There was no review in the newspaper.
I now track TV shows like I used to track record albums. I research and find out when they're going to be released. "Bosch" launched yesterday on Amazon Prime, but you wouldn't know it unless you're a fan, and you should be.
As I always say, distribution is king. If "Bosch" were on Showtime, it would be the talk of the town. It's not an HBO show, there's no deeper meaning, it's plot-driven only, but oh-the-cinematography! You watch and fall in love with a city you already live in. It's got the film noir look we haven't seen on the big screen since "L.A. Confidential," back when movies were America's foremost art form, when we tracked them and went to them.
But now...
If the newspapers want to survive they've got to get with the times. I'm turning the pages of the NYT seeing reviews of films I'll never go to see, that I won't remember when they ultimately hit the flat screen, meanwhile, television drives the culture. This disconnect between and art and commerce, art and publicity, is unfathomable to me, kind of like the new ESPN app...if you're not going to give everybody everything, don't play. You can't bunt in a world of home runs, and you must be willing to cannibalize your legacy business to protect your future.
So "Bosch" is a cop show. And I'm addicted, even though I've never read a single Michael Connelly book. Actually, I'm off genre tomes. Too often there's a twist at the end that is wholly unsatisfying. But the truth is America lives for story, and those who deliver it succeed.
The star is Titus Welliver. Whom I did not know. Now you're gonna tell me he was on "Lost" and "Sons of Anarchy" but I never watched those, I don't watch much TV, still don't, but health problems got me searching and I love escaping into the story, there's a way filmed entertainment (digital video) allows you let go of your troubles and releases you into a new world that is wholly satisfying. This is what I loved about going to the movies. You sat there during "Chinatown" and were engrossed in a fictional story that became real for two hours. In a world with too many distractions, this is incredibly fulfilling.
And at first you don't get Titus. I guess we're used to more suave cops, spies, people larger than life. But as the series progresses you can't imagine anybody else in the role. He comes across as a loner. A man of principles without being too self-righteous.
As for his ex-wife...
She blows like the wind. We know people like this, who are pulled by their desires. And in the new season when she's playing poker at night and looks haggard, she looks real, and I'm all for truth in my viewing.
I remember Amy Aquino as Melanie Griffith's secretary in "Working Girl," a tiny role. She's great here, as a lesbian lieutenant with an edge yet a heart.
And there are people of color.
It looks like L.A.
And it's not shot on the uppity westside, nor the transient Hollywood, but downtown. Angels Flight, the Bradbury Building.
Everything's kind of yellow, kind of twilight, deep in meaning, you're drawn in.
Now the TV shows that get publicity unfold over months, the HBO syndrome. But that's unsatisfying. It'd be like having "Sgt. Pepper" dripped track by track whereas when it was released you sat at home, alone, and played it over and over again until it revealed itself and you knew it by heart.
I feel like we're the only people watching "Bosch," but that makes the experience even more satisfying. We can own it, and spread the word as we enter the world. Seemingly everybody's got Amazon Prime, do they know this series is on?
I doubt it.
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Saturday, 14 April 2018
Friday, 13 April 2018
2018
I made a mistake at Rite-Aid. I bought three ESCs instead of three WRWs.
"What are you talking about?"
I could be the last person on earth still wearing hard contact lenses. I know, I know, I should have gotten with the program and had my eyes done, gone under the knife, but the problem there, in addition to possibly less than perfect results, is that if you're aged, you still need reading glasses, so what's the point? Oh, that's right, you could only have one eye done and then if you're nearsighted, like I am, it would all work, as a matter of fact you can get one contact for distance and one for reading and supposedly your brain adjusts, but my doctor said if you read a lot, don't, and I'm reading all day.
And speaking of quality, the truth is hard contacts give you much better vision than soft. But most people are pussies and cannot handle the pain. Whereas we He-Men of the Universe, inoculated back in the sixties, are used to having boulders in our eyes and can tolerate anything, hell, I wore two right lenses for two years, you see I was going to an exam and it was way early and I put one contact on top of the other and lost one in the extraction process and didn't know which was which and I had to order one via mail, being far from Connecticut in the wilderness of Vermont, and I guessed wrong. And when I asked the ophthalmologist to check the two years later, he said it was impossible, that I'd know, but I didn't, and I was right.
And the truth is no one really wears hard contacts anymore, you wear GAS PERMEABLES, which are a true breakthrough, because then your eye doesn't conform as much to the lens itself, you see air passes through and I can see great but...
I've got this thing in one eye, it only happens in one eye, where there's some kind of allergy that clouds the lens. And the traditional solution, now known as Boston, even though way back when I was addicted to the pink bottles of Barnes-Hind, just isn't strong enough to clean the lenses, or in this case lens, because, as I just stated, it only occurs in one eye.
This is when my genius doctor put me on Lobob, which I used to laugh at in the aisle of the drugstore, whenever I'd see it, which was rare. Lobob had amateurish packaging, it looked like it was cooked up in someone's garage, but now they've got state of the art design, never underestimate logos and artwork, they make a difference, can you say STEVE JOBS?, and Lobob Optimum works great, because it's so damn STRONG!
I know you don't care, but if you do, you can take a peek at their page here: https://www.loboblabs.com And if you do, you'll find there are three necessary packages, CDS for soaking, WRW for wetting and rewetting, and the hot sauce of contact lens solutions, ESC, the EXTRA STRENGTH CLEANER! You're only supposed to use it once a week, but with my allergy I need to use it every day, and it solves the problem, but a little dab'll do ya, and like I said, I made a mistake, I thought I was picking up WRW, which one goes through regularly, and I bought three packages of ESC, and one lasts nearly a year.
Now I could have returned them, if I still had the receipt, but come on, my time is worth something so I didn't and then last night I decided to do the calculation, whether my bottles were gonna expire before I used them.
So I looked for the expiration date and saw it was 2020!
Not like the TV show, not like Barbara Walters, but as in twenty years after the millennium, HOW DID WE GET HERE?
Talk to a boomer and you'll find that he or she was always calculating what age they'd be in the year 2000. But we're past that. And we haven't decided how to label the new era ever since.
Now, occasionally, people talk about 2000-2009 as the aughts, but during the period almost no one did.
And now that the teens are almost over, I've still never ever heard a single person refer to this decade as such, even though when I was growing up we referred to the period from 1910-1919 as the teens. Are we waiting for the twenties, as in ROARING?
Meanwhile, time keeps marching on.
So I'm sitting on a couch on Easter Sunday and we're trading customs stories. And the dentist tells us he was busted twenty five years ago, and I realized that was 1993! That seems like YESTERDAY! But it's twenty five years ago.
I remember the teenager, the high school student who lived with her mother across the walkway from my sister on Dorothy Street when I first moved to L.A., she was 16, oh-so-young. But thinking about it now, I realize today she's 59!!! Eeegads! The teen stars of the eighties, they're entering menopause. Meanwhile, they keep making new people. They're just shoving the rest of us down the moving sidewalk of life, until we fall off the end.
And we don't believe it, but we're confronted with it. Reach 65 and you feel like you want to retire, because everybody else is, and the game of life is now so much less interesting, you've figured it out, realize nothing's gonna last so you might as well have a good time, assuming you've got your health and some cash, which not that many have, at least not both.
So some take social security early. I'm never gonna do that, I don't want to outlive my money, some friends of my parents did this, they ended up with a reverse mortgage, depending upon their kids, it's ugly. So do you live for today or live for tomorrow? Do you spend or save?
Meanwhile, no one is stopping the train to ask these questions. The institutions just keep rolling on. Don't we need a committee to get us all to agree to call this decade the teens? Then again, we couldn't get everybody to agree to the metric system, which is quite a fail. You're in a foreign country looking at the speedometer, freaking out, and then you realize it's in kilometers. As for Celsius, go to Canada enough and you learn you double it and add thirty two, but in a nation where people can't even name their Representative I doubt they can fathom that, and in the era of calculators no one can do math in their head anyway.
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"What are you talking about?"
I could be the last person on earth still wearing hard contact lenses. I know, I know, I should have gotten with the program and had my eyes done, gone under the knife, but the problem there, in addition to possibly less than perfect results, is that if you're aged, you still need reading glasses, so what's the point? Oh, that's right, you could only have one eye done and then if you're nearsighted, like I am, it would all work, as a matter of fact you can get one contact for distance and one for reading and supposedly your brain adjusts, but my doctor said if you read a lot, don't, and I'm reading all day.
And speaking of quality, the truth is hard contacts give you much better vision than soft. But most people are pussies and cannot handle the pain. Whereas we He-Men of the Universe, inoculated back in the sixties, are used to having boulders in our eyes and can tolerate anything, hell, I wore two right lenses for two years, you see I was going to an exam and it was way early and I put one contact on top of the other and lost one in the extraction process and didn't know which was which and I had to order one via mail, being far from Connecticut in the wilderness of Vermont, and I guessed wrong. And when I asked the ophthalmologist to check the two years later, he said it was impossible, that I'd know, but I didn't, and I was right.
And the truth is no one really wears hard contacts anymore, you wear GAS PERMEABLES, which are a true breakthrough, because then your eye doesn't conform as much to the lens itself, you see air passes through and I can see great but...
I've got this thing in one eye, it only happens in one eye, where there's some kind of allergy that clouds the lens. And the traditional solution, now known as Boston, even though way back when I was addicted to the pink bottles of Barnes-Hind, just isn't strong enough to clean the lenses, or in this case lens, because, as I just stated, it only occurs in one eye.
This is when my genius doctor put me on Lobob, which I used to laugh at in the aisle of the drugstore, whenever I'd see it, which was rare. Lobob had amateurish packaging, it looked like it was cooked up in someone's garage, but now they've got state of the art design, never underestimate logos and artwork, they make a difference, can you say STEVE JOBS?, and Lobob Optimum works great, because it's so damn STRONG!
I know you don't care, but if you do, you can take a peek at their page here: https://www.loboblabs.com And if you do, you'll find there are three necessary packages, CDS for soaking, WRW for wetting and rewetting, and the hot sauce of contact lens solutions, ESC, the EXTRA STRENGTH CLEANER! You're only supposed to use it once a week, but with my allergy I need to use it every day, and it solves the problem, but a little dab'll do ya, and like I said, I made a mistake, I thought I was picking up WRW, which one goes through regularly, and I bought three packages of ESC, and one lasts nearly a year.
Now I could have returned them, if I still had the receipt, but come on, my time is worth something so I didn't and then last night I decided to do the calculation, whether my bottles were gonna expire before I used them.
So I looked for the expiration date and saw it was 2020!
Not like the TV show, not like Barbara Walters, but as in twenty years after the millennium, HOW DID WE GET HERE?
Talk to a boomer and you'll find that he or she was always calculating what age they'd be in the year 2000. But we're past that. And we haven't decided how to label the new era ever since.
Now, occasionally, people talk about 2000-2009 as the aughts, but during the period almost no one did.
And now that the teens are almost over, I've still never ever heard a single person refer to this decade as such, even though when I was growing up we referred to the period from 1910-1919 as the teens. Are we waiting for the twenties, as in ROARING?
Meanwhile, time keeps marching on.
So I'm sitting on a couch on Easter Sunday and we're trading customs stories. And the dentist tells us he was busted twenty five years ago, and I realized that was 1993! That seems like YESTERDAY! But it's twenty five years ago.
I remember the teenager, the high school student who lived with her mother across the walkway from my sister on Dorothy Street when I first moved to L.A., she was 16, oh-so-young. But thinking about it now, I realize today she's 59!!! Eeegads! The teen stars of the eighties, they're entering menopause. Meanwhile, they keep making new people. They're just shoving the rest of us down the moving sidewalk of life, until we fall off the end.
