Sales don't matter.
Which is hard to believe in an era where seemingly every #1 is based on sales. You can no longer game the chart by giving away albums with tickets, so now there are these vinyl packages, most of which are souvenirs, many of which go unplayed, their owners don't even have turntables, but that doesn't mean the purveyors can't sell them to go to #1 for a week, meaning you should never ever trust the "Billboard" chart...NEVER! Never mind that we're even talking about sales in the streaming era. We live in an on demand culture, buy any movies on DVD lately?
And then comes today's propaganda:
"4 versions of scathing anti-Biden rap 'Let's Go Brandon' now in iTunes Top 10": https://bit.ly/3pQmS8L
If you're unaware of the "Brandon" phenomenon this article will explain it. Anyway, in a bit of right wing gamesmanship, the conservatives are doing their best to own the libs, even ramping up their publicity machine, with all of their bloviators on social media pushing the message, but...it doesn't mean anything. Go to Spotify, "Let's Go Brandon" is not in the Top 50, as a matter of fact it has almost no impact at all. As of this writing the track has a grand total of 565,434 streams on Spotify. #50 on the Spotify Top 50, "Freaks," by Surf Curse, has 364,314 streams A DAY! As of this writing "Freaks" has 287,974,290 streams on Spotify. In other words, the right wing tried to own the libs and nobody noticed, it had no impact, other than in the echo chamber they reside in. You see today it's not about sales, but CONSUMPTION!
This is a sea change the oldsters are still upset about and the wannabes are complaining about. It all comes down to how much people want to listen to your music. As for the iTunes Store, sales have been decreasing for years. So it's no longer about a one time action, BUT A CONSISTENT BEHAVIOR!
Getting people to spend a buck at the iTunes Store is wholly different from getting them to spend hours listening to a song. And if you try to game Spotify by having a campaign of endless repeats of a song, the company's data can pick up on this and quash it. So, creating a sustained fake hit is essentially impossible. No, IT IS IMPOSSIBLE!
So that's the music business. Completely transparent, you just look at the Spotify stream count, which usually exceeds the YouTube stream count, because music lives on Spotify, not YouTube...which is really for the incredibly young and the incredibly cheap, not to mention there's a free, ad-supported tier on Spotify. YouTube is lousy for music, despite the company's disinformation campaign saying otherwise.
But the music industry doesn't like transparency, it's their worst nightmare, so they employ smoke and mirrors to make you think something is a hit when it is not, and then hopefully there will be enough momentum that it actually will become a hit. Sometimes this works, but it's nearly impossible for anybody but a major label to pull this off, you need money and relationships and commitment, and it doesn't always work for the big boys either, then again their bottom line depends on tonnage, they're not interested in a million plays, you've got to get about 100 million plays before they even begin to get interested!
As for the news/press... We can debate all day long whether Biden is doing a good job. Then again, there no longer is debate, just two major silos, on the left and the right, which barely intersect. And truth doesn't even matter. So, if you want to use modern systems to make a difference, look at the end result, not the press story. Did your action truly move the needle, are people listening to the track? BTS fans signed up for tickets to Trump's Oklahoma rally and changed the outcome, the Trump team thought there was huge demand, they even erected a secondary stage outside, but this wasn't the case, most of the ticket requests were fake. End result, attendance was low and it looked bad for Trump and those truly paying attention learned that it was motivated youths online who moved the needle, and that demonstrated a new level of power, as opposed to running up some novelty track on iTunes.
If someone in the music business starts quoting iTunes numbers, laugh. They're really stretching for a metric to make their case. And it gets even worse, someone will tell you their track/album is #1 on an obscure chart you've never even heard of, like Caribbean Children's Music. That's today, where there's always a number to support your case, which means savvy people investigate and dig for the truth. But many people don't really care about the truth, it's all about team politics, winning. Which is why you'll hear that vaccinated people are more contagious than the unvaxxed, I kid you not.
So what we've got here is a tug of war, between the oldsters and the youngsters, between people who want facts to stand and those who want to manipulate the facts to say something else. And if you're just a casual consumer, surfing by, you might get a completely inaccurate picture of what is going on, especially in the era where it's so hard to get people's attention and deceptive, sensationalist headlines are employed.
The old want the game of the past to maintain. And they don't understand the tools/methods the youngsters use to manipulate today's game. We thought the internet would propagate truth, but just the opposite has happened. We have hard numbers in the streaming business, but no one wants to use them, because they're immutable, they show whether people are listening to a song, and too many make excuses if people do not. "It's only young people who stream." "I made so much more money in the CD world"... I'm not saying the streaming world is perfect, but it's the most accurate we've ever had. People bought albums and played them once. Now, in the on demand world, it comes down to whether people actually listen to your music. And in a world where you're competing with the greatest hits of all time, never mind the hit records of today, that's very hard to make happen.
