"When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose"
Bob Dylan
How do you lose control of a country?
Slowly, then all at once.
It started with Trayvon Martin in Florida. Then it progressed to Eric Gardner in New York, Michael Brown in Ferguson and Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia.
And now it's George Floyd in Minnesota.
We thought the threat was coming from white nationalists, that they'd shoulder their rifles and shoot up the place.
But when these suburban dads showed up at state capitals, the governors and legislators immediately took notice and backed down. The media too. We had to reopen America. It was a silent change.
But when protesters railed against death in Minneapolis?
They government brought out tear gas and rubber bullets.
Because there are more alienated African-Americans than disenchanted whites, because the African-American has been a second-class citizen from day one in America.
Now the right and the Supreme Court want to deny this, they want to whitewash the problem. The Supreme Court said we no longer needed the Voting Rights Act. That blacks in Texas and Georgia and...could register and vote just fine.
But that didn't turn out to be true.
And then Tucker Carlson criticized the left for talking about race, saying we live in a post-racial society, which is like the slave owner saying the plantation works, and not to complain.
Then Colin Kaepernick takes a knee and becomes a pariah.
But not to the younger generation, getting older and more powerful every day, to them he's a hero!
The NBA is run by its players. The commissioner thinks twice before issuing any edicts.
The NFL is Maggie's Farm. They make the rules and you either obey them or you're out of the game. The players are fungible. After all, it's not the owners on the gridiron getting brain-damaged. They have their money, they throw the underclass, with its only opportunity for wealth, to the lions...
And people cheer about it.
So, protesters are burning down their own neighborhoods. Of course it makes no sense. It will take years to rebuild, after the '92 riots in L.A. there was a dearth of supermarkets in South Central.
But...
What does it take for the empowered to take notice and take action?
They charged the killer with third-degree murder quickly, the mob did that.
But the mob has been taking it on the chin for decades.
They were told America is the land of equal opportunity. That we all begin at the same starting line, and if you don't make it, it's your fault.
Meanwhile, a white woman calls the cops on a black man in Central Park. And admit it, you tense up when black men get into the elevator with you. We're all a little racist. And some of us are doing our best to self-adjust. And then we've got a President fanning the flames of the haters. How come there aren't good people on both sides this time Trump, come on, answer me that!
But, this time, there are more of us than there are of them. There just aren't enough policemen in Minneapolis to quell the dissent. So they're bringing in the army, the National Guard is a bunch of weekend warriors who when not trigger-happy are scared to death themselves.
But once you start arresting reporters and keeping peace through the armed forces do you still have a democracy?
You see this is what D.C. and the media don't get. They think Minneapolis and the associated protests in other cities are an isolated event, that will blow over, just like everything else. But that is completely wrong, they are signposts on a continuum.
And we're close to the end.
The world was rolling along just fine, what problems there were were under the surface, and then Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated and we got the first world war.
Same deal with the Arab Spring. Everything's hunky-dory, there is control, and then one overeducated fruit vendor sets himself on fire and the government fails. Mohammed Bouazizi paid with his life. Do you think the Floyd protesters are worried about some buildings in their neighborhood?
They tell us to vote.
But what difference does that make? Especially in an era of gerrymandering and voter suppression, especially in an era of one party winning the popular vote and the other getting the presidency via the electoral college. But those are the rules! But if the game is rigged, if you always lose, if you can't change the rules, you flip over the table.
But the winners of the casino known as life don't understand this. They don't understand the sacrifice. They paid their dues, got educated, worked hard, it's not their fault that George Floyd was killed.
Only it is.
At the top, it's not about left or right, it's about power. It's a club, and you're not in it. And the way they keep you in check is by telling you to work the system. But the system is flawed and the judges keep letting the game play on whenever we cry foul.
Two steps forward and one step back.
The civil rights acts of the sixties freed black people, but it also institutionalized racial hatred in whites.
Same deal with efforts to level the playing field of education. Busing, affirmative action... After a few years went by, the whites were up in arms, their chances were being taken away! And if they couldn't get the rules changed, they too worked the system. By educating their children in private schools, and tutoring them into the best colleges, which they could pay for. And then Betsy DeVos wants public money to go to these private schools, which inherently leaves less for the disadvantaged, who are told that vouchers will save them. Everybody can't migrate to the mountaintop, there's not enough room, many people are going to drown at the bottom.
But they're poor African-Americans living on welfare having too many kids driving expensive cars so screw 'em.
Even though the real welfare crime is all the money the energy companies and other fat cats get in tax breaks, if not direct handouts,
But that's not a sexy story, and the underclass doesn't control the media.
Which brings us to social media. The past week has been inundated with words about the flaws in social media. But what I don't get is without social media, most of these people wouldn't even have a voice! It's like the musician who made his album on his laptop and distributed it for free on Spotify via Songtradr complaining that they're not getting advances from the major labels or making money from streaming. You only get to play, you only get a voice from the internet.
Which is what makes this story different from what came before.
Oldsters are watching television.
Youngsters see the pictures and video on the internet. They comment on it, they read others' comments.
Meanwhile, you think the internet is only about showing off.
Instagram is cool. But Twitter, a hotbed of ideas? IT MUST GO!
So, did you really think the rich could get richer for four decades and there would be no consequences?
Did you really think you could ship all the jobs overseas and the suddenly out of work employees wouldn't feel the pain?
You've got an iPhone.
See a lot of iPhones amongst the underclass?
No, it's all Android, because they're struggling, they can't afford Apple.
And since they've got a smartphone and flat screen, you think they've got enough. But they don't.
Meanwhile, all the established do is continue to cut the safety net.
And the Democrats are complicit too. Never forget that Bill Clinton slashed welfare. But now, representatives of the underclass, the abused, those without a good future support Bernie Sanders and he's taken down by the establishment. Oh, come on. All the news outlets, "The New York Times" and MSNBC and...James Carville and the DNC said we couldn't afford Medicare for all and corporations can't be taxed and controlled and we must run an insider, who can play the game.
And then the outsiders blow up the game.
This has been a long time coming. And it's not about control. You can't control hearts and minds, no way, didn't we learn that in Vietnam?
But now history is being rewritten, the talking heads and the books say the sixties were an aberration, that the damn hippies screwed everything up, that that war was winnable and...
It's disinformation all the time.
But now the disadvantaged have cameras in their phones and they can spread the word online and...
This is just the beginning, when the dust settles in a few days it will not be over, it's just a harbinger of what's to come.
Now the sad thing is after revolution often comes autocracy. The stay at homes are fearful, they want law and order. So, we get Nixon in '68. We get all the Eastern European autocrats.
Meanwhile, Trump keeps praising these dictators.
The problem with Trump is he doesn't know the people. Today the upper classes do their best to never interact with the rest of the public. They live behind gates. They see an occasional servant, but they do not have friends who are working for a living, who are trying to make ends meet on minimum wage as Bezos and the Waltons get ever richer.
The only way the unrest can be addressed is by giving to those with less.
But that's never gonna happen. Because that means the empowered will have to sacrifice. And they're not gonna give up one damn thing. A litmus test...is it all right for your kid to go to the state school because an inner city black or Latino took their place at the Ivy? I don't think so!
Deny all I've said. Attack me personally. Spin fantasies you heard on Fox and the dark web. Talk all you want about the need for peace, the need to keep immigrants and minorities down. But it won't make a bit of difference.
You see the protesters are fighting on what they feel. You know, your gut, your instincts. The spin slides right by them. They've taken it up the rear end for years, and now they've reached their limit. Black people have shorter life expectancies than whites. Why? BECAUSE OF HEALTH CARE! Can you afford to go to the doctor, can you afford insurance?
Oh, don't nitpick. That's what the right has been doing for decades as it tries to drown the government in the bathtub. Saint Reagan said the government was the problem and that is written in stone, just as powerful and lasting as the Bible.
But then, we have a pandemic and we're unprepared.
But now Trump is saying he did a great job!
This only works in the echo chamber of mainstream news. If you're working at the grocery store, if you're delivering food, if you put your life on the line every damn day, if you know people who've died, that's your truth, no matter what anybody else says.
So fire your slings and arrows, your emails and tweets. Won't make a damn bit of difference. You're a professional commenter, you're working the refs 24/7, you have a voice because of the internet and you don't want anyone else to be able to have one, never mind have a louder one.
But this isn't about the internet either.
This is about a society that looked the other way for four decades, that said it was too poor to care about people while billionaires were minted and lionized and the upper class pulled so far away from everybody else that there was no way to bridge that gap. Hey you, out there! You boomer! You Gen-X'er! You worked damn hard to get into a good college, you became a professional, and now even you are left out! You can't afford the concierge doctor, you can't get a good seat at the restaurant, you can't afford the luxury vacation spot.
There are more of us than there are of them.
And if you really think the white militias are gonna start shooting at the underclass, you don't realize that they're their brethren. They're all losing out. They're just blaming it on different people.
You cannot steal constantly from the jar without running out of cookies.
You cannot price fast food cheaper than healthy food and not expect the underprivileged to get fat and have diabetes.
You cannot screw the same people year after year without pushback.
We did not expect it to go down this way.
And we did not expect it to happen now.
Trump skirted impeachment and the DNC anointed Biden. The lanes were clean, the choices were clear, everybody thought it was about an election.
But if you have faith that electing Biden will put food on your table, will get Wells Fargo not to screw you, then you're delusional.
But the people protesting are not delusional. They know more truth than those in government and media. The bottom line is America is not working for them anymore. And they are sick and tired of being abused.
Shoot the messenger, go ahead. I hope it makes you feel good, because it won't make a bit of difference.
The upper class, the media, the government have lost control.
And according to the protesters, it's about time.
Meet the new boss.
The music industry was disrupted by Napster. Could it control its customers? NO! It had to adjust to them, damn the old business model.
For twenty years we were enraptured by the tech titans. But those days are through.
Now it's about ideas, not widgets, not algorithms.
It's about people, not bots.
Mark Zuckerberg is not prepared. In fact, he's blind, like most of the people in the government.
They think they have all the power.
But they don't.
It's morning in America. Wake up and smell the burnt coffee.
It was a new day yesterday, but it's an old day now.
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Saturday 30 May 2020
Thursday 28 May 2020
The Knockout Queen
https://amzn.to/36QlasF
This book is so wild.
When I was a freshman in college, second semester I took an English course entitled "The Picaresque Novel." Now if you look up "picaresque" in the Oxford dictionary, it says "relating to an episodic style of fiction dealing with the adventures of a rough and dishonest but appealing hero." I'm not sure every book we read in that class fit that description, but one thing is for sure, the main character in each book was different, one of a kind, didn't fit in, was a leader of misfits or...
Now at Middlebury, 45% of the students came from prep school. They had it all wired, they knew things I did not. Like "Celtic" is pronounced with a "k" sound as opposed to the "c" of the Boston basketball team, and that you didn't have to read all the books and you never had to turn a paper in on time.
As for the last...I eventually behaved that way too. You've got to be motivated to write a paper. Oh, that's one more thing, there were no objective tests at Middlebury, no true/false or multiple choice, they were all three hour essay tests, and you had to write tons of papers. So, I'd feel the pressure the night before and write my paper, but...
It was a different era. Oh, how I wish I went to college in the computer age. Not only would I not be isolated in nowhere Vermont, I'd be able to print as opposed to type, or maybe just e-mail the finished result to the professor. You see that was the biggest challenge, when you were done scribbling, you had to type your composition. And although I studied touch-typing in high school, maybe the most valuable course I took, my typing was not yet perfect and if you made too many mistakes you had to start over and it was a real pain in the ass.
As for not having to read all the books...
That was wisdom, that was genius.
Some courses would assign you a thousand page book a week. Really. How could you do any other schoolwork, how could you even finish that book? And all this hoopla about online learning...I learned a hell of a lot more out of the classroom than in it. That's why you go to college, to meet different kinds of people, to grow up, most of what you learn in the classroom is close to worthless, especially today when they teach you business crap as opposed to the liberal arts. Which is all to say I don't think I read most of the books in that class that semester. Not that they were any good, not that I missed anything. But I did miss the first week of the semester skiing in Courchevel, and I never really caught up. And I am exaggerating, as everybody is wont to do, I read most of the books, but I distinctly remember not reading "The Ginger Man."
But I did read "Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me."
It changed my life.
That and "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" that summer.
It's different now. Even by 1970 people would have rather recorded the Great American Album as opposed to writing the Great American Novel, but this was before blockbusters. Just like "Jaws" and "Star Wars" ruined the movie business, James Patterson and John Grisham ruined the book business. Suddenly, you could get rich writing a novel. Well, before the techies came along and added a bunch of zeros. So, today we've got genre books, mysteries, romance, and "literature," which is the product of the writing schools wherein the writing supersedes the story and most of it is only read by a small subset of Americans as opposed to everybody.
That was not "Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me."
Its main character is Gnossos Pappadopoulis. It was written by Richard Farina, who was married to Joan Baez's sister Mimi, and he died in a motorcycle accident two days after the book's publication. That was big news back then, today no one even knows who Mimi is, never mind reads this book.
You see it's a combination of irreverence and alienation. The human condition. That's what's been lost in today's mercenary society, everybody hides their identity to get along, to appear a winner, when the truth is being human is challenging, you're living in your head, does anybody really know you, and does any of it really matter?
Neither of the above books are why I became a writer. That happened earlier, in the fall of my freshman year, but that's a story for another day.
But "The Knockout Queen" is the story for today.
You see you have an alienated gay teenager whose mother is in prison for attacking his violent father. And this teenager is living with his aunt. And he befriends this tall, rich girl who lives next door.
And that all happens right away, I'm not really giving anything away. That's what I hate about reviews, they just give a precis of the book, and that's not what I want...what I want to know is if I should read it!
And I'm not recommending "The Knockout Queen," because I don't think it's for everybody.
But if it's for you..!
Come on, are you the type who likes to analyze, who takes nothing at face value, who feels like they exist outside the system?
Are you the type who believes life is rigged, never mind politics?
Are you the type who lives for adventure, even if it's not gonna be posted on Instagram?
Are you the type who adds up the injustices, but soldiers on?
Are you the type who believes it's just not gonna work out for you?
That's a lot of us, but most of us don't want to admit it.
So, by being very small and focused, "The Knockout Queen" becomes universal. Well, that's overstating the case a bit, but you get what I mean, it speaks to the human condition.
What is said and the choices characters make and the way people act...it's just like people you know in real life. The one who says they'll do you any favor, even though they don't really mean it, they just want points for saying it.
I guess what I'm saying is I was reading "The Knockout Queen" and I suddenly realized, THIS IS ME!
No, I don't mean I was any character in the book, but it brought me back to who I once was. And believe me, there's so much I don't want to go back to from college. But me and my friends used to say, if we ever got rich, we'd establish a chair for "flipped-out literature." We really said that, again and again. It was a rebellion against the conservatism of Middlebury. Where they didn't want to know your opinion of the book, they just wanted you to study someone else's opinion. So why read, you're removing all the joy from the experience!