And we don't believe it, but we're confronted with it. Reach 65 and you feel like you want to retire, because everybody else is, and the game of life is now so much less interesting, you've figured it out, realize nothing's gonna last so you might as well have a good time, assuming you've got your health and some cash, which not that many have, at least not both.
So some take social security early. I'm never gonna do that, I don't want to outlive my money, some friends of my parents did this, they ended up with a reverse mortgage, depending upon their kids, it's ugly. So do you live for today or live for tomorrow? Do you spend or save?
Meanwhile, no one is stopping the train to ask these questions. The institutions just keep rolling on. Don't we need a committee to get us all to agree to call this decade the teens? Then again, we couldn't get everybody to agree to the metric system, which is quite a fail. You're in a foreign country looking at the speedometer, freaking out, and then you realize it's in kilometers. As for Celsius, go to Canada enough and you learn you double it and add thirty two, but in a nation where people can't even name their Representative I doubt they can fathom that, and in the era of calculators no one can do math in their head anyway.
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You're Missing The Point!!
My inbox is filling up with people who don't like Three Days Grace's "The Mountain." I DON'T CARE! THAT WAS NOT WHY I WROTE ABOUT IT! I was making a business point, but these writers are too invested in their own opinions to see the forest for the trees, it's why despite believing they know everything they're never gonna triumph in this business, most will be fans dying for backstage access as they boast to their friends with their so-called info no one cares about.
Welcome to the modern era, where those over thirty still think they're living in the old. Hell, they think people really want to listen to vinyl, NO, IT'S A FETISH! Come on, you're listening to albums recorded digitally reproduced analog? What next, an electric car that runs on gas? This is why I deplore the educational system, preparing people for careers, they don't know how to THINK!
Like my piece delineating Zuckerberg's triumphant performance in the Senate. Hell, the stock went up, but you hate him and his company so much you can't put that aside and evaluate his appearance. Better yet, you didn't even watch, you relied on the scuttlebutt, and he or she without information loses in the end. Want to win, pay attention, read. You think you're winning by posting to social media, spreading your inanity, but the truth is one capture of the zeitgeist based on hard work will send you to the top of the chart.
If the chart means anything anymore.
Are you getting this?
Every week "Billboard" publishes a chart that blends sales and streams and the somnambulant press puppets it as if it counted. No, it only matters if someone listens. Did you check the decline of sales? Through the floor my friend. And sales don't necessarily indicate demand. As I write this, Elton John's "Revamp" is #11 on iTunes. Wow, it looks like a success. But then we go to Spotify and find out only two songs have broken a million plays, when there are tracks from albums not even on the iTunes chart that have a huge multiple of this. Hell, the hitmakers of today don't even RELEASE albums! But you're invested in them, despite TV series eclipsing movies. What did Marshall McLuhan say, THE MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE? So rappers are playing with the form, putting out mixtapes, and the oldsters decrying Spotify are playing by the same old rules, to their detriment. That's right, streaming is where the money is. Do you want to go broke? Are you a Civil War re-enactor too?
My point was we live in a cacophonous society where only the Spotify Top 50 gets traction and everything else is forgotten. That despite triumphing in its own little niche, there's no way to cross over. Which is way different from the seventies when AOR tracks crossed over to Top Forty and the MTV era when if a video got airplay the act was huge and if it didn't it was toast, when Top 40 followed MTV's lead and killed AOR.
So you think you're winning by decrying "The Mountain." You'd rather promote your own little video with only three digits of views, with streams on Spotify less than 1000, where they don't even show them. Don't you get it, THE JOKE IS ON YOU! The game is rigged, you can't triumph even if you're any good, and you're not!
The audience can't find you.
That was my point. How do we make the audience aware of genres other than hip-hop/rap? This is the big question.
But you're caught down in the weeds so busy judging not realizing that pastime is passe. In a limited universe it was cool to put down what others were listening to, but now with an almost unlimited amount of music no one is paying attention to your judgments, they've got no time and are liking what they like and they'd like new stuff, but they just can't find it.
Because the major labels are brain dead. They just want to follow the trends. But it's never been this bad, there's never been only ONE trend!
And they want it all and they want it now. And the fastest way there is via radio, an ancient exposure medium if there ever was one. Radio in an on demand world is like joining a record club and waiting for mail delivery. Oh, that's right, the record clubs CRASHED! Time moves on, the future comes.
And the future won't look like today. Other genres will make inroads. First and foremost if there's innovation, envelope pushing.
But think how big the music business would be if other genres got traction. Forget recording revenue, think about the ticket sales at live shows. We're leaving so much money on the table it's not funny. So many people hate the Spotify Top 50, but they don't know where to go to find something else.
Once again, the industry is punting on this, which means someone external will fill the vacuum, and everybody will hate them in the process. Smart people participate in change. But you'd rather bitch that your personal favorite is not a hit. HOW COULD IT BE?
That's my point here. How do we elevate something else?
But you feel superior, sitting at home believing Bob Lefsetz's taste sucks.
I don't care what you think.
AND NEITHER DOES ANYBODY ELSE!
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Welcome to the modern era, where those over thirty still think they're living in the old. Hell, they think people really want to listen to vinyl, NO, IT'S A FETISH! Come on, you're listening to albums recorded digitally reproduced analog? What next, an electric car that runs on gas? This is why I deplore the educational system, preparing people for careers, they don't know how to THINK!
Like my piece delineating Zuckerberg's triumphant performance in the Senate. Hell, the stock went up, but you hate him and his company so much you can't put that aside and evaluate his appearance. Better yet, you didn't even watch, you relied on the scuttlebutt, and he or she without information loses in the end. Want to win, pay attention, read. You think you're winning by posting to social media, spreading your inanity, but the truth is one capture of the zeitgeist based on hard work will send you to the top of the chart.
If the chart means anything anymore.
Are you getting this?
Every week "Billboard" publishes a chart that blends sales and streams and the somnambulant press puppets it as if it counted. No, it only matters if someone listens. Did you check the decline of sales? Through the floor my friend. And sales don't necessarily indicate demand. As I write this, Elton John's "Revamp" is #11 on iTunes. Wow, it looks like a success. But then we go to Spotify and find out only two songs have broken a million plays, when there are tracks from albums not even on the iTunes chart that have a huge multiple of this. Hell, the hitmakers of today don't even RELEASE albums! But you're invested in them, despite TV series eclipsing movies. What did Marshall McLuhan say, THE MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE? So rappers are playing with the form, putting out mixtapes, and the oldsters decrying Spotify are playing by the same old rules, to their detriment. That's right, streaming is where the money is. Do you want to go broke? Are you a Civil War re-enactor too?
My point was we live in a cacophonous society where only the Spotify Top 50 gets traction and everything else is forgotten. That despite triumphing in its own little niche, there's no way to cross over. Which is way different from the seventies when AOR tracks crossed over to Top Forty and the MTV era when if a video got airplay the act was huge and if it didn't it was toast, when Top 40 followed MTV's lead and killed AOR.
So you think you're winning by decrying "The Mountain." You'd rather promote your own little video with only three digits of views, with streams on Spotify less than 1000, where they don't even show them. Don't you get it, THE JOKE IS ON YOU! The game is rigged, you can't triumph even if you're any good, and you're not!
The audience can't find you.
That was my point. How do we make the audience aware of genres other than hip-hop/rap? This is the big question.
But you're caught down in the weeds so busy judging not realizing that pastime is passe. In a limited universe it was cool to put down what others were listening to, but now with an almost unlimited amount of music no one is paying attention to your judgments, they've got no time and are liking what they like and they'd like new stuff, but they just can't find it.
Because the major labels are brain dead. They just want to follow the trends. But it's never been this bad, there's never been only ONE trend!
And they want it all and they want it now. And the fastest way there is via radio, an ancient exposure medium if there ever was one. Radio in an on demand world is like joining a record club and waiting for mail delivery. Oh, that's right, the record clubs CRASHED! Time moves on, the future comes.
And the future won't look like today. Other genres will make inroads. First and foremost if there's innovation, envelope pushing.
But think how big the music business would be if other genres got traction. Forget recording revenue, think about the ticket sales at live shows. We're leaving so much money on the table it's not funny. So many people hate the Spotify Top 50, but they don't know where to go to find something else.
Once again, the industry is punting on this, which means someone external will fill the vacuum, and everybody will hate them in the process. Smart people participate in change. But you'd rather bitch that your personal favorite is not a hit. HOW COULD IT BE?
That's my point here. How do we elevate something else?
But you feel superior, sitting at home believing Bob Lefsetz's taste sucks.
I don't care what you think.
AND NEITHER DOES ANYBODY ELSE!
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Thursday, 12 April 2018
The Mountain
Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2JGkidX
YouTube: https://bit.ly/2DFntPP
If this was 1985 this would be all over MTV, a Top Ten record. As it is, it's number one in the radio backwater known as Active Rock. Now we've heard forever there's no more artist development, but what do we say about Three Days Grace topping the chart on its sixth album fifteen years in?
Now I'm not gonna sit here and say this is an advancement of the form, something brand new, but if you like this music at all, it's more than palatable, hear it twice and you could listen to it all day, as you sit in your car mashing the gas pedal, angry at the world, feeling powerful, wasn't that the essence of hard rock?
Now Active Rock is not as bad as AAA, where the Decemberists are triumphing with the synth-heavy and not quite as magic "Severed," with almost zero impact outside the format, meanwhile all we can read about in the mainstream media is endless articles about the mediocre Elton John tribute LPs that no one cares about...you know how I know, no one is streaming them, even though if you wade through the LPs you'll discover the rendition of "Border Song" by Willie Nelson is quite good.
But our entire method of music distribution/exposure is broken and the industry ain't doing a single thing about it.
This is how it works, tracks break first on streaming services, as a result of online buzz. And then radio comes later, but radio is easier to manipulate, so the majors focus all their effort there, even though it's oftentimes MONTHS behind streaming services and leaves so much out, there's really no such thing as Top Forty, just an urban/hip-hop/rap format and country and a bunch of niches, there's no cross-pollination, and unless you're deep into a specific format you're overwhelmed and tuning out, going to see the aged acts in the amphitheatre or enduring the endless smorgasbord at the festival, where it's more about you than anybody on stage. Radio is fading, but very slowly. Meanwhile, the only format with real penetration online is urban/hip-hop/rap, giving one the impression that's the only one that counts, but the rest are victims of abuse, of underpromotion, of lack of recognition.
"Every day I'm just surviving
Keep climbing the mountain"
Ain't that modern life. Whilst the "artists" in the Spotify Top 50 get TMZ play, we know all about their shenanigans, if you're not privileged to be in the spotlight you're just hunkering down and working, like your audience.
"Even when I feel like dying
Keep climbing the mountain"
And certainly these are not revolutionary lyrics, but they're new to the audience, which keeps replenishing itself.
But then, nearly sotto voce, we get the lyrics...
"The higher I go the harder I fall
So I don't look down, I don't look back at all
And when I wish it all would turn black
I try to see the light and push the darkness back"
This is akin to the message Katy Perry sells, but to a dedicated audience, hard rock acts are not flavor of the moment, their fans are invested.
And then they modulate up and..
"Every time I think I'm over it
I wake up in the bottom of it all again
I'm still surviving
I keep climbing, I keep climbing
The mountain"
And now it feels like sex, when you're in the moment, when you can feel orgasm coming, when everything else in your mind, all the detritus, is swept away and you can only focus on the destination, the momentary nirvana, ain't that what life is all about, the little peaks, that keep you going?
Like your favorite song, played over and over again. Assuming you can find it.
Enough about Pandora, enough about playlists, those are for background listeners, those not needing the injection of music to stay alive. But the truly passionate, who remember when music drove the culture, they want to be exposed.
