Trailer: https://bit.ly/3vcNhNU
1
This Netflix series is strangely satisfying...no, it's incredibly engrossing, if you turn it on you won't turn it off, it will instantly make you a fan of Formula 1.
I follow Formula 1 the way I follow the Tour de France. I see who wins, the standings, but I no longer watch the action.
Grow old enough and your time is precious, I really don't want to spend four hours watching a baseball game. Oh, don't get me wrong, I still want your tickets, it's just that when I was a kid I watched and played a ton of baseball, the Yankees were everything, I knew all the players, read all the books and then...
Football got a huge boost when Namath called and won the Super Bowl. It pushed football ahead of baseball as the nation's favorite.
And I played football too. Sports were different back then, they were casual. As in pickup games. You walked down to the field with your glove or whatever equipment was required and waited for enough people to show up to start a game. It was never set up by our parents. We just walked out the front door and said SEE YA LATER! Not that our parents were worried. Turns out they had no need to be, no need to today either, turns out most snatching of kids is a result of parental disputes, not independent bad actors, but after learning in therapy that their parents were the root of all their faults the boomers decided to do it differently, fathers would be regularly involved with the children, and everything would be mapped out and supervised.
And then sports became truly serious. If you didn't focus on one sport in your single digits, there was no hope you'd become world class. And you focused on this one and only sport, playing the game for fun...that went out the window, burnout became an issue.
And then there was the conditioning. All sports are now completely different from what they used to be. Physical strength is key. Not that I could ever relate to a gym rat. I follow skiing on Apple News and I'm inundated with stories of Lindsey Vonn pumping iron. I feel sorry for her, she can no longer compete in the World Cup and is not quite sure what to do with herself so she has returned to the gym. I can think of nothing more boring than lifting weights. Then again, we used to be much more active, obesity wasn't as big an issue, then again the food was cleaner and we were not addicted to our screens.
But World Cup skiing is a good example. It blew up in the sixties with Jean Claude Killy and Billy Kidd. Then came the dominant Stenmark years. Then Girardelli. Then Hermann Maier and Bode Miller and somewhere along the way it all blended together and to a great degree I stopped watching. Just new twentysomethings, not radically different from the generation before them. Marcel Hirscher won eight World Cups and I don't remember watching any of his races. Well, a few, but the truth is it's all a blur today. And with every race now available, I watch almost none. The tyranny of choice. A ski race on TV used to be a special occasion, now you can follow online, the winning runs are posted to YouTube shortly thereafter.
But in the days of scarcity, I saw all these events on ABC's "Wide World of Sports." All of them. Which means I became familiar with Formula 1. They always showed the Monaco Grand Prix, and the breakthrough was cameras in the pavement, which always got run over and broken before the race was over.
Now if you've ever been to a car race you know it's pretty boring. Either you've got to be a hard core devotee or going for the event, the atmosphere, the party, because you just can't see much. I went to the Long Beach Grand Prix once and I was stunned how close I could get to the track, but it was only in one turn, who knows who was winning.
As for the Indianpolis 500, that was a thing when Andy Granatelli came out with his turbine engine cars, that piqued my interest. But then IndyCar racing split into two factions and it's never been the same since, only its premier event gets any traction.
And the truth is NASCAR is slipping in the U.S. And means almost nothing overseas.
And Formula 1 is for the rest of the world. And once they conspired to make the cars slower, to limit their speed, I lost some interest. But it was fun to see who won, especially when Lewis Hamilton came from nowhere and then became dominant.
But still, I could not understand how one guy controlled, owned the whole damn thing, and that his daughter ended up buying Aaron Spelling's mansion, the largest house in L.A. County, with 123 rooms, 27 bathrooms and 14 bedrooms. It's a house for a cult, not one family, then again the wants and desires of the uber-rich are oftentimes unfathomable.
And speaking of unfathomable, now Liberty, John Malone's company, owns the whole damn thing. How does this happen, where does this leave Formula 1?
2
The drivers are athletes, with almost no body fat, also working out in the gym ad infinitum, yes, you've got to be in top shape to drive a Formula 1 car. As for Nascar...Tony Stewart appears on screen and he's beefy, you've got to be lean to even fit in an F1 car, never mind endure the races.
So, there are ten teams. With two drivers each. And only three can win. As a matter of fact, the first season, 2018, the only one I've watched so far, focuses almost entirely on the mid-pack, Lewis Hamilton gets almost no screen time. Losers do, like Williams, the perennial last place finisher.
But the drivers are just the tip of the iceberg. Each F 1 team has hundreds of members, and often spends hundreds of millions. That's another reason why Mercedes-Benz and Ferrari dominate, the money!
So it's interesting who wins. But it's the human stories, the "up close and personals," that are most intriguing.
Turns out the people who run these teams are lifers, people who've dedicated their entire lives to car racing, like in America people dedicate theirs to baseball, or football. But the season is even longer than baseball, nine months, with twenty one races. And each race lasts a weekend.
Friday is practice.
Saturday is qualifying.
Sunday is the race.
And when you watch them race...it appears that the only time these cars are adhered to the road completely, tires gripping, is on the straightaways, otherwise they're constantly skidding at 200 miles an hour.
But that's not the most interesting part.
McLaren has the best driver but hasn't fielded a winning team in years. They're perennial also-rans.
And Haas is an American outfit, only in it for a handful of years, fighting to move up the middle of the pack.
Renault? Meaningless in America, and in trouble in Europe. The truth is Carlos Ghosn hooked the operation up to Nissan, and then Mitsubishi, but now he's in exile in Lebanon and the enterprise is falling apart. It's been in the news. But Cyril, the leader of Renault's operation, says money is no issue.
But they can't win.
Red Bull? They've got nothing but money. But they're paying their number two driver more than their number one, and number one doesn't like this.
And the drivers...they're all skilled, but the best way to stay in the game is to bring sponsors, i.e. money, that's what teams want most. Otherwise, unless you're winning, chances are you won't find a seat next year, and that happens, you were in the show and now you're not, your career is over. Like I said, there are only twenty seats!
So you'd think it's a pretty insulated operation, so small.
But it travels around the world, even to places like Azerbaijan. And the truth is people follow it all over the globe in droves, it's a really big thing, just not in America.
So you've got the drama of the heads of the operations, will they lose their gig? There are only ten gigs available, this is not the NFL or MLB. You've got to produce or...
That's what bugs me, reminds me of sports growing up. Everybody is friendly, you're teammates, and then you have an off-season and you're cut. You've got to sleep with one eye open, you can only depend on yourself. Even your teammate driver is oftentimes the enemy.
And who knows what will happen in the future. Andy Granatelli's turbine engine car pooped out before the finish line, then it was corralled by the rules. And there is an electric racing circuit now, but it's absent one of racing's main draws...there's no noise! And when autos become self-driving, when people don't even own them, when they call them up on demand, will people clamor to watch Formula 1? I don't know, but it's got to take a hit.
And the truth is F1 is dangerous, people do get killed, but it is so much safer than before, most drivers survive heinous crashes unscathed.
And then there are the independent owners. The South Asian man under investigation in India for going bankrupt and not paying people, but still pouring money into his F 1 team.
And the Canadian billionaire, whose cash delivers a seat for his son.
And the desire to move up to Ferrari...
As for the cars themselves, just take a peek at the steering wheel, it's akin to a video game, as a matter of fact the drivers train by playing video games!
And these are not rock solid machines. They're constantly breaking. If it's exterior, the body, you should see them replace a broken front wing in a matter of seconds, the driver is back out on the tarmac like nothing's happened.
But the tires wear out, the suspension is wonky, there are a million different elements and the odds of one going wrong during a race are high.
As are the odds of another driver forcing you off the road, etiquette is for golf, not Formula 1 racing.
3
So the truth is Formula 1 is much better on television. Where you can see the entire race. Even better, in this series in ten episodes you can see the entire season, the story arcs, beginning to end. And the episodes are about half an hour long, so it's not a huge commitment.
Now the truth is I've been locked up in my house for over a year. To tell you that my mental state has always been positive would be lying. And streaming television does help me cope, but I've already seen most of the A-level shows, but then Jay & Lisa told me we had to check out "Formula1: Drive to Survive." And we finished this show we watched on Acorn that was interesting, but not worth writing about, I don't want to burden you with anything that's not deserving of your time. As a matter of fact, I just finished this book "Good Neighbors," by Sarah Langan, and about halfway through it becomes absolutely riveting, hard to put down. And the set-up is so interesting, set in the not too distant future, looking back, there are news stories and interviews and...I just can't recommend it fully, you can check it out, but it's no F 1 show.
So, I pulled up "Formula1: Drive to Survive" and was hooked from the very beginning. Felice too. Although we did watch that Ayrton Senna movie a few years back and she dug that...it turns out the same people made this Formula 1 series.
And we're watching and we both have questions. Where the money goes. Rules. Yes, this series draws you further into the sport.
I will continue to read the rankings, but now I will go deeper, I will care more, because something is happening in the Formula 1 world and most people in America are unaware. Remember when George Harrison got into F 1? He was on to something. Yes, it's a sport, it's ultimately meaningless, but it is a reflection of the human condition, it is worth dedicating some time to it on planet earth. Every day I can't wait for the sun to set to fire up this series, I think you'll feel the same way too.
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Saturday 22 May 2021
Friday 21 May 2021
1971-Episode One
https://bit.ly/3oE5r8M
I've been thinking I was born at the wrong time.
Now I'm not so sure.
On one hand I was born at exactly the right time, I was 10 when the Beatles broke, I was there for the British Invasion, I saw the whole movie, many of my contemporaries were not, if you were born just a few years later, you missed it, you had to read about it, you watched films about it, but it was different from being there.
I love the internet. Social media causes problems, Zuckerberg is single-handedly going to turn the entire world authoritarian, but the ability to connect with people, to go down the rabbit holes of my desires, that's priceless, that's not how it was in 1971.
In 1971 not only did we have no internet, we had no cable TV.
But what we did have was records.
Even the youngsters believe it's the same as it ever was, you make music, you become famous, hopefully you make a bit of coin, and that's the music business.
But not back then.
Even back in 1971, they were still developing it, still figuring it out. This was when Peter Grant instituted the 90/10 deal. This was when you couldn't get a ticket to almost any show, they all sold out, this is when if you wanted to know which way the wind blew, you listened to music.
We can argue, compare and contrast as they say in college, 1971 to the years that came after and the years that came before, but that's not the point. You see the sixties were a youthquake, the oldsters were stunned, we just weren't staying at home silently, we were revolutionizing all aspects of society, and rock stars were the most famous and influential people in the world, record albums had more power than the Bible.
Meanwhile, we went on with life as usual.
Yes, some people were hippies in Haight-Ashbury. Some moved to Canada to avoid the draft. Others took political matters into their own hands, like the Weathermen, but most of us...we continued to live our lives, we went to school, we graduated and got jobs, not that I would call them careers, economics were secondary to social issues, and the youth were all on the same side.
Chrissie Hynde has got it right about that. You couldn't find a Republican. To be a Republican meant you rejected the music, the dope, the entire lifestyle, and very few people were entranced by that. That's another element of the sixties that's been overlooked, we changed our minds. It's not like in 1965 every teenager was against the war, we were the United States, we never lost, but as the years went by and the corpses piled up we started to question what our elders, what the authorities had to say.
And if you watch the footage at the beginning of this episode, you'll realize things were pretty bad back then, heinous. National Guardsmen shooting and killing students on a college campus? They wouldn't do that today. But race relations...the Black man is still at the bottom of the economic ladder, but now the whites don't hide, for some reason they feel empowered, believe Black people have had decades to get their act together, and it's hurting the whites, affirmative action no! And now when education is expensive and the key to power, never mind success, Black people still haven't been empowered. Whereas college in California used to be so cheap it was essentially free.
So this series starts with Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On." A great album, very powerful, released fifty years ago this week, only it's a rewrite of history to say it was all encompassing, in all households, a statement we all knew, that's patently untrue. Sure, we listened to Motown on AM radio in the sixties, but these were not snappy ditties and in 1971 FM rock radio ruled and it played almost no black music, and although the Stones brought Ike & Tina out in 1972, if you went to rock concerts, you saw almost no people of color.
Not that Chrissie Hynde doesn't get it right. Then again, she starts talking about us all being high and...this is untrue. Was marijuana rampant? Yes. But LSD? One can even argue that was more of a sixties drug.
As for Jimmy Iovine... He's had great success, but now he's acting like an elder statesman, an intellectual, analyzing what happened back then and I just don't buy it. But they cast names in these productions so streaming outlets will buy them and people will watch them.
So what's astounding about this episode is it starts with the politics, what was going on in society, as opposed to diving straight into the music. Because the truth is the two were intertwined. And when I watched the footage...
I could see myself. This was my time, my era. Everybody had long hair and bell bottoms and everybody lived for music and everybody was anti-war. And no one talked about how much money they had, it was about living life to the fullest, questioning authority, arguing principles with your buddies. We were all middle class, we were all in it together.
But the jaw-dropping part of this episode, the reason you must watch it, is for the footage of John Lennon. He's dead, but in this episode he's so alive.
I've never seen this footage before. Maybe it's somewhere online, been in a documentary, but today it's all about curation, making sense of the morass.
We John's house in England. We see him playing "How Do You Sleep?" to George. Yoko Ono looks anything but a pariah, she's pretty attractive and at no time obnoxious. As for John...he's very very smart.
There's a point where they show John and Yoko in bed reading the newspapers. Yes, information is king, and it's available, but people would rather just spread their uneducated opinions.
So John's in the studio, singing "Gimme Some Truth." And the debate is whether to use his Eddie Cochran voice or not. Yes, the Beatles had influences. And Phil Spector says to hold off. Yes, Phil Spector, before he killed anybody, when he was still considered a wunderkind.
You watch Lennon and he's both normal and a god. Someone who's had some experience, but still has a long way to go. Someone willing to stick his neck out for something, to make a difference, hell, it might not work, but why not be optimistic? We don't have that spirit here anymore. It might have died in 1969, maybe 1979, but the truth is people are downtrodden, they don't see a way up. There are billionaires, people with more money than the proletariat can ever earn, and those with the money employ it to their benefit, to keep the rest of us corralled and in control.
Now there's also footage of George Harrison's "Concert for Bangladesh." I've seen the movie, literally, and this footage might be in it, but it's so impactful here. Phil Spector and Allen Klein walking together in the bowels of Madison Square Garden? And Leon Russell is young and thin, now he's dead, George too. As for Eric Clapton...he's doing his best to eviscerate his legend, lockdown bad, vaccine bad, if we just ignore the virus everything will be groovy!
Yes, if you're a student of the game you'll have fun picking out the people, Nicky Hopkins, although they eventually mention his name.
But this was our time.
They're in a record store, looks like Tower Sunset to me, and you see the prices, and people lined up to pay...
And the people camping out for days to get tickets for the Bangladesh concert, and I remember, I did that, I lived to buy records, you had to go to the show, for a peak experience, that's the only place you could connect.
Maybe we need John Lennon today, because I'm certainly not optimistic. By time the Republicans get through with voting laws there is no way in hell a Democrat will ever win. Never mind the rigged Supreme Court probably whittling away abortion rights.
But Nixon, who we thought was not as bad as Trump, when you see him in action, you realize he was pretty bad. And he too used and abused the FBI, and he too had contempt for his enemies, only back then...the youth were against him and the Republicans said he had to resign, whereas today Congresspeople are afraid of an ex-President, they're ruled by an authoritarian in absentia. We watched January 6th on television, but there can be no investigation? Don't talk to me about politicizing it, can you say "Benghazi"?
And you may have caught the anti-Israel fisticuffs at the restaurant in Los Angeles, or the incidents in the U.K. Yes, everybody says it's just about giving the Palestinians their due, but the truth is the past twenty years of Palestinian saber-rattling by nincompoops like Roger Waters has fanned the flames of anti-Semitism. Yes, I'll stand up to Roger Waters any day of the week, I'm not afraid, hell, I'm a child of the sixties!
Yes, it was a long time ago. Fifty years. Classic rockers are dropping like flies. The music lives, it will always live, but it's nowhere near the hit parade, the acts don't have the ethos, never mind the credibility, of those of yore. Then again, the joke's on them, because they have a small fraction of the power of the acts of yore. Kanye West has visibility because we all want to watch the train-wreck, don't confuse his antics with those of a leader, which John Lennon certainly was.
So my generation is long in the tooth. There have been so many changes, so many generations, that to most of America what happened in the sixties and seventies, never mind eighties, is ancient history. Forget not knowing the days when radio was powerful, they don't even know the days when MTV was powerful! And also back then acts could say no, because if you wanted to be believed you couldn't sell out to the man. One can argue quite strongly today's acts are the man! After all they're all whored out to corporations or corporations themselves, selling us crap.