As for Rufi Thorpe, the author of "The Knockout Queen"...
The funny thing is when you read a book, you kinda feel like you know the author, And you're drawn to find out more. Even though if you met in real life they'd want nothing to do with you and you'd find out they're different from your preconception. But the beauty is you never meet them! You have your own fantasy!
Now most of celebrity journalism is based on movie and TV stars. Who literally play a role. There's very little there there. Who cares what they're saying or doing? And then there are reality stars, like the Kardashians, those are business stories, how did they hoodwink America to make all that cash...come on, would you like to hang with these people, the conversation would be inane! And then there are authors. They came up with the story, they're in the book.
Rufi Thorpe said MFA programs were b.s. Not to go if you had to borrow money to do so. That they were a good place to go to have time off to write, but as for learning anything...
You see the U.S. is one big conformity system. They're training you to get in line and be just like everybody else. But deep inside, we're not. We feel different and we're always wandering around like in that children's book, asking ARE YOU MY MOTHER? We're looking for someone who gets us, who is on the same page, who understands us.
And it happens rarely.
Ever try to change your friends? It can't be done. Oh, you can fake it, but you can't become a different person. Turns out the popular people are different. They're fake and duplicitous and fabulous and you need to hang with someone else just as alienated as you.
So, I read "The Knockout Queen" and I was stunned to find someone on the exact same page as me! Once again, not the characters, but the sensibility...as in you're marching through life and it doesn't make any sense.
Rufi Thorpe said she wrote what she wanted to write. Which is where all the great stuff comes from. You can go to Nashville and learn how to write for country radio, but you won't be an original. But originals are who we're truly looking for! But the gatekeepers think you're too dangerous, you're not getting encouragement, and chances are even if what you do is great it'll fail in the marketplace and...
I did not like the ending of "The Knockout Queen." Primarily because people don't change their spots that much. I felt Michael...turned into someone different, as did the Knockout Queen.
Oh, she's 6'3" but she's neither beautiful nor popular. Personality is a factor. Some tall girls become models, and many others regret their height, like Bunny.
Now "The Knockout Queen" is not going to be the book of the year, read by everybody. A lot of book groups will abhor it, because it's pretty downbeat and the characters are not so likable...it's not light fiction. Oh, it's not hard to read, you're drawn to it, you get caught up and it's difficult to put down, but it's not about endless victories.
But there is humor. Life is absurd, sometimes all you can do is laugh.
So if you're one of those people who wants to only read about music. Who wants to constantly bitch about Spotify. Who watches cartoon movies. I doubt you'll like this book. It doesn't give you any answers, it doesn't pay any financial dividends. And it's less about the story than the attitude, the viewpoint.
Then again, there's some of that comic wildness that was in "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," but instead of being 70mm, "The Knockout Queen" is 16mm, it's home video, it's shot on your iPhone and not posted online, it's only for you.
I'm having a hard time diving into another book because I don't want the feeling I got reading "The Knockout Queen" to go.
It's so funny to live so long, see your dreams quashed, march forward somnambulantly and suddenly find out you're the same person you ever were and someone else is on your page.
That's how I felt reading "The Knockout Queen."
Maybe you will too.
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This book is so wild.
When I was a freshman in college, second semester I took an English course entitled "The Picaresque Novel." Now if you look up "picaresque" in the Oxford dictionary, it says "relating to an episodic style of fiction dealing with the adventures of a rough and dishonest but appealing hero." I'm not sure every book we read in that class fit that description, but one thing is for sure, the main character in each book was different, one of a kind, didn't fit in, was a leader of misfits or...
Now at Middlebury, 45% of the students came from prep school. They had it all wired, they knew things I did not. Like "Celtic" is pronounced with a "k" sound as opposed to the "c" of the Boston basketball team, and that you didn't have to read all the books and you never had to turn a paper in on time.
As for the last...I eventually behaved that way too. You've got to be motivated to write a paper. Oh, that's one more thing, there were no objective tests at Middlebury, no true/false or multiple choice, they were all three hour essay tests, and you had to write tons of papers. So, I'd feel the pressure the night before and write my paper, but...
It was a different era. Oh, how I wish I went to college in the computer age. Not only would I not be isolated in nowhere Vermont, I'd be able to print as opposed to type, or maybe just e-mail the finished result to the professor. You see that was the biggest challenge, when you were done scribbling, you had to type your composition. And although I studied touch-typing in high school, maybe the most valuable course I took, my typing was not yet perfect and if you made too many mistakes you had to start over and it was a real pain in the ass.
As for not having to read all the books...
That was wisdom, that was genius.
Some courses would assign you a thousand page book a week. Really. How could you do any other schoolwork, how could you even finish that book? And all this hoopla about online learning...I learned a hell of a lot more out of the classroom than in it. That's why you go to college, to meet different kinds of people, to grow up, most of what you learn in the classroom is close to worthless, especially today when they teach you business crap as opposed to the liberal arts. Which is all to say I don't think I read most of the books in that class that semester. Not that they were any good, not that I missed anything. But I did miss the first week of the semester skiing in Courchevel, and I never really caught up. And I am exaggerating, as everybody is wont to do, I read most of the books, but I distinctly remember not reading "The Ginger Man."
But I did read "Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me."
It changed my life.
That and "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" that summer.
It's different now. Even by 1970 people would have rather recorded the Great American Album as opposed to writing the Great American Novel, but this was before blockbusters. Just like "Jaws" and "Star Wars" ruined the movie business, James Patterson and John Grisham ruined the book business. Suddenly, you could get rich writing a novel. Well, before the techies came along and added a bunch of zeros. So, today we've got genre books, mysteries, romance, and "literature," which is the product of the writing schools wherein the writing supersedes the story and most of it is only read by a small subset of Americans as opposed to everybody.
That was not "Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me."
Its main character is Gnossos Pappadopoulis. It was written by Richard Farina, who was married to Joan Baez's sister Mimi, and he died in a motorcycle accident two days after the book's publication. That was big news back then, today no one even knows who Mimi is, never mind reads this book.
You see it's a combination of irreverence and alienation. The human condition. That's what's been lost in today's mercenary society, everybody hides their identity to get along, to appear a winner, when the truth is being human is challenging, you're living in your head, does anybody really know you, and does any of it really matter?
Neither of the above books are why I became a writer. That happened earlier, in the fall of my freshman year, but that's a story for another day.
But "The Knockout Queen" is the story for today.
You see you have an alienated gay teenager whose mother is in prison for attacking his violent father. And this teenager is living with his aunt. And he befriends this tall, rich girl who lives next door.
And that all happens right away, I'm not really giving anything away. That's what I hate about reviews, they just give a precis of the book, and that's not what I want...what I want to know is if I should read it!
And I'm not recommending "The Knockout Queen," because I don't think it's for everybody.
But if it's for you..!
Come on, are you the type who likes to analyze, who takes nothing at face value, who feels like they exist outside the system?
Are you the type who believes life is rigged, never mind politics?
Are you the type who lives for adventure, even if it's not gonna be posted on Instagram?
Are you the type who adds up the injustices, but soldiers on?
Are you the type who believes it's just not gonna work out for you?
That's a lot of us, but most of us don't want to admit it.
So, by being very small and focused, "The Knockout Queen" becomes universal. Well, that's overstating the case a bit, but you get what I mean, it speaks to the human condition.
What is said and the choices characters make and the way people act...it's just like people you know in real life. The one who says they'll do you any favor, even though they don't really mean it, they just want points for saying it.
I guess what I'm saying is I was reading "The Knockout Queen" and I suddenly realized, THIS IS ME!
No, I don't mean I was any character in the book, but it brought me back to who I once was. And believe me, there's so much I don't want to go back to from college. But me and my friends used to say, if we ever got rich, we'd establish a chair for "flipped-out literature." We really said that, again and again. It was a rebellion against the conservatism of Middlebury. Where they didn't want to know your opinion of the book, they just wanted you to study someone else's opinion. So why read, you're removing all the joy from the experience!
As for Rufi Thorpe, the author of "The Knockout Queen"...
The funny thing is when you read a book, you kinda feel like you know the author, And you're drawn to find out more. Even though if you met in real life they'd want nothing to do with you and you'd find out they're different from your preconception. But the beauty is you never meet them! You have your own fantasy!
Now most of celebrity journalism is based on movie and TV stars. Who literally play a role. There's very little there there. Who cares what they're saying or doing? And then there are reality stars, like the Kardashians, those are business stories, how did they hoodwink America to make all that cash...come on, would you like to hang with these people, the conversation would be inane! And then there are authors. They came up with the story, they're in the book.
Rufi Thorpe said MFA programs were b.s. Not to go if you had to borrow money to do so. That they were a good place to go to have time off to write, but as for learning anything...
You see the U.S. is one big conformity system. They're training you to get in line and be just like everybody else. But deep inside, we're not. We feel different and we're always wandering around like in that children's book, asking ARE YOU MY MOTHER? We're looking for someone who gets us, who is on the same page, who understands us.
And it happens rarely.
Ever try to change your friends? It can't be done. Oh, you can fake it, but you can't become a different person. Turns out the popular people are different. They're fake and duplicitous and fabulous and you need to hang with someone else just as alienated as you.
So, I read "The Knockout Queen" and I was stunned to find someone on the exact same page as me! Once again, not the characters, but the sensibility...as in you're marching through life and it doesn't make any sense.
Rufi Thorpe said she wrote what she wanted to write. Which is where all the great stuff comes from. You can go to Nashville and learn how to write for country radio, but you won't be an original. But originals are who we're truly looking for! But the gatekeepers think you're too dangerous, you're not getting encouragement, and chances are even if what you do is great it'll fail in the marketplace and...
I did not like the ending of "The Knockout Queen." Primarily because people don't change their spots that much. I felt Michael...turned into someone different, as did the Knockout Queen.
Oh, she's 6'3" but she's neither beautiful nor popular. Personality is a factor. Some tall girls become models, and many others regret their height, like Bunny.
Now "The Knockout Queen" is not going to be the book of the year, read by everybody. A lot of book groups will abhor it, because it's pretty downbeat and the characters are not so likable...it's not light fiction. Oh, it's not hard to read, you're drawn to it, you get caught up and it's difficult to put down, but it's not about endless victories.
But there is humor. Life is absurd, sometimes all you can do is laugh.
So if you're one of those people who wants to only read about music. Who wants to constantly bitch about Spotify. Who watches cartoon movies. I doubt you'll like this book. It doesn't give you any answers, it doesn't pay any financial dividends. And it's less about the story than the attitude, the viewpoint.
Then again, there's some of that comic wildness that was in "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," but instead of being 70mm, "The Knockout Queen" is 16mm, it's home video, it's shot on your iPhone and not posted online, it's only for you.
I'm having a hard time diving into another book because I don't want the feeling I got reading "The Knockout Queen" to go.
It's so funny to live so long, see your dreams quashed, march forward somnambulantly and suddenly find out you're the same person you ever were and someone else is on your page.
That's how I felt reading "The Knockout Queen."
Maybe you will too.
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Trump On Twitter
Jack Dorsey is standing up for all of us.
In other words, Trump fucked with the wrong asshole.
What was the Facebook motto? "Move fast and break things."? The history of the internet is the techies do what they want and legacy entities challenge said change and in the middle of the argument, they lose all standing.
Happened in the music business. The record companies shut down Napster and lost half their revenue. You see the labels thought it was all about stealing, whereas it was about their flawed business model. Fans didn't want to pay fifteen bucks for a CD with one good track. They wanted live cuts and rarities, a whole smorgasbord of music. So, Napster was shut down and KaZaA and lockers replaced it and the labels kept fighting the past, and losing all the while. Too much credit is given to the iTunes Store, that was a stopgap measure, it just allowed non-techies to pay for tracks, whereas the enlightened continued to file trade. It wasn't until Spotify that pirates gave up (10% will never pay, Michael Eisner said that, and he was right) and revenues did a U-turn and started to climb.
You see you've got to give the people what they want.
So, the techies have all the power. Look at Google and Amazon, between them they own search, even Microsoft could not make inroads with Bing!
And conversation takes place and news is gathered on Twitter and Facebook and...the oldsters would prefer people consume at the trough of legacy media, i.e. print (and its apps) and TV. But youngsters have no need for physical, it's old news, and they're cutting the cord, they don't even get Fox and MSNBC, never mind ABC or CBS, and if they do they don't pay attention to them.
So, many say Trump got elected because of attention, and that to defeat him this has to be addressed. But Trump is good for legacy media businesses. Cable ratings have gone up, as have subscriptions to the "New York Times." They're not gonna crack down. They too are part of the elite and they cannot change their model. As a matter of fact, the "Times" bends over backwards to criticize Democrats, fearful of criticism from the right. Meanwhile, the "Wall Street Journal" op-ed pages are all right wing all the time and Fox believes there's only one true view, fact-based or not.
So Jack Dorsey takes a stand when no one else with any power is willing to. And he's not backing down, he's leaning in, adding notices to more tweets, not afraid of the president.
I mean why should you be afraid of the president, he's a paper tiger built on hype, there's no there there.
But Pelosi and the news outlets just play the game as usual, say their hands are tied, that there's nothing they can do.
But Jack Dorsey had enough.
Now few had a problem when Alex Jones was shut out of social media. Sure, some continued to defend his inane theories, but sympathy with the Newtown parents and...it was hard to look the other way.
But now that Twitter wants to shut down Trump...actually, not even shut him down, just establish a counterbalance...the attackers are crying foul.
This is like a cheater bitching that they're no longer able to cheat. Even worse, they want the rules changed so they can continue to cheat.
Democrats are passive. They believe their hearts are in the right place so they don't have to be educated on all the issues and they don't have to play hard. But when someone challenges the whole game... That is what this is about folks. Even Trump said it himself! The fear is if everybody gets to vote, there's no way in hell he, or any Republican, will get elected.
Meanwhile, the Democrats do nothing. They win the battle of votes, but lose the Electoral College. Meanwhile, Trump says he won the popular vote...and he's got the biggest megaphone of them all, so his words have influence.
Zuckerberg wants out. He's preparing for a future decades down the road. Without Instagram and WhatsApp he'd be up shit's creek. He got caught in the crossfire hurricane of D.C. and the duplicitous little fuck is playing all nice with the establishment so he can continue to rape and pillage and hide under the pretense that he's doing good. Come on, he's got some secret algorithm that establishes what you can see on his site. And he charges people to be seen. And this is Mr. Neutrality who refuses to draw a line in the sand? He's drawing lines all the time, just not in public.
Google is in a search war with Amazon, and Europe is always knocking on its door charging monopoly, its days of "Do no evil" are not only long behind it, it's afraid of doing anything that gains more attention, for fear of being Microsofted. As for Microsoft... The browser wars were no match for the cloud storage wars. Microsoft pivoted and profited. As did the Republicans. The Democrats, they're living in the past, telling everybody they're enlightened as they get richer and richer and that you've got to support them when they've got no plan for rectifying the inequities pushed upon the public.