Now "The Mountain" has got some traction on Spotify, it's got five and a half million streams, the official video on YouTube has got 12+ million views, whereas the #1 Top Forty cut, the Zedd/Maren Morris/Grey track "The Middle," has got 206+ MILLION streams on Spotify and the lyric video has 58+ million views on YouTube and the official video 25 million! Is the Zedd/Maren Morris/Grey track TEN times better than "The Mountain"? NO! It might be a more modern song, but it's even more of a trifle, something you can enjoy and instantly forget. My point being that more people would like "The Mountain" if they just heard it. As for the Decemberists' "Severed," even though it's number one in its format, it doesn't even have 2 million streams on Spotify, and the video has a paltry 683,140 views on YouTube.
This problem cannot be solved by mainstream media, it keeps promoting the usual suspects to less and less success, as well as nobodies going nowhere, which just muddies the water.
And you can't blame Spotify, the fact that their charts are not manipulated is great, why Apple won't be transparent is beyond me, we live in a fact-based society, at least online if not in D.C.
And radio is like your aged uncle living in a bygone era never coming back.
"When I'm lost and want to fade away"
I used to listen to records to get me through, they spoke to my soul, but now hit music is shooting for something else, it's not playing to the audience so much as navigating some gauntlet with riches at the end that few can identify with, meanwhile the riches get other nitwits to follow in their steps when the truth is music is the elixir of life, it's what keeps you living to die another day.
We've got to climb the mountain. It's like we fought piracy and argued over progress so long that we can't clean up our own house now that we've arrived at the destination, where streaming has won and if you're played you get paid.
If only the powers-that-be made it all just a bit more comprehensible.
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If this was 1985 this would be all over MTV, a Top Ten record. As it is, it's number one in the radio backwater known as Active Rock. Now we've heard forever there's no more artist development, but what do we say about Three Days Grace topping the chart on its sixth album fifteen years in?
Now I'm not gonna sit here and say this is an advancement of the form, something brand new, but if you like this music at all, it's more than palatable, hear it twice and you could listen to it all day, as you sit in your car mashing the gas pedal, angry at the world, feeling powerful, wasn't that the essence of hard rock?
Now Active Rock is not as bad as AAA, where the Decemberists are triumphing with the synth-heavy and not quite as magic "Severed," with almost zero impact outside the format, meanwhile all we can read about in the mainstream media is endless articles about the mediocre Elton John tribute LPs that no one cares about...you know how I know, no one is streaming them, even though if you wade through the LPs you'll discover the rendition of "Border Song" by Willie Nelson is quite good.
But our entire method of music distribution/exposure is broken and the industry ain't doing a single thing about it.
This is how it works, tracks break first on streaming services, as a result of online buzz. And then radio comes later, but radio is easier to manipulate, so the majors focus all their effort there, even though it's oftentimes MONTHS behind streaming services and leaves so much out, there's really no such thing as Top Forty, just an urban/hip-hop/rap format and country and a bunch of niches, there's no cross-pollination, and unless you're deep into a specific format you're overwhelmed and tuning out, going to see the aged acts in the amphitheatre or enduring the endless smorgasbord at the festival, where it's more about you than anybody on stage. Radio is fading, but very slowly. Meanwhile, the only format with real penetration online is urban/hip-hop/rap, giving one the impression that's the only one that counts, but the rest are victims of abuse, of underpromotion, of lack of recognition.
"Every day I'm just surviving
Keep climbing the mountain"
Ain't that modern life. Whilst the "artists" in the Spotify Top 50 get TMZ play, we know all about their shenanigans, if you're not privileged to be in the spotlight you're just hunkering down and working, like your audience.
"Even when I feel like dying
Keep climbing the mountain"
And certainly these are not revolutionary lyrics, but they're new to the audience, which keeps replenishing itself.
But then, nearly sotto voce, we get the lyrics...
"The higher I go the harder I fall
So I don't look down, I don't look back at all
And when I wish it all would turn black
I try to see the light and push the darkness back"
This is akin to the message Katy Perry sells, but to a dedicated audience, hard rock acts are not flavor of the moment, their fans are invested.
And then they modulate up and..
"Every time I think I'm over it
I wake up in the bottom of it all again
I'm still surviving
I keep climbing, I keep climbing
The mountain"
And now it feels like sex, when you're in the moment, when you can feel orgasm coming, when everything else in your mind, all the detritus, is swept away and you can only focus on the destination, the momentary nirvana, ain't that what life is all about, the little peaks, that keep you going?
Like your favorite song, played over and over again. Assuming you can find it.
Enough about Pandora, enough about playlists, those are for background listeners, those not needing the injection of music to stay alive. But the truly passionate, who remember when music drove the culture, they want to be exposed.
Now "The Mountain" has got some traction on Spotify, it's got five and a half million streams, the official video on YouTube has got 12+ million views, whereas the #1 Top Forty cut, the Zedd/Maren Morris/Grey track "The Middle," has got 206+ MILLION streams on Spotify and the lyric video has 58+ million views on YouTube and the official video 25 million! Is the Zedd/Maren Morris/Grey track TEN times better than "The Mountain"? NO! It might be a more modern song, but it's even more of a trifle, something you can enjoy and instantly forget. My point being that more people would like "The Mountain" if they just heard it. As for the Decemberists' "Severed," even though it's number one in its format, it doesn't even have 2 million streams on Spotify, and the video has a paltry 683,140 views on YouTube.
This problem cannot be solved by mainstream media, it keeps promoting the usual suspects to less and less success, as well as nobodies going nowhere, which just muddies the water.
And you can't blame Spotify, the fact that their charts are not manipulated is great, why Apple won't be transparent is beyond me, we live in a fact-based society, at least online if not in D.C.
And radio is like your aged uncle living in a bygone era never coming back.
"When I'm lost and want to fade away"
I used to listen to records to get me through, they spoke to my soul, but now hit music is shooting for something else, it's not playing to the audience so much as navigating some gauntlet with riches at the end that few can identify with, meanwhile the riches get other nitwits to follow in their steps when the truth is music is the elixir of life, it's what keeps you living to die another day.
We've got to climb the mountain. It's like we fought piracy and argued over progress so long that we can't clean up our own house now that we've arrived at the destination, where streaming has won and if you're played you get paid.
If only the powers-that-be made it all just a bit more comprehensible.
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Better Call Saul
Sometimes things don't work out.
I can't watch TV once a week anymore. Can't make an appointment, can't set the DVR, can't even fast-forward through the commercials. I know, I know, there are some great shows on network and cable, but I don't watch them, they don't fit my schedule, which is overbooked, but there are times I want to go deep and I fire up Netflix and go for a marathon.
I was late to "Breaking Bad," I've already acknowledged that. And to tell you the truth, I'm late to "Better Call Saul." But after finishing "Breaking Bad" I fired it up on Netflix and watched two seasons and stopped there. The new episodes weren't even on On Demand on my Spectrum system, and I certainly wasn't going to buy them. Ownership is passe. Whenever you hear about someone building a collection, tune them out. They're inured to the old ways. They believe a person is judged by what they possess. Then again, the future is so confounding, I get why people cling to the past. But the past is history.
And in the past I was addicted to the movies. I can't say I was addicted to television, my mother wouldn't let us watch during the day, we had to go out and play. And we couldn't watch at night without finishing our homework first and she judged what we watched to boot, she didn't stop giving me a hard time about "My Mother The Car," but when you're young and impressionable, everything hits your funny bone.
But my mother got deep into the movies in the late sixties and there was unlimited money if you wanted to go to the flicks. It wasn't seen as escapism, but character building. These were the humanities that are pooh-poohed today. But math and science won't tell you how people feel.
And I felt lonely and misunderstood but when the theatre darkened and the image came up...I was whole.
Almost didn't matter what was on screen, it was about the experience.
But then there were some greats. Like "The Godfather." Which I saw at an 11 PM screening at the new multiplex in Orange. I didn't know there'd been lines, it had opened weeks before, I was in college, experiencing a media blackout, there was no television other than one snowy network channel, no DVDs, one movie theatre and...
When I got back to Connecticut I went to the movies every night. Literally. It was part of my schedule, I caught up. I'm a completist. That's what I hate about media today, you can't grasp it, you can't see all of it, you don't know what's going on, nobody knows what's going on, we're all living in our little verticals being sold a bill of goods.
And I stopped reading reviews. Because the writers believe their essence is to reveal all the plot lines and then judge them. I want it to be fresh, and unexpected, and I almost never see a movie twice, just like Pauline Kael, that's not the experience I'm looking for, and there's so much I haven't seen, so much you haven't seen, and especially now that the moving image is not scarce.
So I marinate in the story. I fall in love with the characters. I think if I can just concentrate and bond with the flick, my life will work out. Kinda like with music, but music's different, film is about story, music is about life. When you get the right record it penetrates you in some bizarre way to the point where you think if you ever met the person who made it not only would you fit in, all your problems would be solved. But this was back when musicians admitted to having problems.
Like Jimmy McGill.
I read that the third season of "Better Call Saul" was finally on Netflix. I'd read that it was one of the best shows of last year. And to tell you the truth, you've got to get into the rhythm of Vince Gilligan. It's slow, and sometimes there's no buildup, no peak, but it's the little things in between that make all the difference.
And when Jimmy, spoiler alert!, loses his license to practice law...
Nothing works out.
I know people who read self-help books. Please stop. You can't learn lessons from somebody else because you're not them, your only hope is to be you. And our entire society is based on winners when the truth is we all lose, each and every one of us, some constantly, some unexpectedly, some are their own worst enemies, but it'll happen to you, I guarantee.
Sure, it looks like some get the breaks, but then they don't make partner, they get squeezed out, their spouse leaves them, their kids have physical or mental problems, no one escapes, and this is what we look for in art, a vibration, a connection, we need to recognize ourselves, no lesson is necessary.
But we keep being told we're inadequate.
Have you ever tried to get a job and been unable to?
I certainly have.
My driver in Rio sent 130 resumes, he didn't even get a response.
You think everybody's got it easy, that if you jump through enough hoops the gates open. And maybe that's true, but it never happened for me.
And now I don't see myself on the silver screen. Everybody's more fabulous, or much worse, or a superhero. No one is broke down and busted on the side of the road wondering how they'll go forward, even though they eventually do.
And what exactly is the relationship with Jimmy and Kim? Are they friends with benefits or more than that? And how come they can't pool their money?
And you've got to serve somebody, every does, that's what Bob Dylan told us, and Nacho is under the thumb of Salamanca, and he can't say no.
That's modern life. I run mine differently, to my detriment. Everybody thinks I have stock in Spotify, that I'm paid by them, but then how could I be trusted? Sure, maybe you don't trust me anyway, especially in a world where everybody's sold out.
Except the artist. The artist must be free.
But our world is one of favors. And if you take one, you've got to give one. That's the essence of the #MeToo movement, it's not just a boys' club, no one wants to blow the whistle on their boss, because not only will the boss fire them, will his hand-picked board defend him, but none of your coworkers will fall in line behind you. The artist always walks alone, never forget it.
So I can't handle the frustration of getting hooked and waiting a week. Especially in our on demand culture. I'd rather not watch at all. But if you give me all the episodes at once, I want to dig down deep, turn out the lights and watch.
And movies aren't long enough, even though they think you're paying by the minute, like musicians they need to fill up the CD, keep us sitting there for two plus hours.
But television can go on forever, except when it doesn't. They stop in the U.K., if it's making money over here it continues, even though the kids have beards and babies and the thrill is long gone.
I've been to Albuquerque. I've known people who've dealt drugs.