Yes, we really thought there was a way out back then. We had hope. Yes, we were disappointed when Nixon got elected, and re-elected, but it wasn't the end of democracy, which is what we're arguing about right now.
Now if you go back to 1971, one of the big acts was Elton John. Actually, he got bigger as the years went by, but on his very first American album, the eponymous "Elton John," he had a track, fittingly the last one, entitled "The King Must Die." And Bernie Taupin's lines in that song were:
"And sooner or later
Everybody's kingdom must die"
Yes, America can't even rebuild roads and bridges, never mind educate it's populace. You're on your own, government is the enemy, no one should pay taxes and then life will be great. Huh?
You can read the article in the "New York Times" about Paul Romer, the favorite economist of the techies who has now switched sides, he now believes in bigger government, greater control of these digital operations: https://nyti.ms/3bLmmB6 Romer changed his mind, he seems to be the only one, America has gone back millennia, it's now positively tribal.
But if you watch "1971" you'll be gobsmacked, you'll see what we lost, and you'll desire to get back to the garden, whether you lived through that era or are still wet behind the ears.
Today's it's different. We've got footage.
Sure, now everything is on camera, but back in '71, so much was lost to the sands of time, films essentially started around the turn of the century, from the nineteenth to the twentieth, and TV essentially started a few years after World War II, in the forties. It's not like we could go back to footage of the Civil War, it's not like we could watch the news, gauge the public's reaction to the assassination of Lincoln, never mind the election of Washington. But through the miracle of technology, this fifty year old footage, this information, is at our fingertips, ready to be put together to tell the narrative of what once was...
If this documentary was released twenty five years ago, like the "Beatles Anthology," it would be a cultural event, everybody would see it.
Even worse, today's hype machine is so busy promoting today, it can't stop to lionize the past.
So you may not even know this series exists. Maybe if it was on Netflix it would have a fighting chance, unfortunately it's on Apple TV+. But it's there, waiting for you to check it out, it's a land mine, like all those classic rock records, just waiting for you to discover them, just because it's old doesn't mean it's passé. There's wisdom to be gained from back then, scoop it up, when you know the past you can march forward enlightened, ready to create a better world.
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I've been thinking I was born at the wrong time.
Now I'm not so sure.
On one hand I was born at exactly the right time, I was 10 when the Beatles broke, I was there for the British Invasion, I saw the whole movie, many of my contemporaries were not, if you were born just a few years later, you missed it, you had to read about it, you watched films about it, but it was different from being there.
I love the internet. Social media causes problems, Zuckerberg is single-handedly going to turn the entire world authoritarian, but the ability to connect with people, to go down the rabbit holes of my desires, that's priceless, that's not how it was in 1971.
In 1971 not only did we have no internet, we had no cable TV.
But what we did have was records.
Even the youngsters believe it's the same as it ever was, you make music, you become famous, hopefully you make a bit of coin, and that's the music business.
But not back then.
Even back in 1971, they were still developing it, still figuring it out. This was when Peter Grant instituted the 90/10 deal. This was when you couldn't get a ticket to almost any show, they all sold out, this is when if you wanted to know which way the wind blew, you listened to music.
We can argue, compare and contrast as they say in college, 1971 to the years that came after and the years that came before, but that's not the point. You see the sixties were a youthquake, the oldsters were stunned, we just weren't staying at home silently, we were revolutionizing all aspects of society, and rock stars were the most famous and influential people in the world, record albums had more power than the Bible.
Meanwhile, we went on with life as usual.
Yes, some people were hippies in Haight-Ashbury. Some moved to Canada to avoid the draft. Others took political matters into their own hands, like the Weathermen, but most of us...we continued to live our lives, we went to school, we graduated and got jobs, not that I would call them careers, economics were secondary to social issues, and the youth were all on the same side.
Chrissie Hynde has got it right about that. You couldn't find a Republican. To be a Republican meant you rejected the music, the dope, the entire lifestyle, and very few people were entranced by that. That's another element of the sixties that's been overlooked, we changed our minds. It's not like in 1965 every teenager was against the war, we were the United States, we never lost, but as the years went by and the corpses piled up we started to question what our elders, what the authorities had to say.
And if you watch the footage at the beginning of this episode, you'll realize things were pretty bad back then, heinous. National Guardsmen shooting and killing students on a college campus? They wouldn't do that today. But race relations...the Black man is still at the bottom of the economic ladder, but now the whites don't hide, for some reason they feel empowered, believe Black people have had decades to get their act together, and it's hurting the whites, affirmative action no! And now when education is expensive and the key to power, never mind success, Black people still haven't been empowered. Whereas college in California used to be so cheap it was essentially free.
So this series starts with Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On." A great album, very powerful, released fifty years ago this week, only it's a rewrite of history to say it was all encompassing, in all households, a statement we all knew, that's patently untrue. Sure, we listened to Motown on AM radio in the sixties, but these were not snappy ditties and in 1971 FM rock radio ruled and it played almost no black music, and although the Stones brought Ike & Tina out in 1972, if you went to rock concerts, you saw almost no people of color.
Not that Chrissie Hynde doesn't get it right. Then again, she starts talking about us all being high and...this is untrue. Was marijuana rampant? Yes. But LSD? One can even argue that was more of a sixties drug.
As for Jimmy Iovine... He's had great success, but now he's acting like an elder statesman, an intellectual, analyzing what happened back then and I just don't buy it. But they cast names in these productions so streaming outlets will buy them and people will watch them.
So what's astounding about this episode is it starts with the politics, what was going on in society, as opposed to diving straight into the music. Because the truth is the two were intertwined. And when I watched the footage...
I could see myself. This was my time, my era. Everybody had long hair and bell bottoms and everybody lived for music and everybody was anti-war. And no one talked about how much money they had, it was about living life to the fullest, questioning authority, arguing principles with your buddies. We were all middle class, we were all in it together.
But the jaw-dropping part of this episode, the reason you must watch it, is for the footage of John Lennon. He's dead, but in this episode he's so alive.
I've never seen this footage before. Maybe it's somewhere online, been in a documentary, but today it's all about curation, making sense of the morass.
We John's house in England. We see him playing "How Do You Sleep?" to George. Yoko Ono looks anything but a pariah, she's pretty attractive and at no time obnoxious. As for John...he's very very smart.
There's a point where they show John and Yoko in bed reading the newspapers. Yes, information is king, and it's available, but people would rather just spread their uneducated opinions.
So John's in the studio, singing "Gimme Some Truth." And the debate is whether to use his Eddie Cochran voice or not. Yes, the Beatles had influences. And Phil Spector says to hold off. Yes, Phil Spector, before he killed anybody, when he was still considered a wunderkind.
You watch Lennon and he's both normal and a god. Someone who's had some experience, but still has a long way to go. Someone willing to stick his neck out for something, to make a difference, hell, it might not work, but why not be optimistic? We don't have that spirit here anymore. It might have died in 1969, maybe 1979, but the truth is people are downtrodden, they don't see a way up. There are billionaires, people with more money than the proletariat can ever earn, and those with the money employ it to their benefit, to keep the rest of us corralled and in control.
Now there's also footage of George Harrison's "Concert for Bangladesh." I've seen the movie, literally, and this footage might be in it, but it's so impactful here. Phil Spector and Allen Klein walking together in the bowels of Madison Square Garden? And Leon Russell is young and thin, now he's dead, George too. As for Eric Clapton...he's doing his best to eviscerate his legend, lockdown bad, vaccine bad, if we just ignore the virus everything will be groovy!
Yes, if you're a student of the game you'll have fun picking out the people, Nicky Hopkins, although they eventually mention his name.
But this was our time.
They're in a record store, looks like Tower Sunset to me, and you see the prices, and people lined up to pay...
And the people camping out for days to get tickets for the Bangladesh concert, and I remember, I did that, I lived to buy records, you had to go to the show, for a peak experience, that's the only place you could connect.
Maybe we need John Lennon today, because I'm certainly not optimistic. By time the Republicans get through with voting laws there is no way in hell a Democrat will ever win. Never mind the rigged Supreme Court probably whittling away abortion rights.
But Nixon, who we thought was not as bad as Trump, when you see him in action, you realize he was pretty bad. And he too used and abused the FBI, and he too had contempt for his enemies, only back then...the youth were against him and the Republicans said he had to resign, whereas today Congresspeople are afraid of an ex-President, they're ruled by an authoritarian in absentia. We watched January 6th on television, but there can be no investigation? Don't talk to me about politicizing it, can you say "Benghazi"?
And you may have caught the anti-Israel fisticuffs at the restaurant in Los Angeles, or the incidents in the U.K. Yes, everybody says it's just about giving the Palestinians their due, but the truth is the past twenty years of Palestinian saber-rattling by nincompoops like Roger Waters has fanned the flames of anti-Semitism. Yes, I'll stand up to Roger Waters any day of the week, I'm not afraid, hell, I'm a child of the sixties!
Yes, it was a long time ago. Fifty years. Classic rockers are dropping like flies. The music lives, it will always live, but it's nowhere near the hit parade, the acts don't have the ethos, never mind the credibility, of those of yore. Then again, the joke's on them, because they have a small fraction of the power of the acts of yore. Kanye West has visibility because we all want to watch the train-wreck, don't confuse his antics with those of a leader, which John Lennon certainly was.
So my generation is long in the tooth. There have been so many changes, so many generations, that to most of America what happened in the sixties and seventies, never mind eighties, is ancient history. Forget not knowing the days when radio was powerful, they don't even know the days when MTV was powerful! And also back then acts could say no, because if you wanted to be believed you couldn't sell out to the man. One can argue quite strongly today's acts are the man! After all they're all whored out to corporations or corporations themselves, selling us crap.
Yes, we really thought there was a way out back then. We had hope. Yes, we were disappointed when Nixon got elected, and re-elected, but it wasn't the end of democracy, which is what we're arguing about right now.
Now if you go back to 1971, one of the big acts was Elton John. Actually, he got bigger as the years went by, but on his very first American album, the eponymous "Elton John," he had a track, fittingly the last one, entitled "The King Must Die." And Bernie Taupin's lines in that song were:
"And sooner or later
Everybody's kingdom must die"
Yes, America can't even rebuild roads and bridges, never mind educate it's populace. You're on your own, government is the enemy, no one should pay taxes and then life will be great. Huh?
You can read the article in the "New York Times" about Paul Romer, the favorite economist of the techies who has now switched sides, he now believes in bigger government, greater control of these digital operations: https://nyti.ms/3bLmmB6 Romer changed his mind, he seems to be the only one, America has gone back millennia, it's now positively tribal.
But if you watch "1971" you'll be gobsmacked, you'll see what we lost, and you'll desire to get back to the garden, whether you lived through that era or are still wet behind the ears.
Today's it's different. We've got footage.
Sure, now everything is on camera, but back in '71, so much was lost to the sands of time, films essentially started around the turn of the century, from the nineteenth to the twentieth, and TV essentially started a few years after World War II, in the forties. It's not like we could go back to footage of the Civil War, it's not like we could watch the news, gauge the public's reaction to the assassination of Lincoln, never mind the election of Washington. But through the miracle of technology, this fifty year old footage, this information, is at our fingertips, ready to be put together to tell the narrative of what once was...
If this documentary was released twenty five years ago, like the "Beatles Anthology," it would be a cultural event, everybody would see it.
Even worse, today's hype machine is so busy promoting today, it can't stop to lionize the past.
So you may not even know this series exists. Maybe if it was on Netflix it would have a fighting chance, unfortunately it's on Apple TV+. But it's there, waiting for you to check it out, it's a land mine, like all those classic rock records, just waiting for you to discover them, just because it's old doesn't mean it's passé. There's wisdom to be gained from back then, scoop it up, when you know the past you can march forward enlightened, ready to create a better world.
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Thursday 20 May 2021
Spotify's Fan Study
https://fanstudy.byspotify.com
There is more information on this page and in its links than you can devour and comprehend in one sitting, but you should dive in.
All the conversation re Spotify has been about payouts. That ship has sailed, now it's about building your audience so that it will speed up and enhance the flywheel of your career. In other words, recorded music streaming is only one income stream, please view it that way.
So the story is always about the Spotify Top 50 and the major labels who parade their wares there. But the truth is never have the major labels had less control over the music landscape, furthermore never have hit artists had less purchase in the landscape, the data shows us this, and you might want to ignore the data re your personal beliefs on political issues, but do you really want to sacrifice the insights when it comes to your own career?
If you're an artist you need to digest this information, you must read it and know it, because now you are your own record label. Don't dream of getting signed, chances are that's the worst thing that can happen to your career. If you make pop or hip-hop that populates the aforementioned Spotify Top 50, go for it, try to get the big deal, but if you don't, don't even bother, as Fleetwood Mac sings, it's time to go your own way.
Sure, you can hand the responsibility to a third party. But chances are they can't deliver more than you can yourself, and they're going to take a huge slice, for probably no results, don't get sucked into the indie label game. But do get sucked into the indie mind-set.
Yesterday Lollapalooza revealed its lineup. There aren't many superstars and the truth is there are other festivals that are genre specific that do extremely well. The nineties paradigm is kaput. You know, the one in which you try to get exposure to become world dominant, where you need a deep pocket for videos and getting on MTV is everything. There is no center in music, no glue, except for maybe the streaming platforms themselves, and the truth is Spotify dominates and it skews young, it's where careers are built and expanded. Sure, be on all of the outlets, but Apple skews old and the subscribers listen less and...Amazon is a black hole proffering little information, but don't count it out, the pricing is just too intriguing, everybody's got a Prime account, so music is burgeoning there.
But Spotify is a music only company (well, podcasts too...let's just call it an audio-only company) and therefore it has to double-down and superserve. And if you follow the link above you will find out what works with your fanbase. When to release new music, how it affects catalog, what kind of merch they prefer...and how to make a canvas and how to pitch your music and the truth is if you're complaining, you're missing the point, this is how Soundcloud built hip-hop into the juggernaut it is. Turned out giving it away for free was good business. And now, knowing how to use the Spotify tools is good business.
Really, it's best if the artist him or herself dives deep and comprehends all this information. Once you hand off responsibility something is lost in the process. There's no phone help on the internet, you've got to figure out solutions to your problems yourself, why do you expect it to be any different in music? Sure, if you have a best friend or a manager empower them. But Spotify's fan/artist information is the complement to Don Passman's book. Sure, you know the law, you know how not to get screwed, but do you know how to build your career?
Don't look at it from top down, but bottom up. Don't compare yourself to Billie Eilish or the Weeknd, don't get frustrated that your numbers are so low, instead focus on the build...are your numbers going up and what can you do to make them increase? And the truth is spamming everybody does not work, you've got to superserve the fans you've got, they are the best spreaders of your music, you've got to keep them interested, you've got to empower them.
Music is in the doldrums.
It was revolutionized in 1964 by the Beatles and the ensuing British Invasion.
Then in the late sixties and early seventies we had FM radio which engendered album rock.
And then in 1981 we had MTV.
And in 1999/2000, we had Napster.
Spotify is over a decade old now, we learned that those who embrace new tools win. But we haven't yet had the artist who demands those not paying attention do.
Yes, we had the Beatles and British Invasion.
FM brought Jimi Hendrix and Cream and...
MTV brought Culture Club and Duran Duran...
We've yet to have the Spotify hit, the breakthrough that is completely different from what came before, which gets everybody interested.
It happens in all media.
In television, it was "The Sopranos" in 1999. A series rejected by network that was better than any movie. And thereafter we got more and more innovative cable shows, Sunday night was for HBO, and then Reed Hastings came along and took Netflix streaming and funded "House of Cards" and we truly hit the golden age of television, it's the entertainment medium everybody wants to talk about, people will ask you what shows you've been watching before they'll ask what music you've been listening to.
So we're waiting for that new sound.
And you might have it. But now there are no barriers to entry. Sure, you could get lost in the morass of the 60,000 tracks added every day to Spotify, but almost all of them are marginal, made by hobbyists, maybe delusional hobbyists, but they will get no traction. The truth is almost nothing will get traction, but we are looking for the new and different and excellent and...
You can make it cheaply with digital tools.
You can promote it for free via social media.
And now Spotify is helping you build your career and track the engagement!
And the truth is it's the least verbal artist who is questioning whether they can make it who blazes the trail, usually someone who has paid dues, been kicking around, with minefields in their past. They've taken time to see what works and what does not, they've honed their craft, and they know it's about the individual statement.
No one will be as dominant as the Beatles, or even Madonna, ever again, can't ever happen. But there is room for acts that have big impact, that start a movement. If you're in it for the money, stop right away, right away, there is just not that much money in music, and odds are you'll never make it. If you want money, work for the corporation, get a steady paycheck. If you want to go down the road less taken, if you are willing to starve, if you're unwilling to complain, if you must do the work believing in yourself...maybe you're what we need. But don't delude yourself into thinking that just because you have self-confidence you can make it. No, you must look at the data, see if the trend is upward, if not, the problem is you. Yes, the truth is if you're great there will be action, there's so little great out there. And then you have to build on that action.