Then again, the winners of today mean less than the winners of yesterday, their reach is less, there's just too much in the marketplace.
Confused yet?
That's exactly how they want you to be.
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Friday 29 October 2021
Thursday 28 October 2021
Gina Schock-This Week's Podcast
From the Baltimore docks to the Hollywood Bowl... Gina Schock is the drummer of the Go-Go's, a songwriter for Miley Cyrus and Selena Gomez and the author of a new photo book about her band. Tune in to hear how a woman with a passion for rock made it to the top.
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-30806836/
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/gina-schock/id1316200737?i=1000539988981
https://open.spotify.com/episode/2Or5za4Wa7vXysLXLA56cw?si=hFf6CzljS1OPed2f5dLPBw
https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9ff4fb19-54d4-41ae-ae7a-8a6f8d3dafa8/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast
https://www.stitcher.com/show/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast
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https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-30806836/
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/gina-schock/id1316200737?i=1000539988981
https://open.spotify.com/episode/2Or5za4Wa7vXysLXLA56cw?si=hFf6CzljS1OPed2f5dLPBw
https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9ff4fb19-54d4-41ae-ae7a-8a6f8d3dafa8/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast
https://www.stitcher.com/show/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast
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Monday 25 October 2021
Instructions
DON'T BOTHER TRYING TO CHANGE SOMEBODY'S MIND
Read this article:
"Where Facts Were No Match for Fear - Civic boosters in central Montana hoped for some federal money to promote tourism. A disinformation campaign got in the way."
https://nyti.ms/3BgNuSe
Then you'll know it's hopeless trying to convince people of the truth if they're invested in falsehoods.
STOP COMPETING
I know, this sounds ridiculous, but today it's all about the individual and their efforts. There used to be a totem pole, with many markers along the way: college, graduate school, job, spouse, money, children... The hierarchy has been completely blown apart, if you're judging yourself based on other people's opinions the joke is on you. There is no center, there is no pecking order, there's just you and your own little life. The Spotify Top 50 doesn't reflect music accurately nor does any other Top 10 or 50 list. And there are endless lists, endless rankings. Publications put out rankings believing that the public's attention span is so short they won't bother to read anything, whereas the truth is today it's all about longform, streaming television taught us this, it's all about bingeing. Those who won't go deep are uninterested, forget them, don't try to appeal to everybody, it's impossible. Just appeal to those who like what you're doing, there are enough of them to make a living, and chances are you can't reach the rest of the world anyway.
DO WHAT YOU WANT TO DO
This is so hard in a world that tells you to conform from day one, where they do their best to beat out the creativity and individuality of kids in school. It's the nonconformists who change the world, not the sheep. And in the internet era you can align yourself with other nonconformists easily, it's not like you're living in the middle of nowhere as the only person of your persuasion and viewpoint yearning for connection, just go online, you'll find your people, and that's all that matters.
READ THE NEWS
This is how you keep up today. The news is the solidifying point of our society. And you don't get news on television, you get talking heads, opinion, and maybe if there's an accident there will be some footage. No, the news is in print. Whether it be in a physical newspaper or online. If you want to be truly informed subscribe to the "New York Times." You don't even have to read the Opinion pages if you're of the right of center persuasion, although there are right wingers contained therein, like Ross Douthat. Every educated, intelligent person reads the "New York Times." It's the Bible at Fox, they may criticize it, but they get their info from it. DON'T get your news from secondary sources, like Facebook. Go straight to the heart of the matter, directly to the "Times" site. If you want more, subscribe to the "Washington Post." And if you've got a business focus, subscribe to the "Wall Street Journal" (but beware of their right wing Opinion page, so biased it's laughable). The "Times" is the best education you'll ever get, better than college. You'll be up to date, you'll have a wide perspective. Invest in your future, read the "Times."
EXPERTISE HAS INCREDIBLE VALUE
Funny in a world where Donald Trump says he loves the uneducated. It doesn't have to be traditional book learning, you can be an expert in fly fishing, anything... The key is to find a subject that you just can't get enough of, that you have a passion for. Information is free. You go down the rabbit hole online. And since you're interested, you'll start intersecting with others with the same interest and they will note the breadth of your knowledge and you will ultimately be rewarded. Here is where it's important to know how to get along with people, that's how you get ahead on the micro level. It's fun to argue, but arguments are much less valuable than raw knowledge. In fact, if you have expertise you'll find that you don't even want to bother arguing with most people, they're too uninformed. But if you're with other experts, you can get into the nuances, where the excitement and the change is. There's a bleeding edge in every vertical of life. You want to work your way to it. You can't jump from zero to a hundred without doing the work in between.