The DNC's position is it's a game of insiders. Only old people vote, so let's concentrate on them and forget those who don't cast a ballot. But the problem with this is eventually everybody gets old, and the younger generation and minorities have been screwed in a way they'll never get over. So, when you don't fight the big bad corporations that underpay them for gig work, when you don't provide them health care, it's gonna catch up with you eventually.
In politics they never throw the long ball.
In tech, if you're not, you're history.
So we can parse it however we want. We can add up the offenses on both sides. We can analyze the law. But not only is that irrelevant, that's not how they do it in tech. In tech...they do what's in their gut.
But tech is a game of musical chairs, and they've run out of extra seats. These are relatively mature companies without challengers. They're their own establishment, albeit with different precepts.
So, Jack Dorsey decides to do what is right.
It's just that simple folks. Forget the analysis. He had enough. His platform was being used to spread lies and to change our country and he decided to put his finger in the dike, he decided to take a stand when everybody else was afraid to. Furthermore, what he thinks and does matters, and the truth is in today's world almost nobody's opinion and action matters. You've got the right to say it, that does not mean anybody is listening.
So Jack Dorsey was mad as hell and wasn't gonna take it anymore.
Trump bungled the Covid-19 response, and all the media and elected officials did was bitch, when they weren't saying they had to be nice to Trump to get benefits. This is like an abused wife. You take it and take it and take it and...take it some more?
I don't expect a revolution. Because people love their flat screens and smartphones too much.
Then again, the Supreme Court and the right wing said we live in a post-racial society where no voting protections are necessary and then innocent African-Americans are killed willy-nilly. Take that Tucker Carlson!
So, Fox can go off the rails because of the end of the fairness doctrine.
But now, in some bizarre twist, Trump wants reintroduction of a facsimile by fiat. Saying the left is inherently biased so he should be able to say whatever he wants whenever he wants.
Tell me where in the world this works.
And Dorsey has all the power, we've learned this over the past two decades, that government never understands tech and its wheels grind so slowly that by time D.C. acts, the cheese has been moved.
Sure, we can debate whether the changes Trump wants will hold up to legal scrutiny, but meanwhile, probably at least through the election, Jack Dorsey is in control of his platform, he can do what he wants, there's nothing Donald Trump can do about it.
How does it feel to have the shoe on the other foot?
America is the story of the power of the individual. One person can move mountains, one person can make change. They're always acting on the right side, everybody knows the truth, even Trump, but almost everybody is afraid to stand up for it. But then you've got Martin Luther King. And you've got the techies.
You hate 'em. Because they changed your life.
The media hates Dorsey and Twitter because on the platform everybody gets a voice. And you don't need the imprimatur of the New York media business to gain a following.
Meanwhile, as per usual, the masses are clueless. They believe Twitter is a cesspool filled with bots where irrelevant people go to argue.
That's what they want you to believe. But if it was true, why would Trump be so pissed?
And you can't teach most oldsters to do new tricks. As in Twitter is just too complicated for them. They finally figured out Facebook, even though everybody on the other side of the hourglass has abandoned the platform.
So, for four years we heard about bad actors interfering with the 2016 election. They even made TV shows about it, the woman from Cambridge Analytica came clean. But...after all that info, there can be no change, it must be business as usual. Huh? Jack Dorsey stands up to disinformation and now Trump calls foul? Especially after disinformation helped him get elected to begin with?
Jack Dorsey is a billionaire. But he's acting like a kid in high school, who has been picked on too often. You remember high school, where you're all in it together. No one's in it together anymore in America. There are the rich and powerful and the poor and weak. And there's the smoke screen saying if you're poor it's your fault, there's a job for everybody and you're just too lazy to do it.
But that job doesn't pay the bills and...
Who is standing up for you and me?
Certainly not Joe Biden. He's lacking in fundraising and internet traction, he can tweet but it's like a tree falling in the forest, no one hears it. Which is why he needs to pick the right VP. Did you see Rachel Bitecofer's piece on this: https://nyti.ms/3euT6gV Bitecofer called 2018 right, but she's not part of the establishment, she hasn't paid her dues, so the DNC ignores her.
That whole "meritocracy," that whole business construct has been blown apart by tech.
The Republicans decided to throw over all their values and line up behind Trump, who appealed to the rich and the left out, you can't let the Dems gain any yardage.
And the Democrats keep crying foul as the game is played, furthermore, it's one in which there are no umpires or referees.
And then Jack Dorsey comes along and says he owns the game and this is the way it's gonna be. Dorsey is playing Trump's game and Trump doesn't like it.
But I do. Because for once someone with money and power is doing what's right as opposed to what's expedient.
We need more of this. It's the only way out of this mess.
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In other words, Trump fucked with the wrong asshole.
What was the Facebook motto? "Move fast and break things."? The history of the internet is the techies do what they want and legacy entities challenge said change and in the middle of the argument, they lose all standing.
Happened in the music business. The record companies shut down Napster and lost half their revenue. You see the labels thought it was all about stealing, whereas it was about their flawed business model. Fans didn't want to pay fifteen bucks for a CD with one good track. They wanted live cuts and rarities, a whole smorgasbord of music. So, Napster was shut down and KaZaA and lockers replaced it and the labels kept fighting the past, and losing all the while. Too much credit is given to the iTunes Store, that was a stopgap measure, it just allowed non-techies to pay for tracks, whereas the enlightened continued to file trade. It wasn't until Spotify that pirates gave up (10% will never pay, Michael Eisner said that, and he was right) and revenues did a U-turn and started to climb.
You see you've got to give the people what they want.
So, the techies have all the power. Look at Google and Amazon, between them they own search, even Microsoft could not make inroads with Bing!
And conversation takes place and news is gathered on Twitter and Facebook and...the oldsters would prefer people consume at the trough of legacy media, i.e. print (and its apps) and TV. But youngsters have no need for physical, it's old news, and they're cutting the cord, they don't even get Fox and MSNBC, never mind ABC or CBS, and if they do they don't pay attention to them.
So, many say Trump got elected because of attention, and that to defeat him this has to be addressed. But Trump is good for legacy media businesses. Cable ratings have gone up, as have subscriptions to the "New York Times." They're not gonna crack down. They too are part of the elite and they cannot change their model. As a matter of fact, the "Times" bends over backwards to criticize Democrats, fearful of criticism from the right. Meanwhile, the "Wall Street Journal" op-ed pages are all right wing all the time and Fox believes there's only one true view, fact-based or not.
So Jack Dorsey takes a stand when no one else with any power is willing to. And he's not backing down, he's leaning in, adding notices to more tweets, not afraid of the president.
I mean why should you be afraid of the president, he's a paper tiger built on hype, there's no there there.
But Pelosi and the news outlets just play the game as usual, say their hands are tied, that there's nothing they can do.
But Jack Dorsey had enough.
Now few had a problem when Alex Jones was shut out of social media. Sure, some continued to defend his inane theories, but sympathy with the Newtown parents and...it was hard to look the other way.
But now that Twitter wants to shut down Trump...actually, not even shut him down, just establish a counterbalance...the attackers are crying foul.
This is like a cheater bitching that they're no longer able to cheat. Even worse, they want the rules changed so they can continue to cheat.
Democrats are passive. They believe their hearts are in the right place so they don't have to be educated on all the issues and they don't have to play hard. But when someone challenges the whole game... That is what this is about folks. Even Trump said it himself! The fear is if everybody gets to vote, there's no way in hell he, or any Republican, will get elected.
Meanwhile, the Democrats do nothing. They win the battle of votes, but lose the Electoral College. Meanwhile, Trump says he won the popular vote...and he's got the biggest megaphone of them all, so his words have influence.
Zuckerberg wants out. He's preparing for a future decades down the road. Without Instagram and WhatsApp he'd be up shit's creek. He got caught in the crossfire hurricane of D.C. and the duplicitous little fuck is playing all nice with the establishment so he can continue to rape and pillage and hide under the pretense that he's doing good. Come on, he's got some secret algorithm that establishes what you can see on his site. And he charges people to be seen. And this is Mr. Neutrality who refuses to draw a line in the sand? He's drawing lines all the time, just not in public.
Google is in a search war with Amazon, and Europe is always knocking on its door charging monopoly, its days of "Do no evil" are not only long behind it, it's afraid of doing anything that gains more attention, for fear of being Microsofted. As for Microsoft... The browser wars were no match for the cloud storage wars. Microsoft pivoted and profited. As did the Republicans. The Democrats, they're living in the past, telling everybody they're enlightened as they get richer and richer and that you've got to support them when they've got no plan for rectifying the inequities pushed upon the public.
The DNC's position is it's a game of insiders. Only old people vote, so let's concentrate on them and forget those who don't cast a ballot. But the problem with this is eventually everybody gets old, and the younger generation and minorities have been screwed in a way they'll never get over. So, when you don't fight the big bad corporations that underpay them for gig work, when you don't provide them health care, it's gonna catch up with you eventually.
In politics they never throw the long ball.
In tech, if you're not, you're history.
So we can parse it however we want. We can add up the offenses on both sides. We can analyze the law. But not only is that irrelevant, that's not how they do it in tech. In tech...they do what's in their gut.
But tech is a game of musical chairs, and they've run out of extra seats. These are relatively mature companies without challengers. They're their own establishment, albeit with different precepts.
So, Jack Dorsey decides to do what is right.
It's just that simple folks. Forget the analysis. He had enough. His platform was being used to spread lies and to change our country and he decided to put his finger in the dike, he decided to take a stand when everybody else was afraid to. Furthermore, what he thinks and does matters, and the truth is in today's world almost nobody's opinion and action matters. You've got the right to say it, that does not mean anybody is listening.
So Jack Dorsey was mad as hell and wasn't gonna take it anymore.
Trump bungled the Covid-19 response, and all the media and elected officials did was bitch, when they weren't saying they had to be nice to Trump to get benefits. This is like an abused wife. You take it and take it and take it and...take it some more?
I don't expect a revolution. Because people love their flat screens and smartphones too much.
Then again, the Supreme Court and the right wing said we live in a post-racial society where no voting protections are necessary and then innocent African-Americans are killed willy-nilly. Take that Tucker Carlson!
So, Fox can go off the rails because of the end of the fairness doctrine.
But now, in some bizarre twist, Trump wants reintroduction of a facsimile by fiat. Saying the left is inherently biased so he should be able to say whatever he wants whenever he wants.
Tell me where in the world this works.
And Dorsey has all the power, we've learned this over the past two decades, that government never understands tech and its wheels grind so slowly that by time D.C. acts, the cheese has been moved.
Sure, we can debate whether the changes Trump wants will hold up to legal scrutiny, but meanwhile, probably at least through the election, Jack Dorsey is in control of his platform, he can do what he wants, there's nothing Donald Trump can do about it.
How does it feel to have the shoe on the other foot?
America is the story of the power of the individual. One person can move mountains, one person can make change. They're always acting on the right side, everybody knows the truth, even Trump, but almost everybody is afraid to stand up for it. But then you've got Martin Luther King. And you've got the techies.
You hate 'em. Because they changed your life.
The media hates Dorsey and Twitter because on the platform everybody gets a voice. And you don't need the imprimatur of the New York media business to gain a following.
Meanwhile, as per usual, the masses are clueless. They believe Twitter is a cesspool filled with bots where irrelevant people go to argue.
That's what they want you to believe. But if it was true, why would Trump be so pissed?
And you can't teach most oldsters to do new tricks. As in Twitter is just too complicated for them. They finally figured out Facebook, even though everybody on the other side of the hourglass has abandoned the platform.
So, for four years we heard about bad actors interfering with the 2016 election. They even made TV shows about it, the woman from Cambridge Analytica came clean. But...after all that info, there can be no change, it must be business as usual. Huh? Jack Dorsey stands up to disinformation and now Trump calls foul? Especially after disinformation helped him get elected to begin with?
Jack Dorsey is a billionaire. But he's acting like a kid in high school, who has been picked on too often. You remember high school, where you're all in it together. No one's in it together anymore in America. There are the rich and powerful and the poor and weak. And there's the smoke screen saying if you're poor it's your fault, there's a job for everybody and you're just too lazy to do it.
But that job doesn't pay the bills and...
Who is standing up for you and me?
Certainly not Joe Biden. He's lacking in fundraising and internet traction, he can tweet but it's like a tree falling in the forest, no one hears it. Which is why he needs to pick the right VP. Did you see Rachel Bitecofer's piece on this: https://nyti.ms/3euT6gV Bitecofer called 2018 right, but she's not part of the establishment, she hasn't paid her dues, so the DNC ignores her.
That whole "meritocracy," that whole business construct has been blown apart by tech.
The Republicans decided to throw over all their values and line up behind Trump, who appealed to the rich and the left out, you can't let the Dems gain any yardage.
And the Democrats keep crying foul as the game is played, furthermore, it's one in which there are no umpires or referees.
And then Jack Dorsey comes along and says he owns the game and this is the way it's gonna be. Dorsey is playing Trump's game and Trump doesn't like it.
But I do. Because for once someone with money and power is doing what's right as opposed to what's expedient.
We need more of this. It's the only way out of this mess.
--
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--
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Sarah Kendzior-This Week's Podcast
The oracle from St. Louis, Sarah Kendzior is the author of the bestselling books "The View From Flyover Country" and "Hiding in Plain Sight." You can see her in bits and pieces on MSNBC and Seth Meyers, but here we go deep, covering her life story, tales of self-publishing, fear of selling out to the man and her love of metal music. For a fresh and honest take on today's political landscape, Sarah Kendzior is the one.
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-30806836/
https://open.spotify.com/episode/6XDy69GdDdEaLyhaKeniRi
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/sarah-kendzior/id1316200737?i=1000476045956
https://www.stitcher.com/s?eid=69989156
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https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-30806836/
https://open.spotify.com/episode/6XDy69GdDdEaLyhaKeniRi
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/sarah-kendzior/id1316200737?i=1000476045956
https://www.stitcher.com/s?eid=69989156
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Tuesday 26 May 2020
Re-Moon Martin
i've spent the last 18 years of my life working for and with Moon Martin, and I just wanted to thank you for the article that you wrote about him, it was beautiful and awesome all at once.
Everything you said was wonderful, but if you'd allow me to correct one tiny detail, I think you would appreciate it...
He would never have considered himself a level above you, if anything he would've put you on the pedestal.
Had he known that you had any desire to speak with him, he would have changed seats to have a conversation with you, especially if it was about music.
He was without a doubt the most humble man I've ever met...His generosity was unparalleled, of the thousands of car rides we took together over the last two decades running errands and picking up gear, he would not let me drive past a homeless person without sticking 10 bucks in their hand. Not once. He could not live with himself if he thought that a person might go hungry and it was within his power to prevent it.
Wikipedia had it wrong, he was born in 1945 but he either fibbed about his age in the media.... or it could've been a typo. He never seemed like the type of man who would care about that sort of thing.
