Mailbag

Subject: Dave Mason Revue

Hi Bob,

This is Johnne Sambataro the guitar player in the Dave Mason Band. I just wanted to thank you for taking the time to come and see us perform at the Saban. Also for writing such a descriptive article about what we do and what we're about. Good Job!!!

On a personal note I would like to thank you for your compliments on "Can't Find My Way Home". I started playing it about 3 years ago at a Dave Mason rehearsal and Dave said "Let's put it in the show". It fit in with all the other songs that add to the journey and tied itself right into the Delaney & Bonnie / Blind Faith connection with Dave.

Maybe someday we can get together and talk about the music that came out of South Florida in the 60's, 70's and 80's. I lived it and that's where I met Dave in 1978 while he was recording the "Mariposa De Oro" album. People ask me all the time "What's it like to play with Dave Mason"? Well it's quite an honor to play with someone I've been a fan of since before I met him. It's actually really cool.

Take care and be well.

Johnne Sambataro
www.JohnSambataro.com

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Subject: Re: The Who Song

I am in a van with John Waite and the rest of the band. It's midnight. We just played a club in Flint Michigan called the Machine Shop .About 500 fans. Turned out to be a great gig. The fans love John. I'm in the back seat reading your Who Song email and John, who acts as the D J in the front seat, puts on Empty Glass . What a great moment. John didn't know I was reading your fantastic email. This moment , finished a great gig , reading your email , listening to Pete & and onto the next gig in Ohio , well , it just doesn't get any better for this drummer. At 66 yrs old no less " Keep on Working" Bob & all my fellow musicians ??????????Thank you Bob . What a great fuckin read !

Alan Childs

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From: Paul Nordlund
Subject: Re: The Who Song

Jeebus! Thanks for turning me onto this tune. I put it on my Apple Music as I read your email and you're right, I had to turn it up. I heard soft, contemporary, over-produced dreck at the gym today and had to put in my air-buds. Imagine Dragons!? How do people do it when there is real power out there.

And I love the lyric in All This Music Must Fade: "I don't mind other guys ripping off my song..." An obvious wink to "The Kids are Alright" lyric, "I don't mind other guys dancing with my girl..." And it's used not as a throwback but as The Who ripping off their own song. What put Pete and Roger ahead of the pack (including the Stones) for those who took an interest in them is they've got real heart. They never fully acquiesced to the marketing package/fan-rape like bands of their ilk have since the late-'80s (see: previously mentioned Stones and their larceny-like $250 nosebleed tickets). Roger's boxing background has stayed true. They don't sell out and they really don't care as you have expressed. They swing. Thank you for reminding me The Who still are in play. I had forgotten this.

Paul

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From: Mark Caplinger
Subject: Re: Pretty Heart

Hi Bob

I noted your reference to Parker McCollum here. I follow the Texas music scene a bit but the name was new to me so I checked him out. Good stuff. I happened to see he was going to be in Stillwater, OK last Friday night. So was I, visiting my son on Parent's Weekend at Oklahoma State University.

There's a party at my son's place Friday, lots of kids and parents hanging around. I overhear someone ask a young lady if she wants to go do something later, and she said "I can't, I'm going to see Parker."

As if everyone should just know, right? Like "Beck" or "Eminem" or "Bono". So I asked her "Parker? Who's Parker?"

Parker McCollum as it turns out, which I was pretty sure I already knew. She told me it was a sold out show, she and a friend got the last tickets.

I know it's a sample set of one but thought you might be interested to know it appears "Parker" has got it going on with the college crowd, at least at Oklahoma State University.

Really enjoy your emails. Thanks and keep 'em coming!

Best,

Mark Caplinger

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From: Bud Scoppa
Subject: Re: Mailbag

Karl is right: Matt gets the score with Tool, but Kevin Coogan, who brought in Green Jello, and Lou himself were also key to the band coming to Zoo. Tom DeSavia turned me on to the Odds , who later toured with Zevon and doubled as his backing band. Underrated in the States.