FIND YOUR OWN PATH
The road well-traveled is heavily advertised. But thinking for yourself and going through the weeds is not. Why go where everybody else has traveled, the odds of you standing out are almost nil.
EVERYBODY'S AN ENTREPRENEUR
There is no lifetime employment, put your faith in your employer at your peril. You must not only navigate your own career, if you want to be truly happy you must strike out and forge your own way. First you must have confidence, based on knowledge. You must risk to get ahead, and if you're not risking you're falling behind. You've got to determine your own path. If someone says they're bad with money, the joke is on them. You can learn about money online, there are a zillion resources. It's everybody for themselves these days and you don't want to be at the mercy of anybody else.
MONEY IS NOT THE ONLY MARKER
You want to have enough not to worry about it all the time, but the truth is happiness comes from career satisfaction and your family and friends. Period. Focus down, not up.
BEWARE OF THOSE GIVING BACK
I'm not talking about your local food bank, I'm talking on a bigger level, especially political people. They're mostly doing it for THEMSELVES! To burnish THEIR image. Sure, they want to help the "little people" along the way, but they're primary. Remember this.
YOU GOTTA ASK
Rejection feels so bad, but if you don't ask you don't get. You'd be surprised how many people will say yes who you're convinced would say no. Then again, don't knock at the door of the hospital asking to be a doctor if you dropped out of high school. But if you've got the qualifications... Same deal with love, but there are qualifications here too. If you want to date someone desirable, you must be desirable too. You could be good-looking, rich, smart, analytical, a good storyteller...or maybe you could be all of these things, then again if this was so you'd be hobbled by always being treated differently and won't be able to deal with failure. If you want to date a better class of person, you've got to better yourself. That's the way it is, it's just true.
THE SQUEAKY WHEEL GETS THE GREASE
If you got a response...FOLLOW IT UP! People are busy, it's not their job to do your work for you. But if they open the door a little, be sure to keep knocking. Persistence is key. As long as you're not an annoyance. If you get no response, chances are the person doesn't want to be bothered, maybe try to connect with them again, but if they continue to be silent, move on. Someone who rejects you out of the box won't accept you until others do, until you've made a name for yourself. Rail against this all you want, but this is the way the landscape is. And nobody likes a pest.
DON'T BE A DILETTANTE AND EXPECT DIVIDENDS
If you want to be an online influencer, you must be posting all of the time, to the exclusion of everything else other than your job or school. You need to sacrifice so much. Hell, you need to sacrifice so much to be successful at any thing, and you're lucky if you can make it in one vertical. If you're not willing to sacrifice, if you want a little bit of everything, move away from the coasts and focus on lifestyle, because it's going to be damn hard to get ahead.
FOCUS ON THE ESSENCE
Followers are secondary to content. Marketing is secondary to content. They teach how to market in school, but as far as creativity...the best seems to always come from outside of the educational system, because education is rote, within boundaries, and true leaders can't be constricted. Your work speaks for you. It almost doesn't even matter whether you market anymore. Your underlying product must be so damn good it sells itself. So anybody exposed to it wants more. If you've got to convince someone they want your artistic work, you're already losing. But know, most people won't like what you're doing. But we live in a country of 330+ million and there are billions of people outside the U.S., there are plenty of people around to hook and make you if not rich, at least comfortable.
YOU CREATE YOUR OWN GAME
Sure, there's a major label record business, but you can be just as successful and make more money OUTSIDE IT! And chances are they don't want you anyway. Same deal with publishing and Hollywood. But you can write online and post videos on YouTube. Don't rail against the system, use the tools for yourself, take advantage and get ahead.
DECIDE IF YOU'RE A MEMBER OF THE CLUB
Most entrepreneurs, most limit testers, are not. There's a club in every industry, everybody knows everybody, it's hard to penetrate and there are unwritten rules. If you don't want to conform, stay out.
SOMEONE HAS GOT YOUR JOB
Yes, you could do the job better. But if you want it, being good enough is not enough. You've got to create your own base, establish your own business, and then you'll oftentimes find you don't want the job you thought you did to begin with.
Read this article:
"Where Facts Were No Match for Fear - Civic boosters in central Montana hoped for some federal money to promote tourism. A disinformation campaign got in the way."
https://nyti.ms/3BgNuSe
Then you'll know it's hopeless trying to convince people of the truth if they're invested in falsehoods.
STOP COMPETING
I know, this sounds ridiculous, but today it's all about the individual and their efforts. There used to be a totem pole, with many markers along the way: college, graduate school, job, spouse, money, children... The hierarchy has been completely blown apart, if you're judging yourself based on other people's opinions the joke is on you. There is no center, there is no pecking order, there's just you and your own little life. The Spotify Top 50 doesn't reflect music accurately nor does any other Top 10 or 50 list. And there are endless lists, endless rankings. Publications put out rankings believing that the public's attention span is so short they won't bother to read anything, whereas the truth is today it's all about longform, streaming television taught us this, it's all about bingeing. Those who won't go deep are uninterested, forget them, don't try to appeal to everybody, it's impossible. Just appeal to those who like what you're doing, there are enough of them to make a living, and chances are you can't reach the rest of the world anyway.
