Spotify playlist: http://bit.ly/3VMQy5l
The music meant more because the people who made it were inaccessible. Now you can reach your favorite artist on social media, or they can make you a birthday greeting on Cameo...is that still a thing? Used to be broke artists scrounged up cash off the radar screen, now they trade on their fame right in front of us.
So we were cruising down the 101 and Pure Prairie League's "Amie" came on. A fantastic song that I may have heard too much, but as I let it play the lyrics came alive in a way they never had before.
"I can see why you think you belong to me
I never tried to make you think or let you see
One thing for yourself
But now you're off with someone else and I'm alone
You see I thought that I might keep you for my own"
The sixties ushered in the era of free love, as a result of the birth control pill. But so many of the social mores didn't really change until the seventies. In the sixties, you might still get married out of college. By the seventies? You probably had multiple relationships before you settled down.
Like with Amie.
But he treated her badly and she moved on. This is something controlling men frequently cannot foresee. They think everything is copacetic, but that's just because their significant other is living in a box, wherein she cannot express a contrary opinion, cannot go out without giving you notice, and will then be questioned ad infinitum. And by time the ex moves on...she's been gone in her mind for a long time, it's just a matter of making the move, and despite the protestations of the man she's never coming back. People don't come back to controlling relationships after they've gained their freedom.
Once again, controlling people usually don't realize it. They control the other person to assuage their anxiety, but life is all about anxiety, nothing is solid except the ground under your feet, and sometimes that shakes.
So who was Amie? This had to be a real story. All these songs are. Which is another reason why oldsters have a hard time writing new material, their lives are not in flux, they're not busy figuring it out, constantly in different situations, they're settled.
And as I was listening to "Amie" I realized that they don't make records like this anymore. First and foremost, because today's music requires more edge, but also the economics were different. By time we hit the seventies, if you had a deal you made your album in a multitrack studio and had enough money and time to get the sound right. Almost no one is given that money today.
So the records were listened to were professional. To the point where when the Ramones came along, it was about undercutting the perfection of the years before.
But perfection carried on.
I also heard Pablo Cruise's "Watcha Gonna Do."
Now I came to love Pablo Cruise's "A Place in the Sun" because of its sync in "An Unmarried Woman," a Jill Clayburgh film that's been lost to the sands of time. She's gone, as is the filmmaker, Paul Mazursky. They don't make this kind of story anymore, but once upon a time...
Jill finds herself suddenly single in the apartment. And then the music starts to play and her mood completely changes, she starts to dance.
"Love always promises to last forever, but sometimes it just don't work out
'Cause laughing lighthearted tunes, oh, sometimes they turn to blues"
Ain't that the truth. And you have to find your place in the sun.
And I know people hate Pablo Cruise, and I was not a fan of their hit "Love Will Find a Way," but I found a promo copy of the "A Place in the Sun" album and I'd drop the needle...
"Everybody's heart needs a holiday sometime"
Yes, but then the album segues into "Watcha Gonna Do."
"Watcha gonna do when she says goodbye
Watcha gonna do when she is gone"
What are you gonna do?
"So you're having trouble with your romance
Well, you better check it out before it goes, yeah
'Cause you might not be seeing things just the way you should
And you don't recognize what everybody knows"
Hmm... Isn't this the same message as "Amie"?
And one thing is for sure, these Pablo Cruise cuts were not made on the cheap. You spent the bucks in the hope you'd get a ton of bucks in return.
All the big recording innovations had already taken place at warp speed in the sixties and early seventies. From mono to stereo to four track to eight track to sixteen to ultimately twenty four tracks.
Then it became about software, i.e. the music.
Like in tech. From 1995-2005, maybe 2010, it was an explosion of innovation. But in music, streaming won, and now it's a matter of the software once again, the music.
And I'm thinking of the billions of streams of "Blinding Lights." That's big, but not as big as the music used to be.
You can see Abel in a bad television series and movie. There's no mystery here. Kendrick Lamar boosted his career by talking about the private life of Drake. The whole world was backstage, but in the seventies going backstage was a near impossibility, and if you got there whatever happened was off the record, there were no smartphones recording video, it was a secret society and a secret life.
We were exposed on the radio. We bought records and went to see our favorite acts live.
And it wasn't entertainment, it was a religious experience. They were right there, on stage, playing your favorite tunes!
Ironically, all these years later so many of these same people are plying the boards, living in the past, and it's kind of creepy, but...
Back then if you were a listener, you were anonymous. You couldn't hate on people online. You had no belief you were equal to the stars, no way. And there was no bigger star than a musician, the biggest of whom wrote their own material, told their story, revealed their inner life and all you could do at home was listen, the backstory was mostly hidden. And therefore the stars were higher and the hoi polloi were lower.
We're never going back to that era, we can't.
But it was different.
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