He loved music so much, no matter where we were there was music playing if we were in the car he would turn on the radio, when we would sit at the burger joint eating french fries, he would listen to whatever music was playing over the speaker system (usually something new and contemporary or pop) and break down the elements of the song with me at the table, debating the different choices that the musicians made in their songs.
He was a mentor to me and I loved him like an uncle.
He was 74 years old, and he had become a little frail over the last few years...He went to sleep in a big easy chair in his living room with a book in his hand, a blanket in his lap, and a little glass of Coke on the nightstand next to him. He left this world as peacefully as anybody could ever hope to.
We were unable to get his obituary published in the LA Times until this past Sunday and Monday, there were huge difficulties getting the death certificate completed during Covid and the government shut down so it took forever, as no newspaper these days is willing to publish obituaries without some hard evidence.
You were right, Bob, he never let go, he never left the circus and he was in it literally until the day that he died.
He spent that day in the recording studio working his butt off on a new album, believe it or not.
A tiny handful of us who were close to him are working diligently to finish it for him now.... we don't know if he completed recording all of his vocals but we will figure it out over the next couple of weeks.
I'm on my way to listen to the first Finished mix right now... and I'm going to have to pull over for a minute to recompose myself.
Thank you again For your awesome article Bob, if there's anything you ever want to know about Moon Martin please don't hesitate to ask, if I don't know the answer to the question I'll put you in touch with somebody who does.
Sean Householder
____________________________________
Very sorry to hear that Moon Martin has died. He was an original player, marching to his own drummer, and yet still able to fit in - you might say he played well with others. At Linda Ronstadt's suggestion, I hired him to be in her band for one Troubadour gig in 1971. The rest of the band consisted of Glenn Frey, Don Henley, Michael Bowden (on bass), Byron Berline on occasional fiddle, and me on occasional acoustic guitar or Wurlitzer electric piano. I recorded three or four sets for a possible live album, using the old Wally Heider truck, but nothing came of it. We did release one track - a version of "Rescue Me," and it shows Moon's uncanny ability to add something fresh while still fitting in. He takes a very rock and roll approach to an R and B song and it works great. It's on Spotify somewhere and you should check out his guitar part, which is on the left channel. I had not seen Moon for a long time, but I will miss him.
Best,
John Boylan
____________________________________
I got in a bit of a pickle a couple of weeks back when I posted on my Twitter and FB and Insta that Moon Martin had sadly died. This was on May 12. Moon had died on May 11, possibly from lung cancer, and although I didn't really know him personally, I heard about it from a private source. It wasn't on Wiki, it wasn't online (for several days). Mutual friends and extremely close colleagues of Moon's, either in the studio or from one of his former bands, didn't know about it. They were of course gutted. The news went on Wiki (May 13) then it was temporarily withdrawn. It was several days before it became conclusive and even at that point, the details were scant. Such was Moon's 'obscurity'. These days, when almost any musician checks out, the story is on the street within minutes. But for Moon Martin it took around 72 hours, which is rare. Moon's reported date of birth is also subject to misinformation but never mind, old is good, and he wrote at least three stone classics and as you suggest, he was the real deal. I bought all of his records but saw him perform live only once, at London's Marquee club in 1979. The joint was rocking.
Will Birch
____________________________________
Your tribute to Moon brought tears to my eyes like the news of his passing did. I worked with him and his devoted manager Ron Henry over the course of my Capitol years
He as a soft spoken and often seemed withdrawn, but once you spent time with him, he became comfortable with you and there grew a sincere and honest relationship. He was thankful that he had a label that really cared about him… we did four albums with Moon.
Honest is the operative keyword. Authentic… humble… down to earth, kick ass rocker from Oklahoma. He lived to play.
Right… he wasn't a 'new waver', he was just Moon. What ya' saw is what ya' got from him. Thanks for your words and sentiment.
Bruce Garfield
____________________________________
Further evidence that we all live in our own bubbles is that you just now found out about Moon's passing, two weeks ago. As a staff engineer at Capitol Studios in the 70's and 80's, I got to work with many artists on the label (Steve Miller, Bob Seger, Tina Turner, Maze), including Moon Martin. He came off as the reluctant rock star, very down to earth with no airs, and was all about the music. His contributions to the rock and roll catalog will not be forgotten.
David N Cole
____________________________________
There was nothing complicated about Moon Martin's music.
Guitar-based songs driven by basic riffs that moved almost in a straight line.
I played his songs on KNAC and KROQ during a time when lots of the other music out there just seemed overblown.
And when other artists demanded a bright spotlight...
I got to see him play live in a school cafeteria.
---"Rolene"
---"I've Got a Reason"
---"Hot House Baby"
All bad ass songs written by Moon and touched just enough by the underrated Jude Cole.
All perfectly unembellished...
Marty Bender
____________________________________
Sad news! Met Moon a couple of times in the Valley and he was amazingly humble and incredibly quirky. He drove a non-flashy truck, was very kind to a strange girl, who had no idea who he was, and THAT made for excellent conversation. He did not seem comfortable around people however, when music was playing he found his footing and was a fantastic hang. I am lucky to have met him.
Paula Barron
____________________________________
I was Moon Martin's fan and his friend for over 30 years.
I Co engineered and produced the albums he recorded in the 80s and toured France with him Many times.
Chas Ferry
____________________________________
When I heard the news, I immediately found and shared the video to
"Rolene" with a couple of friends. They didn't remember it or him
until I mentioned "Bad Case", but I knew Rolene in 1979. It got
through to me somehow in Kentucky and ended up on several of my
mixtapes of the day.
Dave Gorman
____________________________________
Very timely story, I have been on this endless quest to scan my slides and negs for the last couple of years (great than a quarter million) and ran across some shots I had of Moon Martin opening for the last version of the Runaways at The Golden Bear in 1978. I got to see Moon twice, once at this Golden Bear show and then as the opener for Cheap Trick at the Long Beach Arena.
Don Adkins
____________________________________
Check out "Aces with You". I heard it in a Nashville fern bar (remember those?) when I was in law school. Had to rush over to the maître D and find out who it was.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlZ9MHoDvEY
Be safe, be well.
R. Emmett McAuliffe
____________________________________
Like you I did not see any stories about Moon Martin until this past week. I was a sales person for Capitol during the late 1970's and 1980's in D.C. Moon Martin got quite a bit of airplay on WHFS thanks to David Einstein, Weasel, Bob and the rest of the crew of one of the all-time great free form radio stations. BTW - Weasel is still doing his thing on WTMD. https://wtmd.org/radio/sample-page/weasel/
I believe Moon Martin did a gig at the Bayou, that I attended, during the promotion for Escape from Domination.
Willy DeVille with his band Mink Deville played there as well. "Cadillac Walk" also got a lot of exposure on WHFS as did "Mixed Up Shook Up Girl" and "Venus of Avenue D".
Being the pack rat that I am I still have these Moon Martin promo items.
Sadly neither artist got the national traction they deserved to really break through. Sad…
Paul Bishow
____________________________________
We played Moon's albums at my college radio station at the University of Maryland in the late seventies. Good stuff!
R.I.P., Moon.
Carl Nelson
____________________________________
Ex-Southwind member Fontaine Brown had a band later as well, on EMI, called Fast Fontaine, which also featured fellow ex-Southwind member Erik Dalton plus young bassist Dan Rothchild.
My vinyl is true research facility.
Toby Mamis
____________________________________
Before we got involved in the Leon Russell estate, I thought like you, that Oklahoma was where Leon Russell was from. Then I found out also from Oklahoma is, Garth Brooks, Kristin Chenowith, Bob Wills, Reba McIntire, Vince Gill, David Gates (Bread), Will Rogers, Gary Busey, Brad Pitt, Ron Howard, Mickey Mantle and at least a dozen others. Formidable!
Bill Siddons
____________________________________
Oklahoma also provided:
Hoyt Axton
Garth Brooks
Flaming Lips
Chet Baker
Roy Clark?? I think
Merle Kilgore
Wanda Jackson!!
Chuck Thatcher
____________________________________
I remember Cadillac Walk coming out in 1977 and was mesmerized when my buddy spun it up on the turntable when we were living in the dorms at UCSB. I didn't know Moon Martin wrote it. "Dead men raise and sigh." RIP Willy and Moon.
Alan Fenton
____________________________________
Willie DeVille was terrific, but his own worst enemy, like so many.
I never saw him.
Spot on about the Robert Palmer. First three albums were the shit. Changing for MTV may have been smart commercially, but musically I agree with you. I drank with him till dawn after one of our 80's shows with him. The man drank with a purpose. By the middle of the night it was kind of like somebody help Robert to the bathroom. It was tragic to see him gone at 54, but understandable after spending some time with him.
i'm not an Oklahoma music flag waver, but there was really quite a bit more going on here then you've touched on. Particularly in Tulsa, which had its own kind of laid-back sound. Even Clapton fell under a spell in the middle late 70s. And of course JJ Cale. Freddie King had three terrific records on Shelter. Hell even Wanda Jackson was from here. Garth, Carrie Underwood, Blake Shelton, Miranda Lambert.
I'll stop there.
Kindest Regards
Lavon Pagan
____________________________________
Regarding "Can one big hit deliver that much cash?"---I owned a ticket agency in New Mexico when Randy Meisner came to town, opening for the Beach Boys. The promoter asked me to babysit Randy and be sure to get him to the show on time, At dinner he mentioned to me that "Take It To The Limit" earned him $100,000 annually. Even putting in a 2x hyperbole factor, that's nice mailbox money. I also had an English teacher in high school who made enough money for writing a Perry Como hit that he taught for the fun of it and didn't need a second job. I can easily see Moon Martin surviving on his royalties. Today's artists--not so much
Be well
Barry Finkenberg
____________________________________
Loved Moon and working his records.
FYI... Garth Brooks is from Oklahoma as well.
Olie Kornelsen
____________________________________
Bob, " Escape from Domination" is crammed full of exceptional songs.
Although Capitol went full tilt on the project, sales scarcely kicked in. I think the intense material called for rougher-edged instrumentation, and more aggressive delivery than Moon's meek vocals.
Paul Lanning
____________________________________
Wow, Bob
Great story. I read that he passed away. I had a couple friends who recorded and played with RP and I did live sound for Willie
for years around Coup d'Grace era (1981). Never knew that Moon wrote those tunes. RP totally ripped off Moon's arrangement.
I like Willy's version better, but Moon's version is really good.
Listening to him now. Thanks for the turn-on.
Steve Isaacson
____________________________________
They're not just reliving their youth, this is their identity!
YES!!!
I left the business, have gone back in later. Smart? Definitely not. But this is why.
J. Greenberg
____________________________________
Thank you for paying attention to Moon Martin !
Was lucky enough to catch him opening for The Clash at the Bronco Bowl in Dallas on June 6, 1982.
Conejo Tejano
____________________________________
Bob you'd be surprised what one big hit can bring in revenue. I have a friend who wrote a monster hit in the '60s that was tied to a hit movie and he receives $1 million annually. Day in and day out.
Larry LeBlanc
____________________________________
Moon Martin. Even if you never heard his music, you never forgot his name or face. He was all over the shelves when spending numerous hours combing the album racks of my favorite record stores back in my teen years. Yet, it took this newsletter for me to listen to him. Had no idea he wrote those tunes.
John Hauser
____________________________________
So weird.
When I saw the subject line, my first thought was "Why is Lefsetz writing about Moon Martin? He died years ago."
Or, so I wrongly thought.
I'd found Escape From Domination in the CD bargain bins. Unlike most CDs that I found there in the early to mid '90s, it was listenable. More than once.
Mr. Martin's saving grace as far as his career goes, (if you discount his major label status and his covered songs that hit big enough to garner royalties enough to live on), is the fact that his life and death rightly warranted a Lefsetz Letter.
Most of us lifers won't be that lucky.
Scott Sechman
Everything you said was wonderful, but if you'd allow me to correct one tiny detail, I think you would appreciate it...
He would never have considered himself a level above you, if anything he would've put you on the pedestal.
Had he known that you had any desire to speak with him, he would have changed seats to have a conversation with you, especially if it was about music.
He was without a doubt the most humble man I've ever met...His generosity was unparalleled, of the thousands of car rides we took together over the last two decades running errands and picking up gear, he would not let me drive past a homeless person without sticking 10 bucks in their hand. Not once. He could not live with himself if he thought that a person might go hungry and it was within his power to prevent it.
Wikipedia had it wrong, he was born in 1945 but he either fibbed about his age in the media.... or it could've been a typo. He never seemed like the type of man who would care about that sort of thing.
He loved music so much, no matter where we were there was music playing if we were in the car he would turn on the radio, when we would sit at the burger joint eating french fries, he would listen to whatever music was playing over the speaker system (usually something new and contemporary or pop) and break down the elements of the song with me at the table, debating the different choices that the musicians made in their songs.
He was a mentor to me and I loved him like an uncle.
He was 74 years old, and he had become a little frail over the last few years...He went to sleep in a big easy chair in his living room with a book in his hand, a blanket in his lap, and a little glass of Coke on the nightstand next to him. He left this world as peacefully as anybody could ever hope to.
We were unable to get his obituary published in the LA Times until this past Sunday and Monday, there were huge difficulties getting the death certificate completed during Covid and the government shut down so it took forever, as no newspaper these days is willing to publish obituaries without some hard evidence.
You were right, Bob, he never let go, he never left the circus and he was in it literally until the day that he died.
He spent that day in the recording studio working his butt off on a new album, believe it or not.
A tiny handful of us who were close to him are working diligently to finish it for him now.... we don't know if he completed recording all of his vocals but we will figure it out over the next couple of weeks.
I'm on my way to listen to the first Finished mix right now... and I'm going to have to pull over for a minute to recompose myself.
Thank you again For your awesome article Bob, if there's anything you ever want to know about Moon Martin please don't hesitate to ask, if I don't know the answer to the question I'll put you in touch with somebody who does.
Sean Householder
____________________________________
Very sorry to hear that Moon Martin has died. He was an original player, marching to his own drummer, and yet still able to fit in - you might say he played well with others. At Linda Ronstadt's suggestion, I hired him to be in her band for one Troubadour gig in 1971. The rest of the band consisted of Glenn Frey, Don Henley, Michael Bowden (on bass), Byron Berline on occasional fiddle, and me on occasional acoustic guitar or Wurlitzer electric piano. I recorded three or four sets for a possible live album, using the old Wally Heider truck, but nothing came of it. We did release one track - a version of "Rescue Me," and it shows Moon's uncanny ability to add something fresh while still fitting in. He takes a very rock and roll approach to an R and B song and it works great. It's on Spotify somewhere and you should check out his guitar part, which is on the left channel. I had not seen Moon for a long time, but I will miss him.
