Self-Confidence

Finding "self" and the "confidence" to inhabit that frame

Greetings from Boston, the first (and until 2025 the only) city in which I’ve lived and where I learned self-confidence and self-sufficiency. After navigating rotary traffic, crafting a social life, finding a beer league hockey team and learning to cross Beacon Street without going head to head with the Green Line, Boston is where I bought the most vinyl at any point in my life, spending nearly every weekend combing those stores for some obscure prog rock or jazz album. I found the self-confidence to explore small clubs and their obscure paper ticketing systems — the Rat, the Paradise, TT The Bears, some dingy jazz club in Harvard Square — to see more live music that I had collectively experienced in the twenty years prior.

The linkage between “self” and “confidence” surfaced again this weekend, musically, in two distinct, somewhat related, and completely plate-o-shrimp moments. David Johansen, front man for the New York Dolls and great uncle of glam rock, died Friday after long battles with cancer and a brain tumor. He later changed persona to become Buster Poindexter and enjoy a hit with a cover of “Hot Hot Hot.” Johansen had the self-confidence to remake himself and his musical styles when it suited him, and each shock to the music press I think just fueled his exploration of new (or old) musical genres. My brief run-in with Johansen was at the pinnacle of his solo career when we produced a concert at Princeton University and I got to read through his rider — the legal documentation of a supremely confident man who could ask for enough towels to fill a cabana.

“Confidence is a bluff.” — Chrissie Hynde, “Reckless”

I read this news while finishing up “Reckless,” Chrissie Hynde’s autobiography and the long backstory of the Pretenders. More than three quarters of the book is Hynde finding the self-confidence to front a band, write songs, and perform them. There is a complex Venn diagram illustrating Hynde’s influencers, Johansen’s influences, and the rock and roll women who had the confidence (Joan Jett, eg) to front bands in the 1980s.

Callback: As a first-year DJ with big dreams of playing rock and roll down the shore for a summer, I made an aircheck tape tailing out of the Pretenders’ “Brass In Pocket.” It got me nothing more than a life long appreciation for the last four bars of that song.

Why the long rock and roll vamp and intro? Because dealing with “self” and “confidence” was one of the biggest changes for me exiting 2024. I submitted a poster proposal for an academic conference, attended music camp and performed with musicians multiple strata above my skill level, tackled a few home improvement projects I dreaded for months, and made a career tack. What I recognized, and decided to face head-on, is that I was suffering through situations that eroded my self-confidence, rather than risk-assessing the downsides to particular paths or actions.