But "Better Call Saul" is really about the personal relationships, brothers who can't get along and big swinging dicks who are suddenly challenged and the truth is we live in a society where unless you're working by the hour, for a wage, on a contract, everybody's duplicitous, shaving points, working the edges. Come on, believe me. When you go to buy a car they want to sell you one that's there, and they want you to pay as much as possible. Everybody's a mark, now more than ever, when life is tough and you need a lot to get by.
And sure, there's humor in this series. And revenge too. Just like life, it's not one long flat line. But you return to the norm. Just when things are flying high they crash, it's the human condition.
And it's in "Better Call Saul."
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I can't watch TV once a week anymore. Can't make an appointment, can't set the DVR, can't even fast-forward through the commercials. I know, I know, there are some great shows on network and cable, but I don't watch them, they don't fit my schedule, which is overbooked, but there are times I want to go deep and I fire up Netflix and go for a marathon.
I was late to "Breaking Bad," I've already acknowledged that. And to tell you the truth, I'm late to "Better Call Saul." But after finishing "Breaking Bad" I fired it up on Netflix and watched two seasons and stopped there. The new episodes weren't even on On Demand on my Spectrum system, and I certainly wasn't going to buy them. Ownership is passe. Whenever you hear about someone building a collection, tune them out. They're inured to the old ways. They believe a person is judged by what they possess. Then again, the future is so confounding, I get why people cling to the past. But the past is history.
And in the past I was addicted to the movies. I can't say I was addicted to television, my mother wouldn't let us watch during the day, we had to go out and play. And we couldn't watch at night without finishing our homework first and she judged what we watched to boot, she didn't stop giving me a hard time about "My Mother The Car," but when you're young and impressionable, everything hits your funny bone.
But my mother got deep into the movies in the late sixties and there was unlimited money if you wanted to go to the flicks. It wasn't seen as escapism, but character building. These were the humanities that are pooh-poohed today. But math and science won't tell you how people feel.
And I felt lonely and misunderstood but when the theatre darkened and the image came up...I was whole.
Almost didn't matter what was on screen, it was about the experience.
But then there were some greats. Like "The Godfather." Which I saw at an 11 PM screening at the new multiplex in Orange. I didn't know there'd been lines, it had opened weeks before, I was in college, experiencing a media blackout, there was no television other than one snowy network channel, no DVDs, one movie theatre and...
When I got back to Connecticut I went to the movies every night. Literally. It was part of my schedule, I caught up. I'm a completist. That's what I hate about media today, you can't grasp it, you can't see all of it, you don't know what's going on, nobody knows what's going on, we're all living in our little verticals being sold a bill of goods.
And I stopped reading reviews. Because the writers believe their essence is to reveal all the plot lines and then judge them. I want it to be fresh, and unexpected, and I almost never see a movie twice, just like Pauline Kael, that's not the experience I'm looking for, and there's so much I haven't seen, so much you haven't seen, and especially now that the moving image is not scarce.
So I marinate in the story. I fall in love with the characters. I think if I can just concentrate and bond with the flick, my life will work out. Kinda like with music, but music's different, film is about story, music is about life. When you get the right record it penetrates you in some bizarre way to the point where you think if you ever met the person who made it not only would you fit in, all your problems would be solved. But this was back when musicians admitted to having problems.
Like Jimmy McGill.
I read that the third season of "Better Call Saul" was finally on Netflix. I'd read that it was one of the best shows of last year. And to tell you the truth, you've got to get into the rhythm of Vince Gilligan. It's slow, and sometimes there's no buildup, no peak, but it's the little things in between that make all the difference.
And when Jimmy, spoiler alert!, loses his license to practice law...
Nothing works out.
I know people who read self-help books. Please stop. You can't learn lessons from somebody else because you're not them, your only hope is to be you. And our entire society is based on winners when the truth is we all lose, each and every one of us, some constantly, some unexpectedly, some are their own worst enemies, but it'll happen to you, I guarantee.
Sure, it looks like some get the breaks, but then they don't make partner, they get squeezed out, their spouse leaves them, their kids have physical or mental problems, no one escapes, and this is what we look for in art, a vibration, a connection, we need to recognize ourselves, no lesson is necessary.
But we keep being told we're inadequate.
Have you ever tried to get a job and been unable to?
I certainly have.
My driver in Rio sent 130 resumes, he didn't even get a response.
You think everybody's got it easy, that if you jump through enough hoops the gates open. And maybe that's true, but it never happened for me.
And now I don't see myself on the silver screen. Everybody's more fabulous, or much worse, or a superhero. No one is broke down and busted on the side of the road wondering how they'll go forward, even though they eventually do.
And what exactly is the relationship with Jimmy and Kim? Are they friends with benefits or more than that? And how come they can't pool their money?
And you've got to serve somebody, every does, that's what Bob Dylan told us, and Nacho is under the thumb of Salamanca, and he can't say no.
That's modern life. I run mine differently, to my detriment. Everybody thinks I have stock in Spotify, that I'm paid by them, but then how could I be trusted? Sure, maybe you don't trust me anyway, especially in a world where everybody's sold out.
Except the artist. The artist must be free.
But our world is one of favors. And if you take one, you've got to give one. That's the essence of the #MeToo movement, it's not just a boys' club, no one wants to blow the whistle on their boss, because not only will the boss fire them, will his hand-picked board defend him, but none of your coworkers will fall in line behind you. The artist always walks alone, never forget it.
So I can't handle the frustration of getting hooked and waiting a week. Especially in our on demand culture. I'd rather not watch at all. But if you give me all the episodes at once, I want to dig down deep, turn out the lights and watch.
And movies aren't long enough, even though they think you're paying by the minute, like musicians they need to fill up the CD, keep us sitting there for two plus hours.
But television can go on forever, except when it doesn't. They stop in the U.K., if it's making money over here it continues, even though the kids have beards and babies and the thrill is long gone.
I've been to Albuquerque. I've known people who've dealt drugs.
But "Better Call Saul" is really about the personal relationships, brothers who can't get along and big swinging dicks who are suddenly challenged and the truth is we live in a society where unless you're working by the hour, for a wage, on a contract, everybody's duplicitous, shaving points, working the edges. Come on, believe me. When you go to buy a car they want to sell you one that's there, and they want you to pay as much as possible. Everybody's a mark, now more than ever, when life is tough and you need a lot to get by.
And sure, there's humor in this series. And revenge too. Just like life, it's not one long flat line. But you return to the norm. Just when things are flying high they crash, it's the human condition.
And it's in "Better Call Saul."
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Tuesday, 10 April 2018
Zuckerberg In Congress
He was so damn SMART!
I know, I know, I'm supposed to resent him, he ruined the fabric of America, THE WORLD, but I've got to say I'm impressed with his performance today, the brilliant student schooling his inept teachers.
I grew up knowing I was going to college. Never a doubt in my mind. I remember standing on the steps, ready to walk into the first day of kindergarten, telling the other kids I was gonna be a lawyer, that's how heavy the Jewish programming is. Hate us, like you now hate the Asians. But after the Holocaust, after wandering through the world for millennia, our parents were establishing themselves and their goal was for us to have a better life than they did, back before anyone knew who a Palestinian was, when anti-Semitism was rampant, before it became de rigueur as anti-Israel disparagement. If you can't separate Judaism from Zionism you're uneducated. Then again, everybody hates the Jews.
So you had to get good grades to get into a good college. Pepper your resume with all kinds of extracurricular activities. Jews inventing do-gooding for college, now everybody does it. Back when legacies meant that the Christians could go straight from prep school to the nation's finest universities.
We were judged by what we got on our SATs. We ran for office whether we wanted to or not. We were told to try. And our parents were right. They reinforced that the popular kids from high school would be forgotten. That there was a big life ahead of us if we'd just hew the line.
Then the joke was on us. All us baby boomers who became professionals. We wanted to color outside the lines, but our parents taught us not to, to keep our heads down and stay the course.
And the truth is it does matter which college you go to. Not because the classes are any better, they could even be worse! But because of the people you hang with. The better the school, the more intelligent your classmates, it illustrates the POSSIBILITIES!
Critical thinking. Analysis. Questioning perception. That's what the elite institutions teach. It's a hothouse from which you emerge scorched but ready.
Especially if you're the sons and daughters of our generation.
That's right, we did not know about big money. Driving a Cadillac and having a vacation house was rich. Flying private was unheard of, we wouldn't even pay to sit in the front of the plane. But our children...
I think it would have been better off if Zuckerberg stayed in college. Hell, I think EVERYBODY should stay in college, to show you can complete something, that's what life is all about, completing stuff, kinda like playing HQ Trivia to go all the way. It's the essence of marriage. If your significant other is a drug addict, or is physically harming you, get out, that's cool. But even if they're having an affair, WHY DID THEY? It takes two to make a situation, it's best to dig deep and solve it. But no one wants to dig deep anymore.
Kinda like these Senators. So busy primping for the camera and appealing to their constituents that they are inauthentic, Ted Cruz scrolling his phone while others talk, after trying to box Mark into saying Republicans are abused on Facebook. Making inane jokes. Not understanding the essence of the social network.
Zuckerberg ran rings around them.
Of course he was media-trained. He started every response with "Senator," and never lost his cool and...
Couldn't stop talking.
He was fleet on his feet. Knew the answer to nearly everything. Didn't even want a break when offered one. It was like he'd prepared his whole life to do this, knowing it was b.s., like the SATs, like all those tests, he couldn't wait to get back to his real work.
And all the reporters are looking for gotchas, for headlines that will immediately be forgotten. And the truth is all these Silicon Valley institutions know the lesson of Microsoft, if you heel to the government you blink and are toast, which is why Facebook isn't gonna listen, ain't gonna change unless forced to, because it's too exciting doing what they are doing. Sure, they're all rich, but they haven't got time for the trappings.
How often do you see a techie on TMZ? Almost never. They might go out to dinner, but mostly they're working. They're the antithesis of the Kardashians, even though mom Kris can hold her own, she's truly brilliant. But entertainment is fake, now more than ever, the people can't handle the truth, they're fed pabulum, while the real movers and shakers, the truly brilliant, run the country.
Kinda like Robert Mercer, the hedge fund king.
But he's an old fogey nerd, not a young' un like Zuckerberg. His parents protested with long hair and jeans, Zuckerberg protests with code, which his elders can't understand like ours couldn't fathom rock and roll. As for all the venerated entertainment stars of today, they look like dummies unaware of the universe next to Zuckerberg. Sure, we need poetry, but we're getting too little of that in the world today, who do we look up to?
Do I trust Zuckerberg will heed the warning?
HELL NO!
Do I even think he's aware of the holes which can be manipulated in Facebook's systems?
HELL NO!
Did you read the story in "Businessweek" about the spammers triumphing with ads on Facebook? If you haven't, dedicate yourself, which no one seems to do these days, they're too busy posting how great they are on Instagram, but the truth is all that data works...it gets the vulnerable to buy what they shouldn't, in volume.
So Zuckerberg's appearance makes me feel good about humanity. That there are people who can answer the question before having to pause and think first. Come on, speaking is instinct, just like sex, let it out there.
But you're judged by what you have to say. And too many are uneducated and far from brilliant.
Brilliant Zuck is. Leaves you feeling both inadequate and wanting to go to Harvard, to get some of that juice.
I used to read "Rolling Stone" from cover to cover, I just couldn't get enough of my generation, the musicians speaking truth to power.
But when I tuned into NPR on the satellite today I couldn't turn it off, I watched for hours at home, even though the last time I viewed this extensively was during Watergate. Just to see Zuckerberg eat up these bozos.
It was a better show than you'll see at the arena. There was little artifice, Zuckerberg came across as honest and genuine. And convincing too, even though there were holes in his story.
Furthermore, he didn't get impatient and talk down to his audience, which Steve Jobs was famous for doing. And when Elon Musk talks he sounds like an alien.