DO WHAT YOU WANT TO DO
This is so hard in a world that tells you to conform from day one, where they do their best to beat out the creativity and individuality of kids in school. It's the nonconformists who change the world, not the sheep. And in the internet era you can align yourself with other nonconformists easily, it's not like you're living in the middle of nowhere as the only person of your persuasion and viewpoint yearning for connection, just go online, you'll find your people, and that's all that matters.
READ THE NEWS
This is how you keep up today. The news is the solidifying point of our society. And you don't get news on television, you get talking heads, opinion, and maybe if there's an accident there will be some footage. No, the news is in print. Whether it be in a physical newspaper or online. If you want to be truly informed subscribe to the "New York Times." You don't even have to read the Opinion pages if you're of the right of center persuasion, although there are right wingers contained therein, like Ross Douthat. Every educated, intelligent person reads the "New York Times." It's the Bible at Fox, they may criticize it, but they get their info from it. DON'T get your news from secondary sources, like Facebook. Go straight to the heart of the matter, directly to the "Times" site. If you want more, subscribe to the "Washington Post." And if you've got a business focus, subscribe to the "Wall Street Journal" (but beware of their right wing Opinion page, so biased it's laughable). The "Times" is the best education you'll ever get, better than college. You'll be up to date, you'll have a wide perspective. Invest in your future, read the "Times."
EXPERTISE HAS INCREDIBLE VALUE
Funny in a world where Donald Trump says he loves the uneducated. It doesn't have to be traditional book learning, you can be an expert in fly fishing, anything... The key is to find a subject that you just can't get enough of, that you have a passion for. Information is free. You go down the rabbit hole online. And since you're interested, you'll start intersecting with others with the same interest and they will note the breadth of your knowledge and you will ultimately be rewarded. Here is where it's important to know how to get along with people, that's how you get ahead on the micro level. It's fun to argue, but arguments are much less valuable than raw knowledge. In fact, if you have expertise you'll find that you don't even want to bother arguing with most people, they're too uninformed. But if you're with other experts, you can get into the nuances, where the excitement and the change is. There's a bleeding edge in every vertical of life. You want to work your way to it. You can't jump from zero to a hundred without doing the work in between.
FIND YOUR OWN PATH
The road well-traveled is heavily advertised. But thinking for yourself and going through the weeds is not. Why go where everybody else has traveled, the odds of you standing out are almost nil.
EVERYBODY'S AN ENTREPRENEUR
There is no lifetime employment, put your faith in your employer at your peril. You must not only navigate your own career, if you want to be truly happy you must strike out and forge your own way. First you must have confidence, based on knowledge. You must risk to get ahead, and if you're not risking you're falling behind. You've got to determine your own path. If someone says they're bad with money, the joke is on them. You can learn about money online, there are a zillion resources. It's everybody for themselves these days and you don't want to be at the mercy of anybody else.
MONEY IS NOT THE ONLY MARKER
You want to have enough not to worry about it all the time, but the truth is happiness comes from career satisfaction and your family and friends. Period. Focus down, not up.
BEWARE OF THOSE GIVING BACK
I'm not talking about your local food bank, I'm talking on a bigger level, especially political people. They're mostly doing it for THEMSELVES! To burnish THEIR image. Sure, they want to help the "little people" along the way, but they're primary. Remember this.
YOU GOTTA ASK
Rejection feels so bad, but if you don't ask you don't get. You'd be surprised how many people will say yes who you're convinced would say no. Then again, don't knock at the door of the hospital asking to be a doctor if you dropped out of high school. But if you've got the qualifications... Same deal with love, but there are qualifications here too. If you want to date someone desirable, you must be desirable too. You could be good-looking, rich, smart, analytical, a good storyteller...or maybe you could be all of these things, then again if this was so you'd be hobbled by always being treated differently and won't be able to deal with failure. If you want to date a better class of person, you've got to better yourself. That's the way it is, it's just true.
THE SQUEAKY WHEEL GETS THE GREASE
If you got a response...FOLLOW IT UP! People are busy, it's not their job to do your work for you. But if they open the door a little, be sure to keep knocking. Persistence is key. As long as you're not an annoyance. If you get no response, chances are the person doesn't want to be bothered, maybe try to connect with them again, but if they continue to be silent, move on. Someone who rejects you out of the box won't accept you until others do, until you've made a name for yourself. Rail against this all you want, but this is the way the landscape is. And nobody likes a pest.
