More than 20 Feet from Stardom

When Catherine O'Hara passed away on January 30th, there were tributes everywhere. Fellow celebrities sharing memories plus total randos on social media sharing their favorite clip from Schitt's Creek or Best In Show or SCTV. A public wake with perfect jokes.

She deserved all of it.

A couple other folks passed away last week, too. They didn't have O'Hara's level of fame, but they added something to the culture, even if they weren't Kevin's mom from Home Alone. If you're familiar with the great documentary 20 Feet from Stardom, about backup singers like Darlene Love and Merry Clayton, these two musicians were even further from being household names. But their music, and the music they inspired, fill my household. Let's talk about them!

LYNN BLAKEY (1962-2026)

A North Carolina-based musician, Blakey was in the bands Tres Chicas, Oh-OK, and Let's Active, whose "Every Word Means No" made it onto a couple new wave compilations in my possession. The video looks and sounds exactly like 1983. Honestly, it might be too jangly for modern ears.

In addition to her own formidable career, Blakey inspired "Left of the Dial," simply one of the finest songs ever written.

I'll let Replacements biographer Bob Mehr take it from here:

But “Left of the Dial” was also a hidden love song. Specifically, an evocation of (Paul) Westerberg’s infatuation with Blakey. They first met when the Replacements and Let’s Active shared a bill at San Francisco's I-Beam in the fall of 1983. “He kinda followed me around and bummed cigarettes off me,” recalled Blakey. The next night they spent hours walking and talking in the rain. “We had nowhere to go because we were young and poor, but we got know each other. I think Paul decided he had a crush on me.” As Westerberg recalled, “I was in love with the idea of being in love with her. So I used that to pine with.”

They would exchange calls and letters in between tours, before Blakey moved to Athens–the land of “sweet Georgia breezes”--where she joined Michael Stipe’s sister Lynda’s band Oh-OK. “The song is about that first year of Paul and I meeting and hitting it off, and logistically it not working out,” said Blakey.

“I figured the only way I'd hear her voice was with her band on the radio on a college station. And one night we did,” said Westerberg. “We were passing through a town somewhere, and she was doing an interview on the radio. I heard her voice for the first time in six months for about a minute. Then the station faded out.” The moment provided a denouement for the song: “If I don't see ya, in a long, long while/I'll try to find you, left of the dial.”

When Blakey first heard the song, she was perplexed. “The whole ‘Left of the Dial’ thing, I didn’t realize what that meant. I was a college DJ but our station in [Greensboro] was like 103.1–it was on the right side of the dial. I was like, ‘Does he think I’m a communist?’” laughed Blakey. “It wasn’t until Paul explained it to me, ‘No, most of these stations are on the left-hand side.’”

In an era when it's (probably too) easy to reconnect with anyone you've ever met in your life, we're not too far removed from writing a song about hoping to hear your crush's voice on the radio as you're driving through, like, Champaign-Urbana. It's one of the most romantic things I've ever heard. By all accounts, she led a life worthy of such devotion.

FRED SMITH (1948-2026)

It's weird that being a founding member of Blondie isn't the most interesting thing in your music career.

Fred Smith left Blondie in 1975 to play bass for Television, one of those Velvet Underground-ish bands that weren't popular like his former band would become, but left a body of work that's immortal. (So did Blondie, lest you think I'd ever speak ill of Deborah Harry.)

Every time the titanic "Marquee Moon" threatens to go off the rails, there's Smith's bass, reeling the guitars back in. It's hard to call a 10+ minute song too short, but it is:

Returning to the subject of The Old Ways: Before every song on earth was on your telephone, I discovered Television because my high school friend Paul had one of those cheapo cassettes full of late '70s punk and new wave songs whose only connective tissue was licensing rights. Side one track one was "See No Evil":

Pretty catchy! I then heard R.E.M. cover it on KQRS at, like, 12:30am one night. And since my devotion to R.E.M. at the time was all-consuming, it drove me to find a used Marquee Moon CD at the Electric Fetus.

And that's how I found out about Fred Smith and his work on one of the best albums of all time. You kids and your algorithms these days, why I oughta...

Lynn and Fred weren't stars. Fred wasn't even the most famous musician named Fred Smith. But they left a legacy. One that you can find on the left of the dial. It's always worth the effort.

See you tomorrow.