Joe Scarborough isn’t just a onetime congressman turned cable-TV talker, nor even just a handsome face. No, he is a rock ’n’ roller, a singer, a guitarist, and a (more than) prolific songwriter. He is—if the publicity hoo-ha accompanying his new extended-play recording is to be believed—“this year’s most surprising debut artist.”
Don’t scoff! There’s ample precedent, not just for serious musicians with day gigs (modernist composer Charles Ives was an insurance executive) but even for television personalities with instrumental skills: John Tesh traded in Entertainment Tonight for a career tickling new-age pap out of the piano; Fox News correspondent Doug McKelway is a fine bluegrass banjo player; Walter Cronkite was an accomplished bassoonist. (Okay, that last bit was a joke—The Most Trusted Man in America actually played the saxophone.)
What little The Scrapbook has been able to hear of Scarborough and his band—via clips of various Upper West Side honkytonk gigs posted on YouTube—isn’t particularly promising. Morning Joe’s meandering vocals make Ringo Starr’s singing sound like a model of pitch precision. But then again, that shouldn’t be an impediment to modern pop success: We trust Joe’s studio work will be amply Auto-Tuned.
No, what alarms us is this revelation in the press release: “Scarborough has spent the last year holed up in studios recording 50 of his 400 original songs.” 400 songs! Some perspective: In a decade of concentrated artistic effort, the Beatles recorded a couple of hundred originals. Scarborough’s already got himself 400, and he seems determined to inflict every last one of them on his fan(s): “I’ve got a hell of a lot of songs to get out there, so I’ll be releasing them in waves with a EP every month for the next four years,” Joe threatens. “I may take a quick rest after releasing my first 200 songs.” Whew.
A politician who turned to TV journalism, and who is now turning to music, should Scarborough find success as a rocker, how long will it be before he decides to try acting? And Joe the actor would surely find that what he really wants to do is direct. After which, like so many in Hollywood, Scarborough may finally decide to dive into politics.