DON'T BE A DILETTANTE AND EXPECT DIVIDENDS
If you want to be an online influencer, you must be posting all of the time, to the exclusion of everything else other than your job or school. You need to sacrifice so much. Hell, you need to sacrifice so much to be successful at any thing, and you're lucky if you can make it in one vertical. If you're not willing to sacrifice, if you want a little bit of everything, move away from the coasts and focus on lifestyle, because it's going to be damn hard to get ahead.
FOCUS ON THE ESSENCE
Followers are secondary to content. Marketing is secondary to content. They teach how to market in school, but as far as creativity...the best seems to always come from outside of the educational system, because education is rote, within boundaries, and true leaders can't be constricted. Your work speaks for you. It almost doesn't even matter whether you market anymore. Your underlying product must be so damn good it sells itself. So anybody exposed to it wants more. If you've got to convince someone they want your artistic work, you're already losing. But know, most people won't like what you're doing. But we live in a country of 330+ million and there are billions of people outside the U.S., there are plenty of people around to hook and make you if not rich, at least comfortable.
YOU CREATE YOUR OWN GAME
Sure, there's a major label record business, but you can be just as successful and make more money OUTSIDE IT! And chances are they don't want you anyway. Same deal with publishing and Hollywood. But you can write online and post videos on YouTube. Don't rail against the system, use the tools for yourself, take advantage and get ahead.
DECIDE IF YOU'RE A MEMBER OF THE CLUB
Most entrepreneurs, most limit testers, are not. There's a club in every industry, everybody knows everybody, it's hard to penetrate and there are unwritten rules. If you don't want to conform, stay out.
SOMEONE HAS GOT YOUR JOB
Yes, you could do the job better. But if you want it, being good enough is not enough. You've got to create your own base, establish your own business, and then you'll oftentimes find you don't want the job you thought you did to begin with.
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Fantasy Band-Lead Guitarist-This Week On SiriusXM
Who would you pick to be the lead guitarist of the fantasy band?
This is not necessarily the best guitarist, but the best guitarist for a BAND!
Tune in tomorrow, October 26th, to Volume 106, 7 PM East, 4 PM West.
Phone #: 844-6-VOLUME, 844-686-5863
Twitter: @lefsetz or @siriusxmvolume/#lefsetzlive
Hear the episode live on SiriusXM VOLUME: siriusxm.us/HearLefsetzLive
If you miss the episode, you can hear it on demand on the SiriusXM app: siriusxm.us/LefsetzLive
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This is not necessarily the best guitarist, but the best guitarist for a BAND!
Tune in tomorrow, October 26th, to Volume 106, 7 PM East, 4 PM West.
Phone #: 844-6-VOLUME, 844-686-5863
Twitter: @lefsetz or @siriusxmvolume/#lefsetzlive
Hear the episode live on SiriusXM VOLUME: siriusxm.us/HearLefsetzLive
If you miss the episode, you can hear it on demand on the SiriusXM app: siriusxm.us/LefsetzLive
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-iHeart: https://ihr.fm/2Gi5PFj
-Apple: https://apple.co/2ndmpvp
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Sunday 24 October 2021
Amen Old Friend
Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3EazmMd
YouTube: https://bit.ly/3m7GWBh
If I didn't write about this I doubt you'd ever hear it.
But even now my inbox will be inundated with emails from people asking for their time back, others telling me my taste sucks, they need to tear me down and build themselves up. Welcome to America.
I only found "Amen Old Friend" because I wanted to listen to the entire new Doobie Brothers album, "Liberté," and I'd be lying if I told you I liked "Amen Old Friend" from the beginning. But then came the change. And then my focus was somewhere else and my brain stopped, the music, IT WAS RESONATING!
"So afraid of
What I can see
Turned a blind eye
In your hour of need"
There's nowhere to hear this music unless you seek it out, but why would you even look, probably not even knowing it was released. I forgot the Doobies put out a new album at the beginning of the month. I was excited about the advance tracks, but then I lost the thread, we all lose the thread.
"Life's too short to waste this love again
Down this road that never ends
Don't look back, let's make amends
Amen, amen to old friends"
Live long enough and you watch friends come and go. Want to be really shocked, look at your wedding pictures, you probably won't even be able to name a couple of the people, most you haven't seen in eons, and probably never will again. The internet connected all of us and after the initial excitement wore off we realized why we stopped communicating. Then again, get old enough and you wonder what everybody is up to, what happened to them, how their lives played out, how yours compares.
After all, you made a lot of choices, were they all good? Very few boomers ended up where they wanted to. If they had do-overs, they'd do it differently. Marry this one, not be involved with that one. Leapt into entrepreneurship, played the political game at the company better. You keep learning lessons as you get older, but it's always too late, you're still encountering new conundrums, you know so much more but you realize how much you don't know, whereas when you were twenty you knew everything.