You've got all the tools, we're dying for you to change our world...please change our world!
--
Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/
--
Listen to the podcast:
-iHeart: https://ihr.fm/2Gi5PFj
-Apple: https://apple.co/2ndmpvp
--
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There is more information on this page and in its links than you can devour and comprehend in one sitting, but you should dive in.
All the conversation re Spotify has been about payouts. That ship has sailed, now it's about building your audience so that it will speed up and enhance the flywheel of your career. In other words, recorded music streaming is only one income stream, please view it that way.
So the story is always about the Spotify Top 50 and the major labels who parade their wares there. But the truth is never have the major labels had less control over the music landscape, furthermore never have hit artists had less purchase in the landscape, the data shows us this, and you might want to ignore the data re your personal beliefs on political issues, but do you really want to sacrifice the insights when it comes to your own career?
If you're an artist you need to digest this information, you must read it and know it, because now you are your own record label. Don't dream of getting signed, chances are that's the worst thing that can happen to your career. If you make pop or hip-hop that populates the aforementioned Spotify Top 50, go for it, try to get the big deal, but if you don't, don't even bother, as Fleetwood Mac sings, it's time to go your own way.
Sure, you can hand the responsibility to a third party. But chances are they can't deliver more than you can yourself, and they're going to take a huge slice, for probably no results, don't get sucked into the indie label game. But do get sucked into the indie mind-set.
Yesterday Lollapalooza revealed its lineup. There aren't many superstars and the truth is there are other festivals that are genre specific that do extremely well. The nineties paradigm is kaput. You know, the one in which you try to get exposure to become world dominant, where you need a deep pocket for videos and getting on MTV is everything. There is no center in music, no glue, except for maybe the streaming platforms themselves, and the truth is Spotify dominates and it skews young, it's where careers are built and expanded. Sure, be on all of the outlets, but Apple skews old and the subscribers listen less and...Amazon is a black hole proffering little information, but don't count it out, the pricing is just too intriguing, everybody's got a Prime account, so music is burgeoning there.
But Spotify is a music only company (well, podcasts too...let's just call it an audio-only company) and therefore it has to double-down and superserve. And if you follow the link above you will find out what works with your fanbase. When to release new music, how it affects catalog, what kind of merch they prefer...and how to make a canvas and how to pitch your music and the truth is if you're complaining, you're missing the point, this is how Soundcloud built hip-hop into the juggernaut it is. Turned out giving it away for free was good business. And now, knowing how to use the Spotify tools is good business.
Really, it's best if the artist him or herself dives deep and comprehends all this information. Once you hand off responsibility something is lost in the process. There's no phone help on the internet, you've got to figure out solutions to your problems yourself, why do you expect it to be any different in music? Sure, if you have a best friend or a manager empower them. But Spotify's fan/artist information is the complement to Don Passman's book. Sure, you know the law, you know how not to get screwed, but do you know how to build your career?
Don't look at it from top down, but bottom up. Don't compare yourself to Billie Eilish or the Weeknd, don't get frustrated that your numbers are so low, instead focus on the build...are your numbers going up and what can you do to make them increase? And the truth is spamming everybody does not work, you've got to superserve the fans you've got, they are the best spreaders of your music, you've got to keep them interested, you've got to empower them.
Music is in the doldrums.
It was revolutionized in 1964 by the Beatles and the ensuing British Invasion.
Then in the late sixties and early seventies we had FM radio which engendered album rock.
And then in 1981 we had MTV.
And in 1999/2000, we had Napster.
Spotify is over a decade old now, we learned that those who embrace new tools win. But we haven't yet had the artist who demands those not paying attention do.
Yes, we had the Beatles and British Invasion.
FM brought Jimi Hendrix and Cream and...
MTV brought Culture Club and Duran Duran...
We've yet to have the Spotify hit, the breakthrough that is completely different from what came before, which gets everybody interested.
It happens in all media.
In television, it was "The Sopranos" in 1999. A series rejected by network that was better than any movie. And thereafter we got more and more innovative cable shows, Sunday night was for HBO, and then Reed Hastings came along and took Netflix streaming and funded "House of Cards" and we truly hit the golden age of television, it's the entertainment medium everybody wants to talk about, people will ask you what shows you've been watching before they'll ask what music you've been listening to.
So we're waiting for that new sound.
And you might have it. But now there are no barriers to entry. Sure, you could get lost in the morass of the 60,000 tracks added every day to Spotify, but almost all of them are marginal, made by hobbyists, maybe delusional hobbyists, but they will get no traction. The truth is almost nothing will get traction, but we are looking for the new and different and excellent and...
You can make it cheaply with digital tools.
You can promote it for free via social media.
And now Spotify is helping you build your career and track the engagement!
And the truth is it's the least verbal artist who is questioning whether they can make it who blazes the trail, usually someone who has paid dues, been kicking around, with minefields in their past. They've taken time to see what works and what does not, they've honed their craft, and they know it's about the individual statement.
No one will be as dominant as the Beatles, or even Madonna, ever again, can't ever happen. But there is room for acts that have big impact, that start a movement. If you're in it for the money, stop right away, right away, there is just not that much money in music, and odds are you'll never make it. If you want money, work for the corporation, get a steady paycheck. If you want to go down the road less taken, if you are willing to starve, if you're unwilling to complain, if you must do the work believing in yourself...maybe you're what we need. But don't delude yourself into thinking that just because you have self-confidence you can make it. No, you must look at the data, see if the trend is upward, if not, the problem is you. Yes, the truth is if you're great there will be action, there's so little great out there. And then you have to build on that action.
You've got all the tools, we're dying for you to change our world...please change our world!
--
Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/
--
Listen to the podcast:
-iHeart: https://ihr.fm/2Gi5PFj
-Apple: https://apple.co/2ndmpvp
--
http://www.twitter.com/lefsetz
--
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Shelly Banjo-This Week's Podcast
Shelly Banjo, Bloomberg's New York Bureau Chief, is the #1 expert on TikTok. Here we cover the company's birth, its algorithm, how music is picked and used, record companies' involvement, how much money creators make...TikTok is where hits start today, you need to listen to this!
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-30806836/
https://open.spotify.com/episode/4CeoblctLCK315b86Il32G?si=VbbWZMkHRjmCrcFl8l4mPw
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast/id1316200737
https://www.stitcher.com/show/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast
https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9ff4fb19-54d4-41ae-ae7a-8a6f8d3dafa8/The-Bob-Lefsetz-Podcast?
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Listen to the podcast:
-iHeart: https://ihr.fm/2Gi5PFj
-Apple: https://apple.co/2ndmpvp
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https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-30806836/
https://open.spotify.com/episode/4CeoblctLCK315b86Il32G?si=VbbWZMkHRjmCrcFl8l4mPw
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast/id1316200737
https://www.stitcher.com/show/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast
https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9ff4fb19-54d4-41ae-ae7a-8a6f8d3dafa8/The-Bob-Lefsetz-Podcast?
--
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Listen to the podcast:
-iHeart: https://ihr.fm/2Gi5PFj
-Apple: https://apple.co/2ndmpvp
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Tuesday 18 May 2021
The Attaché
Trailer: https://bit.ly/3405a6o
Relationships are hard.
I found out about this show in "The Week," it's my favorite magazine, even if I do subscribe to so many of the publications they quote. It's what "Time" and "Newsweek" used to be, but sans editorializing, it's almost entirely a compilation of news from other sources. And it's expensive. But you could subscribe...and give up other news completely and be more up to speed than most people.
But really, I get it for the arts info. They recommend books and movies and music and TV and a couple of weeks back they listed the best Israeli TV shows, and there was only one I hadn't seen, "The Attaché."
Israel...they're winning the battle, but losing the war.
Everybody hates the Jews, and now they've finally got a vessel to express themselves, the Palestinians. And I'm not gonna change your opinion, I'm not even gonna try, because you just can't do that these days. I'd point you to great pieces by Bret Stephens and Tom Friedman in the "New York Times," but I'm sure you've got ammunition saying otherwise. And Israel is flawed, and Netanyahu has to go, but the truth is the Arab world wants Israel to go completely, never forget that. Or maybe you're happy about that.
So Israeli TV, pound for pound, is the best programming out there. Even if you're not Jewish. It's realistic. Genuine. And ultimately it's not about action so much as personal relationships, even when there is action, it all comes down to the people involved, like in "Valley of Tears."
So "The Attaché" is about a drummer. Who's married to a Parisian who moved to Israel. And she's gotten a gig as an attaché in the Israeli embassy in Paris for a year, so the family moves there.
And...
She's got a big, all-consuming job, and he's nowhere. He's a star in Israel, but nobody in Paris. Or as James Taylor put it so eloquently in "Captain Jim's Drunken Dream": "Up here I'm just a whisky bum but down there I'm a king."
And Avshalom speaks Hebrew, and English, but he doesn't speak French, so he finds it hard to communicate. The truth is many more French people speak English than they used to. I went skiing there in 1971 and I might as well have been in Japan, there was a wall between me and the locals, but when I repeated the trip ten years ago, almost everybody spoke English, it was not an issue.
But speaking of issues... If you've been following what has been going on in France, which I don't think most Americans have, they're too self-centered, it's a hotbed of anti-Semitism, and terror. Muslim vs... There doesn't seem to be a fix. And this show starts off with the Bataclan explosion, you remember, the nightclub disaster back in 2015. I was on a Summit Series ship, I was clueless, but then they announced it from the stage and it was eerie, to be out at sea with so much happening back on land.
So, if you're Jewish in Paris. Or even Muslim... You're terrified. And this is how the series starts out, and the theme returns, but really, you could scratch all the Israeli/Arab/Paris material completely, set this same show in America and...it would be just as haunting. Hell, maybe they're going to remake it in America, they oftentimes do, it would be easy, you're a couple living in New York City and your spouse gets a job for a year in Los Angeles, and she very much wants the gig. Do you go with her? You've got to sacrifice your work, but you want to keep the family together.
But when you arrive, when you're actually there, your spouse is integrated and happy and you're solo all day and resentful and...
Relationships can end in an instant. Something can be said and then it's all over, the other person just can't get over it. And small choices are critical. Do you reach in after the dissension, or do you pull away?
These are Jews, these are verbal people, they don't hold their feelings in...well, actually in this show they do to a degree, but the truth ultimately outs and then what?
You're rolling along, you think everything is hunky-dory and then one day...your spouse says something completely unexpected, you thought you were on the same page but it turns out you're not. Where do you go from there? You could say nothing, but that never works, that's a recipe for death. You've got to give your viewpoint, you've got to argue, but that does not mean there's an equitable solution.
Everybody only gets one life to live. And most people are not eager to compromise. On the little things maybe, but on the dream? Isn't that Marlon Brando's most famous line, "I coulda been a contender!" You don't want to quash someone's dream.
Situations change. Always. Can you adjust?
But if you don't completely cave, if you put forth your opinion, somewhere in the arguments that are now coming more frequently you realize...this could be the end.
It's a sinking feeling. You nearly go numb. You can't work, you can't eat... You don't want to believe it, but here you are. You want to hold back the hands of time, you want your partner to be who they used to be, but they're not. Doesn't matter what they promised you, that was then and this is now.
So do you hold on tighter?
Amazingly, that doesn't work at all. The other person considers you clingy and subservient and this makes them feel pulling away is right.
And the truth is ever since the introduction of the pill back in the sixties, divorce has been rampant. And some divorces are necessary, but the concept of hanging in there, working it out, the commitment being paramount? That's not embraced to the degree it used to be.
Commitment. It's the essence of a relationship. Bedrock. Commitment can supersede any problem, assuming it's not drugs or physical violence. And there's always a way to work it out, but someone is gonna sacrifice, someone is gonna suffer.
Or you could get divorced. But you almost always wake up later missing what you had. The new person is attractive and funny but after a few weeks or months you realize they're just not your ex. But once the rupture has happened, it's almost always too late to get back together.
And one person is not always reasonable. You can be, but they can't see your viewpoint, they don't want to compromise and then what? I don't know, I really don't.
And if Covid has taught us anything, you want to be with someone. Same sex, opposite sex, I don't care. We were not made to go through life alone.
So "The Attaché" is only ten half hour episodes, not much of a commitment. But at times I had to turn it off, it was just too heavy, I needed a break, I had to get out of that space. Yes, I'm watching the show and I'm thinking about the two major breakups in my life and...I don't want to go there, but I know it's always possible, the only person you can ultimately know and count on completely is yourself, if you think otherwise you're fooling yourself. The fact that two people can stay together for an extended period of time and make it work is almost a miracle, it's the hardest job you'll ever do. But the rewards make it worth it. At least that's what I've learned.
So most people will never see "The Attaché," since it's on Acorn. The best show on Acorn is "Line of Duty," it's one of the best streaming shows out there, worth the price of admission. Sign up for Acorn to see it. Acorn's only six bucks, but getting someone to spend, to get them over the transom, is the most difficult thing to do. And if you do subscribe, also watch "Keeping Faith," and there are other good shows on the outlet, but after the exquisite experience of the six seasons of "Line of Duty," thirty six episodes total, pull up "The Attaché," it's nowhere near as heavy as it appears from what I've written above, in fact at times it's light, but I'd highly recommend it, there are better shows out there, a bunch of them Israeli, but it's hard to find something this visceral made in America.
And once you start watching Israeli TV you'll be stunned how the same people pop up. The female femme fatale of "The Bureau" is a café owner's wife in "The Attaché." The reluctant doctor in "Srugim," the military commander in "Valley of Tears," is a musician here. They're actors, not stars, they're players, it's fascinating.
But maybe this is not what you want to see. Maybe you want light entertainment, diversion, your regular life is laden with enough problems. But if you watch the right TV shows, you'll get insight into your regular life, like you used to with independent cinema, but with TV series you can dig deeper.
So I don't know what is gonna happen in Israel, it's an impossible situation. Israel has the Iron Dome and Gaza, firing missiles, does not. Therefore John Oliver blames the Israelis. Let me tell you, if you're Jewish... It used to just be Roger Waters, now we've got members of Congress...you can't say something about women, Blacks, but it's open season on Jews. Of course that's not completely true, but that's exactly the point. No one is so American that they're part of a pure majority, the only people who are native are...the natives, and one thing is for sure, the Native Americans have been discriminated against for hundreds of years. Eventually you're gonna find yourself on the wrong side, everybody is going to be against you. And it's not going to feel good.
This is where Jews are today.
Hell, I'll just make this final point, which everybody seems to forget, Israel can only lose once.
So do I approve of everything Israel does? Hell no. The fact that there are settlements at all bugs me. But when they march in Charlottesville and yell "Jews will not replace us." and when there's a conflagration in the Middle East and the lion's share of the public is on the side of the Palestinians...it's just plain scary.
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Relationships are hard.
I found out about this show in "The Week," it's my favorite magazine, even if I do subscribe to so many of the publications they quote. It's what "Time" and "Newsweek" used to be, but sans editorializing, it's almost entirely a compilation of news from other sources. And it's expensive. But you could subscribe...and give up other news completely and be more up to speed than most people.
But really, I get it for the arts info. They recommend books and movies and music and TV and a couple of weeks back they listed the best Israeli TV shows, and there was only one I hadn't seen, "The Attaché."
Israel...they're winning the battle, but losing the war.
Everybody hates the Jews, and now they've finally got a vessel to express themselves, the Palestinians. And I'm not gonna change your opinion, I'm not even gonna try, because you just can't do that these days. I'd point you to great pieces by Bret Stephens and Tom Friedman in the "New York Times," but I'm sure you've got ammunition saying otherwise. And Israel is flawed, and Netanyahu has to go, but the truth is the Arab world wants Israel to go completely, never forget that. Or maybe you're happy about that.
So Israeli TV, pound for pound, is the best programming out there. Even if you're not Jewish. It's realistic. Genuine. And ultimately it's not about action so much as personal relationships, even when there is action, it all comes down to the people involved, like in "Valley of Tears."
So "The Attaché" is about a drummer. Who's married to a Parisian who moved to Israel. And she's gotten a gig as an attaché in the Israeli embassy in Paris for a year, so the family moves there.
And...
She's got a big, all-consuming job, and he's nowhere. He's a star in Israel, but nobody in Paris. Or as James Taylor put it so eloquently in "Captain Jim's Drunken Dream": "Up here I'm just a whisky bum but down there I'm a king."
And Avshalom speaks Hebrew, and English, but he doesn't speak French, so he finds it hard to communicate. The truth is many more French people speak English than they used to. I went skiing there in 1971 and I might as well have been in Japan, there was a wall between me and the locals, but when I repeated the trip ten years ago, almost everybody spoke English, it was not an issue.
