welch, the Fairfield Four, Del McCoury, and Emmylou Harris. Looking back, maybe we need to get Edwards a show on Sirius XM.

Edwards’s team did respond and they told me John was a huge fan of Springsteen and U2, and a fan of Mellencamp who was appearing at rallies with him.

That was exciting!

I got a response from Dennis Kucinich’s camp too. The staffer replied that he was in Iowa but Dennis hadn’t travelled there in awhile, so he didn’t know.

I got a few other responses as well. Sports Handicapper turned commentator Wayne Allyn Root was running for the Libertarian nomination (He didn’t win, but did end up as the ticket’s nominee for veep). Root was wonderful and also a fan of alternative, rock, country, and even opera.

Michael Charles Smith was an Oregon businessman back when the thought was a businessman with no political experience couldn’t win the Republican nomination, let alone the White House. Like Andrew Yang, a bit Quioxtic, he could never quite break into the bigger conversation.

He gave a thoughtful answer that included artists as diverse as Jaromir Weinberger, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy and Rush. We are likely poorer for not having him in the conversation.

Lastly, I got a response from a personal hero - humor columnist Dave Barry. Barry has become a Pat Paulson style perennial Presidential candidate. (I don’t know if anyone ever voted for Barry, but Paulson got nearly 11000 votes in the 92 GOP primaries).

Relevant to 2020, I never heard from Joe Biden, but he was in the news at the time as being a vocal critic of P2P network. He would also inspire Red State Update’s “Fightin Joe Biden”- video plays here (Remember them? They apparently still podcast and are on Twitter).

Anyway, it's all saved on an all-but-forgotten Blogspot which will likely outlive us all.

Have we seen the end of #voteyermusic?  You will have to wait and see.