But Mark Zuckerberg sounded like one of the top kids in your high school, who you grew up with, played basketball with, played tricks with, who stayed the course and...
Ended up ruling the world.
That's right, Facebook is more powerful than any media institution. One could say it's more powerful than the government, because it can reach more people.
And it's scary to think one man is in control.
But watching him today you thought that Zuck earned it, the Winklevosses could never do this, he kept control of his company, he continues to innovate, even if it's through acquisition.
And if you ask me you should delete your Facebook account. Instagram too.
But you can't resist that hit of dopamine. Zuckerberg has created a hit record that never leaves the chart, that keeps on spinning, give him credit for that.
At the same time you're excoriating him.
"How Facebook Helps Shady Advertisers Pollute the Internet-'They go out and find the morons for me.'": https://bloom.bg/2undQ85
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I know, I know, I'm supposed to resent him, he ruined the fabric of America, THE WORLD, but I've got to say I'm impressed with his performance today, the brilliant student schooling his inept teachers.
I grew up knowing I was going to college. Never a doubt in my mind. I remember standing on the steps, ready to walk into the first day of kindergarten, telling the other kids I was gonna be a lawyer, that's how heavy the Jewish programming is. Hate us, like you now hate the Asians. But after the Holocaust, after wandering through the world for millennia, our parents were establishing themselves and their goal was for us to have a better life than they did, back before anyone knew who a Palestinian was, when anti-Semitism was rampant, before it became de rigueur as anti-Israel disparagement. If you can't separate Judaism from Zionism you're uneducated. Then again, everybody hates the Jews.
So you had to get good grades to get into a good college. Pepper your resume with all kinds of extracurricular activities. Jews inventing do-gooding for college, now everybody does it. Back when legacies meant that the Christians could go straight from prep school to the nation's finest universities.
We were judged by what we got on our SATs. We ran for office whether we wanted to or not. We were told to try. And our parents were right. They reinforced that the popular kids from high school would be forgotten. That there was a big life ahead of us if we'd just hew the line.
Then the joke was on us. All us baby boomers who became professionals. We wanted to color outside the lines, but our parents taught us not to, to keep our heads down and stay the course.
And the truth is it does matter which college you go to. Not because the classes are any better, they could even be worse! But because of the people you hang with. The better the school, the more intelligent your classmates, it illustrates the POSSIBILITIES!
Critical thinking. Analysis. Questioning perception. That's what the elite institutions teach. It's a hothouse from which you emerge scorched but ready.
Especially if you're the sons and daughters of our generation.
That's right, we did not know about big money. Driving a Cadillac and having a vacation house was rich. Flying private was unheard of, we wouldn't even pay to sit in the front of the plane. But our children...
I think it would have been better off if Zuckerberg stayed in college. Hell, I think EVERYBODY should stay in college, to show you can complete something, that's what life is all about, completing stuff, kinda like playing HQ Trivia to go all the way. It's the essence of marriage. If your significant other is a drug addict, or is physically harming you, get out, that's cool. But even if they're having an affair, WHY DID THEY? It takes two to make a situation, it's best to dig deep and solve it. But no one wants to dig deep anymore.
Kinda like these Senators. So busy primping for the camera and appealing to their constituents that they are inauthentic, Ted Cruz scrolling his phone while others talk, after trying to box Mark into saying Republicans are abused on Facebook. Making inane jokes. Not understanding the essence of the social network.
Zuckerberg ran rings around them.
Of course he was media-trained. He started every response with "Senator," and never lost his cool and...
Couldn't stop talking.
He was fleet on his feet. Knew the answer to nearly everything. Didn't even want a break when offered one. It was like he'd prepared his whole life to do this, knowing it was b.s., like the SATs, like all those tests, he couldn't wait to get back to his real work.
And all the reporters are looking for gotchas, for headlines that will immediately be forgotten. And the truth is all these Silicon Valley institutions know the lesson of Microsoft, if you heel to the government you blink and are toast, which is why Facebook isn't gonna listen, ain't gonna change unless forced to, because it's too exciting doing what they are doing. Sure, they're all rich, but they haven't got time for the trappings.
How often do you see a techie on TMZ? Almost never. They might go out to dinner, but mostly they're working. They're the antithesis of the Kardashians, even though mom Kris can hold her own, she's truly brilliant. But entertainment is fake, now more than ever, the people can't handle the truth, they're fed pabulum, while the real movers and shakers, the truly brilliant, run the country.
Kinda like Robert Mercer, the hedge fund king.
But he's an old fogey nerd, not a young' un like Zuckerberg. His parents protested with long hair and jeans, Zuckerberg protests with code, which his elders can't understand like ours couldn't fathom rock and roll. As for all the venerated entertainment stars of today, they look like dummies unaware of the universe next to Zuckerberg. Sure, we need poetry, but we're getting too little of that in the world today, who do we look up to?
Do I trust Zuckerberg will heed the warning?
HELL NO!
Do I even think he's aware of the holes which can be manipulated in Facebook's systems?
HELL NO!
Did you read the story in "Businessweek" about the spammers triumphing with ads on Facebook? If you haven't, dedicate yourself, which no one seems to do these days, they're too busy posting how great they are on Instagram, but the truth is all that data works...it gets the vulnerable to buy what they shouldn't, in volume.
So Zuckerberg's appearance makes me feel good about humanity. That there are people who can answer the question before having to pause and think first. Come on, speaking is instinct, just like sex, let it out there.
But you're judged by what you have to say. And too many are uneducated and far from brilliant.
Brilliant Zuck is. Leaves you feeling both inadequate and wanting to go to Harvard, to get some of that juice.
I used to read "Rolling Stone" from cover to cover, I just couldn't get enough of my generation, the musicians speaking truth to power.
But when I tuned into NPR on the satellite today I couldn't turn it off, I watched for hours at home, even though the last time I viewed this extensively was during Watergate. Just to see Zuckerberg eat up these bozos.
It was a better show than you'll see at the arena. There was little artifice, Zuckerberg came across as honest and genuine. And convincing too, even though there were holes in his story.
Furthermore, he didn't get impatient and talk down to his audience, which Steve Jobs was famous for doing. And when Elon Musk talks he sounds like an alien.
But Mark Zuckerberg sounded like one of the top kids in your high school, who you grew up with, played basketball with, played tricks with, who stayed the course and...
Ended up ruling the world.
That's right, Facebook is more powerful than any media institution. One could say it's more powerful than the government, because it can reach more people.
And it's scary to think one man is in control.
But watching him today you thought that Zuck earned it, the Winklevosses could never do this, he kept control of his company, he continues to innovate, even if it's through acquisition.
And if you ask me you should delete your Facebook account. Instagram too.
But you can't resist that hit of dopamine. Zuckerberg has created a hit record that never leaves the chart, that keeps on spinning, give him credit for that.
At the same time you're excoriating him.
"How Facebook Helps Shady Advertisers Pollute the Internet-'They go out and find the morons for me.'": https://bloom.bg/2undQ85
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Shirley Manson-This Week's Podcast
She was not who I expected her to be.
I'm friendly with her publicist, Brian Bumbery, who's always got a smile and a story and when they arrived at the studio I ignored her, maybe out of my fear of women, but mostly because you've got to be wary of leaving the best stuff in the green room. I wish you could have heard my conversation with John Dick BEFORE we got on the air. Which is why I don't want to waste time, but I felt I was being unkind so I apologized to her, telling her just that, my green room theory, and she casually told me it was no problem but still... Do I know enough about Garbage? I bought the first album, was caught up the mania, but Shirley Manson was a cool ice queen, right?
WRONG!
She's sassy and opinionated and smart...
That's one of the problems with the war between the sexes, too often you don't go down the pike far enough to find out who these people really are. You're intimidated, they're uncomfortable, hell, you often don't even exchange words, you just imbue them with your preconceptions and go on your merry way.
So no one is less Hollywood than Shirley Manson. And although her hair color and cut would give you the impression she's out there, she's more rooted than most. She goes with the flow, is fearful of consequences, but at the same time tests limits. And when she was on the cover of all those fashion magazines she was sitting in her hotel room alone, perfectly fine, but if you ever wanted to know what it's like to be a star in the eye of the hurricane, in the midst of the maelstrom...
Listen in.
A snippet: https://bit.ly/2HpInVH
P.S. This is long and meandering but the studio people think this is the best podcast yet.
TuneIn https://listen.tunein.com/ShirleyMansonLetter
Apple https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/shirley-manson/id1316200737?i=1000408575466&mt=2
Google Play: https://play.google.com/music/m/Dsykfdf3naugiessaluksbjjl7q?t=Shirley_Manson-The_Bob_Lefsetz_Podcast
Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast
Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/bob-lefsetz/shirley-manson-18
Overcast: https://overcast.fm/+LBr9u_KN4
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I'm friendly with her publicist, Brian Bumbery, who's always got a smile and a story and when they arrived at the studio I ignored her, maybe out of my fear of women, but mostly because you've got to be wary of leaving the best stuff in the green room. I wish you could have heard my conversation with John Dick BEFORE we got on the air. Which is why I don't want to waste time, but I felt I was being unkind so I apologized to her, telling her just that, my green room theory, and she casually told me it was no problem but still... Do I know enough about Garbage? I bought the first album, was caught up the mania, but Shirley Manson was a cool ice queen, right?
WRONG!
She's sassy and opinionated and smart...
That's one of the problems with the war between the sexes, too often you don't go down the pike far enough to find out who these people really are. You're intimidated, they're uncomfortable, hell, you often don't even exchange words, you just imbue them with your preconceptions and go on your merry way.
So no one is less Hollywood than Shirley Manson. And although her hair color and cut would give you the impression she's out there, she's more rooted than most. She goes with the flow, is fearful of consequences, but at the same time tests limits. And when she was on the cover of all those fashion magazines she was sitting in her hotel room alone, perfectly fine, but if you ever wanted to know what it's like to be a star in the eye of the hurricane, in the midst of the maelstrom...
Listen in.
A snippet: https://bit.ly/2HpInVH
P.S. This is long and meandering but the studio people think this is the best podcast yet.
TuneIn https://listen.tunein.com/ShirleyMansonLetter
Apple https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/shirley-manson/id1316200737?i=1000408575466&mt=2
Google Play: https://play.google.com/music/m/Dsykfdf3naugiessaluksbjjl7q?t=Shirley_Manson-The_Bob_Lefsetz_Podcast
Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast
Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/bob-lefsetz/shirley-manson-18
Overcast: https://overcast.fm/+LBr9u_KN4
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Re-Lindsey Buckingham/Fleetwood Mac
Hello Bob...It's true. The songs live on while we hang in there enjoying the fact that we get to keep working and the guarantees seem to go up each year. But we're not fooling ourselves...we're fortunate beyond our dreams to have never been off the road as we entered our 48th year in 2018. The 70's were good to us. We have a great team and the audience fuels our drive onward. No complaints as we look forward to making it to half a century making music. Peace & Love...from America. best always, Dewey Bunnell
__________________________________________
Have to say that in any era, but especially this one, it's important for folks to have a song(s), a group, and a time that you associate with something meaningful in your life. Present or past. Hopefully good in many ways, but can be otherwise. Glitz wears off but "real" will stay.
Lindsay is part of an overall example of great groups who know each other better than their own families from working together for so long. It happens. But first they had to create something that was good enough, hooky enough, to become part of people's lives.
There are still new ones coming up but the paradigm has changed as has the amount of material.
But the old fact still stands, a great song is a great song.
Tom Johnston
__________________________________________
You've never been in a band bob! Some people like to play the songs and get a buzz and I like seeing them
Watch mick Fleetwood play tusk and see joy in action maybe even bliss?
I am excited to see mike Campbell join the list of great people who have joined this Fleetwood Mac
I am deliriously 'appy in fact!