But speaking of issues... If you've been following what has been going on in France, which I don't think most Americans have, they're too self-centered, it's a hotbed of anti-Semitism, and terror. Muslim vs... There doesn't seem to be a fix. And this show starts off with the Bataclan explosion, you remember, the nightclub disaster back in 2015. I was on a Summit Series ship, I was clueless, but then they announced it from the stage and it was eerie, to be out at sea with so much happening back on land.
So, if you're Jewish in Paris. Or even Muslim... You're terrified. And this is how the series starts out, and the theme returns, but really, you could scratch all the Israeli/Arab/Paris material completely, set this same show in America and...it would be just as haunting. Hell, maybe they're going to remake it in America, they oftentimes do, it would be easy, you're a couple living in New York City and your spouse gets a job for a year in Los Angeles, and she very much wants the gig. Do you go with her? You've got to sacrifice your work, but you want to keep the family together.
But when you arrive, when you're actually there, your spouse is integrated and happy and you're solo all day and resentful and...
Relationships can end in an instant. Something can be said and then it's all over, the other person just can't get over it. And small choices are critical. Do you reach in after the dissension, or do you pull away?
These are Jews, these are verbal people, they don't hold their feelings in...well, actually in this show they do to a degree, but the truth ultimately outs and then what?
You're rolling along, you think everything is hunky-dory and then one day...your spouse says something completely unexpected, you thought you were on the same page but it turns out you're not. Where do you go from there? You could say nothing, but that never works, that's a recipe for death. You've got to give your viewpoint, you've got to argue, but that does not mean there's an equitable solution.
Everybody only gets one life to live. And most people are not eager to compromise. On the little things maybe, but on the dream? Isn't that Marlon Brando's most famous line, "I coulda been a contender!" You don't want to quash someone's dream.
Situations change. Always. Can you adjust?
But if you don't completely cave, if you put forth your opinion, somewhere in the arguments that are now coming more frequently you realize...this could be the end.
It's a sinking feeling. You nearly go numb. You can't work, you can't eat... You don't want to believe it, but here you are. You want to hold back the hands of time, you want your partner to be who they used to be, but they're not. Doesn't matter what they promised you, that was then and this is now.
So do you hold on tighter?
Amazingly, that doesn't work at all. The other person considers you clingy and subservient and this makes them feel pulling away is right.
And the truth is ever since the introduction of the pill back in the sixties, divorce has been rampant. And some divorces are necessary, but the concept of hanging in there, working it out, the commitment being paramount? That's not embraced to the degree it used to be.
Commitment. It's the essence of a relationship. Bedrock. Commitment can supersede any problem, assuming it's not drugs or physical violence. And there's always a way to work it out, but someone is gonna sacrifice, someone is gonna suffer.
Or you could get divorced. But you almost always wake up later missing what you had. The new person is attractive and funny but after a few weeks or months you realize they're just not your ex. But once the rupture has happened, it's almost always too late to get back together.
And one person is not always reasonable. You can be, but they can't see your viewpoint, they don't want to compromise and then what? I don't know, I really don't.
And if Covid has taught us anything, you want to be with someone. Same sex, opposite sex, I don't care. We were not made to go through life alone.
So "The Attaché" is only ten half hour episodes, not much of a commitment. But at times I had to turn it off, it was just too heavy, I needed a break, I had to get out of that space. Yes, I'm watching the show and I'm thinking about the two major breakups in my life and...I don't want to go there, but I know it's always possible, the only person you can ultimately know and count on completely is yourself, if you think otherwise you're fooling yourself. The fact that two people can stay together for an extended period of time and make it work is almost a miracle, it's the hardest job you'll ever do. But the rewards make it worth it. At least that's what I've learned.
So most people will never see "The Attaché," since it's on Acorn. The best show on Acorn is "Line of Duty," it's one of the best streaming shows out there, worth the price of admission. Sign up for Acorn to see it. Acorn's only six bucks, but getting someone to spend, to get them over the transom, is the most difficult thing to do. And if you do subscribe, also watch "Keeping Faith," and there are other good shows on the outlet, but after the exquisite experience of the six seasons of "Line of Duty," thirty six episodes total, pull up "The Attaché," it's nowhere near as heavy as it appears from what I've written above, in fact at times it's light, but I'd highly recommend it, there are better shows out there, a bunch of them Israeli, but it's hard to find something this visceral made in America.
And once you start watching Israeli TV you'll be stunned how the same people pop up. The female femme fatale of "The Bureau" is a café owner's wife in "The Attaché." The reluctant doctor in "Srugim," the military commander in "Valley of Tears," is a musician here. They're actors, not stars, they're players, it's fascinating.
But maybe this is not what you want to see. Maybe you want light entertainment, diversion, your regular life is laden with enough problems. But if you watch the right TV shows, you'll get insight into your regular life, like you used to with independent cinema, but with TV series you can dig deeper.
So I don't know what is gonna happen in Israel, it's an impossible situation. Israel has the Iron Dome and Gaza, firing missiles, does not. Therefore John Oliver blames the Israelis. Let me tell you, if you're Jewish... It used to just be Roger Waters, now we've got members of Congress...you can't say something about women, Blacks, but it's open season on Jews. Of course that's not completely true, but that's exactly the point. No one is so American that they're part of a pure majority, the only people who are native are...the natives, and one thing is for sure, the Native Americans have been discriminated against for hundreds of years. Eventually you're gonna find yourself on the wrong side, everybody is going to be against you. And it's not going to feel good.
This is where Jews are today.
Hell, I'll just make this final point, which everybody seems to forget, Israel can only lose once.
So do I approve of everything Israel does? Hell no. The fact that there are settlements at all bugs me. But when they march in Charlottesville and yell "Jews will not replace us." and when there's a conflagration in the Middle East and the lion's share of the public is on the side of the Palestinians...it's just plain scary.
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Re-Déjà Vu 50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition
Hi Bob,
In 1974 I was the agent for The Beach Boys. Bill Graham was promoting the CSN&Y tour and made an offer
to the BBs to open six or seven of the shows.
I was at the first date in Milwaukee at County Stadiumand watched The Beach Boys kill. The audience of 50,000 was into it from the first notes of "Heroes and Villains". Thunderous response. I was bursting at the seams thinking that CSN&Y couldn't possibly follow them.
Crosby came out alone, with a guitar, played "Almost Cut My Hair" and it was like The Beach Boys never played.
Chip Rachlin
______________________________________
This one is a desert Island fave. Still stands up! I wore this one out. The songwriting and vocals and the playing. Like no one else. Most people love the 1st album, as do I, BUT..Deja Vu.. every track is a classic!
CSNY was the shit.The interplay between Neil and Stephen is magic and the VOCALS- the writing..! Carry On, What an album starter !
They don't make albums like this anymore.. well most people are listening to clowns with a laptop and Garage band calling them selves ' musicians' or ' producers' lol
You plug the drum machine in and you are a writer. I know someone that overheard a kid on a plane telling someone ' I play the drum machine' .
These are the end times..
Back to Deja Vu. Where is anyone remotely TRYING to make music like this? And this is 50 years old??? Jeez I am old. haha
Where is the new Steely Dan, or any ORIGINAL sounding band?? Composition that make you go ' Holy shit how did they think of THAT?'
Yes spoken by an old guy .. one that has been making records and touring for 45 years but .. yeah I am old and thank GOD I lived the the golden age of rock n roll.
Steve Lukather
______________________________________
I'm 56, which means 'Deja Vu' was one of the albums that was immediately prior to my generation, but it was ubiquitous, in every house, and certainly in my stepdad's record collection (he's 8 years younger than my mom).
'Deja Vu' is also part of one of my oddest and funniest rock and roll memories. We were in Donnie Ienner's fancy fancy office at 550 Madison Avenue. Columbia and Maverick/Warner were the two labels fighting to sign us in the home stretch. Donnie had just CRANKED "Lump" (album was already out on indie Pop Llama) at maybe 120 dB on his mega-stereo and told us about how much he liked our record and that he would put it out as-is on Columbia or let us remix or re-record if we wanted to...and then out of nowhere as were talking about music he sort of leaned back and wistfully spoke aloud what he was going to do that weekend, which was go out to his farm and listen to his favorite album, 'Deja Vu', which he went on to wax rhapsodic about for a few minutes.
That's what music is all about. Here's this big badass New York City gorilla of a guy, a human bulldozer who let nothing get in his way, but what was actually in his soul, and he couldn't express himself, was all the weirdness and sensitivity that CSNY captured in that album.
Nothing but mad respect for both of them, but I was pretty sure Guy O'Seary and Freddy DeMann weren't spending their Saturdays listening to 'Deja Vu.'
We signed to Columbia.
dave dederer
______________________________________
Bob. Thank you. One of your best essays ever. So many great insights I can strongly relate to. Your praise for Carry On is also so right on. It always pumped me up also. I haven't listened to whole album but there is lots of magic there. Almost Cut My Hair and Country Girl really seemed sonically much better w better separation of voices and instruments. The acoustic guitar in right channel of Country Girl really came through.
One memory. I visited the Rock Hall of Fame for about three days in a row in 2000 during a 15 month RV trip w my then wife and they had a digital playback system and booths where one could dial in the entire catalog of artists. A hard disc early version of quasi streaming. And Suite Judy Blue Eyes had a loud drum track in the mix! It was so bizarre to hear this mix version! Loud pounding drum. Ahmet must have told that asshole dipshit poseur Wenner to tell his quislings sycophants to put that version of the song in there. It just did not fit at all. Maybe Ahmet thought it was too soft and needed pounding drums. Wonder if Stills knew in advance. I doubt it. Would love to hear story of that.
Everything else I heard was original recordings and I spent hours listening. It was such a great source to explore entire catalogs that we take for granted today w availability of streaming. Of course today so many the Rock Hall (Rap Hall?) inductees are a total fucking piece of shit joke though I love the museum itself and the displays and exhibits and programs etc and the staff does a great job. If I were relegated to Cleveland I'd be a docent. Sad that even the museum itself was subject to the music industry record label bullshit influence. He said naively!
Derek Morris
Santa Barbara
______________________________________
How well I remember the anticipated release of Deja Vu. I was in college in a small town in Ohio with one record store and phoned the owner "Old Man Myers" every day until I was finally told a box of 25 LPs had arrived.
I lived off campus so I hiked the 2.5 miles into town, purchased the odd faux-leather covered album and hurried back to my apartment to enjoy.
When I placed the LP on my Garrard turntable I discovered the album was so warped that it would not play - the stylus jumped all over the tracks! I was so angry and disappointed that I immediately retraced my steps and asked for a new copy. Guess what? Every one of the 25 copies was as warped as mine. Apparently, I found out later, the combination of a still- warm vinyl LP stuffed into a cover that was already somewhat warped due to the weight of the front photo, caused the problem.
It was another two weeks before good copies arrived. In the end worth the wait but at the time it felt like the birthday present you really wanted, when opened, was crushed.
Ron Beales
______________________________________
Excellent piece, Bob. Deja Vu is one of my favorite albums. I can't wait to hear it as you described. When I turned 4+20 in 2005, I made a point of learning to play that song and it culminated with me playing it solo on guitar on my birthday. However I changed some of the lyrics to:"/He was tired of being poor/He left my mother and ran off with a slightly masculine whore/" to better suit my situation. (That was a joke of course.) I also saw CSNY do Carry On live in the winter of 2000 and that was extremely powerful.
All the best,
Charlie Soste
______________________________________
Every single thing you said below filled my heart. I got my copy of Déjà Vu the first day possible, at the Palm Beach Mall, along with some of my girlfriends. We had our 'leather album's and I believe I played it more than any other record of that time. Maybe Tea for the Tillerman is a close 2nd. And it really does hold up. Stills' voice, and Crosby's, just sublime.
Chris Schmidt
______________________________________
Always especially loved Stills' Spanish conclusion to "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" singing about the beauty of peaceful Cuba and his regrets that he could not visit...CSN (&Y) filled such a great niche in music of the era! Great 50th Anniversary collection. Thanks.
Anthony Napoli
Beacon, NY
______________________________________
When I listen to "Déjà vu", it makes me daydream about a different, more pastoral/tangible life that would make more sense for me, if the world progressed in the ways people thought it would, a decade+ before I was born.
I've lost count of friends who would surely have different lives, too -- people who should be writers, working in the theater, painters, musicians, a few who'd have their own farms -- instead of whatever screen-based or service-based grind they're locked into. The 21st century has plenty of advantages over life as it was 50 years ago, it's true, but it's also true that things today are spiritually cruel in myriad ways that feel specifically designed to deaden the soul.
But a few weeks ago, I had a weird musical epiphany while listening to 'Déjà vu" on a drive, which is that you can do a quasi-"Dark Side of the Moon"/"Wizard of Oz" thing with "Déjà vu"/the arc of the pandemic. The songs seem to create that story and, somehow, actually really fit together. I know that sounds ridiculous, I have absolutely no idea why such a thing came to mind, and I guess it doesn't really matter. I just think it's incredibly cool, rare, and wonderful that a 50-year-old album can paint brand-new sonic pictures in my life as it is now. Wild and powerful music tends to be timeless, thank God.
Jennifer Carney
______________________________________
It was far from a disappointment for me. The Deja Vu album had the 2nd most emotional impact of any album in my entire life. It was a truly lifting experience. Sgt. Pepper's takes first place only because it is both weird and wonderful, whereas Deja Vu is simply wonderful.
When I dropped the needle on that record, I was transported to some other place in the universe that I didn't know existed. A true transformation took play in my young mind. It was like I had been imbued with an extra sense to enjoy the world. How incredible is that? Music can resonate with your soul and put you in touch with the Heavens. I wanted more.
"Our House," "Almost Cut My Hair, " Woodstock," et al. It was an astounding musical accomplishment. A true gift to anyone who wanted to partake in a self-discovery tour. Listening to those lush vocals and wonderful harmonies was beyond anything I had yet encountered. Me, a young teenage boy in Melbourne, Australia, sitting alone in my blackened-out den with fluorescent hippie stickers adorning the ceiling with the ultraviolet light charging them up with radiation so that they glowed with the lights off. I felt like I was in heaven. Perhaps I was. Perhaps this is as close as it gets while still on Earth. Thank you CSNY for your timeless gift to humanity.
Best,
Pete Meehan
______________________________________
God you just sent me down the itunes rabbit hole with this post.
Deja Vu was a seriously important album to me when I was a kid.
I clocked hours listening to that.
And Stephen Stills in particular.
Underrated vocalist IMO.
I was crazy about his work when I was younger..
Still holds up beautifully..
And even on my computer speakers the complexity of those sometimes intricate arrangements shines through.
What an era. There's great music being made today--
But listening to this and more reminds me once again that we grew up in a renaissance era.
Karen Gordon
______________________________________
After my first listen, on Tidal hi/res, on Friday, I posted, "the
guitars were covered with gauze until this issue, it's been a long
time"
I upgraded my playback in January, the Kef LS50 Wireless II is a high
end streaming stereo system on it's own.
I've been listening to that era's recordings, in hi/res, daily for 4
months, this is the most sumptuous offering.
It's been a long time, it's better than ever.
Paul Zullo
______________________________________
Bob, I've never stopped listening to Deja Vu which in my opinion is the greatest hippie rock album of all time. Listening to the 50th Anniversary Deluxe as i write this...but i still think that "Country Girl - I Think You're Pretty" is perhaps the best track on the album.. it sure as hell resonates with me. The imagery is fantastic . i wanna cry everytime i hear it..This album has been an incredible lasting influence on my approach to music throughout my career.
Randy Dawson
______________________________________
I was seven when Déjà Vu was released. Would be seven more years before I listened to the album for the first time. I knew that day, It would not be my last.
Michael Murphy
______________________________________
Love this album, one of the greats.
Though CS&N debut is hard to beat by any band, even if you add in Neil Young.
I also have a weak spot for the Graham Nash & David Crosby 1972 album, bit more patchy but tracks like Where Will I Be?, Page 43, Immigration Man, The Wall Song, Strangers Room, Girl Be On My Mind are up there with their best.
Add their solo works, I Miss You, There's Only One, Wounded Bird, Better Days, Traction In The Rain, Stephen Stills albums including Manassas, Crosby with If Only I Could Remember My Name……
All sheer genius and make up one of my favourite playlists "CN&S some Y", so called as the trio for me are untouchable.
So sad we are likely to never see the trio live again, as live their three voices come together to make a fourth voice that nobody else can match.
Regards
Robin Hill
______________________________________
"It's not about having the best voice, it's about having the most expressive voice, just ask Rod Stewart or Bob Dylan."
Thank you,
Willie Nelson
Johnny Cash
Elvis
Joe Strummer
Warren Zevon
Mick Jagger
Waylon Jennings
Eric Burdon
Jerry Garcia
Dennis Pelowski
______________________________________
Bob,
Having heard it many times on the radio as a teen, I always thought it was "Sweet Judy Blue Eyes". Then I bought the album.
