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Help NOT Wanted

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Written by Thom Ring

It's sobering to consider in a time of high unemployment that not only jobs but entire occupations disappear every day. We can hope that the jobs come back, but many occupations never will.

I guess that's the nature of progress, and they (the ubiquitous "they") tell us that new jobs are being created to replace the old ones. But what is worrisome here, in this land of Mom 'N Pop Culture, is the quality and meaning of these new occupations as compared to the disappearing ones. Particularly sad from the standpoint of the quality of our lives are the artisans who must face how progress - to use that term, if not sarcastically, at least loosely - has negated the value of their arts. Consider the following occupations. I mourn the loss of these honorable and sometimes ancient crafts.

Musician: I commented on the state of the music industry in my recent blog, "Worth Listening," but it's worse than the fact that everybody inside and outside the music industry seems preoccupied with the next big thing at the expense and so many perfectly wonderful little things. Yes, this is the phenomenon that gives us Lady Gaga and the idea that how wildly performers dress becomes more important than whether they have anything to actually say - not to mention any talent for saying it.

At least Lady Gaga is actually performing (Notice I didn't say "singing." For all we know she's lip-synching on stage.) What has proven a worse situation for musicians is the burgeoning market for on-site disk-jockeys.

You used to find bands playing at every hangout-spot in town. Some of them stunk up the joint, but some of then were damned good. Indeed, this used to be how every band got started. But how does a band of four, five or more musicians compete with one person who shows up with a stereo system and a box of CDs? On the other hand, how does a guy manage to make money by doing what anyone in the club could do for themselves? I wonder if we're heading for a day when everyone at the club just plugs in their own iPods and dances to their own song. That would make for a dicey dance-floor, but it suggests that maybe the disk jockey's days might wind up numbered as well.

Actually, their days already are.

Disk Jockey: Actually, the disk jockeys whose days are numbered are the ones on the radio.

When I was a kid I had a friend who built a radio station in his basement. He bought a transmitter and a microphone from Radio Shack. For turntables he took apart two of those little portable record players and sunk the decks from them into holes he cut in a bench. The transmitter didn't transmit far; his audience basically was his mother and a couple of neighbors. But it fed a dream of being a local celebrity, as scores of DJs used to be in every community.

These days "local" is a word best not applied to the local radio station. Most are owned by national conglomerates, and (as was discussed in my blog "What's an Olive or Two?") a little savings can add up when your economy of scale is humongous. So most stations actually employ DJs only for their most important time-slots, usually for morning and evening drive-time. Before and after, recorded shows, often with no DJ at all, fill the airwaves.

Popular DJs used to be referred to as radio-personalities. That's what made them attractive to listeners. That's still what you hear driving to and from work, and the more personality they have the better if they want to keep their jobs.  But you know what? A long time ago DJs also used to make their own choices of music to play. Their exposure to new stuff, their sense of taste, and their understanding of their listeners also were marketable qualities. Nowadays the choice of what's played is controlled more by the folks who create and market the music than by people who represent the audience. That's how we got Lady Gaga, thank you very much.

Chef: Chef schools are popping up everywhere. And new chefs are popping out. Where do they
get jobs? Or, more accurately, do they?

I once was told by a man who had worked as a regional rep for Denny's that nothing ever went into their kitchens that wasn't frozen. I don't know for sure, because I don't even eat there. But more recently I was told by someone with the means to know that meals at Olive Garden come already assembled, waiting only the microwave. Imagine, going out to eat a frozen dinner.

When Olive Garden first opened in my area the company ran an ad that featured a young man of evidently Italian ethnicity talking about how his uncle from the old country had visited and how he'd taken him to Olive Garden. Aah, bellisimo! We're talking about Rhode Island here. Some of the best Italian restaurants in the country can be found in Providence, or an hour up the road in the north end of Boston. You can get authentic Italian cooking in cinder-block social clubs. I'm betting that young man now is shunned by his family.

Sign Painter: Yes, I know, high art indeed. Yet in a way it was the highest form; it was art that had to communicate messages both stated and unstated. Still, this is not the main reason I mourn the loss of this profession.

Nowadays the process of making signs is just another digitized one. You can make perfectly fine small signs for your business on your own computer and printer. Large commercial signs are created by signmakers the same way. You just need an additional machine to cut perfect letters out of self-adhesive vinyl sheets.

Yes, they look great. They look, identically, uniformly great. Any hint of personality, any hint of craft, is gone. Did you ever watch a signmaker paint up a sign? The process, simply put, was marvelous. As with any great craftsman, sign painters made the impossible look easy. They controlled the brush like a surgeon does a scalpel, with perfect stokes effortlessly applied. Yet, every sign hinted at its creator. In any town the best painters instantly could identify the work of any other. And some painters would have a special talent for certain special features, painting figures, say, or pinstripes, or a specific type of lettering. Or gold leaf. Remember gold leaf?

I imagine today they just use gold-colored vinyl. I suppose that speaks more clearly than I can.

Any other occupations we should be missing? Blog us and let us know what we overlooked.