I think if you had been in a band you would understand
Peter Noone
__________________________________________
I am the newest member of The Manhattan Transfer (Yes, THAT Manhattan Transfer, in their 45th Anniversary year) and I replaced Tim Hauser who was the founder but passed away a few years ago. I thought it would be more difficult in terms of the reaction of the fans as Tim was a strong personality and quite a character, but they have been very accepting of me. I can really see in the fans what you are saying here: They just want to hear the songs!
We have a new album and that seems to be going well as the fans seem to be supportive and encouraging despite the change. When I first filled in, we had some shows in Europe and the audiences were going crazy even without Tim there for the first time. As we left the stage Janis turned to me and said...as if it JUST hit her.. "The Manhattan Transfer is the music!" Just thought I'd share and confirm, as it really it home as I was reading your post.
I always look forward to your e-mails… thank you for that!
Trist Curless
__________________________________________
May I add a little sauce to the mix of this very interesting topic? I've had a theory for a while that singers in particular underestimate the power of the band identity to fans. The parallel I draw, as a Brit soccer fanatic, is sports teams. you start to become a fan of The Dodgers, or The Yankees or in my case the mighty Spurs- when you're a kid. You idolise each player. You have their poster on their wall. You know every stat about them.
5 years later the star forward has been signed to another team, the two best defenders have retired and the goalkeeper has gone to play for your team's great rival. So do you switch allegiance? No you simply take down the old posters and put up new ones with the new stars....and you boo your old hero when he comes back to play an away game at your ground.
All the people you mention in this piece probably wrongly believed that it was them the fans wanted to see. They don't learn. Peter Gabriel leaves Genesis and the little drummer says 'I can sing a bit'. Jagger makes solo records.Fish leaves Meryllion, Lee Roth leaves Van Halen, Roger Waters leaves Floyd.
Do these bands collapse? No they get even bigger!
You are correct Bob, it's about the songs. But it's also about allegiance to a band or a football team. It doesn't matter who's in the team.
Cheers
Robin Millar
__________________________________________
This is great. I'm going to reference this blog the next time someone criticizes Mike Love and Bruce Johnston for touring as the Beach Boys. You make the point, you have the original lead singer with a guy who has been in the band since 1965 who sang on California Girls and Good Vibrations along with Jeffrey Foskett who's been with them since 1981 and who sings Brian better than Brian and Carl better than Carl and they perform the whole repertoire better and more consistently than the original members ever did.
The Beach Boys have a touring band that for the most part has played with each other twice as long as the original band actually played and yet people criticize their right to do it.
Thank you Bob for making my point all along.
John Ferriter
__________________________________________
All bets were off when the Floyd did more than just get by on the road without Waters.
Marty Winsch
__________________________________________
Don't use my name, but I think it is because if even if just a tiny bit of the original magic is still left in the band (even if some members are no longer there) it is still way better than 90% of what is out there today, music with no depth or meaning behind it. I feel bad for kids growing up today and what they have to listen to :(
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__________________________________________
Have to say that in any era, but especially this one, it's important for folks to have a song(s), a group, and a time that you associate with something meaningful in your life. Present or past. Hopefully good in many ways, but can be otherwise. Glitz wears off but "real" will stay.
Lindsay is part of an overall example of great groups who know each other better than their own families from working together for so long. It happens. But first they had to create something that was good enough, hooky enough, to become part of people's lives.
There are still new ones coming up but the paradigm has changed as has the amount of material.
But the old fact still stands, a great song is a great song.
Tom Johnston
__________________________________________
You've never been in a band bob! Some people like to play the songs and get a buzz and I like seeing them
Watch mick Fleetwood play tusk and see joy in action maybe even bliss?
I am excited to see mike Campbell join the list of great people who have joined this Fleetwood Mac
I am deliriously 'appy in fact!
I think if you had been in a band you would understand
Peter Noone
__________________________________________
I am the newest member of The Manhattan Transfer (Yes, THAT Manhattan Transfer, in their 45th Anniversary year) and I replaced Tim Hauser who was the founder but passed away a few years ago. I thought it would be more difficult in terms of the reaction of the fans as Tim was a strong personality and quite a character, but they have been very accepting of me. I can really see in the fans what you are saying here: They just want to hear the songs!
We have a new album and that seems to be going well as the fans seem to be supportive and encouraging despite the change. When I first filled in, we had some shows in Europe and the audiences were going crazy even without Tim there for the first time. As we left the stage Janis turned to me and said...as if it JUST hit her.. "The Manhattan Transfer is the music!" Just thought I'd share and confirm, as it really it home as I was reading your post.
I always look forward to your e-mails… thank you for that!
Trist Curless
__________________________________________
May I add a little sauce to the mix of this very interesting topic? I've had a theory for a while that singers in particular underestimate the power of the band identity to fans. The parallel I draw, as a Brit soccer fanatic, is sports teams. you start to become a fan of The Dodgers, or The Yankees or in my case the mighty Spurs- when you're a kid. You idolise each player. You have their poster on their wall. You know every stat about them.
5 years later the star forward has been signed to another team, the two best defenders have retired and the goalkeeper has gone to play for your team's great rival. So do you switch allegiance? No you simply take down the old posters and put up new ones with the new stars....and you boo your old hero when he comes back to play an away game at your ground.
All the people you mention in this piece probably wrongly believed that it was them the fans wanted to see. They don't learn. Peter Gabriel leaves Genesis and the little drummer says 'I can sing a bit'. Jagger makes solo records.Fish leaves Meryllion, Lee Roth leaves Van Halen, Roger Waters leaves Floyd.
Do these bands collapse? No they get even bigger!
You are correct Bob, it's about the songs. But it's also about allegiance to a band or a football team. It doesn't matter who's in the team.
Cheers
Robin Millar
__________________________________________
This is great. I'm going to reference this blog the next time someone criticizes Mike Love and Bruce Johnston for touring as the Beach Boys. You make the point, you have the original lead singer with a guy who has been in the band since 1965 who sang on California Girls and Good Vibrations along with Jeffrey Foskett who's been with them since 1981 and who sings Brian better than Brian and Carl better than Carl and they perform the whole repertoire better and more consistently than the original members ever did.
The Beach Boys have a touring band that for the most part has played with each other twice as long as the original band actually played and yet people criticize their right to do it.
Thank you Bob for making my point all along.
John Ferriter
__________________________________________
All bets were off when the Floyd did more than just get by on the road without Waters.
Marty Winsch
__________________________________________
Don't use my name, but I think it is because if even if just a tiny bit of the original magic is still left in the band (even if some members are no longer there) it is still way better than 90% of what is out there today, music with no depth or meaning behind it. I feel bad for kids growing up today and what they have to listen to :(
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Monday, 9 April 2018
Lindsey Buckingham Fired From Fleetwood Mac
It's about the songs, not the band.
It started with Journey. The voice of the act, Steve Perry, didn't want to work, he needed an operation, so the rest of the act went on the road without him, with a bunch of faceless singers, doing reasonable business. Then they found a replica of Steve's voice online, and then business started to increase to the point where they're playing stadiums this summer, with Def Leppard.
Foreigner not only goes on the road without Lou Gramm, but sans Mick Jones sometimes too.
And then Glenn Frey dies and the Eagles not only reunite, their grosses are bigger than ever!
What's going on?
When your hits are behind you, it's all about the money. No one's got enough. And touring gives purpose to your life. And there's nowhere you can get that kind of adulation, that hit of adrenaline, other than on stage.
But shouldn't the audience balk?
They did not when all the fifties acts toured with a group of faceless performers not in the original incarnation.
It's an oldies phenomenon, after the thrill is gone, the cult of personality, the adoration, the laughter and the tears, all that is left is the songs and the memories. And it turns out many can't get enough of them.
Ergo the tribute acts. Doing a bang-up imitation of Led Zeppelin and so many more.
As long as it sounds close enough to what once was, and it includes some patina of originality, people are in. After all, the Mac toured without Christine McVie for years and played arenas. They've proven in the past the act has a hard time surviving without Stevie Nicks, but if god forbid she passed and Grace Potter took her spot, or Lorde...
Queen tours with Adam Lambert.
We could speculate on the cause of this. Then again, it's been Lindsey's band from day one, and he's been irascible. Of course, of course, it was Fleetwood and McVie's band, but they could play theatres without Lindsey and Stevie and therefore they let Lindsey control the act. And when the noose gets too tight and there are alternatives...
The truth is these acts are riddled with personality problems, all that bonds the members is the music. Would you want to hang forever with your high school buddies? That's what it's like. Furthermore, artists are uncompromised, it's their edges that made them successful, and they don't know how to trim them. You'd tell them just to get along, but then again, you could never be in the act.
And the act does include Lindsey's soloing. But the seventies are over, the audience doesn't want to hear virtuosos extend, they just want the songs, they just want to nod their heads and sing along. And Lindsey's vocals have oftentimes been...
Rough.
So now you've got Mike Campbell, whose ability rivals Lindsey's, although his sound is different, and Neil Finn comes back from the dead, in this case New Zealand, to demonstrate the chops which never fully got the praise they deserved.
And if you don't think Vince Gill brought the Eagles to new heights...
You haven't seen them.
This news would have been revolutionary in the seventies, even the eighties, but today it's another blip on the radar screen. Fleetwood Mac has long since surrendered the zeitgeist to the younger generation. Hell, the McVie/Buckingham album got no traction. That's what it's like being an aged act doing new music in today's cacophonous world.
So now YOU'RE Fleetwood Mac. When you go to the show and sing along with your head in the air it's about you, not the people on stage. You're long in the tooth, remembering when, feeling good for the moment, that's what you pays your money for and if you want to see these people in the flesh, go soon, because they're not gonna be around much longer.
But the songs remain the same.
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It started with Journey. The voice of the act, Steve Perry, didn't want to work, he needed an operation, so the rest of the act went on the road without him, with a bunch of faceless singers, doing reasonable business. Then they found a replica of Steve's voice online, and then business started to increase to the point where they're playing stadiums this summer, with Def Leppard.
Foreigner not only goes on the road without Lou Gramm, but sans Mick Jones sometimes too.
And then Glenn Frey dies and the Eagles not only reunite, their grosses are bigger than ever!
What's going on?
When your hits are behind you, it's all about the money. No one's got enough. And touring gives purpose to your life. And there's nowhere you can get that kind of adulation, that hit of adrenaline, other than on stage.
But shouldn't the audience balk?
They did not when all the fifties acts toured with a group of faceless performers not in the original incarnation.
It's an oldies phenomenon, after the thrill is gone, the cult of personality, the adoration, the laughter and the tears, all that is left is the songs and the memories. And it turns out many can't get enough of them.
Ergo the tribute acts. Doing a bang-up imitation of Led Zeppelin and so many more.
As long as it sounds close enough to what once was, and it includes some patina of originality, people are in. After all, the Mac toured without Christine McVie for years and played arenas. They've proven in the past the act has a hard time surviving without Stevie Nicks, but if god forbid she passed and Grace Potter took her spot, or Lorde...
Queen tours with Adam Lambert.
We could speculate on the cause of this. Then again, it's been Lindsey's band from day one, and he's been irascible. Of course, of course, it was Fleetwood and McVie's band, but they could play theatres without Lindsey and Stevie and therefore they let Lindsey control the act. And when the noose gets too tight and there are alternatives...
The truth is these acts are riddled with personality problems, all that bonds the members is the music. Would you want to hang forever with your high school buddies? That's what it's like. Furthermore, artists are uncompromised, it's their edges that made them successful, and they don't know how to trim them. You'd tell them just to get along, but then again, you could never be in the act.