Best,
John Boylan
____________________________________
I got in a bit of a pickle a couple of weeks back when I posted on my Twitter and FB and Insta that Moon Martin had sadly died. This was on May 12. Moon had died on May 11, possibly from lung cancer, and although I didn't really know him personally, I heard about it from a private source. It wasn't on Wiki, it wasn't online (for several days). Mutual friends and extremely close colleagues of Moon's, either in the studio or from one of his former bands, didn't know about it. They were of course gutted. The news went on Wiki (May 13) then it was temporarily withdrawn. It was several days before it became conclusive and even at that point, the details were scant. Such was Moon's 'obscurity'. These days, when almost any musician checks out, the story is on the street within minutes. But for Moon Martin it took around 72 hours, which is rare. Moon's reported date of birth is also subject to misinformation but never mind, old is good, and he wrote at least three stone classics and as you suggest, he was the real deal. I bought all of his records but saw him perform live only once, at London's Marquee club in 1979. The joint was rocking.
Will Birch
____________________________________
Your tribute to Moon brought tears to my eyes like the news of his passing did. I worked with him and his devoted manager Ron Henry over the course of my Capitol years
He as a soft spoken and often seemed withdrawn, but once you spent time with him, he became comfortable with you and there grew a sincere and honest relationship. He was thankful that he had a label that really cared about him… we did four albums with Moon.
Honest is the operative keyword. Authentic… humble… down to earth, kick ass rocker from Oklahoma. He lived to play.
Right… he wasn't a 'new waver', he was just Moon. What ya' saw is what ya' got from him. Thanks for your words and sentiment.
Bruce Garfield
____________________________________
Further evidence that we all live in our own bubbles is that you just now found out about Moon's passing, two weeks ago. As a staff engineer at Capitol Studios in the 70's and 80's, I got to work with many artists on the label (Steve Miller, Bob Seger, Tina Turner, Maze), including Moon Martin. He came off as the reluctant rock star, very down to earth with no airs, and was all about the music. His contributions to the rock and roll catalog will not be forgotten.
David N Cole
____________________________________
There was nothing complicated about Moon Martin's music.
Guitar-based songs driven by basic riffs that moved almost in a straight line.
I played his songs on KNAC and KROQ during a time when lots of the other music out there just seemed overblown.
And when other artists demanded a bright spotlight...
I got to see him play live in a school cafeteria.
---"Rolene"
---"I've Got a Reason"
---"Hot House Baby"
All bad ass songs written by Moon and touched just enough by the underrated Jude Cole.
All perfectly unembellished...
Marty Bender
____________________________________
Sad news! Met Moon a couple of times in the Valley and he was amazingly humble and incredibly quirky. He drove a non-flashy truck, was very kind to a strange girl, who had no idea who he was, and THAT made for excellent conversation. He did not seem comfortable around people however, when music was playing he found his footing and was a fantastic hang. I am lucky to have met him.
Paula Barron
____________________________________
I was Moon Martin's fan and his friend for over 30 years.
I Co engineered and produced the albums he recorded in the 80s and toured France with him Many times.
Chas Ferry
____________________________________
When I heard the news, I immediately found and shared the video to
"Rolene" with a couple of friends. They didn't remember it or him
until I mentioned "Bad Case", but I knew Rolene in 1979. It got
through to me somehow in Kentucky and ended up on several of my
mixtapes of the day.
Dave Gorman
____________________________________
Very timely story, I have been on this endless quest to scan my slides and negs for the last couple of years (great than a quarter million) and ran across some shots I had of Moon Martin opening for the last version of the Runaways at The Golden Bear in 1978. I got to see Moon twice, once at this Golden Bear show and then as the opener for Cheap Trick at the Long Beach Arena.
Don Adkins
____________________________________
Check out "Aces with You". I heard it in a Nashville fern bar (remember those?) when I was in law school. Had to rush over to the maître D and find out who it was.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlZ9MHoDvEY
Be safe, be well.
R. Emmett McAuliffe
____________________________________
Like you I did not see any stories about Moon Martin until this past week. I was a sales person for Capitol during the late 1970's and 1980's in D.C. Moon Martin got quite a bit of airplay on WHFS thanks to David Einstein, Weasel, Bob and the rest of the crew of one of the all-time great free form radio stations. BTW - Weasel is still doing his thing on WTMD. https://wtmd.org/radio/sample-page/weasel/
I believe Moon Martin did a gig at the Bayou, that I attended, during the promotion for Escape from Domination.
Willy DeVille with his band Mink Deville played there as well. "Cadillac Walk" also got a lot of exposure on WHFS as did "Mixed Up Shook Up Girl" and "Venus of Avenue D".
Being the pack rat that I am I still have these Moon Martin promo items.
Sadly neither artist got the national traction they deserved to really break through. Sad…
Paul Bishow
____________________________________
We played Moon's albums at my college radio station at the University of Maryland in the late seventies. Good stuff!
R.I.P., Moon.
Carl Nelson
____________________________________
Ex-Southwind member Fontaine Brown had a band later as well, on EMI, called Fast Fontaine, which also featured fellow ex-Southwind member Erik Dalton plus young bassist Dan Rothchild.
My vinyl is true research facility.
Toby Mamis
____________________________________
Before we got involved in the Leon Russell estate, I thought like you, that Oklahoma was where Leon Russell was from. Then I found out also from Oklahoma is, Garth Brooks, Kristin Chenowith, Bob Wills, Reba McIntire, Vince Gill, David Gates (Bread), Will Rogers, Gary Busey, Brad Pitt, Ron Howard, Mickey Mantle and at least a dozen others. Formidable!
Bill Siddons
____________________________________
Oklahoma also provided:
Hoyt Axton
Garth Brooks
Flaming Lips
Chet Baker
Roy Clark?? I think
Merle Kilgore
Wanda Jackson!!
Chuck Thatcher
____________________________________
I remember Cadillac Walk coming out in 1977 and was mesmerized when my buddy spun it up on the turntable when we were living in the dorms at UCSB. I didn't know Moon Martin wrote it. "Dead men raise and sigh." RIP Willy and Moon.
Alan Fenton
____________________________________
Willie DeVille was terrific, but his own worst enemy, like so many.
I never saw him.
Spot on about the Robert Palmer. First three albums were the shit. Changing for MTV may have been smart commercially, but musically I agree with you. I drank with him till dawn after one of our 80's shows with him. The man drank with a purpose. By the middle of the night it was kind of like somebody help Robert to the bathroom. It was tragic to see him gone at 54, but understandable after spending some time with him.
i'm not an Oklahoma music flag waver, but there was really quite a bit more going on here then you've touched on. Particularly in Tulsa, which had its own kind of laid-back sound. Even Clapton fell under a spell in the middle late 70s. And of course JJ Cale. Freddie King had three terrific records on Shelter. Hell even Wanda Jackson was from here. Garth, Carrie Underwood, Blake Shelton, Miranda Lambert.
I'll stop there.
Kindest Regards
Lavon Pagan
____________________________________
Regarding "Can one big hit deliver that much cash?"---I owned a ticket agency in New Mexico when Randy Meisner came to town, opening for the Beach Boys. The promoter asked me to babysit Randy and be sure to get him to the show on time, At dinner he mentioned to me that "Take It To The Limit" earned him $100,000 annually. Even putting in a 2x hyperbole factor, that's nice mailbox money. I also had an English teacher in high school who made enough money for writing a Perry Como hit that he taught for the fun of it and didn't need a second job. I can easily see Moon Martin surviving on his royalties. Today's artists--not so much
Be well
Barry Finkenberg
____________________________________
Loved Moon and working his records.
FYI... Garth Brooks is from Oklahoma as well.
Olie Kornelsen
____________________________________
Bob, " Escape from Domination" is crammed full of exceptional songs.
Although Capitol went full tilt on the project, sales scarcely kicked in. I think the intense material called for rougher-edged instrumentation, and more aggressive delivery than Moon's meek vocals.
Paul Lanning
____________________________________
Wow, Bob
Great story. I read that he passed away. I had a couple friends who recorded and played with RP and I did live sound for Willie
for years around Coup d'Grace era (1981). Never knew that Moon wrote those tunes. RP totally ripped off Moon's arrangement.
I like Willy's version better, but Moon's version is really good.
Listening to him now. Thanks for the turn-on.
Steve Isaacson
____________________________________
They're not just reliving their youth, this is their identity!
YES!!!
I left the business, have gone back in later. Smart? Definitely not. But this is why.
J. Greenberg
____________________________________
Thank you for paying attention to Moon Martin !
Was lucky enough to catch him opening for The Clash at the Bronco Bowl in Dallas on June 6, 1982.
Conejo Tejano
____________________________________
Bob you'd be surprised what one big hit can bring in revenue. I have a friend who wrote a monster hit in the '60s that was tied to a hit movie and he receives $1 million annually. Day in and day out.
Larry LeBlanc
____________________________________
Moon Martin. Even if you never heard his music, you never forgot his name or face. He was all over the shelves when spending numerous hours combing the album racks of my favorite record stores back in my teen years. Yet, it took this newsletter for me to listen to him. Had no idea he wrote those tunes.
John Hauser
____________________________________
So weird.
When I saw the subject line, my first thought was "Why is Lefsetz writing about Moon Martin? He died years ago."
Or, so I wrongly thought.
I'd found Escape From Domination in the CD bargain bins. Unlike most CDs that I found there in the early to mid '90s, it was listenable. More than once.
Mr. Martin's saving grace as far as his career goes, (if you discount his major label status and his covered songs that hit big enough to garner royalties enough to live on), is the fact that his life and death rightly warranted a Lefsetz Letter.
Most of us lifers won't be that lucky.
Scott Sechman
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Moon Martin
He must've had a bad case of something.
Music has turned into news. There's no filter, no trusted authority. There's an endless firehose of material and no one can be trusted to separate the noteworthy from that which should be ignored.
But that's not the way it used to be.
It was very simple...did you have a record deal?
I'm not talking about an indie. That'll take your rights and give you bupkes. I'm talking about one of the well known majors, or one of their divisions. Who didn't sign you for a single, but an album. Who promoted you as if you were gonna break through. Who signed you for five records, even if they only put out two, but you got a good push, like Moon Martin.
He got five. That's how many albums John David "Moon" Martin had on Capitol. I bought three of them.
Now there was a scene in Los Angeles. In the mid-seventies it was punk in New York, but in the late seventies it was new wave in Los Angeles. And Moon Martin was considered new wave.
Although you could tell he was not. As in he wasn't new. It's hard to hide age. Even though everybody in the public eye lies about it. Yup, that record executive, that act, they're perceived to be young when they're old. And the truth is they're old because that's how long it takes to make it. The young phenoms are often products of the system, the idolmakers, whereas those who stick tend to have been kicked around a bit, took time to get their footing before they broke through, even though they wanted it more than the young phenoms, it's all they ever wanted.
So if you go to Moon's Wikipedia page, he was born in 1950.
But if you read some of the obits, he was born in 1945. Which makes complete sense. If for no other reason than his hair was prematurely gray nearly instantly. And there's no way he could have played with Hendrix and Joplin if he was only 20, they died in 1970.
But Martin did.
Once again, there was not only a clear line between who was worth paying attention to, you either were a musician or you were not. If you weren't, you couldn't survive. You couldn't play in cover bands, you couldn't move to Los Angeles and scrap your way up.
Moon Martin was from Oklahoma. A state many had never been to, still haven't been to, which we knew as the home of Leon Russell and his posse. Other than that...the state sat above Texas and had oil and..?
It was a bigger country back then. But a smaller world, because there was less in it.
So, Moon Martin moves to Los Angeles with his band Southwind. Not that I ever heard of it. He plays with Linda Ronstadt and hangs with Glenn Frey and then he got his deal. And when the album came out, the first, "Shots From a Cold Nightmare," in '78, we knew about it, because the rock press was still a thing, and he got coverage in the "Los Angeles Times," before they cut the newshole down so small most people gave up their subscriptions.
And the truth is you saw Moon around town.
Music didn't dominate bedrooms, it dominated clubs. And you went. Because staying home was anathema. Moon was a cut above, because he had his aforementioned record deal, he was a nascent star.
And then came "Bad Case of Loving You."
By this time we'd already moved on to the second album, "Escape From Domination," "Rolene" was heard on KROQ, back when that was a free form station, before the ROQ of the 80s, before the death of rock and the decimation of the station this year.
But at this point, Moon Martin was not famous for the Robert Palmer cover, but the Willy DeVille covers. DeVille also had a deal with Capitol, but he was from New York, and anything but earthy, it looked like the daylight would kill him, although I did see him once during the afternoon at the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre, but he was better at the Whisky, his natural environment. DeVille covered "Cadillac Walk" back in '77, which is one of the reasons I bought "Shots From a Cold Nightmare," I was a big fan of DeVille, and if you wrote his most famous song, you were worth paying attention to.
As for Robert Palmer... I'd already moved on. I started with "Pressure Drop," with the delectable "Give Me An Inch," and went back to the debut, "Sneakin' Sally Through the Alley," with its killer opening medley, but "Some People Can Do What They Like" disappointed me.
It was the fifth Robert Palmer LP that contained "Bad Case of Loving You," upon which Palmer, or most likely his record company, added "(Doctor, Doctor)" to make sure the audience knew this was the track and album to buy.
This was 1979. Six years and three albums before "Riptide" and "Addicted to Love." "Bad Case of Loving You (Doctor, Doctor)" was a radio hit. And it got played, all the time on AOR stations, you see this was before Palmer was seen as Mr. Suave, the cut was a blistering runaway rock track and it got the attention it deserved.
Actually, Moon Martin got a bit of MTV exposure, with 1982's "X-Ray Vision," but this was before Duran Duran, before everybody had the channel in their home, when pre-eighties acts could get a shot, and although it was cool to see him there, most people will never remember.
And then the Capitol deal ended. But we did not forget him. He had that major label record deal!
The last time I saw Moon Martin was probably about fifteen years ago, he was flying back from Canadian Music Week on the same plane. I did not go up to talk to him, he did not project airs, but he was on a level above me, he'd played in the rarefied world of rock stars.
Moon Martin died. TWO WEEKS AGO!
I just found out yesterday. There was no obit in the "Los Angeles Times," no big story I saw anywhere. Just this tidbit, whose thread I followed back to obituaries.
They said Moon lived comfortably on his royalties. Can one big hit deliver that much cash?
Well, you got paid more in the old days. But these days, having written a classic rock cut, how much money could you make?
I don't know.
I don't know how he died.
All I know is Moon Martin sold his soul to rock and roll. He followed the music to the very last note. He died with his guitar strap on. It wasn't a fling, something he did before law school. He had no desire to work at the bank. (Although let's not forget Harry Nilsson was a teller!) It was all music, all the time.
That's my generation, we got bitten by the rock and roll bug and could not let go.
It's my brethren who are buying all those tickets to the classic rock shows. They're not just reliving their youth, this is their identity!
And then there are those who dedicated their entire lives to the sound. Musicians. And people on the other side of the fence. For every famous manager you'd be stunned how many are starving, or people who once had a gig at the label... They can't let go, they can't leave the circus. They're in it til they die.
Like Moon Martin.
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Music has turned into news. There's no filter, no trusted authority. There's an endless firehose of material and no one can be trusted to separate the noteworthy from that which should be ignored.
But that's not the way it used to be.
