Seemingly every day a song gets stuck in my head, I wake up singing it to myself. And usually I can't figure out what started it. Two days ago it was the Hollies' "Carrie Anne." Today it's Leo Sayer's "Living in a Fantasy." You probably know the former. Although when it was a hit you probably couldn't name a single member of the group and could not have foreseen that Graham Nash would exit, move to California, and become one third of a supergroup whose music is still resonating. As for "Living in a Fantasy," I doubt you know it. And if you're under thirty, you probably don't know either.
I wish I'd written an article in today's "New York Times" entitled:
"Baseball Is Dying. The Government Should Take It Over.": https://nyti.ms/3LHkhpi
Before you libertarians get your knickers in a twist, I don't agree baseball should be nationalized, and I don't really think the writer does either, but the statistics he delineates make it clear, like the Grammys, baseball is in a death spiral.
First there's the TV ratings:
"Attendance at games has declined steadily since 2008 and viewership figures are almost hilariously bleak. An ordinary national prime-time M.L.B. broadcast, such as ESPN's 'Sunday Night Baseball,' attracts some 1.5 million pairs of eyes each week, which is to say, roughly the number that are likely to be watching a heavily censored version of 'Goodfellas' on a basic cable movie channel in the same time slot.
Even the World Series attracts smaller audiences than the average 'Thursday Night Football' broadcast, the dregs of the National Football League's weekly schedule. In 1975, the World Series had an average of 36 million viewers per game; in 2021, it barely attracted 12 million per game."
And then there's the economics:
"Casual observers may assume that despite this lack of popularity, baseball is still somehow insanely valuable. This is an illusion. Major League Baseball generated around $11 billion in revenue in 2019, but this figure does not accurately reflect the demand for its product. The astronomical salaries that continue to be enjoyed by the sport's stars (if that is the mot juste) are a result not of the game's nonexistent popularity but of the economics of cable television providers, who bundle regional sports networks alongside dozens of other channels so that anyone with cable TV is buying baseball whether he likes it or not."
Yes, baseball is being propped up by a dying television paradigm that is not only on its way to being superseded, it is being superseded as I write this.
Basic cable is in its death throes. The old bundle model is history. Paying for so much you don't want. Today you pay for what you do want, subscriptions to the streaming giants like Netflix and Disney+, and if you really care about the rearguard you get an antenna for network TV or buy an ever-increasingly expensive skinny internet bundle from the likes of Google and Sling. And the younger generation sees no need for either, just like they see no need for a landline.
Things change, and those dedicated to them refuse to acknowledge this.
Both the Grammys and the MLB are going to be SOL when the TV payments crash. But both luxuriate in the present glory, as if it is forever. And believe me, they'll bitch when the cheese is moved, just like all the musicians when the old label paradigm collapsed with the advent of the internet. Players are still mourning the days of the major label keeping scores of acts alive, whether they were successful or not. Those days are through, the economics have changed.
Now the amount of ink about the MLB lockout was voluminous, as it was for the Grammy telecast. This publicity makes it seem like these are universal attractions everyone follows with bated breath.
"Culturally, too, the game is increasingly irrelevant. The average age of a person watching a baseball game on television is 57, and one shudders to think what the comparable figure is for radio broadcasts. Typical American 10-year-olds are as likely to recognize Jorge Soler, who was named the most valuable player of last year's World Series, as they are their local congressional representative."
And:
"In some parts of the country, participation in Little League has decreased by nearly 50 percent in the past decade and a half."
In other words, everything the boomers hold dear is fading in the rearview mirror. Everything that looked to be forever, bedrock, turns out not to be.
There's a generation gap. Which is hard for boomers to fathom, since they were the original ones who separated from their parents, and they insist they'll be hip until they die. They think since their kids call them every day on the cellphone, or text them, that they know what is going on. But they don't. Ask a boomer about the metaverse, crypto and NFTs and if they know what they are, they'll say how they're irrelevant junk, doomed to failure. But they are not. They may not look like they do today, just like Facebook eclipsed MySpace, but the underlying concept is valid, just like concerts in virtual worlds like Roblox are burgeoning.
Which brings us back to the music. Turns out very little of the classic rock canon is going to last. The Beatles, yes. But maybe not even the Rolling Stones. The work of the great songwriters, like Carole King...she, herself, may not be remembered, but her songs will.
Which brings us to today's music. Today there is a tsunami of product in every category. That's one of the things hurting mass, the concept is passé, everybody is in their own niche. Last night I heard Loverboy's "Workin' for the Weekend" over the grocery store PA. What are the odds today's music will play that role. "Working for the Weekend" is classic, it's forty years old, which of today's tracks will be universal in forty years? Almost none.