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Subject: RE: Precipitous Drops

Bob, my street-level experience over three decades in the thick of it at EMI was this: The much-heralded project either under-performs or else stiffs out altogether, causing the artist 's management to brutalize the label chief. Label chief then threatens and cajoles several chieftains, who in turn menace local honchos. Local honchos then buy ads, stroke PDs, put up billboards, activate street teams, sponsor contests, give away tickets/trips/backstage passes/swag...after which, the project briefly regains momentum, then sinks to the bottom and finally (sometimes after 8 or 9 months of futile activity) goes away. Paul Lanning

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Subject: Re: Re-Heart Correction

I love Joan Jett. She defied the odds! Also Kenny Laguna put all his eggs in one basket back then because he believed in Joan when nobody else did. When I was 13, I was diagnosed with dyslexia and wasn't really able to keep up in school but I had music... and Joan Jett! She was an inspiration to me and she still is. And God bless Kenny!! Over 40 years later and they are still together. In this business- that should not be taken for granted. That is a gift - for both of them.

There are two sets of business - your business and none of your business and her sexuality is the later.

Dina LaPolt

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Subject: Biden and Air Supply ... RE: Pre-Debate Update

Hi Bob,

You actually gave Joe Biden a major compliment by comparing him to the "Air Supply of Presidential Candidates."

I have been doing PR for Air Supply for over 15 years and they are by far the most professional and thoughtful I have ever worked for. Graham Russell and Russell Hitchcock are true gentlemen who never take their fans for granted or rest on their laurels. They perform about 130 gigs each year, all around the world and these are large theaters, showrooms, and even some arenas/stadiums.

After 40 years in the biz they still work harder than ever. Have never had a real argument between them. They do their tour press interviews for every market, sound-check at every venue, shake up their show set list often, interact with the audience, meet & greets with fans, and have a highly talented energetic band so the show really rocks. Their manager, tour manager, and some of the crew have been with them for decades and everything just works and it's a joy to work together. The venues/promoters always invite them back year after year and the people just keep coming.

I always tell G & R, I won't retire until they do, and that is not even on the horizon at this point.

Plenty of those hipper-than-thou "soft rock" proclaimers from the 80s & 90s have themselves fallen by the wayside. So maybe Biden is also the little engine that could -- they have!

PS - Elizabeth Warren would make a kick-ass VP. However Air Supply does not need an opening act.

Best,

Steve Levesque - President

LUCK Media & Marketing, Inc.
Entertainment Publicity & Marketing

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From: Wallace Collins
Subject: Re: Eddie Money At The Grammy Museum

Bob

Nice read - made me a bit verklempt. Pierced some shield this morning i guess, caught me by surprise.

Ha! Wait. As I write I realize why: "Phillips" & the "cassette" mention made me remember my dad. He was general counsel for Phillips US (his legal department was the internal M&A, acquired all the companies & built it). I never learned to properly razor shave because we had Norelcos before we were old enough. Magnavox Color TVs (plural) all over the house. Cassette players a plenty, of course. Rod Stewart records before he broke in the US because Phillips acquired Mercury for a while. I now know I saw email & the internet before they called it that: my dad was bedridden after back surgery but had a big box computer by his bed where he typed green words on a screen & his office wrote back & forth so he could work. Last bit, I moved into the city for law school & he gave me a small box to attach to my stereo. Told me soon small discs would be coming to play on it, but I went to the record store & all they had was one or two classical discs, not the rock i wanted. I recall him saying "just wait" - it was a prototype CD player (I still have it).

Funny how a random word ("Phillips" & "cassette" of all things) can trigger memories & emotions.

Wallace - Sent from my iPhone

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From: Joseph Weinstein
Subject: Re: Pre-Debate Update

Bezos/Zuck/Gates/Musk could agree to pay off student debt ($100k per) for 300,000 recent college graduates if they'll relocate and establish residency in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Florida prior to the next election. Trump won those states by 190,000 in aggregate. 75 electoral votes at stake. Given all of the environmental repeals as of late, $30 billion could be the deal of the century!

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Subject: Re: The Climate Strike

Bob-
Virtually my all of my middle & youngest daughters' entire high school walked out on strike today. It became a ghost town, and was impressive to see. I'm just barely old enough to have walked out to protest the Vietnam War [in 7th grade], and they went to exactly the same place [on the UIUC college campus]. This gave me a lot of hope. They are also almost all blind to color, gender, race, class, money, and religion. A very tolerant bunch who are mad as hell and won't take it anymore. Bravo!