I wouldn't even be a Doobie Brothers fan if it weren't for a quirk of fate. I lived with five other guys and one of their wives in a condo in Mammoth Lakes, California for the month of May 1975. Skiing every day, and when we got back to our rented abode, the 8-tracks fired up. It was an endless diet of "Physical Graffiti" and the Doobie Brothers. I thought I was over Led Zeppelin, but then I came home from skiing and NEEDED to hear "Kashmir." As for the Doobies...once you hear "What Were Once Vices Are Now Habits" you become a fan, because there's nothing quite like it. Smooth yet not slick. Edgy but soulful. Loud and quiet. The band I knew from the AM radio in my old Chevy was much deeper than I believed.
Then I had to buy the albums for myself.
That's how it used to work. Music wasn't everywhere like today. You needed a system. And you needed the records/tapes. So music was for home and car. In between, you sang the songs in your head. And if you went on a trip you couldn't take the music with you.
And you were fans of certain acts and bought their new albums without hearing them first. But then you listened to FM radio to find out what else was great. That was the culture, you needed to know, the country ran on music, maybe the entire world. The musicians were testing limits, pushing the envelope, and then it all imploded. It was a golden era and you only know this if you lived through it and most people did not and get it all wrong. Malcolm Gladwell has a new audiobook with Paul Simon, forget that he injects his insane theories to make himself look smart, but he wasn't even born until 1963, he missed Simon & Garfunkel, completely, the fact that the duo were seen as has-beens, on the road with Soupy Sales, and then Mike Nichols used "Mrs. Robinson" in "The Graduate" and this elevated the two of them to superstar status. It's one thing to have had a string of hits in the sixties, it's another to keep it going, to top yourself. Gladwell thinks Simon's peak is "Graceland," which is just complete nonsense, has he ever heard "For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her"? Of course not, that was a sixties activity, buying very few albums and devouring them, knowing the album tracks as well as the hits. And now the oldies stations only play the hits, if that.
And Kelefa Sanneh, the "New Yorker" writer, has a new book about major labels and "Seven Genres." Sanneh was born in 1976, if he wants to write about hip-hop, fine, but what does this guy know about the history of rock and roll, this is the guy who popularized the inane word "rockism." Huh?
We were addicted to the radio, to music in a way almost no one is today. And we didn't go to the show to shoot selfies, it wasn't about us, but them, the people on stage.
And if you know your Doobie Brothers history, you know that the first single off "What Were Once Vices..," "Another Park, Another Sunday," stiffed. The album was fading in the marketplace, and then suddenly radio started playing "Black Water" on its own initiative and the band became even bigger. "Black Water" was a Patrick Simmons track, it didn't sound anything like the Tom Johnston radio hits, it demonstrated the band's breadth, which was there on the albums, assuming you bought 'em and played 'em, because that was the only way you heard 'em, FM radio didn't play everything, just a few cuts, you had to decide whether the plunge of purchase was worth it.
And now there's nowhere for "Amen Old Friend" to be heard. It's not hard and heavy enough for Active Rock radio, it's not slick enough for AC, and Top 40 would never play it. It's almost as if they didn't even record it. That's what classic rock musicians do now, record for themselves, if they bother to record at all, to many it's just too depressing, so they just go on the road and play the oldies and reap the adulation and the dollars.
If this were still the seventies, and it most certainly is not, some FM station might play "Amen Old Friend" and a listener would be grabbed, since it stuck out, quiet in a way the rest of the records were not, and demand might spread the word. Then again, "Seven Bridges Road" was not embraced by radio, even though it's now a concert staple opening every Eagles show, everybody in the audience knowing it, funny how that works.
And a lot of people going to see the dinosaurs live just want to hear the hits. Maybe they bought one album, but really they know the act from the big tracks on the radio. And then there are those who were infected, who purchased every album, the subject of Ray Davies and the Kinks' "Rock N' Roll Fantasy," which has been eclipsed by the great but wholly different Bad Company cut with the same name.
"Dan is a fan and he lives for our music
It's the only thing that gets him by
He's watched us grow and he's seen all our shows
He's seen us low and he's seen us high"
These people still exist. And they don't only work in the business, they don't only live in the metropolis, music penetrates the everyday life of boomers, there were not only few distractions, music was superior, you had to listen to know which way the wind blew.
And for some of us the world passed by. We were busy listening to records when everybody else went straight and started hoovering up bucks. And now that they've got theirs the whole scene has fallen apart. Wankers like Sanneh will tell you it's the same as it ever was, but nothing could be further from the truth, that would be like saying that the tech of the sixties was the same as the tech of the nineties and aughts. We had tech in the sixties, color television! But it had none of the same impact as the internet.