Cheers,
Tom Moore
Oxford, MI
______________________________________
It seems that everything I need to know I learn from you. Thank you.
Steven Okin
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In 1974 I was the agent for The Beach Boys. Bill Graham was promoting the CSN&Y tour and made an offer
to the BBs to open six or seven of the shows.
I was at the first date in Milwaukee at County Stadiumand watched The Beach Boys kill. The audience of 50,000 was into it from the first notes of "Heroes and Villains". Thunderous response. I was bursting at the seams thinking that CSN&Y couldn't possibly follow them.
Crosby came out alone, with a guitar, played "Almost Cut My Hair" and it was like The Beach Boys never played.
Chip Rachlin
______________________________________
This one is a desert Island fave. Still stands up! I wore this one out. The songwriting and vocals and the playing. Like no one else. Most people love the 1st album, as do I, BUT..Deja Vu.. every track is a classic!
CSNY was the shit.The interplay between Neil and Stephen is magic and the VOCALS- the writing..! Carry On, What an album starter !
They don't make albums like this anymore.. well most people are listening to clowns with a laptop and Garage band calling them selves ' musicians' or ' producers' lol
You plug the drum machine in and you are a writer. I know someone that overheard a kid on a plane telling someone ' I play the drum machine' .
These are the end times..
Back to Deja Vu. Where is anyone remotely TRYING to make music like this? And this is 50 years old??? Jeez I am old. haha
Where is the new Steely Dan, or any ORIGINAL sounding band?? Composition that make you go ' Holy shit how did they think of THAT?'
Yes spoken by an old guy .. one that has been making records and touring for 45 years but .. yeah I am old and thank GOD I lived the the golden age of rock n roll.
Steve Lukather
______________________________________
I'm 56, which means 'Deja Vu' was one of the albums that was immediately prior to my generation, but it was ubiquitous, in every house, and certainly in my stepdad's record collection (he's 8 years younger than my mom).
'Deja Vu' is also part of one of my oddest and funniest rock and roll memories. We were in Donnie Ienner's fancy fancy office at 550 Madison Avenue. Columbia and Maverick/Warner were the two labels fighting to sign us in the home stretch. Donnie had just CRANKED "Lump" (album was already out on indie Pop Llama) at maybe 120 dB on his mega-stereo and told us about how much he liked our record and that he would put it out as-is on Columbia or let us remix or re-record if we wanted to...and then out of nowhere as were talking about music he sort of leaned back and wistfully spoke aloud what he was going to do that weekend, which was go out to his farm and listen to his favorite album, 'Deja Vu', which he went on to wax rhapsodic about for a few minutes.
That's what music is all about. Here's this big badass New York City gorilla of a guy, a human bulldozer who let nothing get in his way, but what was actually in his soul, and he couldn't express himself, was all the weirdness and sensitivity that CSNY captured in that album.
Nothing but mad respect for both of them, but I was pretty sure Guy O'Seary and Freddy DeMann weren't spending their Saturdays listening to 'Deja Vu.'
We signed to Columbia.
dave dederer
______________________________________
Bob. Thank you. One of your best essays ever. So many great insights I can strongly relate to. Your praise for Carry On is also so right on. It always pumped me up also. I haven't listened to whole album but there is lots of magic there. Almost Cut My Hair and Country Girl really seemed sonically much better w better separation of voices and instruments. The acoustic guitar in right channel of Country Girl really came through.
One memory. I visited the Rock Hall of Fame for about three days in a row in 2000 during a 15 month RV trip w my then wife and they had a digital playback system and booths where one could dial in the entire catalog of artists. A hard disc early version of quasi streaming. And Suite Judy Blue Eyes had a loud drum track in the mix! It was so bizarre to hear this mix version! Loud pounding drum. Ahmet must have told that asshole dipshit poseur Wenner to tell his quislings sycophants to put that version of the song in there. It just did not fit at all. Maybe Ahmet thought it was too soft and needed pounding drums. Wonder if Stills knew in advance. I doubt it. Would love to hear story of that.
Everything else I heard was original recordings and I spent hours listening. It was such a great source to explore entire catalogs that we take for granted today w availability of streaming. Of course today so many the Rock Hall (Rap Hall?) inductees are a total fucking piece of shit joke though I love the museum itself and the displays and exhibits and programs etc and the staff does a great job. If I were relegated to Cleveland I'd be a docent. Sad that even the museum itself was subject to the music industry record label bullshit influence. He said naively!
Derek Morris
Santa Barbara
______________________________________
How well I remember the anticipated release of Deja Vu. I was in college in a small town in Ohio with one record store and phoned the owner "Old Man Myers" every day until I was finally told a box of 25 LPs had arrived.
I lived off campus so I hiked the 2.5 miles into town, purchased the odd faux-leather covered album and hurried back to my apartment to enjoy.
When I placed the LP on my Garrard turntable I discovered the album was so warped that it would not play - the stylus jumped all over the tracks! I was so angry and disappointed that I immediately retraced my steps and asked for a new copy. Guess what? Every one of the 25 copies was as warped as mine. Apparently, I found out later, the combination of a still- warm vinyl LP stuffed into a cover that was already somewhat warped due to the weight of the front photo, caused the problem.
It was another two weeks before good copies arrived. In the end worth the wait but at the time it felt like the birthday present you really wanted, when opened, was crushed.
Ron Beales
______________________________________
Excellent piece, Bob. Deja Vu is one of my favorite albums. I can't wait to hear it as you described. When I turned 4+20 in 2005, I made a point of learning to play that song and it culminated with me playing it solo on guitar on my birthday. However I changed some of the lyrics to:"/He was tired of being poor/He left my mother and ran off with a slightly masculine whore/" to better suit my situation. (That was a joke of course.) I also saw CSNY do Carry On live in the winter of 2000 and that was extremely powerful.
All the best,
Charlie Soste
______________________________________
Every single thing you said below filled my heart. I got my copy of Déjà Vu the first day possible, at the Palm Beach Mall, along with some of my girlfriends. We had our 'leather album's and I believe I played it more than any other record of that time. Maybe Tea for the Tillerman is a close 2nd. And it really does hold up. Stills' voice, and Crosby's, just sublime.
Chris Schmidt
______________________________________
Always especially loved Stills' Spanish conclusion to "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" singing about the beauty of peaceful Cuba and his regrets that he could not visit...CSN (&Y) filled such a great niche in music of the era! Great 50th Anniversary collection. Thanks.
Anthony Napoli
Beacon, NY
______________________________________
When I listen to "Déjà vu", it makes me daydream about a different, more pastoral/tangible life that would make more sense for me, if the world progressed in the ways people thought it would, a decade+ before I was born.
I've lost count of friends who would surely have different lives, too -- people who should be writers, working in the theater, painters, musicians, a few who'd have their own farms -- instead of whatever screen-based or service-based grind they're locked into. The 21st century has plenty of advantages over life as it was 50 years ago, it's true, but it's also true that things today are spiritually cruel in myriad ways that feel specifically designed to deaden the soul.
But a few weeks ago, I had a weird musical epiphany while listening to 'Déjà vu" on a drive, which is that you can do a quasi-"Dark Side of the Moon"/"Wizard of Oz" thing with "Déjà vu"/the arc of the pandemic. The songs seem to create that story and, somehow, actually really fit together. I know that sounds ridiculous, I have absolutely no idea why such a thing came to mind, and I guess it doesn't really matter. I just think it's incredibly cool, rare, and wonderful that a 50-year-old album can paint brand-new sonic pictures in my life as it is now. Wild and powerful music tends to be timeless, thank God.
Jennifer Carney
______________________________________
It was far from a disappointment for me. The Deja Vu album had the 2nd most emotional impact of any album in my entire life. It was a truly lifting experience. Sgt. Pepper's takes first place only because it is both weird and wonderful, whereas Deja Vu is simply wonderful.
When I dropped the needle on that record, I was transported to some other place in the universe that I didn't know existed. A true transformation took play in my young mind. It was like I had been imbued with an extra sense to enjoy the world. How incredible is that? Music can resonate with your soul and put you in touch with the Heavens. I wanted more.
"Our House," "Almost Cut My Hair, " Woodstock," et al. It was an astounding musical accomplishment. A true gift to anyone who wanted to partake in a self-discovery tour. Listening to those lush vocals and wonderful harmonies was beyond anything I had yet encountered. Me, a young teenage boy in Melbourne, Australia, sitting alone in my blackened-out den with fluorescent hippie stickers adorning the ceiling with the ultraviolet light charging them up with radiation so that they glowed with the lights off. I felt like I was in heaven. Perhaps I was. Perhaps this is as close as it gets while still on Earth. Thank you CSNY for your timeless gift to humanity.
Best,
Pete Meehan
______________________________________
God you just sent me down the itunes rabbit hole with this post.
Deja Vu was a seriously important album to me when I was a kid.
I clocked hours listening to that.
And Stephen Stills in particular.
Underrated vocalist IMO.
I was crazy about his work when I was younger..
Still holds up beautifully..
And even on my computer speakers the complexity of those sometimes intricate arrangements shines through.
What an era. There's great music being made today--
But listening to this and more reminds me once again that we grew up in a renaissance era.
Karen Gordon
______________________________________
After my first listen, on Tidal hi/res, on Friday, I posted, "the
guitars were covered with gauze until this issue, it's been a long
time"
I upgraded my playback in January, the Kef LS50 Wireless II is a high
end streaming stereo system on it's own.
I've been listening to that era's recordings, in hi/res, daily for 4
months, this is the most sumptuous offering.
It's been a long time, it's better than ever.
Paul Zullo
______________________________________
Bob, I've never stopped listening to Deja Vu which in my opinion is the greatest hippie rock album of all time. Listening to the 50th Anniversary Deluxe as i write this...but i still think that "Country Girl - I Think You're Pretty" is perhaps the best track on the album.. it sure as hell resonates with me. The imagery is fantastic . i wanna cry everytime i hear it..This album has been an incredible lasting influence on my approach to music throughout my career.
Randy Dawson
______________________________________
I was seven when Déjà Vu was released. Would be seven more years before I listened to the album for the first time. I knew that day, It would not be my last.
Michael Murphy
______________________________________
Love this album, one of the greats.
Though CS&N debut is hard to beat by any band, even if you add in Neil Young.
I also have a weak spot for the Graham Nash & David Crosby 1972 album, bit more patchy but tracks like Where Will I Be?, Page 43, Immigration Man, The Wall Song, Strangers Room, Girl Be On My Mind are up there with their best.
Add their solo works, I Miss You, There's Only One, Wounded Bird, Better Days, Traction In The Rain, Stephen Stills albums including Manassas, Crosby with If Only I Could Remember My Name……
All sheer genius and make up one of my favourite playlists "CN&S some Y", so called as the trio for me are untouchable.
So sad we are likely to never see the trio live again, as live their three voices come together to make a fourth voice that nobody else can match.
Regards
Robin Hill
______________________________________
"It's not about having the best voice, it's about having the most expressive voice, just ask Rod Stewart or Bob Dylan."
Thank you,
Willie Nelson
Johnny Cash
Elvis
Joe Strummer
Warren Zevon
Mick Jagger
Waylon Jennings
Eric Burdon
Jerry Garcia
Dennis Pelowski
______________________________________
Bob,
Having heard it many times on the radio as a teen, I always thought it was "Sweet Judy Blue Eyes". Then I bought the album.
Cheers,
Tom Moore
Oxford, MI
______________________________________
It seems that everything I need to know I learn from you. Thank you.
Steven Okin
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Best Woman Rock Vocalist-SiriusXM This Week
Tune in today, May 18th, to Volume 106, 7 PM East, 4 PM West.
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Monday 17 May 2021
Déjà Vu 50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition
Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2QpeMVc
You're gonna want to buy a new playback system for this.
Today's news is Apple went lossless. Which Amazon has already done. And they both announced new, attractive price points, but Amazon Music can stream in Ultra HD, and the difference is between 16/44.1, i.e. CD quality, and 24/192, and you can hear it. But most people don't own systems good enough to properly feel and hear the incredibly enriching experience of full band audio. Sure, it sounds better even on crappy equipment, but when you fire up the good stuff and listen, you'll be AMAZED!
Come on, the hits of the classic rock era have been remastered so many times most have tuned out. Now the effort is to remix these LPs, which I believe is heresy, unless you're like Steven Wilson and trying to exactly replicate the original, which he does. Bottom line, we don't expect any more. But this "Déjà Vu" package delivers more, you feel like you're jetted right back to 1970, and it feels so good, even if you were never there! That's the power of classic rock, cut before the loudness wars, for vinyl.
To tell you the truth, I was more interested in the bonus tracks than the originals, which I know so well, so I scanned the track listing and clicked on the "4 + 20" demo...and I felt like Stephen Stills was sitting two feet away, and his voice was still intact, and the experience was so different from what we experience today, Stills paid his dues before he wrote this, even though he was then only 24.
"Four and twenty years ago
I come into this life"
That was in 1945, January 3rd in fact, technically Stills isn't even a baby boomer, the war was still raging, on both fronts, Europe and Japan.
"I walk the floor and want to know
Why am I so alone"
You could be lonely back in the last century. Yes, you can still be so today, but you have options, you can go online and try to find like-minded people, but in 1970 all you had was the telephone, there weren't even answering machines, you sat there, unable to sleep and at wit's end... Then you put on a record. And the pain of the performer resonated with the one inside you, and this connection allowed you to soldier on.
Another revelation is the demo for David Crosby's "Almost Cut My Hair." You'll listen to the guitar strum, repetitively, and then just over half a minute in Crosby starts to sing and you're snapped to attention, the hair on your arms stands straight up.
"Almost cut my hair
It happened just the other day"
This was when people in some burgs were just growing theirs long, even though the Beatles had broken through more than half a decade earlier. They couldn't take the risk. They needed everybody else to do it first. They didn't want the parental blowback. But David Crosby was a rock star, he was beholden to no one, and he could debate whether it had to go, but he wanted to let his freak flag fly. And over the ensuing decades, Crosby's rep has sunk. He's difficult, he's opinionated, but one thing is for sure, back then he sure could sing. And I was so enamored of the demo that I pulled up the original. And there's that exquisite winding Stephen Stills guitar intro and then Crosby starts to sing, and once again it's like you're in the studio with him, not in the control room, but sitting mere inches away as he sings into the mic. For eons people have thought "Almost Cut My Hair" was a dated curio, but here it's up front and center once again. Crosby's rep is instantly rescued, and Stills's is elevated, too much history has ensued since, but at the time Stills was a giant.
I wondered if all the original, remastered tracks were such a revelation. So I pulled up the overplayed, never disappearing "Woodstock."
Let's see, Joni Mitchell wrote it, connoisseurs will say her later released, slowed down less bombastic take is superior, the definitive statement. And Ian Matthews had an AM hit with a soft version of the song, but...this original is so powerful, so in your face, that it's UNDENIABLE! Stephen's guitar is spitting, the drums are pounding, you can feel them, and then Stills sings on top of it all and it's as if he's testifying, not self-conscious at all, as if he's live on stage singing for thousands and caught up in the moment.
"Said I'm going down to Yasgur's Farm
Gonna join in a rock and roll band
Got to get back to the land
And set my soul free"
There was only one Woodstock, it's never been replicated since. Because they had all the best acts and no one knew so many would come, that it would be a defining cultural event showing the power of the youth bookended not by Altamont but the Moratorium in D.C. in November. We had light before we had darkness. Our souls were nearly completely free, that's not even a goal anymore, now everybody wants to sell out and cash in, you'll sacrifice your credibility, your beliefs, anything for the buck, telling yourself everybody else is doing it so it's O.K. And "Woodstock" never weakens, when it fades at the end you want to run and catch up, you replay it, just to marinate in that joyous sound, which makes you come alive, you might have been passive before, but no more.
But the real thrill of this package is not only the demos but the originals that were never included, especially the Stills cuts that were ultimately released later. "Know You Got to Run" appears in two versions, the first a demo as exquisite as the one for "4 + 20," albeit louder, with less inherent intimacy. And it's sans the vocal mistakes we expect in the preparatory tracks, Stills could sing every note. And the 48th track, at the package's end, is a fully produced take, that didn't make the album, it's so interesting, it's electric and powerful instead of acoustic and quiet like the version on "Stephen Stills 2."
And there's even a demo of "So Begins the Task," which didn't come out until 1972, as part of the Manassas package.
"And I must learn to live without you now"
This is the flip side of today's music, where you kick them to the curb and crawl out of the wreckage into a brand new car, the rock stars of yore were three-dimensional, they could get hurt, they had pain, which is one of the reasons their works meant so much to us, they were living a life that we would soon experience, if we hadn't already.