And the act does include Lindsey's soloing. But the seventies are over, the audience doesn't want to hear virtuosos extend, they just want the songs, they just want to nod their heads and sing along. And Lindsey's vocals have oftentimes been...
Rough.
So now you've got Mike Campbell, whose ability rivals Lindsey's, although his sound is different, and Neil Finn comes back from the dead, in this case New Zealand, to demonstrate the chops which never fully got the praise they deserved.
And if you don't think Vince Gill brought the Eagles to new heights...
You haven't seen them.
This news would have been revolutionary in the seventies, even the eighties, but today it's another blip on the radar screen. Fleetwood Mac has long since surrendered the zeitgeist to the younger generation. Hell, the McVie/Buckingham album got no traction. That's what it's like being an aged act doing new music in today's cacophonous world.
So now YOU'RE Fleetwood Mac. When you go to the show and sing along with your head in the air it's about you, not the people on stage. You're long in the tooth, remembering when, feeling good for the moment, that's what you pays your money for and if you want to see these people in the flesh, go soon, because they're not gonna be around much longer.
But the songs remain the same.
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Susan Anspach
How can she be dead?
I've turned into my father, I'm addicted to the obituaries. For the shock, for the connection, to feel good I'm still here.
Last week Bob Beattie died. He didn't merit an obit in the L.A. "Times," but he got credit in the "New York Times." He made the U.S. Ski Team winners, by being a hard-ass. Billy Kidd and Jimmie Heuga won the first male Olympic ski medals. Then Beattie helped start the World Cup, and the Pro Tour, and he even had a show called "Ski World" on ESPN, before YouTube, when you just couldn't get enough, the commercially unavailable theme song goes through my head all the time, it's about dreams, about possibilities, I still have it on a videocassette, but I haven't fired up my VCR in excess of a decade.
Susan Anspach was the intelligent woman who dissed you, who kept you on your toes, who didn't need you. At least that's how I remember her. She abandoned Woody Allen in "Play It Again Sam." She abandoned George Segal for Kris Kristofferson in "Blume In Love." She went mano a mano with Jack Nicholson in "Five Easy Pieces." Back when movies eclipsed novels as the great American stories, when music paved the way and directors took over like players, forgoing corporate interference to get it right. You used to have to record in the company studios. You used to have to sacrifice final cut. And then...
We were addicted. We went to the movies constantly. Not to eat popcorn and Raisinets, but to peer into the human condition. It was what was going on in the mind. Spielberg has had a ton of commercial success taking people on roller coaster rides. I preferred to sit in my seat and be transported to another world where people understood me, dealt with the questions I had, gave me hope there was a better life out there.
When a movie star was unattainable and unknown. There was no TMZ. No endless promotional gravy train, publicists negotiating magazine covers. We didn't really know who these people were, but we thought we did. We were in love with them.
I was working at Star Sporting Goods on Highland when I heard Jack Nicholson was in the store, just before filming "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest," he and his driver were buying a ski rack and more. I went up to talk to him...
And he was as cool as the legend. Before he was ubiquitous. When youngsters knew him from "Easy Rider" and "The Last Detail," before he got the front row seat at the Oscars, when the Oscars still meant something.
My mother went to a Judith Crist movie weekend with Fred and Eleanor Perry and told me about "Last Summer." I went to see it and was transfixed by Barbara Hershey, it was her inner power.
As for Woody Allen....
We cracked up over "Take The Money and Run," and then my entire family went to see "Play It Again, Sam" on Broadway. That's right, we were up close and personal with Woody, Diane Keaton and Tony Roberts.
In the film...
Susan Anspach played the ex-wife.
I always thought she was Jewish, but the obits say otherwise. That's right, we members of the tribe are always aligning with our landsmen. And when a Jew commits a crime we wince. And Anspach never radiated warmth, she was distant, you couldn't hold her, and this made you want to hold her even more.
Every man has had this experience. The woman who won't say yes. Who you then can't help but follow. You ultimately realize it's fruitless, that this is not what you're looking for anyway, you always wonder if they find someone and are happy, believing there's someone better out there than you, but most times the unhappiness is baked into the woman, or you didn't really understand and get her in the first place.
But we wanted to.
That's what being a movie star was. Larger than life.
Rock stars were life itself, but you could pay and see them, they were up there on stage. Whereas movie stars were unavailable. They were thirty feet tall and never viewed in real life. When I moved to L.A. in the seventies and would see them around...my jaw would drop, you mean they're real?
They were icons, living in rarefied air. Forget that an actor plays a role, we suspended disbelief, we thought it was really them.
And you followed the players like sports. You saw actors and actresses from film to film.
And then they disappeared.
Some went to television, not that I ever watched much.
Others just retired.
But they were still the same in your brain. Young and vivacious. Frozen in time. Locked in amber. Hell, when I just pulled up clips I was stunned, because it's easy to return to what once was, when you didn't turn on your phone after the lights came on but exited the theatre tingling, thinking, pondering the possibilities.
And the flicks engendered conversation. About plot, motive, interior dialogue, we went to parties and spent hours arguing, it was a staple of college dorm life.
But that era is gone now.
Everybody's available online, we find out that so many are superficial or unlovable, but back then we invested our own hopes and dreams in our favorites.
Movies were always big. But in the late sixties and seventies they usurped the mantle of the American zeitgeist from television, if you wanted to know which way the wind blew you listened to a record, if you wanted to know what was happening between two people, you went to the movies. Hell, if you didn't, you couldn't see so many of these films. They never made it to TV, although you could go to the revival house, it was a regular pilgrimage.
So it's the end of an era.
I never met Susan Anspach. Never saw her around town. Yet I think I know her. That if I bumped into her we could start a conversation. I could try to peel back the layers, try to penetrate her shield, try to lock on.
But I don't believe I could hold her, she'd look over my shoulder and see someone better, something more interesting. Because she was better than me.
They all were.
"We Rise With Our Dreams" from "Ski World" (fast-forward to 28:50): https://bit.ly/2GQbPms
"Play It Again, Sam": https://bit.ly/2qkvnZv
"Five Easy Pieces": https://bit.ly/2HmuR58
"Blume In Love": https://bit.ly/2HbYkkK
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I've turned into my father, I'm addicted to the obituaries. For the shock, for the connection, to feel good I'm still here.
Last week Bob Beattie died. He didn't merit an obit in the L.A. "Times," but he got credit in the "New York Times." He made the U.S. Ski Team winners, by being a hard-ass. Billy Kidd and Jimmie Heuga won the first male Olympic ski medals. Then Beattie helped start the World Cup, and the Pro Tour, and he even had a show called "Ski World" on ESPN, before YouTube, when you just couldn't get enough, the commercially unavailable theme song goes through my head all the time, it's about dreams, about possibilities, I still have it on a videocassette, but I haven't fired up my VCR in excess of a decade.
Susan Anspach was the intelligent woman who dissed you, who kept you on your toes, who didn't need you. At least that's how I remember her. She abandoned Woody Allen in "Play It Again Sam." She abandoned George Segal for Kris Kristofferson in "Blume In Love." She went mano a mano with Jack Nicholson in "Five Easy Pieces." Back when movies eclipsed novels as the great American stories, when music paved the way and directors took over like players, forgoing corporate interference to get it right. You used to have to record in the company studios. You used to have to sacrifice final cut. And then...
We were addicted. We went to the movies constantly. Not to eat popcorn and Raisinets, but to peer into the human condition. It was what was going on in the mind. Spielberg has had a ton of commercial success taking people on roller coaster rides. I preferred to sit in my seat and be transported to another world where people understood me, dealt with the questions I had, gave me hope there was a better life out there.
When a movie star was unattainable and unknown. There was no TMZ. No endless promotional gravy train, publicists negotiating magazine covers. We didn't really know who these people were, but we thought we did. We were in love with them.
I was working at Star Sporting Goods on Highland when I heard Jack Nicholson was in the store, just before filming "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest," he and his driver were buying a ski rack and more. I went up to talk to him...
And he was as cool as the legend. Before he was ubiquitous. When youngsters knew him from "Easy Rider" and "The Last Detail," before he got the front row seat at the Oscars, when the Oscars still meant something.
My mother went to a Judith Crist movie weekend with Fred and Eleanor Perry and told me about "Last Summer." I went to see it and was transfixed by Barbara Hershey, it was her inner power.
As for Woody Allen....
We cracked up over "Take The Money and Run," and then my entire family went to see "Play It Again, Sam" on Broadway. That's right, we were up close and personal with Woody, Diane Keaton and Tony Roberts.
In the film...
Susan Anspach played the ex-wife.
I always thought she was Jewish, but the obits say otherwise. That's right, we members of the tribe are always aligning with our landsmen. And when a Jew commits a crime we wince. And Anspach never radiated warmth, she was distant, you couldn't hold her, and this made you want to hold her even more.
Every man has had this experience. The woman who won't say yes. Who you then can't help but follow. You ultimately realize it's fruitless, that this is not what you're looking for anyway, you always wonder if they find someone and are happy, believing there's someone better out there than you, but most times the unhappiness is baked into the woman, or you didn't really understand and get her in the first place.
But we wanted to.
That's what being a movie star was. Larger than life.
Rock stars were life itself, but you could pay and see them, they were up there on stage. Whereas movie stars were unavailable. They were thirty feet tall and never viewed in real life. When I moved to L.A. in the seventies and would see them around...my jaw would drop, you mean they're real?
They were icons, living in rarefied air. Forget that an actor plays a role, we suspended disbelief, we thought it was really them.
And you followed the players like sports. You saw actors and actresses from film to film.
And then they disappeared.
Some went to television, not that I ever watched much.
Others just retired.
But they were still the same in your brain. Young and vivacious. Frozen in time. Locked in amber. Hell, when I just pulled up clips I was stunned, because it's easy to return to what once was, when you didn't turn on your phone after the lights came on but exited the theatre tingling, thinking, pondering the possibilities.
And the flicks engendered conversation. About plot, motive, interior dialogue, we went to parties and spent hours arguing, it was a staple of college dorm life.
But that era is gone now.
Everybody's available online, we find out that so many are superficial or unlovable, but back then we invested our own hopes and dreams in our favorites.
Movies were always big. But in the late sixties and seventies they usurped the mantle of the American zeitgeist from television, if you wanted to know which way the wind blew you listened to a record, if you wanted to know what was happening between two people, you went to the movies. Hell, if you didn't, you couldn't see so many of these films. They never made it to TV, although you could go to the revival house, it was a regular pilgrimage.
So it's the end of an era.
I never met Susan Anspach. Never saw her around town. Yet I think I know her. That if I bumped into her we could start a conversation. I could try to peel back the layers, try to penetrate her shield, try to lock on.
But I don't believe I could hold her, she'd look over my shoulder and see someone better, something more interesting. Because she was better than me.
They all were.
"We Rise With Our Dreams" from "Ski World" (fast-forward to 28:50): https://bit.ly/2GQbPms
"Play It Again, Sam": https://bit.ly/2qkvnZv
"Five Easy Pieces": https://bit.ly/2HmuR58
"Blume In Love": https://bit.ly/2HbYkkK
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Sunday, 8 April 2018
Final Rio
It's controlled chaos.
That's what my driver told me yesterday. A Brazilian who spent twenty three years in Texas, illegally, he came home to see his dying dad and now he can't go back to the U.S. for ten years, maybe he'll emigrate to Portugal, right now he's living with his dogs working seven days a week as a driver, in the U.S. he was a pilot, he flew King Airs and Citations.
Doesn't he need time off? To see his girlfriends from the favelas?
That's right, he met them on WhatsApp, only in America does that app not dominate, it's Brazilians' entire life, they form groups, that's where my driver met his girlfriends. He'll let them come to his house, he won't go to theirs. And he won't stop at red lights at night. But he's not complaining, you see Brazilians are optimistic.