*You are spot on re their view on cars as well
**This is Central Illinois, not the bluest of part of the state…
**Keep it up sir, you have been on a tear this year and keep hitting home runs- from your memorials, to the new world realities, to this youth quake.

Best-
--
Jonathan Pines - Director of Strategic Operations
Rupert Neve Designs / Fingerprint Audio

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From: Leora Katz
Subject: Re: The Climate Strike

at dinner last night, i said to my husband: "so amazing to see the massive, worldwide protests against climate change today, eh?" (yes i'm canadian)

he said: "huh? what are you talking about?"

i was shocked. he's on twitter all day. uses instagram multiple times a day. is very plugged into news, what's going on in culture, etc.

but he had seen nothing about the climate strikes, while my feeds had been full of it.

and it's simply because the people and outlets he follows didn't mention it, while the ones i follow were all over it.

it was a stark reminder of our individual echo chambers and how something huge can be going on, but totally invisible to someone whose "scene" is just slightly different.

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Subject: RE: Re-JBL L100s

The midrange driver in the JBL L-100s is the same one we used by the dozens in the Grateful Dead's infamous "Wall of Sound". They were and still are one of the best midrange drivers of all times! Owsley "Bear" Stanley conceived of "the Wall", and he designed the curved front array of JBL 12" drivers, 5" drivers, and the ElectroVoice tweeters. You can Google for images. Sounded just wonderful. I was on the design committee and did the blueprints for most of the conventional rectangular boxes in the system based on dimensions for L, W, and H being 1/3 of a wavelength apart. JBL was thrilled with how many of their loudspeakers we used!

Best,

Rick Turner

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From: Jon Birge
Subject: Re: Hillbilly Elegy

The difference is that Westover's point is that education was the difference between her siblings who had meaningful lives and those who didn't. She didn't have many advantages. Vance doesn't go into how he had a state legislature internship in high school and then the one in D.C. Not sure those are doled our on merit. Might be a piece missing in his narrative.

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Subject: Re: Hillbilly Elegy

Bob,
REALLY bad news: JD spun -- or as I like to tell my Music Criticism students at Middle Tennessee State University extremed -- his high-low white trash upbringing.
How do I know? I used to play golf at the very old money country club in South Florida his uncle belongs to. His father -- the extreme Christian one -- had money. That side of the family was plenty successful. He had a far greater grasp of how the levers worked... but why let the facts get in the way of setting up a run for office?
This is important. For a lot of reasons. But I'll start with dignity. Don't be like Ron Howard who fell in love with the marginalizing tropes + bought into the boot strap achievement notion.
Best,
Holly Gleason
Nashville, TN

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From: Dave Dederer
Subject: Re: Hillbilly Elegy

Bob,

The game is, indeed, rigged. I learned this when I transferred to Brown my junior year in college.

In 1985, Seattle was still a provincial town. I'd been to NY and visited my girlfriend at Brown, but I didn't get it until I arrived full-time.

Meeting other kids out west, we'd ask about what music you liked, do you like to ski, hike, climb, surf, skate? I'll never forget the questions kids asked me the first few days at Brown: "Where'd you prep?" "Does your dad work on the Street? Or Capitol Hill?"

I wondered, "What the fuck is wrong with these people?"

It was an eye-opener -- immediately clear that THESE are the people running the country, forever and ever, amen. And all they cared about was where I fit into the calcified social strata they called home.

But of course that's all a total load of bullshit. Because even if you're winning the game, you're still playing the game. And the game is profoundly dumb and pointless relative to things like making art or living according to values that reflect true respect for oneself and for others.

Per NYT article today, ambitious, rich people don't stop working -- because they find they can't quite win the game.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/17/style/rich-people-things.html

They're playing the wrong game. As Wynton Marsalis said, when talking about the incorruptibility of jazz or any true art form, "You can't money your way into being Picasso." You have to do the work. The work of being fearlessly and authentically yourself, plus the just plain hard graft of putting in the hours and the effort. With no guarantee of a payoff, unlike putting in the hours at HBS or Wharton or Stanford Law School, which comes with a guaranteed payoff.