All the hype has been about the demo for "Birds," which was soon released as part of "After the Gold Rush," which wouldn't have meant much if it weren't for "Déjà Vu." It's a ten, but we've been privy to so much of Young's vault. But the publicity is about it because Neil Young's credibility and stature are still intact, whereas what's left of the others' is in tatters. But, I must admit Graham Nash's background vocals here add another layer.
But there are all these Crosby cuts, the man who is seen as the lightweight of the act in retrospect, his guitar was unnecessary, and Nash wrote the hits. There's even a take of "Song With No Words," which appeared on his initial solo LP, which went straight into the dumper a year later and has been resuscitated in reputation recently, to a degree undeservedly, but this was one of its great cuts.
There's even a demo of "Laughing," another one of the really good cuts on "If I Could Only Remember My Name." The album was released in the dead of winter, I remember lying in the dark, stoned, listening with my headphones on, the demo is less polished, but even more intimate. Even better is the demo for "Triad," once again incredibly intimate.
And you'll want to listen to "Bluebird Revisited," for the guitar if nothing else, remember when we were into guitar players, argued about them, and it wasn't just how fast they played?
There's even a version of "Change Partners"!
I'll be honest I haven't listened to most of the Graham Nash stuff, but there is a demo of "Right Between the Eyes" which is less cutesy than the take on "Songs for Beginners," which for a long time I thought was the best initial solo album from the original three.
And then there are the alternate takes, the alternate mixes. Most are not especially gripping, but the alternate mix of the title track is especially interesting, the original didn't have the gravitas, the impact of other cuts on the album, but this version does, and be sure to listen to the demo.
And the truth is "Déjà Vu" was a disappointment, but no one could live up to that original Crosby, Stills & Nash LP, oftentimes people do their best work when no one is paying attention, when they've got something to prove. And in truth, the Neil Young songs don't really fit, even though "Helpless" is now considered a classic and I always liked "Country Girl," especially the last section, entitled "Country Girl (I Think You're Pretty)," I was living in the country, but I was no one's country man, that's for sure, any romance was in my head, triggered by these songs.
And the Crosby, Stills & Nash debut percolated slowly in the marketplace, it was like Led Zeppelin's debut, it built, and then when the second album was released everyone had to have it IMMEDIATELY!
I remember the day "Déjà Vu" came out, driving to a mall that no longer is used for retail to get it, with its faux-leather cover, and I got home and dropped the needle...
Now the funny thing is Graham Nash wrote the singles, the hits, but there was no doubt in anybody's mind that the star of the band was Stephen Stills. And the track that truly put the act over the transom, turned them into stars, was the opening one on the first LP, "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes," a song embedded in every baby boomer's DNA which has not caught fire with the younger generations which cotton to the softer and the louder, James Taylor and Led Zeppelin, but in '69, even '70, Crosby, Stills, Nash (and sometimes Young), were bigger than either of those acts, and it was because of this one damn song.
Why was "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" so great? LET ME COUNT THE WAYS!
First and foremost it's a suite, it slowed down in the middle and gained further gravitas and then it accelerated once again, it needed all of its seven plus minutes.
Second there was the intro acoustic guitar, which people at home tried to replicate but no one seemed able to do.
Third, Stills's vocal. It's not about having the best voice, it's about having the most expressive voice, just ask Rod Stewart or Bob Dylan.
Fourth, there's the electric guitar dancing throughout this seemingly acoustic number.
Fifth, it's Stills's exclamation...oh-a-oh-a...just shy of ninety seconds in, it's so human!
Sixth, and most important...THE HARMONY VOCALS!
We'd never been exposed to something so rich, so perfect. Turns out they couldn't replicate the sound live, just listen to "4 Way Street," but at this point we did not know that, all we knew was these three meshing voices together sounded so transcendent that the end product seemed inhuman. So the question was...could CSN and now Y come up with another "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes," a track that affected us so?
Of course not.
Then again, maybe...
It's the opening track that nobody talks about anymore.
But it's the best cut on "Déjà Vu," no matter what anybody says.
"One morning I woke up and I knew
You were really gone"
The sound was even BETTER than "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes," I know, seemed impossible, but you couldn't deny it.
"A new day, a new way"
There was the acoustic guitar intro, but this time the vocals were amped up, you were drawn to them, you had to pay attention.
"The sky is clearing and the night
Has gone out"
There's that dancing electric guitar once again, but "Carry On" is not a remake whatsoever, it's its own damn song, but with nearly equal magic.
"Where are you going now my love
Where will you be tomorrow
Will you bring me happiness
Will you bring me sorrow"
Yes, after an instrumental interlude, the song completely changes, also akin to "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes," yet different.
"Oh the questions of a thousand dreams
What you do with what you see
Lover can you talk to me"
But the bottom line is overall there are fewer dynamics than "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes," "Carry On" is more aggressive, less quiet, more demanding of attention, and therefore it's inferior to "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes"...BUT IT'S SO DAMN GOOD!
I'd wake up every morning and drop the needle, "Carry On" would get me amped up for school, I could drift through the halls with this sound in my head, no one could penetrate me, I was protected.
"Carry On" is not background, none of CSNY's music is, at least not on the first two LPs, this is not music for playlists, tracks cherry-picked to get you through your day at the office, they're statements, THEY'RE LIFE ITSELF!
And now you can get even closer.
I've got my original vinyl, which sounds different, but nowhere near as clean, here the steel wool has been scrubbed away, I used to be outside the building, now I'm in the studio with the band, it's a dream come true.
Now the truth is all four members have continued to carry on. With varying levels of artistic and commercial success. But there will come a day when you can no longer see them.
Crosby has been the most experimental, but Stills even went on tour with Judy Blue Eyes herself, he's taking risks, but they're all getting older by the minute, and they're a bit worse for wear. Furthermore, they all swear they'll never play together again, because of Crosby's mouth, some things should not be said, no matter what you think.
I've got the feeling I've been here before. But I haven't been here for so long, I thought the place evaporated. But then I pulled up this album and started listening and I was drawn through the vortex to a scene, an album, a feeling, a life, fifty years ago, as if it were yesterday.
I don't think newbies will feel quite the same. Then again, if you've never heard music like this, it's kinda like the English axemen discovering the Delta blues records.
But no one wants to put this kind of time in anymore. Everybody involved had paid a lot of dues, even had hit records, before they came together in this formation.
And they're top vocalists and players but the reason the rep remains is because of the SONGS! They're hard to write, but when you've got the skill we want to hear what you've got to say.
You'll be positively blown away when you hear how these tracks sound. They might even inspire you to upgrade your reproduction equipment, realizing you want to listen to music at the level you listen to TV, even better.
We are stardust, we are golden, we may have to shake off some rust but the roots are still there, we know where we came from, what we experienced, we felt. And at this late date the only thing left to do is get back to the garden.
Listen to the 50th Anniversary edition of "Déjà Vu" and your journey will begin. You will be optimistic instead of pessimistic. You'll think of the possibilities. You'll remember what once was and start to believe...maybe we can make it come back again. After all, we've now got the Dead Sea Scrolls. They're cleaned up, they're pristine, we can digest the message fully, we can't help but be overwhelmed and motivated. There's still time...
You're gonna want to buy a new playback system for this.
Today's news is Apple went lossless. Which Amazon has already done. And they both announced new, attractive price points, but Amazon Music can stream in Ultra HD, and the difference is between 16/44.1, i.e. CD quality, and 24/192, and you can hear it. But most people don't own systems good enough to properly feel and hear the incredibly enriching experience of full band audio. Sure, it sounds better even on crappy equipment, but when you fire up the good stuff and listen, you'll be AMAZED!
Come on, the hits of the classic rock era have been remastered so many times most have tuned out. Now the effort is to remix these LPs, which I believe is heresy, unless you're like Steven Wilson and trying to exactly replicate the original, which he does. Bottom line, we don't expect any more. But this "Déjà Vu" package delivers more, you feel like you're jetted right back to 1970, and it feels so good, even if you were never there! That's the power of classic rock, cut before the loudness wars, for vinyl.
To tell you the truth, I was more interested in the bonus tracks than the originals, which I know so well, so I scanned the track listing and clicked on the "4 + 20" demo...and I felt like Stephen Stills was sitting two feet away, and his voice was still intact, and the experience was so different from what we experience today, Stills paid his dues before he wrote this, even though he was then only 24.
"Four and twenty years ago
I come into this life"
That was in 1945, January 3rd in fact, technically Stills isn't even a baby boomer, the war was still raging, on both fronts, Europe and Japan.
"I walk the floor and want to know
Why am I so alone"
You could be lonely back in the last century. Yes, you can still be so today, but you have options, you can go online and try to find like-minded people, but in 1970 all you had was the telephone, there weren't even answering machines, you sat there, unable to sleep and at wit's end... Then you put on a record. And the pain of the performer resonated with the one inside you, and this connection allowed you to soldier on.
Another revelation is the demo for David Crosby's "Almost Cut My Hair." You'll listen to the guitar strum, repetitively, and then just over half a minute in Crosby starts to sing and you're snapped to attention, the hair on your arms stands straight up.
"Almost cut my hair
It happened just the other day"
This was when people in some burgs were just growing theirs long, even though the Beatles had broken through more than half a decade earlier. They couldn't take the risk. They needed everybody else to do it first. They didn't want the parental blowback. But David Crosby was a rock star, he was beholden to no one, and he could debate whether it had to go, but he wanted to let his freak flag fly. And over the ensuing decades, Crosby's rep has sunk. He's difficult, he's opinionated, but one thing is for sure, back then he sure could sing. And I was so enamored of the demo that I pulled up the original. And there's that exquisite winding Stephen Stills guitar intro and then Crosby starts to sing, and once again it's like you're in the studio with him, not in the control room, but sitting mere inches away as he sings into the mic. For eons people have thought "Almost Cut My Hair" was a dated curio, but here it's up front and center once again. Crosby's rep is instantly rescued, and Stills's is elevated, too much history has ensued since, but at the time Stills was a giant.
I wondered if all the original, remastered tracks were such a revelation. So I pulled up the overplayed, never disappearing "Woodstock."
Let's see, Joni Mitchell wrote it, connoisseurs will say her later released, slowed down less bombastic take is superior, the definitive statement. And Ian Matthews had an AM hit with a soft version of the song, but...this original is so powerful, so in your face, that it's UNDENIABLE! Stephen's guitar is spitting, the drums are pounding, you can feel them, and then Stills sings on top of it all and it's as if he's testifying, not self-conscious at all, as if he's live on stage singing for thousands and caught up in the moment.
"Said I'm going down to Yasgur's Farm
Gonna join in a rock and roll band
Got to get back to the land
And set my soul free"
There was only one Woodstock, it's never been replicated since. Because they had all the best acts and no one knew so many would come, that it would be a defining cultural event showing the power of the youth bookended not by Altamont but the Moratorium in D.C. in November. We had light before we had darkness. Our souls were nearly completely free, that's not even a goal anymore, now everybody wants to sell out and cash in, you'll sacrifice your credibility, your beliefs, anything for the buck, telling yourself everybody else is doing it so it's O.K. And "Woodstock" never weakens, when it fades at the end you want to run and catch up, you replay it, just to marinate in that joyous sound, which makes you come alive, you might have been passive before, but no more.
But the real thrill of this package is not only the demos but the originals that were never included, especially the Stills cuts that were ultimately released later. "Know You Got to Run" appears in two versions, the first a demo as exquisite as the one for "4 + 20," albeit louder, with less inherent intimacy. And it's sans the vocal mistakes we expect in the preparatory tracks, Stills could sing every note. And the 48th track, at the package's end, is a fully produced take, that didn't make the album, it's so interesting, it's electric and powerful instead of acoustic and quiet like the version on "Stephen Stills 2."
And there's even a demo of "So Begins the Task," which didn't come out until 1972, as part of the Manassas package.
"And I must learn to live without you now"
This is the flip side of today's music, where you kick them to the curb and crawl out of the wreckage into a brand new car, the rock stars of yore were three-dimensional, they could get hurt, they had pain, which is one of the reasons their works meant so much to us, they were living a life that we would soon experience, if we hadn't already.
All the hype has been about the demo for "Birds," which was soon released as part of "After the Gold Rush," which wouldn't have meant much if it weren't for "Déjà Vu." It's a ten, but we've been privy to so much of Young's vault. But the publicity is about it because Neil Young's credibility and stature are still intact, whereas what's left of the others' is in tatters. But, I must admit Graham Nash's background vocals here add another layer.
But there are all these Crosby cuts, the man who is seen as the lightweight of the act in retrospect, his guitar was unnecessary, and Nash wrote the hits. There's even a take of "Song With No Words," which appeared on his initial solo LP, which went straight into the dumper a year later and has been resuscitated in reputation recently, to a degree undeservedly, but this was one of its great cuts.
There's even a demo of "Laughing," another one of the really good cuts on "If I Could Only Remember My Name." The album was released in the dead of winter, I remember lying in the dark, stoned, listening with my headphones on, the demo is less polished, but even more intimate. Even better is the demo for "Triad," once again incredibly intimate.
And you'll want to listen to "Bluebird Revisited," for the guitar if nothing else, remember when we were into guitar players, argued about them, and it wasn't just how fast they played?
There's even a version of "Change Partners"!
I'll be honest I haven't listened to most of the Graham Nash stuff, but there is a demo of "Right Between the Eyes" which is less cutesy than the take on "Songs for Beginners," which for a long time I thought was the best initial solo album from the original three.
And then there are the alternate takes, the alternate mixes. Most are not especially gripping, but the alternate mix of the title track is especially interesting, the original didn't have the gravitas, the impact of other cuts on the album, but this version does, and be sure to listen to the demo.
And the truth is "Déjà Vu" was a disappointment, but no one could live up to that original Crosby, Stills & Nash LP, oftentimes people do their best work when no one is paying attention, when they've got something to prove. And in truth, the Neil Young songs don't really fit, even though "Helpless" is now considered a classic and I always liked "Country Girl," especially the last section, entitled "Country Girl (I Think You're Pretty)," I was living in the country, but I was no one's country man, that's for sure, any romance was in my head, triggered by these songs.
And the Crosby, Stills & Nash debut percolated slowly in the marketplace, it was like Led Zeppelin's debut, it built, and then when the second album was released everyone had to have it IMMEDIATELY!
I remember the day "Déjà Vu" came out, driving to a mall that no longer is used for retail to get it, with its faux-leather cover, and I got home and dropped the needle...
Now the funny thing is Graham Nash wrote the singles, the hits, but there was no doubt in anybody's mind that the star of the band was Stephen Stills. And the track that truly put the act over the transom, turned them into stars, was the opening one on the first LP, "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes," a song embedded in every baby boomer's DNA which has not caught fire with the younger generations which cotton to the softer and the louder, James Taylor and Led Zeppelin, but in '69, even '70, Crosby, Stills, Nash (and sometimes Young), were bigger than either of those acts, and it was because of this one damn song.
Why was "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" so great? LET ME COUNT THE WAYS!
First and foremost it's a suite, it slowed down in the middle and gained further gravitas and then it accelerated once again, it needed all of its seven plus minutes.
Second there was the intro acoustic guitar, which people at home tried to replicate but no one seemed able to do.
Third, Stills's vocal. It's not about having the best voice, it's about having the most expressive voice, just ask Rod Stewart or Bob Dylan.
Fourth, there's the electric guitar dancing throughout this seemingly acoustic number.
Fifth, it's Stills's exclamation...oh-a-oh-a...just shy of ninety seconds in, it's so human!
Sixth, and most important...THE HARMONY VOCALS!
We'd never been exposed to something so rich, so perfect. Turns out they couldn't replicate the sound live, just listen to "4 Way Street," but at this point we did not know that, all we knew was these three meshing voices together sounded so transcendent that the end product seemed inhuman. So the question was...could CSN and now Y come up with another "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes," a track that affected us so?
Of course not.
Then again, maybe...
It's the opening track that nobody talks about anymore.
But it's the best cut on "Déjà Vu," no matter what anybody says.
"One morning I woke up and I knew
You were really gone"
The sound was even BETTER than "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes," I know, seemed impossible, but you couldn't deny it.
"A new day, a new way"
There was the acoustic guitar intro, but this time the vocals were amped up, you were drawn to them, you had to pay attention.
"The sky is clearing and the night
Has gone out"
There's that dancing electric guitar once again, but "Carry On" is not a remake whatsoever, it's its own damn song, but with nearly equal magic.
"Where are you going now my love
Where will you be tomorrow
Will you bring me happiness
Will you bring me sorrow"
Yes, after an instrumental interlude, the song completely changes, also akin to "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes," yet different.
"Oh the questions of a thousand dreams
What you do with what you see
Lover can you talk to me"
But the bottom line is overall there are fewer dynamics than "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes," "Carry On" is more aggressive, less quiet, more demanding of attention, and therefore it's inferior to "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes"...BUT IT'S SO DAMN GOOD!