But institutions keep acting like the paradigm of the past is forever, while they continue to drop, one by one, just like the musicians of yore.
Did you see that Bobby Rydell died? That was a different era, music was entertainment, disposable, made for kids. Then the Beatles came along and wiped all those old acts from the map, suddenly music was taken seriously. If you're taking today's music seriously you have no sense of history and no sense of context. There are a lot of things more primary than music, like the war in Ukraine and politics, things that everybody has heard of and has an opinion on, whereas most of today's hit music has been heard by only a minority of the population.
There is revenue in small, but the money is always in big, in scale. But don't expect the people promoted through the ranks at record labels to understand this, and it's such an insider club that outsiders are reluctant to participate, they can make more money much easier in other fields.
Which brings us back to Leo Sayer.
Roger Daltrey's first solo album was comprised of covers of his tunes, written with David Courtney, who almost no readers know. But there were two tracks that Courtney wrote with Adam Faith. That was a selling point, Adam Faith's involvement in "Daltrey." I bet you boomers on this side of the pond might still recognize the name, but the credits have been lost to history.
It took a while for Leo Sayer to break in America. And it only happened when he broadened his sound, added humor, connected with the dance craze taking over the country. "Long Tall Glasses (I Can Dance)" was all over AM radio in 1974. Then again, anybody who truly loved music was listening to FM, almost exclusively. Ditto with 1976's "You Make Me Feel Like Dancing." Nobody listening to FM rock wanted to dance, at least not in platform shoes and a leisure suit, but that track went to number one in 1976. It was a moment in time, that quickly faded. But I remembered "One Man Band" and "Giving it all Away," so when I saw 1980's "Living in a Fantasy" in the promo bin, for either $1.99 or $2.49, I'd have to find the record, the sticker is still on it, promos weren't shrink-wrapped, I bought it. There was actually a hit on the record, a cover of Sonny Curtis and Jerry Allison's "More Than I Can Say," but it didn't drive album sales, because AM was about singles, FM was about albums, and AM play didn't sell albums.
But that's not what I remember about the "Living in a Fantasy" album. No, it's two songs, "Where Did we Go Wrong," and the title tune.
"You, you are my reason to live
You make me shine with all the love that you give
And when I think of you I keep driftin' away
Little by little I love you more every day"
And those might sound like bland, relatively predictable lyrics, but the acoustic guitar and emotional delivery add gravitas. But then comes the magic bridge:
"I lay in bed but I just can't sleep
I close my eyes and you're all that I see
I can't believe that it's happening to me"
Bridge? Some of today's hit records only have one chord, and believe me, they're not "Tomorrow Never Knows."
But Leo Sayer was not only a songwriter, in this case with the lost to the sands of time Alan Tarney, he was also a singer.
A singer is not someone with perfect pipes, although they might possess them, no, a singer is someone who can sell a song, someone who can wring the emotion in the lyrics, convince you that they mean what they're singing.
And the piece-de-resistance of "Living in a Fantasy" is the final section, a whole new melody, a heightened emotion, you can feel the desire in the words:
"Oh, you're too much, too soon, too strong
But I want drown in your touch
Don't keep me floating too long"
We've all felt this, it's the essence of being in love. A magic feeling that cannot be replicated anywhere else, something you live for. It fades, but the memory keeps the relationship going, however there are those addicted to it and keep bouncing from person to person, in love with being in love.
It's all there, in one song.
And I've spent much of my life living in a fantasy. Less now, today I'm much more integrated in society, credit the internet and a ton of psychotherapy. But I have not lost the ability to slip back into that old mode, all it takes is a song, not any song, only specific ones. They take me away, to a better place.
That's the essence of music, any music. And it's the upbeat songs that get us moving, but it's the contemplative serious ones that change our lives, that help us keep going.
I could square this with today's world, what's been gained and lost in the years. But to a degree it's a fool's errand, it makes oldsters feel good but youngsters don't care, and it's their world now.
And as we age will these stars of yore tour our condo communities?
Probably, at least those still alive. We boomers are fading into the sunset, you age and you realize it, and if you're fighting it you're delusional, it's the nature of life. Aging is freedom, you let go of so much b.s., and you also gain perspective, not that anybody wants to hear what you have to say, you're just moving down the conveyor belt of life and to those just beginning everything is brand new, they don't care about history, and then they slip down the line themselves.
But we didn't think this would happen.
We lived through something, that is being lost to the sands of time. Everybody says it's still the same, that the music is just as good, means the same to listeners, but that is patently untrue, that's just a way to rationalize their continued existence in this business. They're living in a fantasy.
But so am I.
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