It was very simple...did you have a record deal?
I'm not talking about an indie. That'll take your rights and give you bupkes. I'm talking about one of the well known majors, or one of their divisions. Who didn't sign you for a single, but an album. Who promoted you as if you were gonna break through. Who signed you for five records, even if they only put out two, but you got a good push, like Moon Martin.
He got five. That's how many albums John David "Moon" Martin had on Capitol. I bought three of them.
Now there was a scene in Los Angeles. In the mid-seventies it was punk in New York, but in the late seventies it was new wave in Los Angeles. And Moon Martin was considered new wave.
Although you could tell he was not. As in he wasn't new. It's hard to hide age. Even though everybody in the public eye lies about it. Yup, that record executive, that act, they're perceived to be young when they're old. And the truth is they're old because that's how long it takes to make it. The young phenoms are often products of the system, the idolmakers, whereas those who stick tend to have been kicked around a bit, took time to get their footing before they broke through, even though they wanted it more than the young phenoms, it's all they ever wanted.
So if you go to Moon's Wikipedia page, he was born in 1950.
But if you read some of the obits, he was born in 1945. Which makes complete sense. If for no other reason than his hair was prematurely gray nearly instantly. And there's no way he could have played with Hendrix and Joplin if he was only 20, they died in 1970.
But Martin did.
Once again, there was not only a clear line between who was worth paying attention to, you either were a musician or you were not. If you weren't, you couldn't survive. You couldn't play in cover bands, you couldn't move to Los Angeles and scrap your way up.
Moon Martin was from Oklahoma. A state many had never been to, still haven't been to, which we knew as the home of Leon Russell and his posse. Other than that...the state sat above Texas and had oil and..?
It was a bigger country back then. But a smaller world, because there was less in it.
So, Moon Martin moves to Los Angeles with his band Southwind. Not that I ever heard of it. He plays with Linda Ronstadt and hangs with Glenn Frey and then he got his deal. And when the album came out, the first, "Shots From a Cold Nightmare," in '78, we knew about it, because the rock press was still a thing, and he got coverage in the "Los Angeles Times," before they cut the newshole down so small most people gave up their subscriptions.
And the truth is you saw Moon around town.
Music didn't dominate bedrooms, it dominated clubs. And you went. Because staying home was anathema. Moon was a cut above, because he had his aforementioned record deal, he was a nascent star.
And then came "Bad Case of Loving You."
By this time we'd already moved on to the second album, "Escape From Domination," "Rolene" was heard on KROQ, back when that was a free form station, before the ROQ of the 80s, before the death of rock and the decimation of the station this year.
But at this point, Moon Martin was not famous for the Robert Palmer cover, but the Willy DeVille covers. DeVille also had a deal with Capitol, but he was from New York, and anything but earthy, it looked like the daylight would kill him, although I did see him once during the afternoon at the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre, but he was better at the Whisky, his natural environment. DeVille covered "Cadillac Walk" back in '77, which is one of the reasons I bought "Shots From a Cold Nightmare," I was a big fan of DeVille, and if you wrote his most famous song, you were worth paying attention to.
As for Robert Palmer... I'd already moved on. I started with "Pressure Drop," with the delectable "Give Me An Inch," and went back to the debut, "Sneakin' Sally Through the Alley," with its killer opening medley, but "Some People Can Do What They Like" disappointed me.
It was the fifth Robert Palmer LP that contained "Bad Case of Loving You," upon which Palmer, or most likely his record company, added "(Doctor, Doctor)" to make sure the audience knew this was the track and album to buy.
This was 1979. Six years and three albums before "Riptide" and "Addicted to Love." "Bad Case of Loving You (Doctor, Doctor)" was a radio hit. And it got played, all the time on AOR stations, you see this was before Palmer was seen as Mr. Suave, the cut was a blistering runaway rock track and it got the attention it deserved.
Actually, Moon Martin got a bit of MTV exposure, with 1982's "X-Ray Vision," but this was before Duran Duran, before everybody had the channel in their home, when pre-eighties acts could get a shot, and although it was cool to see him there, most people will never remember.
And then the Capitol deal ended. But we did not forget him. He had that major label record deal!
The last time I saw Moon Martin was probably about fifteen years ago, he was flying back from Canadian Music Week on the same plane. I did not go up to talk to him, he did not project airs, but he was on a level above me, he'd played in the rarefied world of rock stars.
Moon Martin died. TWO WEEKS AGO!
I just found out yesterday. There was no obit in the "Los Angeles Times," no big story I saw anywhere. Just this tidbit, whose thread I followed back to obituaries.
They said Moon lived comfortably on his royalties. Can one big hit deliver that much cash?
Well, you got paid more in the old days. But these days, having written a classic rock cut, how much money could you make?
I don't know.
I don't know how he died.
All I know is Moon Martin sold his soul to rock and roll. He followed the music to the very last note. He died with his guitar strap on. It wasn't a fling, something he did before law school. He had no desire to work at the bank. (Although let's not forget Harry Nilsson was a teller!) It was all music, all the time.
That's my generation, we got bitten by the rock and roll bug and could not let go.
It's my brethren who are buying all those tickets to the classic rock shows. They're not just reliving their youth, this is their identity!
And then there are those who dedicated their entire lives to the sound. Musicians. And people on the other side of the fence. For every famous manager you'd be stunned how many are starving, or people who once had a gig at the label... They can't let go, they can't leave the circus. They're in it til they die.
Like Moon Martin.
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Monday 25 May 2020
Colrado Songs-SiriusXM This Week
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Now, SiriusXM streaming is FREE through May 31st.
Listen tomorrow, 4 PM Pacific, 7 PM East, on Volume 106 at:
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Spotify: https://spoti.fi/36vZi5w
Pandora: https://bit.ly/3c6eOWS
Now, SiriusXM streaming is FREE through May 31st.
Listen tomorrow, 4 PM Pacific, 7 PM East, on Volume 106 at:
siriusxm.us/VOLUMESXM
Listen to previous shows on demand:
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News Update
"The American ideology, on the left and the right, that props up inequality": https://wapo.st/3d88aks
The problem is us.
This is the most important article you will read this week, assuming you read it at all. If I sent it to you personally, if you were the only one getting it, I know you'd at least skim it. But since this is a mailing list, one to many, you can avoid taking the time to read this article, but you shouldn't.
Now the nature of writing anything about politics is those on the right come out in force to tell you you're wrong. The left tends to sit somnambulantly knowing it is right, therefore not having to act. This is wrong. But I focus on the left because it is not as right as it believes it is.
The above link takes you to a review of Thomas Piketty's new book "Capital and Ideology." That's right, the French economist whose previous book was the definitive statement on income inequality.
You see the left is self-righteous, to the point of obfuscation, it's got no idea what is really going on in this country. And it's simple, globalization has left many behind. We live in a country of haves and have-nots, and the haves in the Democratic Party, who earned their wealth, have contempt for the less advantaged, if they think of them at all.
"'Improving the lot of the disadvantaged ceased to be its (the Democratic Party) main focus. Instead, it turned its attention primarily to serving the interests of the winners in the educational competition.' By 2016, according to post-election surveys that Piketty analyzes in depth and across several countries, the Democrats were the party of not just the highly educated but even the highly paid."
And the consequence of this?
"...Piketty identifies the turn toward identitarian politics as a direct consequence of the left-wing parties' conversion to market capitalism. 'The disadvantaged classes felt abandoned by the social-democratic parties (in the broadest sense) and this sense of abandonment provided fertile ground for anti-immigrant rhetoric and nativist ideologies to take root.'"
But the lambasting of Democrats goes further:
"Beginning with Bill 'The era of big government is over' Clinton, party leaders actively repudiated what they saw as an embarrassing legacy of industrial unions, welfare programs and redistribution. Having repeated for decades that public policy must bow to the iron laws of economics, the Democrats 'remain unable even today to perceive the alternatives to the situation they themselves created.'"
It gets even worse, and I know I'm quoting a lot of the article, but there's so much genius in it:
"The result is that economic elites in the United States have their choice of two party ideologies: one favoring educational achievement and rationality, the other entrepreneurialism and wealth. Both assume the primacy of competitive markets and justify their outcomes as the natural workings of a meritocratic system. Compared with earlier belief systems that conferred advantages based on birth or race, this shared ideology of meritocracy has the distinct advantage of justifying inequality as a pure product of natural (market) forces operating on a presumed starting point (however fictional) of equal opportunity."
And the conclusion:
"...if redistribution between the rich and poor is ruled out...then it is all but inevitable that political conflict will focus on the one area in which nation-states are still free to act, namely, defining and controlling their borders.' And so, in the United States, a pro-market party that claims to defend rural, white, Christian America faces off against a pro-market party that embraces the image of a diverse, cosmopolitan, urban America. To the half of the population that has known only stagnant incomes and increasing income insecurity, one party offers modestly beneficial economic policies bestowed by a technocratic elite; the other promises to restore their faded glory by winning trade wars and expelling immigrants."
So, the Democrats have become the Republicans without even realizing it. They pulled themselves up by their bootstraps, got a good education, made it as a professional or business person and then conferred these same advantages squared upon their progeny. Meanwhile, the traditional blue collar Democrats were left out, even worse their unions were busted and their jobs shipped overseas and they were told it was the market's fault, no one took responsibility.
Now the truth is that Biden and the DNC are on the wrong side of this. Sanders and Warren were on the right side. But Biden got the votes. Is it because only the aged and entitled vote? Possibly. Or is it that everybody else is so disillusioned they don't even bother to vote, if they're paying attention at all. Bezos is on the way to becoming a trillionaire, and the rank and file lost their jobs. It can't be their fault, maybe it's China's? Or the immigrants stealing their jobs. Trump is speaking to these constituents, the left is just telling them they know better and are less bad than the Republicans and they need to be trusted...does anybody trust a politician anymore?
In other words, the problems in America today are much deeper than Trump. He won because he tapped into them. People were sick of a two-faced overeducated Clinton who didn't seem to benefit them, as Hillary and her husband became millionaires.
Oh, don't point to egregious behavior on the right. As stated above, being an entrepreneur and becoming rich is the ethos of the right! And it's all about perception. And the perception is Democrats don't care about working people. But it's even worse, Democrats don't care about struggling college graduates either. Biden, the man from Delaware, the home of the corporation, was pushed over the threshold and is now depending upon those corporations to get him elected. The funny thing is the people popped up more money for Sanders, who has boatloads of Twitter followers, who said you were entitled to health care and that the corporations were the bad guys.
But it's got to be business as usual. The writers at the "New York Times" played the educational game, they're friends with the rich and powerful, they don't want to demote themselves to the hoi polloi.
And the news is laden with stories of Bernie Sanders putting a stake in his own heart. He just wouldn't play the game. Hell, most people don't even get a chance to play the game, who is speaking, who is even thinking about them?
Vote for Biden, I will, but it will only be the beginning. The vaunted Obama didn't solve any of the above problems. If the rich get richer and the poor get poorer...WATCH OUT!
"WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE: Trump Is Gambling on a Resurrection, With Lives and Livelihoods - There is another way. A realist's guide to getting through the pandemic, rebooted and safe.": https://bloom.bg/2XvYMQH
I told my shrink it was raw insanity. And he agreed. I'm looking for leadership, a way out. And there is none. Some are partying like it's 1999 and the death rate in L.A. County keeps going up and am I supposed to stay home or go out or..?
Michael Bloomberg may have fumbled the nomination, but he resurrected "Businessweek." A staid McGraw-Hill publication, in the wake of the last economic crisis, 2008, "Businessweek" was sold to Bloomberg and it got better! It could be the best pure business publication out there. If you have no time, subscribe to "Businessweek" and "The Week" and you'll be caught up, even more than most people who say they follow the news.
Anyway, in this week's magazine, "Businessweek" has the definitive statement on Covid-19, where we are, what is happening, and how we can get out of this mess.
David Rocke, a mathematician at UC Davis, says it's all about game theory:
"The concept is that if you're behind in a game - say, a presidential campaign - big, bold moves can make sense, even if there's only a small chance they will pay off. If someone does stumble on a miracle cure for Covid-19, or the national economy somehow gets going by Election Day, then both Trump and the American people win. If the gambles fail, he's no worse off because he was probably going to lose the election anyway. As far as the American people, they could wind up much worse off from his experiments. But if the president has a bad Election Day, that won't be his problem anymore."
In other words, it's all about Trump, protecting his presidency, the penumbra is irrelevant, just noise. He's betting that Covid-19 will fade, the economy will bounce back, and even if a few oldsters die, people will forget the crisis and vote for him. He's throwing the long ball. The news media and the Democrats are grunting it out in the ground game, going for inches and yards, moving forward and then getting pushed back.
"There's actually a fair chance that Trump's bet will pay off. Let's say the number of new cases continues to fall nationally, as it has in most of the world, because most people take precautions. Deaths remain elevated in nursing homes, prisons and crowded multigenerational housing, but the public regards that as an inevitable consequence of the pandemic and doesn't blame Trump. Democrats come to be seen as silly hand-wringers, or worse, obstructionists who tried to kill the growth for political ends. Trump suddenly has a good shot at winning a second term.
Two points about that scenario. One, allowing more vulnerable people to die is a choice, not an inevitability. Two, there's a risk that things will turn out much worse, with a second or third wave of infections that kills tens of thousands or more."
The author of this article, Peter Coy, says that our failure in fighting Covid-19 has been one of "imagination: an inability to grasp the magnitude of this disaster and the measures required to combat it."
"By now we know what works. The pandemic-fighting strategy that was pioneered by China and applied successfully elsewhere is to get the rate of new infections low enough that you can stamp out fresh flare-ups through testing and tracing. If there are too many active infections, though, testers and tracers won't be able to keep up. They'd be fighting a brushfire with a water pistol."
The U.S. doesn't want to spend the money, on testing, or employing citizens to do contact tracing, but according to NYU economist Paul Romer:
"'To control this pandemic, and any future pandemic, the U.S. should make the investment necessary to test people every two weeks, which would mean 25 million tests per day on an ongoing basis.'"
In other words, there is a way out.
As for economic costs...many people are self-quarantining still, and a second wave will put us even further behind.
In other words, we don't have to throw our hands in the air and just march forward ignorantly. But this doesn't align with Trump's plan to throw the long ball. He's gambling that it'll all work out. And if it doesn't? He still might win.
"Trump Sows Doubt on Voting. It Keeps Some People Up at Night. - A group of worst-case scenario planners - mostly Democrats, but also some anti-Trump Republicans - have been gaming out how to respond to various doomsday options for the 2020 presidential election." https://nyti.ms/2ZyG4uq
1. Is the election going to happen.
2. To what degree will voting be suppressed.
3. To what degree will the voting process be hacked.
4. Will Trump decide the election is illegitimate if he doesn't win.
People are now planning for these possibilities. Unfortunately, I'm not sure what the rank and file can do here. We're dependent upon elected officials and a few insiders with power. Pelosi is speaking about the integrity of our elections, but the issue is not sexy until AFTER elections occur. We sit on our duffs and complain about the result, oftentimes not having voted to begin with. You can't complain if you didn't vote.
