Final Amsterdam

CALIFORNIA

"Oh, it gets so lonely
When you're walking
And the streets are full of strangers"

There's no loneliness like the one you feel in a foreign country. It descends like a curtain, when you enter your hotel room, when someone brushes by you on the sidewalk, you don't fit in, you don't belong, life is going on all around you, but you're ensconced in a bubble.

"Oh, California I'm coming home
Oh, make me feel good rock 'n' roll band
I'm your biggest fan
California I'm coming home"

It's been getting a bad rap, people say Florida is the new California, but that can't possibly be, you see it's on east coast time, you've got to be out on the west coast, three hours behind and a whole mental state away.

But Jerry Brown, a seventies refugee, is giving the state a resurgence, with its high taxes and can-do spirit it's once again the beacon for the rest of the nation. But that's not why I live here.

It's the:

1. Freedom.
2. The weather.
3. The landscape.
4. The feeling that we're still inventing it, that there are opportunities.

Maybe I can't explain it, L.A.'s such a bad tourist town, spread out with few definitive attractions, but if you're looking for a place to live, to make home base, I've never found anyplace better.

THE TAXI HOME

I feel guilty that I'm only going to Santa Monica. The driver's been waiting in the queue for eons, expecting a long haul to Hollywood, downtown or even Orange County or the Valley, and I'm just a hop up the hill. Even worse, I wanted the driver to turn on the a/c, which was gonna cost him. Am I the only person who worries about others first, afraid not only that I'll be disapproved of, but that I'll disappoint and negatively impact them?

JEWISH HISTORICAL MUSEUM

That's what Jews do. Go to the synagogue, go to the Jewish sites. That's what my mother said, I'm following in her footsteps.

The most revelatory sight was the mikveh, uncovered deep beneath the old synagogue in a recent excavation, and I'm not even Orthodox, but I could see people stepping down into the ritual bath to achieve purity.

REMBRANDT'S HOUSE

He was a wheeler-dealer, an operator. His entrance room was a gallery, next door was a space where he did his hondling.

Also interesting were the box beds, cupboards for sleeping that you'd have to fold yourself up in half in in order to fit inside, which is exactly what they did, fearful if they lay flat, they'd be inhabited by bad spirits and whisked away, at least that's what the guide said.

FIDELITY

Ralph said to hook up with her and Jonty. That they knew the full electronic music experience.

Jonty told me about getting crushed in an elevator shaft in New York City.

Fidelity told me about growing up in East Germany.

Leipzig. That's where she was born. And I'm running the mental map, is that Austria? We Americans are so ignorant. But then she moved to Berlin. The wrong side.

Her father was a musician, not a member of the Party, and he told her to always be aware. To think before answering the questions of the teachers and the others who were informants, even the West Berliners who implored them to defect who were really working for East Berlin.

And one day on the radio Fidelity heard the wall had come down. She told her mother, who didn't believe it, and made her go to school. There was no one there.

She got a hundred marks for turning in her passport. With the money she bought concert tickets, she had to see Depeche Mode. And candy. You just couldn't get this kind of chocolate in East Germany. Not that she spent that much time in West Berlin after the wall came down. Because she and her former East Germans were put down. You could tell which side someone was from...by the clothes, the appearance, integration was a concept more than reality. And to this day Fidelity is untrusting. Because you never know...

VCs AND APP DEVELOPERS

Want to cash out. That's their goal. Everything's a means to something else. This has infected the music business a bit too, with wealth and fame so desired. But at the heart of it is the music itself. I realize I'm not on the money team. I'm on the cultural team. And if that leaves me broke, so be it.

PASQUALE ROTELLA

I had such a wild night on Friday. I went out with Pasquale Rotella, majordomo of the infamous Electric Daisy Carnival, a whole posse of people, his road manager, his talent buyer, his financial advisor, Jason Bentley, fellow Los Angeles promoter Milo, and David Lewis's team, except for Mr. Lewis himself, who had back trouble, he's the key player in Dutch EDM.

Not that it was called that back when all these people got involved. When no one else was paying attention.

Pasquale started off going to raves. And when that scene died, he started promoting shows himself. And had more ups and downs than those in it for the cash could tolerate. Promoting on an Indian reservation when he lost his site just days before expecting 30,000 people for a show.

It's like this electronic scene is a parallel business, everything music used to be. The people are in it for everything that's right, the music, the audience, the scene, the culture. They don't need anybody else to feel good. Live Nation and SFX came looking for them.

And what happens now is anybody's guess. Even the biggest insiders are fearful the scene could contract into what it once was. But it will never die. Because like-minded people love to embrace their outsider status and dance.


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