As a Seattle native of a certain age and educational and social background, I know lots of people who made lots of money in tech. You know what many of them do for fun and wish they could do for a living? Play music. And they spend crazy money for great tix to shows. They want to be rock stars. Meaning they want to create something of undeniable value that touches and moves people. Because they know that building a cloud-based sales contact management platform and selling it for hundreds of millions or being an early investor in an online ad startup MSFT eventually acquired for billions is...meaningless. And dorky. And not fun.

But you don't have to choose one or the other. You can understand the game and also play outside the rules. Subvert from within, as it were.

My older daughter just started her freshman year at an Ivy League school. She is smart, ambitious and very hard-working. I say more power to her. She will learn the rules of the game and will know the players. These advantages are just tools. I will encourage her to do the real work of finding a mission -- music, art, medicine, diplomacy, whatever -- and to live out that mission. To play the real game.

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From: Melissa Ward
Subject: Re: Once Upon A Time...in Hollywood

Well I thought I was late to the film two weeks ago. It was entrancing to watch The Strip recreated so perfectly.

My mom and stepdad would load us into the car (a white Fleetwood Brougham with red brocade and real wood interior) each time my grandmother or step grandmother or some other guests were visiting from out of town. I wanted so badly to be out there on the strip in a mini dress and pigtails, yet just thirteen I was kept close to home, highly supervised. I slunk down as far as possible so none of the hippies would see me seeing them.

Later around '70-'72 my girlfriends and I would drive up from OC and eat at Tiny Naylors drive-in, then cruise up into the hills above the strip gazing at the snazzy homes, entranced to see some with four or five fancy cars parked in the sparkle-laden stucco car ports. He really got it right though!

What tickled me was remembering how inane it all was - media - the silly radio announcers and silly commercials. Media was awash in the superficial.
And yes females were mostly programmed to rely on their looks for success, men on their confidence and intelligence. Too bad as pretty as she is the actress who played Tate didn't come close to her beauty or class. I never could believe it was her. The Manson guy wasn't scary, only the one who played The hair stylist seemed to pull it off. Hard though to recreate these people of many decades and an entirely different age. I don't think people who grew up in the digital age can ever portray a non-digital character. And Im probably wrong!

As one who was a hippie in the early 70s in SoCal, I actually met and unfortunately became briefly acquainted with a guy (Eagle) who had lived at the Spahn Ranch, and yes, those girls in the film came nowhere close to the scary hippies girls I met. He was a scary horrible creepy guy. One girl was from The Love Family up north, many of whom later died with Jim Jones in Guyana. They weren't the Love & Light New Age spiritual vegans I hung with. They were lustful for power and willing to do anything to get it.

So the film was a bit of fluff, still entertaining, and yes Brad Pitt's character was by far the best thing about it. And his amazing dog.

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From: Lindsay Faller
Subject: Re: The Republican Viewpoint

Interesting read - frustrating but interesting. I always wonder why many Americans have such a deep belief that government is useless and paying taxes isn't fair. As if schools will fund themselves and laws will be made by themselves. Also, do people think what Trump's being investigated is about the Dems losing 2016? The guy is a thug, everyone can see it, though honestly, this whole thing feels like taking Al Capone out with a parking ticket.

I am American but have lived abroad for almost 20 years. First in London, now in Amsterdam (hello Brexit!) and my view of taxes and government has shifted completely. The current situation in the UK aside, the nanny state gets a bad rap, but it is also a good to know that if I got sick I wouldn't bankrupt my family. That my public transport system works brilliantly. I'm happy to pay taxes for that, because it helps me and helps others. When government works it is a wonderful thing. Maybe the issue in the US is that the country was founded on an underlying distrust of government and the current system is a self fulfilling prophecy. It's all about the individual, not the collective good, and therein lies the problem.

Also interesting: all your included replies were by men.

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From: Winky
Subject: Re: Dirty Honey

Bob,

The band is doing great work on the road and on the charts, but I am not the manager. I am just a friend and enthusiastic ambassador for the guys and their music. Mark has done an amazing job with his team getting them to where they are today. They are the real deal !

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From: PhilTripp
Subject: Re: Four Dead Ramones

If you don't make mistakes you're not doing anything.

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