It's twenty years since Bush vs. Gore, and we still don't have a handle on the voting process. It is not run by the best and the brightest and the more it becomes computerized the more questions come up. We've been so convinced that the United States is the greatest country in the world that we refuse to acknowledge our deficiencies and address them.
But in this case, some are.
FINAL NOTE
"Gambling on a resurrection is one of the pathologies that can emerge from what finance types call the principal/agent problem: the potential for misalignment of interests between the principal (in this case, the American people) and the agent who works for them (in this case, Trump). In business, the fix for a principal/agent problem is for shareholders to have the information and power to control the CEO."
This is from the "Businessweek" article above. Leftists live in the land of emotions, whereas Trump is first and foremost a businessman, and therefore you need to analyze his acts through this lens. We do have a problem. The checks and balances have been minimized, if not outright eliminated. We cannot depend upon the Republicans to fix our national problems. Trump delivers what most Republicans want...an unfettered economy wherein you're entitled to your spoils and you live by your smarts and your wits. If you don't succeed, the problem is you. Of course there are distractions, like immigration and school vouchers and gay marriage and abortion...but that's just to keep the hoi polloi busy as the fat cats get fatter. A realignment, if it is to ever arrive, must come from the Democrats. But that would mean fat cat Democrats would have to suffer a bit. But when Joe Biden considers $400,000 a year borderline compensation, that must have tax advantages, it's hard to have hope.
So, here we are, with a President running amok and the Democrats disunited, complaining about social issues, while it really all comes down to money. Who's got it, who controls it and how it is distributed.
In other words, if you're expecting the ship to be turned around, don't hold your breath, elite Democrats are more similar to elite Republicans than you. We're stuck in the middle, and if we're going anywhere, it's probably down.
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The problem is us.
This is the most important article you will read this week, assuming you read it at all. If I sent it to you personally, if you were the only one getting it, I know you'd at least skim it. But since this is a mailing list, one to many, you can avoid taking the time to read this article, but you shouldn't.
Now the nature of writing anything about politics is those on the right come out in force to tell you you're wrong. The left tends to sit somnambulantly knowing it is right, therefore not having to act. This is wrong. But I focus on the left because it is not as right as it believes it is.
The above link takes you to a review of Thomas Piketty's new book "Capital and Ideology." That's right, the French economist whose previous book was the definitive statement on income inequality.
You see the left is self-righteous, to the point of obfuscation, it's got no idea what is really going on in this country. And it's simple, globalization has left many behind. We live in a country of haves and have-nots, and the haves in the Democratic Party, who earned their wealth, have contempt for the less advantaged, if they think of them at all.
"'Improving the lot of the disadvantaged ceased to be its (the Democratic Party) main focus. Instead, it turned its attention primarily to serving the interests of the winners in the educational competition.' By 2016, according to post-election surveys that Piketty analyzes in depth and across several countries, the Democrats were the party of not just the highly educated but even the highly paid."
And the consequence of this?
"...Piketty identifies the turn toward identitarian politics as a direct consequence of the left-wing parties' conversion to market capitalism. 'The disadvantaged classes felt abandoned by the social-democratic parties (in the broadest sense) and this sense of abandonment provided fertile ground for anti-immigrant rhetoric and nativist ideologies to take root.'"
But the lambasting of Democrats goes further:
"Beginning with Bill 'The era of big government is over' Clinton, party leaders actively repudiated what they saw as an embarrassing legacy of industrial unions, welfare programs and redistribution. Having repeated for decades that public policy must bow to the iron laws of economics, the Democrats 'remain unable even today to perceive the alternatives to the situation they themselves created.'"
It gets even worse, and I know I'm quoting a lot of the article, but there's so much genius in it:
"The result is that economic elites in the United States have their choice of two party ideologies: one favoring educational achievement and rationality, the other entrepreneurialism and wealth. Both assume the primacy of competitive markets and justify their outcomes as the natural workings of a meritocratic system. Compared with earlier belief systems that conferred advantages based on birth or race, this shared ideology of meritocracy has the distinct advantage of justifying inequality as a pure product of natural (market) forces operating on a presumed starting point (however fictional) of equal opportunity."
And the conclusion:
"...if redistribution between the rich and poor is ruled out...then it is all but inevitable that political conflict will focus on the one area in which nation-states are still free to act, namely, defining and controlling their borders.' And so, in the United States, a pro-market party that claims to defend rural, white, Christian America faces off against a pro-market party that embraces the image of a diverse, cosmopolitan, urban America. To the half of the population that has known only stagnant incomes and increasing income insecurity, one party offers modestly beneficial economic policies bestowed by a technocratic elite; the other promises to restore their faded glory by winning trade wars and expelling immigrants."
So, the Democrats have become the Republicans without even realizing it. They pulled themselves up by their bootstraps, got a good education, made it as a professional or business person and then conferred these same advantages squared upon their progeny. Meanwhile, the traditional blue collar Democrats were left out, even worse their unions were busted and their jobs shipped overseas and they were told it was the market's fault, no one took responsibility.
Now the truth is that Biden and the DNC are on the wrong side of this. Sanders and Warren were on the right side. But Biden got the votes. Is it because only the aged and entitled vote? Possibly. Or is it that everybody else is so disillusioned they don't even bother to vote, if they're paying attention at all. Bezos is on the way to becoming a trillionaire, and the rank and file lost their jobs. It can't be their fault, maybe it's China's? Or the immigrants stealing their jobs. Trump is speaking to these constituents, the left is just telling them they know better and are less bad than the Republicans and they need to be trusted...does anybody trust a politician anymore?
In other words, the problems in America today are much deeper than Trump. He won because he tapped into them. People were sick of a two-faced overeducated Clinton who didn't seem to benefit them, as Hillary and her husband became millionaires.
Oh, don't point to egregious behavior on the right. As stated above, being an entrepreneur and becoming rich is the ethos of the right! And it's all about perception. And the perception is Democrats don't care about working people. But it's even worse, Democrats don't care about struggling college graduates either. Biden, the man from Delaware, the home of the corporation, was pushed over the threshold and is now depending upon those corporations to get him elected. The funny thing is the people popped up more money for Sanders, who has boatloads of Twitter followers, who said you were entitled to health care and that the corporations were the bad guys.
But it's got to be business as usual. The writers at the "New York Times" played the educational game, they're friends with the rich and powerful, they don't want to demote themselves to the hoi polloi.
And the news is laden with stories of Bernie Sanders putting a stake in his own heart. He just wouldn't play the game. Hell, most people don't even get a chance to play the game, who is speaking, who is even thinking about them?
Vote for Biden, I will, but it will only be the beginning. The vaunted Obama didn't solve any of the above problems. If the rich get richer and the poor get poorer...WATCH OUT!
"WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE: Trump Is Gambling on a Resurrection, With Lives and Livelihoods - There is another way. A realist's guide to getting through the pandemic, rebooted and safe.": https://bloom.bg/2XvYMQH
I told my shrink it was raw insanity. And he agreed. I'm looking for leadership, a way out. And there is none. Some are partying like it's 1999 and the death rate in L.A. County keeps going up and am I supposed to stay home or go out or..?
Michael Bloomberg may have fumbled the nomination, but he resurrected "Businessweek." A staid McGraw-Hill publication, in the wake of the last economic crisis, 2008, "Businessweek" was sold to Bloomberg and it got better! It could be the best pure business publication out there. If you have no time, subscribe to "Businessweek" and "The Week" and you'll be caught up, even more than most people who say they follow the news.
Anyway, in this week's magazine, "Businessweek" has the definitive statement on Covid-19, where we are, what is happening, and how we can get out of this mess.
David Rocke, a mathematician at UC Davis, says it's all about game theory:
"The concept is that if you're behind in a game - say, a presidential campaign - big, bold moves can make sense, even if there's only a small chance they will pay off. If someone does stumble on a miracle cure for Covid-19, or the national economy somehow gets going by Election Day, then both Trump and the American people win. If the gambles fail, he's no worse off because he was probably going to lose the election anyway. As far as the American people, they could wind up much worse off from his experiments. But if the president has a bad Election Day, that won't be his problem anymore."
In other words, it's all about Trump, protecting his presidency, the penumbra is irrelevant, just noise. He's betting that Covid-19 will fade, the economy will bounce back, and even if a few oldsters die, people will forget the crisis and vote for him. He's throwing the long ball. The news media and the Democrats are grunting it out in the ground game, going for inches and yards, moving forward and then getting pushed back.
"There's actually a fair chance that Trump's bet will pay off. Let's say the number of new cases continues to fall nationally, as it has in most of the world, because most people take precautions. Deaths remain elevated in nursing homes, prisons and crowded multigenerational housing, but the public regards that as an inevitable consequence of the pandemic and doesn't blame Trump. Democrats come to be seen as silly hand-wringers, or worse, obstructionists who tried to kill the growth for political ends. Trump suddenly has a good shot at winning a second term.
Two points about that scenario. One, allowing more vulnerable people to die is a choice, not an inevitability. Two, there's a risk that things will turn out much worse, with a second or third wave of infections that kills tens of thousands or more."
The author of this article, Peter Coy, says that our failure in fighting Covid-19 has been one of "imagination: an inability to grasp the magnitude of this disaster and the measures required to combat it."
"By now we know what works. The pandemic-fighting strategy that was pioneered by China and applied successfully elsewhere is to get the rate of new infections low enough that you can stamp out fresh flare-ups through testing and tracing. If there are too many active infections, though, testers and tracers won't be able to keep up. They'd be fighting a brushfire with a water pistol."
The U.S. doesn't want to spend the money, on testing, or employing citizens to do contact tracing, but according to NYU economist Paul Romer:
"'To control this pandemic, and any future pandemic, the U.S. should make the investment necessary to test people every two weeks, which would mean 25 million tests per day on an ongoing basis.'"
In other words, there is a way out.
As for economic costs...many people are self-quarantining still, and a second wave will put us even further behind.
In other words, we don't have to throw our hands in the air and just march forward ignorantly. But this doesn't align with Trump's plan to throw the long ball. He's gambling that it'll all work out. And if it doesn't? He still might win.
"Trump Sows Doubt on Voting. It Keeps Some People Up at Night. - A group of worst-case scenario planners - mostly Democrats, but also some anti-Trump Republicans - have been gaming out how to respond to various doomsday options for the 2020 presidential election." https://nyti.ms/2ZyG4uq
1. Is the election going to happen.
2. To what degree will voting be suppressed.
3. To what degree will the voting process be hacked.
4. Will Trump decide the election is illegitimate if he doesn't win.
People are now planning for these possibilities. Unfortunately, I'm not sure what the rank and file can do here. We're dependent upon elected officials and a few insiders with power. Pelosi is speaking about the integrity of our elections, but the issue is not sexy until AFTER elections occur. We sit on our duffs and complain about the result, oftentimes not having voted to begin with. You can't complain if you didn't vote.
It's twenty years since Bush vs. Gore, and we still don't have a handle on the voting process. It is not run by the best and the brightest and the more it becomes computerized the more questions come up. We've been so convinced that the United States is the greatest country in the world that we refuse to acknowledge our deficiencies and address them.
But in this case, some are.
FINAL NOTE
"Gambling on a resurrection is one of the pathologies that can emerge from what finance types call the principal/agent problem: the potential for misalignment of interests between the principal (in this case, the American people) and the agent who works for them (in this case, Trump). In business, the fix for a principal/agent problem is for shareholders to have the information and power to control the CEO."
This is from the "Businessweek" article above. Leftists live in the land of emotions, whereas Trump is first and foremost a businessman, and therefore you need to analyze his acts through this lens. We do have a problem. The checks and balances have been minimized, if not outright eliminated. We cannot depend upon the Republicans to fix our national problems. Trump delivers what most Republicans want...an unfettered economy wherein you're entitled to your spoils and you live by your smarts and your wits. If you don't succeed, the problem is you. Of course there are distractions, like immigration and school vouchers and gay marriage and abortion...but that's just to keep the hoi polloi busy as the fat cats get fatter. A realignment, if it is to ever arrive, must come from the Democrats. But that would mean fat cat Democrats would have to suffer a bit. But when Joe Biden considers $400,000 a year borderline compensation, that must have tax advantages, it's hard to have hope.
So, here we are, with a President running amok and the Democrats disunited, complaining about social issues, while it really all comes down to money. Who's got it, who controls it and how it is distributed.
In other words, if you're expecting the ship to be turned around, don't hold your breath, elite Democrats are more similar to elite Republicans than you. We're stuck in the middle, and if we're going anywhere, it's probably down.
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Sunday 24 May 2020
Today's Covers
Playlist: https://spoti.fi/3c01KSW
"Oh, You Pretty Things"
Peter Noone
It was Herman's debut single.
Phil May of the Pretty Things died. The band meant little in the U.S. Although I did buy their 1974 album "Silk Torpedo," because it came out on Swan Song. When we think of labels that could do no wrong, where every release mattered, like Pixar in films, at least until the sale to Disney, the obvious choice is David Geffen's Asylum, and then Swan Song.
The very first release on Swan Song came during the summer of '74, it was the Bad Company debut, with its out of the box hit single "Can't Get Enough." Despite Paul Rodgers singing one of the all-time rock staples, Free's "All Right Now," most people in the U.S. did not know his name. Nor did most people know Mick Ralphs, the longtime guitarist of Mott the Hoople, which had finally broken through after their switch to Columbia and Bowie's gift of "All the Young Dudes." But one thing people did know was rock and roll music, and the combination of a great vocal and great guitar playing and melody was an elixir listeners could not deny. Actually, I preferred the opening cut on the second side of the LP, the eerie eponymous track "Bad Company," which sounded like a bunch of outlaws alone on the prairie who suddenly started to swagger in the middle of the track. And to some people, the most memorable cut on the debut LP was the final one, "Seagull," a Rodgers/Ralphs composition that evidenced the flip side of the power of rock, there's in your face bluster, but there's also internal resonance, quiet songs that speak to the listener's alienation, a core element of humanity on this planet we call Earth, where we have more questions than answers and look to music to make us feel whole. The fact that the follow-up, "Straight Shooter," was even bigger than the debut was confounding, "Feel Like Makin' Love" with its stinging guitar explosion emanated from dashboards all over America, and "Shooting Star" is one of the two best songs about being a rock star, the other being the Kinks' "A Rock 'n' Roll Fantasy," and "Deal With the Preacher" and "Wild Fire Woman" demonstrate that Rodgers can emote with the best, that he'd listened to McCartney through Little Richard to...remember when you used to have to have a great voice to succeed? And speaking of the Kinks, David Bowie covers "Where Have All the Good Times Gone" on "Pinups," although Van Halen's cover on "Diver Down" is superior but neither can beat the Ray Davies sneer in the original Kinks iteration. Anyway, based on the Swan Song imprimatur, I purchased "Silk Torpedo" with its memorable cover, but I can't say I ever cottoned to it.