"You would see the only one
I'd been running from
Was really me"
A lot of boomers still haven't grown up. They're not old like their parents. They get plastic surgery, they lie about their age, as if their contemporaries don't know the truth. There's no reflection, it's all about the now, but without context life is far from rich. Then again, despite the Me Decade, most boomers weren't really looking to unpack their identities and issues, rather they were looking for a way forward, a secret that could make life work. But the truth is no such secret exists. You get old enough and you know this.
"I was nothing but lonely
Feeling like a fool
I turned my back
On someone like you
Time has gone
Right or wrong
Don't know what I was chasing"
We were chasing perfection, something we believed we were entitled to. And then one day we woke up and found we'd been pushed off a cliff. We no longer mattered, it was all about the Millennials and Gen-Z. We can't turn back the hands of time, and now too many of us are alone, and too many of us are broke, living on Social Security that doesn't pay the bills. When you get old enough, when jobs no longer matter, when totems no longer matter, when the hierarchy disappears and you're all in it together like you were in school, one thing is for sure, you don't want to be alone.
But at least the music helps. Then again, there's a plague of loneliness ending too often in suicide. You're told to pull yourself up by the bootstraps, that it's all your fault, but the truth is some people are so far gone they can't even start, they need a helping hand, but it's hard to get one.
So you listen to the music. If only you had new music, that might give you hope.
All I'm saying is that if "Amen Old Friend" got a chance, if it was exposed, it would resonate with more than the old fans going to the Doobies show, we're reflecting, we can understand the lyrics, we just can't hear them.
Amen.
YouTube: https://bit.ly/3m7GWBh
If I didn't write about this I doubt you'd ever hear it.
But even now my inbox will be inundated with emails from people asking for their time back, others telling me my taste sucks, they need to tear me down and build themselves up. Welcome to America.
I only found "Amen Old Friend" because I wanted to listen to the entire new Doobie Brothers album, "Liberté," and I'd be lying if I told you I liked "Amen Old Friend" from the beginning. But then came the change. And then my focus was somewhere else and my brain stopped, the music, IT WAS RESONATING!
"So afraid of
What I can see
Turned a blind eye
In your hour of need"
There's nowhere to hear this music unless you seek it out, but why would you even look, probably not even knowing it was released. I forgot the Doobies put out a new album at the beginning of the month. I was excited about the advance tracks, but then I lost the thread, we all lose the thread.
"Life's too short to waste this love again
Down this road that never ends
Don't look back, let's make amends
Amen, amen to old friends"
Live long enough and you watch friends come and go. Want to be really shocked, look at your wedding pictures, you probably won't even be able to name a couple of the people, most you haven't seen in eons, and probably never will again. The internet connected all of us and after the initial excitement wore off we realized why we stopped communicating. Then again, get old enough and you wonder what everybody is up to, what happened to them, how their lives played out, how yours compares.
After all, you made a lot of choices, were they all good? Very few boomers ended up where they wanted to. If they had do-overs, they'd do it differently. Marry this one, not be involved with that one. Leapt into entrepreneurship, played the political game at the company better. You keep learning lessons as you get older, but it's always too late, you're still encountering new conundrums, you know so much more but you realize how much you don't know, whereas when you were twenty you knew everything.
I wouldn't even be a Doobie Brothers fan if it weren't for a quirk of fate. I lived with five other guys and one of their wives in a condo in Mammoth Lakes, California for the month of May 1975. Skiing every day, and when we got back to our rented abode, the 8-tracks fired up. It was an endless diet of "Physical Graffiti" and the Doobie Brothers. I thought I was over Led Zeppelin, but then I came home from skiing and NEEDED to hear "Kashmir." As for the Doobies...once you hear "What Were Once Vices Are Now Habits" you become a fan, because there's nothing quite like it. Smooth yet not slick. Edgy but soulful. Loud and quiet. The band I knew from the AM radio in my old Chevy was much deeper than I believed.
Then I had to buy the albums for myself.
That's how it used to work. Music wasn't everywhere like today. You needed a system. And you needed the records/tapes. So music was for home and car. In between, you sang the songs in your head. And if you went on a trip you couldn't take the music with you.
And you were fans of certain acts and bought their new albums without hearing them first. But then you listened to FM radio to find out what else was great. That was the culture, you needed to know, the country ran on music, maybe the entire world. The musicians were testing limits, pushing the envelope, and then it all imploded. It was a golden era and you only know this if you lived through it and most people did not and get it all wrong. Malcolm Gladwell has a new audiobook with Paul Simon, forget that he injects his insane theories to make himself look smart, but he wasn't even born until 1963, he missed Simon & Garfunkel, completely, the fact that the duo were seen as has-beens, on the road with Soupy Sales, and then Mike Nichols used "Mrs. Robinson" in "The Graduate" and this elevated the two of them to superstar status. It's one thing to have had a string of hits in the sixties, it's another to keep it going, to top yourself. Gladwell thinks Simon's peak is "Graceland," which is just complete nonsense, has he ever heard "For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her"? Of course not, that was a sixties activity, buying very few albums and devouring them, knowing the album tracks as well as the hits. And now the oldies stations only play the hits, if that.