I'd wake up every morning and drop the needle, "Carry On" would get me amped up for school, I could drift through the halls with this sound in my head, no one could penetrate me, I was protected.
"Carry On" is not background, none of CSNY's music is, at least not on the first two LPs, this is not music for playlists, tracks cherry-picked to get you through your day at the office, they're statements, THEY'RE LIFE ITSELF!
And now you can get even closer.
I've got my original vinyl, which sounds different, but nowhere near as clean, here the steel wool has been scrubbed away, I used to be outside the building, now I'm in the studio with the band, it's a dream come true.
Now the truth is all four members have continued to carry on. With varying levels of artistic and commercial success. But there will come a day when you can no longer see them.
Crosby has been the most experimental, but Stills even went on tour with Judy Blue Eyes herself, he's taking risks, but they're all getting older by the minute, and they're a bit worse for wear. Furthermore, they all swear they'll never play together again, because of Crosby's mouth, some things should not be said, no matter what you think.
I've got the feeling I've been here before. But I haven't been here for so long, I thought the place evaporated. But then I pulled up this album and started listening and I was drawn through the vortex to a scene, an album, a feeling, a life, fifty years ago, as if it were yesterday.
I don't think newbies will feel quite the same. Then again, if you've never heard music like this, it's kinda like the English axemen discovering the Delta blues records.
But no one wants to put this kind of time in anymore. Everybody involved had paid a lot of dues, even had hit records, before they came together in this formation.
And they're top vocalists and players but the reason the rep remains is because of the SONGS! They're hard to write, but when you've got the skill we want to hear what you've got to say.
You'll be positively blown away when you hear how these tracks sound. They might even inspire you to upgrade your reproduction equipment, realizing you want to listen to music at the level you listen to TV, even better.
We are stardust, we are golden, we may have to shake off some rust but the roots are still there, we know where we came from, what we experienced, we felt. And at this late date the only thing left to do is get back to the garden.
Listen to the 50th Anniversary edition of "Déjà Vu" and your journey will begin. You will be optimistic instead of pessimistic. You'll think of the possibilities. You'll remember what once was and start to believe...maybe we can make it come back again. After all, we've now got the Dead Sea Scrolls. They're cleaned up, they're pristine, we can digest the message fully, we can't help but be overwhelmed and motivated. There's still time...
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Sunday 16 May 2021
Warner/Discovery
It's very simple. They both lost the streaming war. And this is a Hail Mary pass to elbow in before the game of musical chairs ends and there are no more seats at the table.
But all the news has been about AT&T's balance sheet, who will run the combined operation...this is what small people address, the smart people look at the bigger issue. And the bigger issue is streaming consolidation.
HBO played its hand completely wrong. It was late to market and was focused on satiating its cable customers, and as a result, the price for HBO Max was too damn high. You could get Disney+, with a better catalogue, for half the price. And you got Apple TV+ essentially for free. And everybody has Amazon, because of Prime, and Netflix is the big kahuna, with first mover advantage and the most direct pay subscribers, where do we go from here?
One thing is for sure, the public will only pay for a limited number of streaming services. End of story. Right now, it's more expensive to watch TV than it was in the cable bundle era, assuming you subscribe to everything, which is why most people don't. Furthermore, there is endless churn depending upon hits. If you don't have a steady slew of new product, people will sign up for one show and then sign off. That's no way to run a business. And that's why Netflix has spent so much on production as the lay people keep bitching about its balance sheet. You spend now to reap the reward later, didn't we learn this with Amazon, which also had first mover advantage? You don't let anybody else play.
And let's not forget Hulu, which is mostly selling traditional TV shows. Less necessary than Netflix, but how necessary?
It's a well-known fact that the CEOs of these companies who try to diversify are clueless. Not only communications companies, but Microsoft too. Buying Skype for all that bread, never mind Nokia. Just because you're smart in one area does not mean you are smart in another. Which is why doctors and dentists are notoriously bad investors, and Apple rarely makes big acquisitions. Apple isn't trying to eat everybody, it's trying to grow what it's got. And it already got burned on the Beats purchase, the software had to be rewritten, they bought air, they won't do that again. As for headphones, they now make their own, overpriced of course, Apple can be out of touch with the public too, did you see they just discontinued their HomePod? A device no one was clamoring for. If you're interested in audio, you buy boutique brands. If you're interested in voice control, you go with Amazon, maybe Google, but Amazon was first with the Echo, and perception is its voice control is better than Apple's, people have had too many bad experiences with Siri.
So, AT&T and Verizon buying media properties? That's like Oracle buying the Yankees. It's apples and oranges. We learned these projected synergies don't work all the way back in the nineties, when Bob Sillerman sold a bunch of concert promoters to Clear Channel radio. Let me see, do I know anybody, ANYBODY, who has changed cell phone providers based on the perks, i.e. HBO Max, Discovery+, Apple Music? No, not a single one! Sure, most people stay with their carrier, but the big story in the last half decade has been T-Mobile, which focused on price. That'll get people to switch.
And buying DirectTV, or AOL... What next, BlackBerry? And these guys make eight figures, their boards should be held liable, or is everybody with money in America completely out of touch with the street?
Is WarnerMedia a drain on AT&T's balance sheet? Yes. But that's not the real reason they're offloading it, they're looking to the future, and they're worried they're going to be in a whole heap of trouble. It's like Cisco buying Flip, they soon woke up and realized video was going to be a feature in smartphones so they shut it down, while it still had a viable market!
So there's all this scuttlebutt about who will control the combined company, the day after the "Wall Street Journal" did a whole feature on WarnerMedia's Jason Kilar. You may think you have control, but control always goes with the money, no matter how good a job you're doing. And everybody is expendable, everybody! Think of all the HBO programmers who left that we thought were irreplaceable, like Chris Albrecht...the power is in the platform, not the individual, and this not only in TV...think of all the wankers who believe they can make it alone on Substack, what do they say, don't give up your day job?
As for John Malone's tax shenanigans... Everybody who has followed this movie knows that the king of cable doesn't like to pay taxes, that's anathema. But he's been in the business for decades, the youngsters writing about this merger are still wet behind the ears.
So now we've got a ball game. This merger is streaming genius, a combination of highbrow and lowbrow. HBO and HGTV. And if you read the story in the recent "New Yorker," you know many people today watch HGTV like they used to watch CNN...as in it's on 24/7, like wallpaper, are they willing to pay ten bucks for the package? Sure! Well, you need to start cheaper, Discovery+ is priced at $6.99. The introductory price is always lower, everybody knows that, it behooves you to sign up early, which makes me wonder about the bozos at HBO with their fifteen dollar price point. Mercedes has never sold as many cars as Toyota, never ever. Aren't these lessons you learn in business school?
Well, these executives out of their depth can read a spreadsheet, they can work the numbers, they just can't see the big picture. They're focused on margins instead of market share. This is playing out in newspapers as I write this. The enemy is Alden Global Capital... It's maintaining its margins to make money, cutting staff and planning on taking its papers down to zero and then throwing them away. This is the opposite paradigm, but it's still relevant. Alden knows where it's going. Even worse, after twenty years, all these local papers have been unable to adjust to the internet. Sure, the aforementioned WSJ and the NYT and WaPo have...but the rest, they can't get anybody to pay for their online product for two reasons: 1. There's not enough content, the news hole has been cut too far. And 2. The first-mover advantage, they're already subscribing to one or two or all three of the big three, and that's more than enough.
Content is never king, never ever forget it, it's all about distribution. And HBO Max and Discovery+ were heading for distribution death, it doesn't matter what they wanted to air, it's too late. But combine them and you've got a fighting chance, assuming they continue to roll out a plethora of new product and start with a low price.
Sure, if you work for one of these entities you're worried about your job, I understand that, but if you're an investor or consumer this is manna from heaven, the only question that remains is...
How many streaming services will people pay for?
We don't know yet.
But all the news has been about AT&T's balance sheet, who will run the combined operation...this is what small people address, the smart people look at the bigger issue. And the bigger issue is streaming consolidation.
HBO played its hand completely wrong. It was late to market and was focused on satiating its cable customers, and as a result, the price for HBO Max was too damn high. You could get Disney+, with a better catalogue, for half the price. And you got Apple TV+ essentially for free. And everybody has Amazon, because of Prime, and Netflix is the big kahuna, with first mover advantage and the most direct pay subscribers, where do we go from here?
One thing is for sure, the public will only pay for a limited number of streaming services. End of story. Right now, it's more expensive to watch TV than it was in the cable bundle era, assuming you subscribe to everything, which is why most people don't. Furthermore, there is endless churn depending upon hits. If you don't have a steady slew of new product, people will sign up for one show and then sign off. That's no way to run a business. And that's why Netflix has spent so much on production as the lay people keep bitching about its balance sheet. You spend now to reap the reward later, didn't we learn this with Amazon, which also had first mover advantage? You don't let anybody else play.
And let's not forget Hulu, which is mostly selling traditional TV shows. Less necessary than Netflix, but how necessary?
It's a well-known fact that the CEOs of these companies who try to diversify are clueless. Not only communications companies, but Microsoft too. Buying Skype for all that bread, never mind Nokia. Just because you're smart in one area does not mean you are smart in another. Which is why doctors and dentists are notoriously bad investors, and Apple rarely makes big acquisitions. Apple isn't trying to eat everybody, it's trying to grow what it's got. And it already got burned on the Beats purchase, the software had to be rewritten, they bought air, they won't do that again. As for headphones, they now make their own, overpriced of course, Apple can be out of touch with the public too, did you see they just discontinued their HomePod? A device no one was clamoring for. If you're interested in audio, you buy boutique brands. If you're interested in voice control, you go with Amazon, maybe Google, but Amazon was first with the Echo, and perception is its voice control is better than Apple's, people have had too many bad experiences with Siri.
So, AT&T and Verizon buying media properties? That's like Oracle buying the Yankees. It's apples and oranges. We learned these projected synergies don't work all the way back in the nineties, when Bob Sillerman sold a bunch of concert promoters to Clear Channel radio. Let me see, do I know anybody, ANYBODY, who has changed cell phone providers based on the perks, i.e. HBO Max, Discovery+, Apple Music? No, not a single one! Sure, most people stay with their carrier, but the big story in the last half decade has been T-Mobile, which focused on price. That'll get people to switch.
And buying DirectTV, or AOL... What next, BlackBerry? And these guys make eight figures, their boards should be held liable, or is everybody with money in America completely out of touch with the street?
Is WarnerMedia a drain on AT&T's balance sheet? Yes. But that's not the real reason they're offloading it, they're looking to the future, and they're worried they're going to be in a whole heap of trouble. It's like Cisco buying Flip, they soon woke up and realized video was going to be a feature in smartphones so they shut it down, while it still had a viable market!
So there's all this scuttlebutt about who will control the combined company, the day after the "Wall Street Journal" did a whole feature on WarnerMedia's Jason Kilar. You may think you have control, but control always goes with the money, no matter how good a job you're doing. And everybody is expendable, everybody! Think of all the HBO programmers who left that we thought were irreplaceable, like Chris Albrecht...the power is in the platform, not the individual, and this not only in TV...think of all the wankers who believe they can make it alone on Substack, what do they say, don't give up your day job?
As for John Malone's tax shenanigans... Everybody who has followed this movie knows that the king of cable doesn't like to pay taxes, that's anathema. But he's been in the business for decades, the youngsters writing about this merger are still wet behind the ears.
So now we've got a ball game. This merger is streaming genius, a combination of highbrow and lowbrow. HBO and HGTV. And if you read the story in the recent "New Yorker," you know many people today watch HGTV like they used to watch CNN...as in it's on 24/7, like wallpaper, are they willing to pay ten bucks for the package? Sure! Well, you need to start cheaper, Discovery+ is priced at $6.99. The introductory price is always lower, everybody knows that, it behooves you to sign up early, which makes me wonder about the bozos at HBO with their fifteen dollar price point. Mercedes has never sold as many cars as Toyota, never ever. Aren't these lessons you learn in business school?
Well, these executives out of their depth can read a spreadsheet, they can work the numbers, they just can't see the big picture. They're focused on margins instead of market share. This is playing out in newspapers as I write this. The enemy is Alden Global Capital... It's maintaining its margins to make money, cutting staff and planning on taking its papers down to zero and then throwing them away. This is the opposite paradigm, but it's still relevant. Alden knows where it's going. Even worse, after twenty years, all these local papers have been unable to adjust to the internet. Sure, the aforementioned WSJ and the NYT and WaPo have...but the rest, they can't get anybody to pay for their online product for two reasons: 1. There's not enough content, the news hole has been cut too far. And 2. The first-mover advantage, they're already subscribing to one or two or all three of the big three, and that's more than enough.
Content is never king, never ever forget it, it's all about distribution. And HBO Max and Discovery+ were heading for distribution death, it doesn't matter what they wanted to air, it's too late. But combine them and you've got a fighting chance, assuming they continue to roll out a plethora of new product and start with a low price.
Sure, if you work for one of these entities you're worried about your job, I understand that, but if you're an investor or consumer this is manna from heaven, the only question that remains is...
How many streaming services will people pay for?
We don't know yet.
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Rock Me On The Water
"Rock Me on the Water: 1974 - The Year Los Angeles Transformed Movies, Music, Television, and Politics": https://amzn.to/3fpmpDt
At first I loved this book.
Then it depressed me.
Ronald Brownstein posits that 1974 was the apotheosis in entertainment and it all emanated from Los Angeles. This is patently untrue. I hate when writers come up with a theory and shoehorn the facts to make their case. Didn't David Hepworth write a whole book about how 1971 was the year music exploded, they even made an Apple TV+ series about it, as a matter of fact it's going to launch this week! But Hepworth is a music journalist and Brownstein is a political writer and it makes all the difference. Brownstein is a better writer, but he's got no innate feel for the landscape. But it all happened so long ago, a long long time ago as Don McLean sang, but that was in 1972.
1974... I graduated from college.
I remember going to the Beatles' 50th Anniversary taping. Supposedly Paul had been reluctant and Ringo gung-ho but really it lacked gravitas, almost intentionally, at least what I could see from the floor, it might have played a bit different at home. It was a celebration, it was light as opposed to heavy. But when it gets heavy...
So Brownstein starts with Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson. That was a golden era of film, the late sixties and seventies. But I'd never say that '74 was the peak. And Brownstein never mentions "The Deer Hunter," which came out in '78, and was the most dynamic and thought-provoking anti-Vietnam film of the era.
Not that Brownstein doesn't discuss the penumbra, what happened before and after '74, but he says it was basically all downhill thereafter, that the social consciousness flicks were from the earlier part of the decade.
Anyway, Warren Beatty is now 84 years old. And Jack Nicholson is the same age. Warren is still around, but Jack has completely disappeared. There are rumors he is ill, but if this is so, no one is talking. And I learned a bit of info reading about these two, my mind drifted back to that era, talking to Jack at the sporting goods store I worked in when I first moved to L.A. And I thought how the Oscars were a cultural rite back then and are nearly irrelevant today, but that's because TV has usurped the throne that film abdicated. Studios decided they were going solely for the bucks, and they ruined the business, at least artistically.
And then Brownstein went into music. Jackson Browne, Linda Ronstadt and the Eagles. There was very little I didn't know, but the scene came alive in my mind, I know those records by heart, and it's about more than the records, what we felt back then. And it's fun to read about what you already know, as long as the writer gets it right, and Brownstein does here. He interviewed all the subjects, he had access to everybody, the book is littered with footnotes, as a matter of fact, 25% of the book is footnotes, then again, I could write the music stuff off the top of my head, at least 95% of what Brownstein did, and his perspective is different from mine, he's doing research, he's coming from the outside, he's not rock and roll. And therefore, especially as the book unfolds, it's all about analysis and descriptors...I won't say style trumps substance, but I also won't say his viewpoint is the same as everyone else's. He cherry-picks Jackson Browne's apocalyptic lyrics while leaving the personal ones completely aside, and any fan knows Jackson Browne is a star because of his insight into people and relationships.
But then the book shifts to television. It's basically the story of Norman Lear. And CBS, which aired most of his shows. And the truth is...when I went to college we had no TV, I was aware of these shows, but I never saw them. Hell, I didn't own a TV until 1987, and I don't think I missed much. Sure, I gathered in houses to watch SNL, when I had mono I watched "Mary Hartman," but back then it wasn't happening on television, not at all, you could exist quite easily without ever turning on the idiot box, as a matter of fact TV was considered a time suck, and if you avoided it wisdom was you lived a much fuller life. TV didn't really become a thing until HBO started its original programming, and then the whole paradigm was blown up and jetted into the future in 1999 by "The Sopranos," Sunday night was for HBO, the networks didn't even bother to program against it.
But then there was a chapter on Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda and...it was all about politics, not Jane's movie career.