So I was reading Phil May's obituary, and it said that Bowie covered two Pretty Things songs on "Pinups," and I decided to pull up the LP to listen to them. And "Don't Bring Me Down" resonated, I bought "Pinups" upon release, was always a bit disappointed with it, but I listened to it, so I knew the track. The album's opener was the other Pretty Things song, "Rosalyn," but I never loved this rendition, I hadn't even heard the original. Funny the roots of these rockers in retrospect, you can trace the direct line from the aforementioned Little Richard on through, but not anymore.
Now if you want to talk "Don't Bring Me Down," my favorite song with that title is the one by the Animals. The funny thing is for a band from Newcastle on Tyne, the track has the U.S. stamped all over it, the composition was by Goffin and King and the producer was Tom Wilson, whom of course you know from the work he did with Bob Dylan.
And since I've referenced Newcastle on Tyne, I've got to note the Elton track wherein the burg is referenced. I'm speaking, of course, of "Can I Put You On," which most listeners do not know, but should. The original studio version was actually released after the live recording. And although the live take is a killer, there's magic in the studio take that warms my heart. The song was part of the soundtrack for the long forgotten 1971 flick "Friends," and the LP with the pink cover released by Paramount opened with the title cut, which was lost to most until it was released on CD as part of Elton John's boxed set "To Be Continued..." in 1990. I owned this LP and the arm on my turntable that steadied stacked records scratched it and I always lamented this until the CD version was released, it's one of my favorite Elton John cuts. Anyway, the lines in "Can I Put You On" are:
"And a second cousin works in the pits in Newcastle on Tyne
And he don't care if it rains outside, there's coal dust on his mind"
Now many rockers associate the title "Don't Bring Me Down" with ELO, but to tell you the truth I think the Electric Light Orchestra peaked with "Eldorado."
And one of the best cuts on "Pinups" is "Sorrow," and I'd completely forgotten, if I ever knew, that the original was done by the McCoys, yes, of "Hang on Sloopy" fame. The funny thing is this b-side for "Fever" was a big hit in the U.K., it meant nothing in the U.S.
So thinking about the Pretty Things and Bowie, my mind segued to that track on "Hunky Dory," "Oh! You Pretty Things." I'm partial to "Ziggy Stardust," it was the first Bowie LP I purchased, I saw that tour, but I can make a strong argument that "Hunky Dory" is Bowie's best album. At this late date "Changes" still gets airplay, and since David's death there's been a focus on "Life on Mars?," but "Kooks" is sheer magic, "Andy Warhol" is great, and "The Bewlay Brothers" is haunting, David had a thing about ending his LPs this way, "Ziggy Stardust" ended with "Rock 'n' Roll Suicide." And reading about "Oh! You Pretty Things" I was stunned to find out that Peter Noone had the first released version of this song, he'd gotten it from Bowie's publisher. And the truth is Noone's take is pretty close to the one ultimately released by Bowie. Neither was big on the hit parade, but both contain magic, there's less gravitas in Herman's take, but it's got a whimsy that'll remind you of the English countryside.
"Growin' Up"
David Bowie
And doing further research on "Pinups" I was reminded that Bowie did a cover of Springsteen's "Growin' Up," from "Greetings From Asbury Park" that was added to the initial Rykodisc CD of "Pinups."
The song was added to the 2004 remaster of "Diamond Dogs," which is available on Amazon Music, but for some reason not on Spotify or Apple Music. Hmm... I guess the 2016 remaster superseded the 2004 version, but something was lost in the transition. In any event, in case you don't subscribe to Amazon Music, you can listen to Bowie's version of "Growin' Up" on YouTube here: https://bit.ly/2XnBqgc
It's not super-memorable, but the interesting thing is it was cut before Bruce's big breakthrough with "Born to Run" a full year later. Funny how Bowie knew about it. "Greetings" got a ton of hype, but it was cut like an acoustic Dylan album as opposed to the E Street Band experience that came thereafter.
Now Bowie was changing direction. "Aladdin Sane" did not live up to "Ziggy Stardust," it was hard to convert those that were not already on the bus. At this late date, most of the focus is on "The Jean Genie," and that is good, but I like "Panic in Detroit" even better, but the song I ended up playing most from the album is one that never gets any mention, another slow, meaningful closer, "Lady Grinning Soul," an old torch-like song that builds to a climax, it's a mini-movie.
And then Bowie broke through with the less than satisfying "Diamond Dogs," finally getting a huge hit in the public consciousness, now that everybody was tuned into FM, "Rebel Rebel," which was castigated as meaningless, there was now a Bowie backlash in the critical community.
And then Bowie completely changed direction. He reincarnated himself as a Philadelphia soul singer, the Thin White Duke, and suddenly he was monumental, everywhere, embraced by black and white audiences both.
"Young Americans" did not jump out of the box, fans bought it but AOR was flummoxed by it and black radio didn't immediately embrace it, it was a slow burner until suddenly it was everywhere. And if I never hear "Fame" again, I'm cool with that. And I like the title cut just a smidge better, but the opening cut on the second side, it's a killer! But before I get to "Somebody Up There Likes Me" there's a magical track on the first side that never gets any ink, which never comes up in conversation, that is my second favorite on the LP, "Fascination," which was cowritten by Luther Vandross before almost anybody knew who he was, actually you've got to credit Bowie with popularizing the soul singer.
But we were talking about "Somebody Up There Likes Me."
This is the only track on "Young Americans" without its own Wikipedia page, but it's the one that sticks out for me.
What do I like about it?
It's long, six minutes and thirty six seconds. Bowie and the band stretch out, the track goes through movements, but the best part of the cut is it allows Bowie to emote. And David Sanborn's saxophone contribution is an integral part of the record, but Bowie dances all over the track and the background singers testify, their vocals were arranged by Mr. Vandross, and it's like being in church, not one constrained by a roof, but the open landscape, where you can feel the joy of nature and music.
I'd slept in my car behind the Hart ski factory in Reno on my way to Mammoth Mountain on April 30th, 1975. I was awoken by a security guard in the middle of the night. He bought my reason for being there and when the factory opened I went inside and got a pair of replacement skis and got back in my 2002 and spun the dial of my Blaupunkt as I left the metropolis and entered the Sierra Nevada and I wasn't sure if somebody up there liked me, I'm still not sure of that, but at that particular moment, for those six plus minutes, I liked myself and my life, I was in heaven.
"Oh, You Pretty Things"
Peter Noone
It was Herman's debut single.
Phil May of the Pretty Things died. The band meant little in the U.S. Although I did buy their 1974 album "Silk Torpedo," because it came out on Swan Song. When we think of labels that could do no wrong, where every release mattered, like Pixar in films, at least until the sale to Disney, the obvious choice is David Geffen's Asylum, and then Swan Song.
The very first release on Swan Song came during the summer of '74, it was the Bad Company debut, with its out of the box hit single "Can't Get Enough." Despite Paul Rodgers singing one of the all-time rock staples, Free's "All Right Now," most people in the U.S. did not know his name. Nor did most people know Mick Ralphs, the longtime guitarist of Mott the Hoople, which had finally broken through after their switch to Columbia and Bowie's gift of "All the Young Dudes." But one thing people did know was rock and roll music, and the combination of a great vocal and great guitar playing and melody was an elixir listeners could not deny. Actually, I preferred the opening cut on the second side of the LP, the eerie eponymous track "Bad Company," which sounded like a bunch of outlaws alone on the prairie who suddenly started to swagger in the middle of the track. And to some people, the most memorable cut on the debut LP was the final one, "Seagull," a Rodgers/Ralphs composition that evidenced the flip side of the power of rock, there's in your face bluster, but there's also internal resonance, quiet songs that speak to the listener's alienation, a core element of humanity on this planet we call Earth, where we have more questions than answers and look to music to make us feel whole. The fact that the follow-up, "Straight Shooter," was even bigger than the debut was confounding, "Feel Like Makin' Love" with its stinging guitar explosion emanated from dashboards all over America, and "Shooting Star" is one of the two best songs about being a rock star, the other being the Kinks' "A Rock 'n' Roll Fantasy," and "Deal With the Preacher" and "Wild Fire Woman" demonstrate that Rodgers can emote with the best, that he'd listened to McCartney through Little Richard to...remember when you used to have to have a great voice to succeed? And speaking of the Kinks, David Bowie covers "Where Have All the Good Times Gone" on "Pinups," although Van Halen's cover on "Diver Down" is superior but neither can beat the Ray Davies sneer in the original Kinks iteration. Anyway, based on the Swan Song imprimatur, I purchased "Silk Torpedo" with its memorable cover, but I can't say I ever cottoned to it.
So I was reading Phil May's obituary, and it said that Bowie covered two Pretty Things songs on "Pinups," and I decided to pull up the LP to listen to them. And "Don't Bring Me Down" resonated, I bought "Pinups" upon release, was always a bit disappointed with it, but I listened to it, so I knew the track. The album's opener was the other Pretty Things song, "Rosalyn," but I never loved this rendition, I hadn't even heard the original. Funny the roots of these rockers in retrospect, you can trace the direct line from the aforementioned Little Richard on through, but not anymore.
Now if you want to talk "Don't Bring Me Down," my favorite song with that title is the one by the Animals. The funny thing is for a band from Newcastle on Tyne, the track has the U.S. stamped all over it, the composition was by Goffin and King and the producer was Tom Wilson, whom of course you know from the work he did with Bob Dylan.
And since I've referenced Newcastle on Tyne, I've got to note the Elton track wherein the burg is referenced. I'm speaking, of course, of "Can I Put You On," which most listeners do not know, but should. The original studio version was actually released after the live recording. And although the live take is a killer, there's magic in the studio take that warms my heart. The song was part of the soundtrack for the long forgotten 1971 flick "Friends," and the LP with the pink cover released by Paramount opened with the title cut, which was lost to most until it was released on CD as part of Elton John's boxed set "To Be Continued..." in 1990. I owned this LP and the arm on my turntable that steadied stacked records scratched it and I always lamented this until the CD version was released, it's one of my favorite Elton John cuts. Anyway, the lines in "Can I Put You On" are:
"And a second cousin works in the pits in Newcastle on Tyne
And he don't care if it rains outside, there's coal dust on his mind"
Now many rockers associate the title "Don't Bring Me Down" with ELO, but to tell you the truth I think the Electric Light Orchestra peaked with "Eldorado."
And one of the best cuts on "Pinups" is "Sorrow," and I'd completely forgotten, if I ever knew, that the original was done by the McCoys, yes, of "Hang on Sloopy" fame. The funny thing is this b-side for "Fever" was a big hit in the U.K., it meant nothing in the U.S.
So thinking about the Pretty Things and Bowie, my mind segued to that track on "Hunky Dory," "Oh! You Pretty Things." I'm partial to "Ziggy Stardust," it was the first Bowie LP I purchased, I saw that tour, but I can make a strong argument that "Hunky Dory" is Bowie's best album. At this late date "Changes" still gets airplay, and since David's death there's been a focus on "Life on Mars?," but "Kooks" is sheer magic, "Andy Warhol" is great, and "The Bewlay Brothers" is haunting, David had a thing about ending his LPs this way, "Ziggy Stardust" ended with "Rock 'n' Roll Suicide." And reading about "Oh! You Pretty Things" I was stunned to find out that Peter Noone had the first released version of this song, he'd gotten it from Bowie's publisher. And the truth is Noone's take is pretty close to the one ultimately released by Bowie. Neither was big on the hit parade, but both contain magic, there's less gravitas in Herman's take, but it's got a whimsy that'll remind you of the English countryside.
"Growin' Up"
David Bowie
And doing further research on "Pinups" I was reminded that Bowie did a cover of Springsteen's "Growin' Up," from "Greetings From Asbury Park" that was added to the initial Rykodisc CD of "Pinups."
The song was added to the 2004 remaster of "Diamond Dogs," which is available on Amazon Music, but for some reason not on Spotify or Apple Music. Hmm... I guess the 2016 remaster superseded the 2004 version, but something was lost in the transition. In any event, in case you don't subscribe to Amazon Music, you can listen to Bowie's version of "Growin' Up" on YouTube here: https://bit.ly/2XnBqgc
It's not super-memorable, but the interesting thing is it was cut before Bruce's big breakthrough with "Born to Run" a full year later. Funny how Bowie knew about it. "Greetings" got a ton of hype, but it was cut like an acoustic Dylan album as opposed to the E Street Band experience that came thereafter.
Now Bowie was changing direction. "Aladdin Sane" did not live up to "Ziggy Stardust," it was hard to convert those that were not already on the bus. At this late date, most of the focus is on "The Jean Genie," and that is good, but I like "Panic in Detroit" even better, but the song I ended up playing most from the album is one that never gets any mention, another slow, meaningful closer, "Lady Grinning Soul," an old torch-like song that builds to a climax, it's a mini-movie.
And then Bowie broke through with the less than satisfying "Diamond Dogs," finally getting a huge hit in the public consciousness, now that everybody was tuned into FM, "Rebel Rebel," which was castigated as meaningless, there was now a Bowie backlash in the critical community.
And then Bowie completely changed direction. He reincarnated himself as a Philadelphia soul singer, the Thin White Duke, and suddenly he was monumental, everywhere, embraced by black and white audiences both.
"Young Americans" did not jump out of the box, fans bought it but AOR was flummoxed by it and black radio didn't immediately embrace it, it was a slow burner until suddenly it was everywhere. And if I never hear "Fame" again, I'm cool with that. And I like the title cut just a smidge better, but the opening cut on the second side, it's a killer! But before I get to "Somebody Up There Likes Me" there's a magical track on the first side that never gets any ink, which never comes up in conversation, that is my second favorite on the LP, "Fascination," which was cowritten by Luther Vandross before almost anybody knew who he was, actually you've got to credit Bowie with popularizing the soul singer.
But we were talking about "Somebody Up There Likes Me."
This is the only track on "Young Americans" without its own Wikipedia page, but it's the one that sticks out for me.
What do I like about it?
It's long, six minutes and thirty six seconds. Bowie and the band stretch out, the track goes through movements, but the best part of the cut is it allows Bowie to emote. And David Sanborn's saxophone contribution is an integral part of the record, but Bowie dances all over the track and the background singers testify, their vocals were arranged by Mr. Vandross, and it's like being in church, not one constrained by a roof, but the open landscape, where you can feel the joy of nature and music.
I'd slept in my car behind the Hart ski factory in Reno on my way to Mammoth Mountain on April 30th, 1975. I was awoken by a security guard in the middle of the night. He bought my reason for being there and when the factory opened I went inside and got a pair of replacement skis and got back in my 2002 and spun the dial of my Blaupunkt as I left the metropolis and entered the Sierra Nevada and I wasn't sure if somebody up there liked me, I'm still not sure of that, but at that particular moment, for those six plus minutes, I liked myself and my life, I was in heaven.
--
Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/
--
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-iHeart: https://ihr.fm/2Gi5PFj
-Apple: https://apple.co/2ndmpvp
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