And Kelefa Sanneh, the "New Yorker" writer, has a new book about major labels and "Seven Genres." Sanneh was born in 1976, if he wants to write about hip-hop, fine, but what does this guy know about the history of rock and roll, this is the guy who popularized the inane word "rockism." Huh?
We were addicted to the radio, to music in a way almost no one is today. And we didn't go to the show to shoot selfies, it wasn't about us, but them, the people on stage.
And if you know your Doobie Brothers history, you know that the first single off "What Were Once Vices..," "Another Park, Another Sunday," stiffed. The album was fading in the marketplace, and then suddenly radio started playing "Black Water" on its own initiative and the band became even bigger. "Black Water" was a Patrick Simmons track, it didn't sound anything like the Tom Johnston radio hits, it demonstrated the band's breadth, which was there on the albums, assuming you bought 'em and played 'em, because that was the only way you heard 'em, FM radio didn't play everything, just a few cuts, you had to decide whether the plunge of purchase was worth it.
And now there's nowhere for "Amen Old Friend" to be heard. It's not hard and heavy enough for Active Rock radio, it's not slick enough for AC, and Top 40 would never play it. It's almost as if they didn't even record it. That's what classic rock musicians do now, record for themselves, if they bother to record at all, to many it's just too depressing, so they just go on the road and play the oldies and reap the adulation and the dollars.
If this were still the seventies, and it most certainly is not, some FM station might play "Amen Old Friend" and a listener would be grabbed, since it stuck out, quiet in a way the rest of the records were not, and demand might spread the word. Then again, "Seven Bridges Road" was not embraced by radio, even though it's now a concert staple opening every Eagles show, everybody in the audience knowing it, funny how that works.
And a lot of people going to see the dinosaurs live just want to hear the hits. Maybe they bought one album, but really they know the act from the big tracks on the radio. And then there are those who were infected, who purchased every album, the subject of Ray Davies and the Kinks' "Rock N' Roll Fantasy," which has been eclipsed by the great but wholly different Bad Company cut with the same name.
"Dan is a fan and he lives for our music
It's the only thing that gets him by
He's watched us grow and he's seen all our shows
He's seen us low and he's seen us high"
These people still exist. And they don't only work in the business, they don't only live in the metropolis, music penetrates the everyday life of boomers, there were not only few distractions, music was superior, you had to listen to know which way the wind blew.
And for some of us the world passed by. We were busy listening to records when everybody else went straight and started hoovering up bucks. And now that they've got theirs the whole scene has fallen apart. Wankers like Sanneh will tell you it's the same as it ever was, but nothing could be further from the truth, that would be like saying that the tech of the sixties was the same as the tech of the nineties and aughts. We had tech in the sixties, color television! But it had none of the same impact as the internet.
"You would see the only one
I'd been running from
Was really me"
A lot of boomers still haven't grown up. They're not old like their parents. They get plastic surgery, they lie about their age, as if their contemporaries don't know the truth. There's no reflection, it's all about the now, but without context life is far from rich. Then again, despite the Me Decade, most boomers weren't really looking to unpack their identities and issues, rather they were looking for a way forward, a secret that could make life work. But the truth is no such secret exists. You get old enough and you know this.
"I was nothing but lonely
Feeling like a fool
I turned my back
On someone like you
Time has gone
Right or wrong
Don't know what I was chasing"
We were chasing perfection, something we believed we were entitled to. And then one day we woke up and found we'd been pushed off a cliff. We no longer mattered, it was all about the Millennials and Gen-Z. We can't turn back the hands of time, and now too many of us are alone, and too many of us are broke, living on Social Security that doesn't pay the bills. When you get old enough, when jobs no longer matter, when totems no longer matter, when the hierarchy disappears and you're all in it together like you were in school, one thing is for sure, you don't want to be alone.
But at least the music helps. Then again, there's a plague of loneliness ending too often in suicide. You're told to pull yourself up by the bootstraps, that it's all your fault, but the truth is some people are so far gone they can't even start, they need a helping hand, but it's hard to get one.
So you listen to the music. If only you had new music, that might give you hope.
All I'm saying is that if "Amen Old Friend" got a chance, if it was exposed, it would resonate with more than the old fans going to the Doobies show, we're reflecting, we can understand the lyrics, we just can't hear them.
Amen.
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