Many are now aware of Hayden as a result of the recent Chicago 7 movie, but he was never ever rock and roll. Nor was Jane Fonda. And as far as what they did in 1974...it wasn't much different from what they did before and after.
So why do we even need these two?
Because politics is Brownstein's beat, his everyday gig. And the truth is by the very early seventies, music disengaged from politics, and other than the news, TV wasn't involved at all. This is when Brownstein, trying to weave the story, loses the thread.
And this was when the book started to become tedious. Which completely surprised me, because I was so into it previously.
This is when I reminded myself that fiction is so much more rewarding.
This is when I started to realize everything that happened in this book happened a long damn time ago, almost half a century.
Let's see, I won't say it feels like I graduated from college yesterday, I feel like I've got runway left, but having said that, everybody I know outside the music business has retired. And that's it. Done. You can have experiences, but your life has basically been written, at least the way these people live it. They play golf and travel, but they don't change the world, despite having so much time on their hands.
And when you read this book you can't stop thinking how different things are today. TV and politics are obvious. But music is too... Acts don't migrate to Los Angeles to make it, you can make it from anywhere today, that's the power of the internet. Sure, you might ultimately move to the west coast, but back then you had to! And you paid a lot of dues. And hung out and got drunk and theorized... Today everybody is going where they're going real fast, there's no time to woodshed, the fear is that you'll be superseded, and never be able to catch up.
So music has completely changed. It's driven by the internet and it's about branding and money and the building blocks...that's a step you hope to skip. You read about these old tunes and you realize there are no modern equivalents, none... Come on, Linda Ronstadt's "You're No Good" was her breakthrough, we haven't had a track that engaging and powerful in eons. As for "Hotel California," which was '76, that's a high water mark. The Eagles are hated because they were so damn good, talented, polished and great singers and songwriters, the reaction was punk, breaking it down, even though punk was really a reaction to prog and corporate rock. Simple had power. And in truth, punk didn't really have its heyday until '91 and Nirvana. And the reason that act was so damn great, and ultimately legendary, was because of the songwriting, Kurt Cobain had both punk and pop sensibilities, he knew how to write a song, and he had what all of the classic acts of the seventies possessed, he was alienated, he was the anti-Dave Grohl.
But forget debating quality, the point is those great records were fifty years ago. And as I'm thinking of the age and career status of those who made them it occurs to me they're all in their seventies, some, like Ronstadt, have already retired from the road. Soon, they'll be gone. And then I will be too.
One thing is for sure, time marches forward.
That's another thing that's upsetting about this book. I have sixties and seventies values, but those days are a couple of changes back.
The police are now gods, except when they kill people. Back then they were "pigs," yes, even Joni Mitchell sang about kissing a "Sunset pig." But that was back when Sunset Boulevard was the epicenter of the music business, not only is Pandora's Box gone, but so much of the music and arts infrastructure, the real estate values are just too high, now you've got residence towers and offices and...the culture has been excised.
Our worst enemy was Nixon. Sure, there were rednecks, but we didn't argue over the facts, just the opinions.
And the military! Vietnam vets were angry their efforts were not respected. Today people in uniform are exalted, irrelevant of the results of their service.
In other words, I grew up in a different era.
Most people my age have given up trying to keep up. They've got a smartphone, but oftentimes it's a few generations old. As for TV? They're the generation that still watches in real time, check the data. It's easy to use the clicker to change channels, quite another to record to the DVR and use the smart TV or the Roku to watch streaming outlets, never mind dig deep into the offerings. Of course there are exceptions, people who are computer savvy...then again, the truth is you no longer need to be computer savvy, the devices and operating systems are superior.
And the digital excitement and exploration of twenty years ago is almost extinct. Remember the Naked News? Probably not unless you're over 30. Now you can just Google nude bodies, sex acts, and your next door neighbor is flaunting it on OnlyFans.
In other words, culture moved. Forget judging whether it's for better or worse, one thing is for sure, it's different.
And so am I.
If I went back to my college campus, which I won't, the students there would see me as an oldster who attended in an ancient era. And they'd be right. We had no cable, no DVDs, no internet...it was literally a different century.
And then I start thinking about how much runway I truly have left. Do I really have twenty or thirty years? And even if I do, what will be my quality of life? Junior Bounous may have skied Pipeline at 80, and gone heli-skiing a month ago at 95, but you probably have no idea who Junior Bounous is. Bounous was the original ski school director at Snowbird, a legendary powder skier, was his life equal to that of the entertainment stars? I spent a lot of my life in the mountains, is that where I should be? Wherever I should be, whatever I want to do, I should go there and do it now. Most people don't live to 95.
But boomers thought they'd never die.
Therefore they're not prepared for retirement not only intellectually, but financially. Most can't afford to do what they want. And now my generation is the conservative one, living in the Villages in Florida, on a fixed income, not wanting to be taxed for social programs that don't benefit them. We used to blame our parents for thinking like this, now it's us.
Now if you didn't live through the aforementioned era, if you weren't in your late teens in 1974, you'll take everything in "Rock Me on the Water" as gospel. But it's not. It's not that the facts are so wrong, as a matter of fact they're almost universally right, but the feel and context are a bit off. Because Brownstein was not part of the equation back then, that wasn't his life. As a matter of fact, he was born in 1958. Chris "Mad Dog" Russo was born in '59, just a year later, and he was testifying to Howard Stern how the book was a revelation, that he was too young to truly experience what was happening back then, so he loved it.
I didn't love it.
He or she who writes history owns it.
As far as the history of the late sixties and seventies...
It was an era where we had time, today we don't. You could be bored, today you can't. Big ideas were important, cash was secondary, what you stood for was everything, credibility was key. That's hard to understand for today's generation, which is struggling just to keep its head above water. No one with a brain moves to Hollywood to spend a decade trying to make it in music, they exit much earlier if they try at all. Today you graduate from college and get a high-paying job, you get a business degree, never mind an MBA. No one I graduated from college with met with a recruiter, never mind got a corporate job. I don't think I even knew what an MBA was until the eighties. My life was about experiences. Which were rich. But not valued much today.
So you can listen to the records of yore, you're not going to bother to watch the TV, as for the movies, now classics are from the early twentieth century, but the context...one in which music was everything, when you listened to albums to from your opinions and direct your future, I don't think that comes through via the wax alone.
It was a long time ago, it's history.
And soon I will be too.
P.S. Brownstein posits "On the Border" as an artistic breakthrough for the Eagles. He's the only one who sees it that way. Yes, it was a commercial success, but the real breakthrough was its follow-up, "One of These Nights," in 1975, never mind "Hotel California" a year later, and all believe that its predecessor, the commercial disappointment "Desperado," is superior to "On the Border" artistically. And as my old friend Tony Wilson said, if you get the little things wrong, who is to trust you'll get the big things right?
At first I loved this book.
Then it depressed me.
Ronald Brownstein posits that 1974 was the apotheosis in entertainment and it all emanated from Los Angeles. This is patently untrue. I hate when writers come up with a theory and shoehorn the facts to make their case. Didn't David Hepworth write a whole book about how 1971 was the year music exploded, they even made an Apple TV+ series about it, as a matter of fact it's going to launch this week! But Hepworth is a music journalist and Brownstein is a political writer and it makes all the difference. Brownstein is a better writer, but he's got no innate feel for the landscape. But it all happened so long ago, a long long time ago as Don McLean sang, but that was in 1972.
1974... I graduated from college.
I remember going to the Beatles' 50th Anniversary taping. Supposedly Paul had been reluctant and Ringo gung-ho but really it lacked gravitas, almost intentionally, at least what I could see from the floor, it might have played a bit different at home. It was a celebration, it was light as opposed to heavy. But when it gets heavy...
So Brownstein starts with Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson. That was a golden era of film, the late sixties and seventies. But I'd never say that '74 was the peak. And Brownstein never mentions "The Deer Hunter," which came out in '78, and was the most dynamic and thought-provoking anti-Vietnam film of the era.
Not that Brownstein doesn't discuss the penumbra, what happened before and after '74, but he says it was basically all downhill thereafter, that the social consciousness flicks were from the earlier part of the decade.
Anyway, Warren Beatty is now 84 years old. And Jack Nicholson is the same age. Warren is still around, but Jack has completely disappeared. There are rumors he is ill, but if this is so, no one is talking. And I learned a bit of info reading about these two, my mind drifted back to that era, talking to Jack at the sporting goods store I worked in when I first moved to L.A. And I thought how the Oscars were a cultural rite back then and are nearly irrelevant today, but that's because TV has usurped the throne that film abdicated. Studios decided they were going solely for the bucks, and they ruined the business, at least artistically.
And then Brownstein went into music. Jackson Browne, Linda Ronstadt and the Eagles. There was very little I didn't know, but the scene came alive in my mind, I know those records by heart, and it's about more than the records, what we felt back then. And it's fun to read about what you already know, as long as the writer gets it right, and Brownstein does here. He interviewed all the subjects, he had access to everybody, the book is littered with footnotes, as a matter of fact, 25% of the book is footnotes, then again, I could write the music stuff off the top of my head, at least 95% of what Brownstein did, and his perspective is different from mine, he's doing research, he's coming from the outside, he's not rock and roll. And therefore, especially as the book unfolds, it's all about analysis and descriptors...I won't say style trumps substance, but I also won't say his viewpoint is the same as everyone else's. He cherry-picks Jackson Browne's apocalyptic lyrics while leaving the personal ones completely aside, and any fan knows Jackson Browne is a star because of his insight into people and relationships.
But then the book shifts to television. It's basically the story of Norman Lear. And CBS, which aired most of his shows. And the truth is...when I went to college we had no TV, I was aware of these shows, but I never saw them. Hell, I didn't own a TV until 1987, and I don't think I missed much. Sure, I gathered in houses to watch SNL, when I had mono I watched "Mary Hartman," but back then it wasn't happening on television, not at all, you could exist quite easily without ever turning on the idiot box, as a matter of fact TV was considered a time suck, and if you avoided it wisdom was you lived a much fuller life. TV didn't really become a thing until HBO started its original programming, and then the whole paradigm was blown up and jetted into the future in 1999 by "The Sopranos," Sunday night was for HBO, the networks didn't even bother to program against it.
But then there was a chapter on Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda and...it was all about politics, not Jane's movie career.
Many are now aware of Hayden as a result of the recent Chicago 7 movie, but he was never ever rock and roll. Nor was Jane Fonda. And as far as what they did in 1974...it wasn't much different from what they did before and after.
So why do we even need these two?
Because politics is Brownstein's beat, his everyday gig. And the truth is by the very early seventies, music disengaged from politics, and other than the news, TV wasn't involved at all. This is when Brownstein, trying to weave the story, loses the thread.
And this was when the book started to become tedious. Which completely surprised me, because I was so into it previously.
This is when I reminded myself that fiction is so much more rewarding.
This is when I started to realize everything that happened in this book happened a long damn time ago, almost half a century.
Let's see, I won't say it feels like I graduated from college yesterday, I feel like I've got runway left, but having said that, everybody I know outside the music business has retired. And that's it. Done. You can have experiences, but your life has basically been written, at least the way these people live it. They play golf and travel, but they don't change the world, despite having so much time on their hands.
And when you read this book you can't stop thinking how different things are today. TV and politics are obvious. But music is too... Acts don't migrate to Los Angeles to make it, you can make it from anywhere today, that's the power of the internet. Sure, you might ultimately move to the west coast, but back then you had to! And you paid a lot of dues. And hung out and got drunk and theorized... Today everybody is going where they're going real fast, there's no time to woodshed, the fear is that you'll be superseded, and never be able to catch up.
So music has completely changed. It's driven by the internet and it's about branding and money and the building blocks...that's a step you hope to skip. You read about these old tunes and you realize there are no modern equivalents, none... Come on, Linda Ronstadt's "You're No Good" was her breakthrough, we haven't had a track that engaging and powerful in eons. As for "Hotel California," which was '76, that's a high water mark. The Eagles are hated because they were so damn good, talented, polished and great singers and songwriters, the reaction was punk, breaking it down, even though punk was really a reaction to prog and corporate rock. Simple had power. And in truth, punk didn't really have its heyday until '91 and Nirvana. And the reason that act was so damn great, and ultimately legendary, was because of the songwriting, Kurt Cobain had both punk and pop sensibilities, he knew how to write a song, and he had what all of the classic acts of the seventies possessed, he was alienated, he was the anti-Dave Grohl.
But forget debating quality, the point is those great records were fifty years ago. And as I'm thinking of the age and career status of those who made them it occurs to me they're all in their seventies, some, like Ronstadt, have already retired from the road. Soon, they'll be gone. And then I will be too.
One thing is for sure, time marches forward.
That's another thing that's upsetting about this book. I have sixties and seventies values, but those days are a couple of changes back.
The police are now gods, except when they kill people. Back then they were "pigs," yes, even Joni Mitchell sang about kissing a "Sunset pig." But that was back when Sunset Boulevard was the epicenter of the music business, not only is Pandora's Box gone, but so much of the music and arts infrastructure, the real estate values are just too high, now you've got residence towers and offices and...the culture has been excised.
Our worst enemy was Nixon. Sure, there were rednecks, but we didn't argue over the facts, just the opinions.
And the military! Vietnam vets were angry their efforts were not respected. Today people in uniform are exalted, irrelevant of the results of their service.
In other words, I grew up in a different era.
Most people my age have given up trying to keep up. They've got a smartphone, but oftentimes it's a few generations old. As for TV? They're the generation that still watches in real time, check the data. It's easy to use the clicker to change channels, quite another to record to the DVR and use the smart TV or the Roku to watch streaming outlets, never mind dig deep into the offerings. Of course there are exceptions, people who are computer savvy...then again, the truth is you no longer need to be computer savvy, the devices and operating systems are superior.
And the digital excitement and exploration of twenty years ago is almost extinct. Remember the Naked News? Probably not unless you're over 30. Now you can just Google nude bodies, sex acts, and your next door neighbor is flaunting it on OnlyFans.
In other words, culture moved. Forget judging whether it's for better or worse, one thing is for sure, it's different.
And so am I.
If I went back to my college campus, which I won't, the students there would see me as an oldster who attended in an ancient era. And they'd be right. We had no cable, no DVDs, no internet...it was literally a different century.
And then I start thinking about how much runway I truly have left. Do I really have twenty or thirty years? And even if I do, what will be my quality of life? Junior Bounous may have skied Pipeline at 80, and gone heli-skiing a month ago at 95, but you probably have no idea who Junior Bounous is. Bounous was the original ski school director at Snowbird, a legendary powder skier, was his life equal to that of the entertainment stars? I spent a lot of my life in the mountains, is that where I should be? Wherever I should be, whatever I want to do, I should go there and do it now. Most people don't live to 95.
But boomers thought they'd never die.
Therefore they're not prepared for retirement not only intellectually, but financially. Most can't afford to do what they want. And now my generation is the conservative one, living in the Villages in Florida, on a fixed income, not wanting to be taxed for social programs that don't benefit them. We used to blame our parents for thinking like this, now it's us.
Now if you didn't live through the aforementioned era, if you weren't in your late teens in 1974, you'll take everything in "Rock Me on the Water" as gospel. But it's not. It's not that the facts are so wrong, as a matter of fact they're almost universally right, but the feel and context are a bit off. Because Brownstein was not part of the equation back then, that wasn't his life. As a matter of fact, he was born in 1958. Chris "Mad Dog" Russo was born in '59, just a year later, and he was testifying to Howard Stern how the book was a revelation, that he was too young to truly experience what was happening back then, so he loved it.
I didn't love it.
He or she who writes history owns it.
As far as the history of the late sixties and seventies...
It was an era where we had time, today we don't. You could be bored, today you can't. Big ideas were important, cash was secondary, what you stood for was everything, credibility was key. That's hard to understand for today's generation, which is struggling just to keep its head above water. No one with a brain moves to Hollywood to spend a decade trying to make it in music, they exit much earlier if they try at all. Today you graduate from college and get a high-paying job, you get a business degree, never mind an MBA. No one I graduated from college with met with a recruiter, never mind got a corporate job. I don't think I even knew what an MBA was until the eighties. My life was about experiences. Which were rich. But not valued much today.
So you can listen to the records of yore, you're not going to bother to watch the TV, as for the movies, now classics are from the early twentieth century, but the context...one in which music was everything, when you listened to albums to from your opinions and direct your future, I don't think that comes through via the wax alone.
It was a long time ago, it's history.
And soon I will be too.
P.S. Brownstein posits "On the Border" as an artistic breakthrough for the Eagles. He's the only one who sees it that way. Yes, it was a commercial success, but the real breakthrough was its follow-up, "One of These Nights," in 1975, never mind "Hotel California" a year later, and all believe that its predecessor, the commercial disappointment "Desperado," is superior to "On the Border" artistically. And as my old friend Tony Wilson said, if you get the little things wrong, who is to trust you'll get the big things right?
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