You feel alive because so much is at risk. In the U.S. you're somnambulant, sleepwalking through life, in Rio you're on high alert.
The highlight of Friday was going to Gilberto Gil's studio, to do a podcast. Gil is a superstar in Brazil. He was jailed and exiled by the government in the sixties, living in London he drank up the culture, it infused his politics when he returned three years later.
Music was everything. That's what Gilberto told me. Now he has a hard time making sense of the scene. I told him anyone who tells you they know what's going on is lying.
So we drove up the hill to just shy of the favela. On our way home, we had to detour, there was a shooting. There's an app for that. My drivers were getting alerts all the time.
And when I descended the steps into Gilberto's studio...
It felt like fall in L.A.
How to describe it... It's not like the east coast, with the nip in the air, it's more about the light, it's gray and warm and you can feel the seasons changing and I felt snow was coming to Colorado...only in the U.S. it's spring.
So Gilberto succeeded by being different. He had nearly immediate success. He was called to provide songs for a singer with a TV show, and she liked him so much, she put him on and overnight he was known. That's the power of uniqueness, that's the power of listening to your own heart. And as we talked about Nesuhi, how he got him into the Montreux Jazz Festival, and all the other movers and shakers who have passed but were icons, I got energized, by what once was.
It was also fascinating hanging with Moogie and Cherney. They'd debate microphones, this is their language. Credits would come up and they'd search their phones, wanting to get it right, expand their horizons, like that old Bad Company song, they live for the music.
And when I got to the Miami airport I didn't expect the security guard to speak English. Live in a foreign land for only a brief time and it changes you, I was used to the language barrier, but now it's gone.
I had lunch in an upscale restaurant in a good neighborhood and one in a not-so-good neighborhood. I ate the Brazilian national dish of... Well, they serve a big pot of beans and beef and sausage which you pour over rice, collard greens, orange slices and pig ears, then you douse it all with farofa, look it up. I mean if you're gonna go to a foreign country, you might as well have the realistic experience.
And Moogie took us to a Portuguese restaurant. I wish I could tell you the appetizers I ate, which were delectable. Chicken that tasted like sausage but wasn't, little beef balls, and the main course was cod, the national dish of Portugal. They salt it, they ship it, and then in Rio they soak it and then cook and serve it. To tell you the truth, I still felt it to be a bit salty. And the funny thing is you eat so late, maybe ten, and I overate.
And on the drive back to the hotel, Moogie was talking about security, that's what everybody talks about, politics and safety. Everyone's had a bad experience. Gilberto's family was held up at gunpoint, then he moved into a high-rise. And Moogie says the smart thing to do is to have a fake bag, to give to the criminals. One with an old cellphone and thirty or forty dollars. And then the driver raised her hand, she had one, ready to deliver if detained.
And driving while drunk is a zero tolerance situation. They have checkpoints on the weekends.
And like I told you, gun ownership is illegal. But the criminals have guns.
And what is the solution?
Many said education, giving the underclass a leg up. I was told education is not mandatory, there are people living in the favelas who have never gone to school. Ninety plus percent of them are good, but the neighborhoods are controlled by the gangs, by the drug dealers.
Scary, I know!
And I'm not the paranoid type.
But when you put the idea in my head...
Brazil is a big country, with two hundred million people. It's got an economy based on beef and minerals and...corruption is rampant. The mayor of Rio skimmed tons off the construction of light rail and then escaped to New York, so far he's not been extradited. You wanna get rich, you become a politician.
And I don't know if I've got it all right. But everywhere I went I asked the same questions. And got similar answers. I was there, I got a taste of what was going on.
And what is happening is you've got an upbeat people living for the music and the partying despite the challenges.
I literally saw how the other half lived.
My eyes were opened in Rio.
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That's what my driver told me yesterday. A Brazilian who spent twenty three years in Texas, illegally, he came home to see his dying dad and now he can't go back to the U.S. for ten years, maybe he'll emigrate to Portugal, right now he's living with his dogs working seven days a week as a driver, in the U.S. he was a pilot, he flew King Airs and Citations.
Doesn't he need time off? To see his girlfriends from the favelas?
That's right, he met them on WhatsApp, only in America does that app not dominate, it's Brazilians' entire life, they form groups, that's where my driver met his girlfriends. He'll let them come to his house, he won't go to theirs. And he won't stop at red lights at night. But he's not complaining, you see Brazilians are optimistic.
You feel alive because so much is at risk. In the U.S. you're somnambulant, sleepwalking through life, in Rio you're on high alert.
The highlight of Friday was going to Gilberto Gil's studio, to do a podcast. Gil is a superstar in Brazil. He was jailed and exiled by the government in the sixties, living in London he drank up the culture, it infused his politics when he returned three years later.
Music was everything. That's what Gilberto told me. Now he has a hard time making sense of the scene. I told him anyone who tells you they know what's going on is lying.
So we drove up the hill to just shy of the favela. On our way home, we had to detour, there was a shooting. There's an app for that. My drivers were getting alerts all the time.
And when I descended the steps into Gilberto's studio...
It felt like fall in L.A.
How to describe it... It's not like the east coast, with the nip in the air, it's more about the light, it's gray and warm and you can feel the seasons changing and I felt snow was coming to Colorado...only in the U.S. it's spring.
So Gilberto succeeded by being different. He had nearly immediate success. He was called to provide songs for a singer with a TV show, and she liked him so much, she put him on and overnight he was known. That's the power of uniqueness, that's the power of listening to your own heart. And as we talked about Nesuhi, how he got him into the Montreux Jazz Festival, and all the other movers and shakers who have passed but were icons, I got energized, by what once was.
It was also fascinating hanging with Moogie and Cherney. They'd debate microphones, this is their language. Credits would come up and they'd search their phones, wanting to get it right, expand their horizons, like that old Bad Company song, they live for the music.
And when I got to the Miami airport I didn't expect the security guard to speak English. Live in a foreign land for only a brief time and it changes you, I was used to the language barrier, but now it's gone.
I had lunch in an upscale restaurant in a good neighborhood and one in a not-so-good neighborhood. I ate the Brazilian national dish of... Well, they serve a big pot of beans and beef and sausage which you pour over rice, collard greens, orange slices and pig ears, then you douse it all with farofa, look it up. I mean if you're gonna go to a foreign country, you might as well have the realistic experience.
And Moogie took us to a Portuguese restaurant. I wish I could tell you the appetizers I ate, which were delectable. Chicken that tasted like sausage but wasn't, little beef balls, and the main course was cod, the national dish of Portugal. They salt it, they ship it, and then in Rio they soak it and then cook and serve it. To tell you the truth, I still felt it to be a bit salty. And the funny thing is you eat so late, maybe ten, and I overate.
And on the drive back to the hotel, Moogie was talking about security, that's what everybody talks about, politics and safety. Everyone's had a bad experience. Gilberto's family was held up at gunpoint, then he moved into a high-rise. And Moogie says the smart thing to do is to have a fake bag, to give to the criminals. One with an old cellphone and thirty or forty dollars. And then the driver raised her hand, she had one, ready to deliver if detained.
And driving while drunk is a zero tolerance situation. They have checkpoints on the weekends.
And like I told you, gun ownership is illegal. But the criminals have guns.
And what is the solution?
Many said education, giving the underclass a leg up. I was told education is not mandatory, there are people living in the favelas who have never gone to school. Ninety plus percent of them are good, but the neighborhoods are controlled by the gangs, by the drug dealers.
Scary, I know!
And I'm not the paranoid type.
But when you put the idea in my head...
Brazil is a big country, with two hundred million people. It's got an economy based on beef and minerals and...corruption is rampant. The mayor of Rio skimmed tons off the construction of light rail and then escaped to New York, so far he's not been extradited. You wanna get rich, you become a politician.
And I don't know if I've got it all right. But everywhere I went I asked the same questions. And got similar answers. I was there, I got a taste of what was going on.
And what is happening is you've got an upbeat people living for the music and the partying despite the challenges.
I literally saw how the other half lived.
My eyes were opened in Rio.
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The Middle Class Revolts
The government has been unable to reign in hedge funds.
But the remaining reporters at the "Denver Post" just might.
For far too long we've revered money. And believed that those in possession of it know better. We've been sold this canard, that the rich are job creators, that if they triumph, so do we, that if we just unfetter them, release them from regulations, we'll all be lifted up.
Wrong.
This is the story of Trump, this is the story of the Republican Congress. How they've lost touch with the people.
Forget "Roseanne," forget the ignorant angry at immigrants and globalization. They've been left behind, unfortunately, they need to be propped up, but it's the intelligentsia who are going to remake this country.
Remember when that was the goal? To be educated and smart? Before college became a glorified trade school? Before Ivy Leaguers went to Wall Street and became beholden to the Benjamins?
So they shoot black people and the white people don't care. Some bleeding heart liberals do, but the truth is racism is rampant, despite what the Supreme Court said in its voting rights decision. As for a compassionate America... When scores of Muslims are killed in the Middle East, it barely gets any ink. Seems you've got to be white and Christian to matter.
But we've got cameras now, we can document and see, and what we view is not pretty.
So then the teachers in Virginia say no mas. They're entrusted with our foremost responsibility, educating the young, and they're treated like fast-food employees, viewed as unreliable unionists who must be quashed.
And then the same thing happens in Oklahoma, a red state if there ever was one.
And the teachers don't even agree with their union, they want more, they want a fair deal. Why should all the energy companies get a pass?
Why should they be subsidized by the government?
Think about that!
Meanwhile, the Kansas Supreme Court keeps saying not enough is spent on education in a state bankrupted by no tax supply side economics and then students, MERE CHILDREN!, are fed up with school shootings and capture the nation's attention and not only protest, but produce change.
This was not supposed to happen. The NRA was too powerful, they had politicians in their pockets.
But that's no match for the truth.
And now comes the story of the "Denver Post."
You're supposed to feel lucky you've got a job, you're not supposed to rock the boat. The whole damn country is about not rocking the boat. I'm not talking about the agitated on the internet, I'm talking about the working stiffs, trying to feed their families. Sure, you can be a greeter at Wal-Mart, while you subsist on welfare, but if you're a professional, you need to shut up, for fear of being squeezed out of the marketplace, especially if you're aged.
And now these reporters have had enough. The hedge fund owners have bled the enterprise dry, using the profits for other endeavors, including lining their own pockets and building buildings.
When you've got nothing, you've got nothing to lose.
But even if you've got something, and you see it slipping away, living in a game of musical chairs, people are now standing up for their truth.
We've been at the mercy of these mercenaries for far too long. They're billionaires, they should be revered like rock stars.
Only there are no more rock stars.
A rock star was someone who made it on their creativity who was all about credibility and truth and not selling out. If a musician makes it today, they're eager to make a deal, IT'S ALL ABOUT SELLING OUT! Which is why no one's listening to them, other than the nincompoops who don't know what time it is.
But the internet was supposed to save us.
Now the truth is these unregulated pricks in search of bucks have belittled our society. The press builds up Sheryl Sandberg as she destroys our country and our minds. But the woman educating your children is pissed upon, told to make do, get a second job.
Our values are screwed up.
Only they're not.
The truth is we know better, and we're finally saying it.
Sure, news is a challenged business. But we don't need extra layers of challenge added on. The truth is the "Denver Post" owners, as well as Tronc, are all about preserving their profit margins, double-digit ones, as not only reporters lose jobs, but the papers lose relevance. First they came for the classifieds, then they came for the full page ads, then they came for the news... The "Los Angeles Times" is a pamphlet, there's more nutrition in a box of Froot Loops!
But a billionaire bought the "Times."
And another billionaire bought the "Washington Post," which went from also-ran to leader. The WSJ is an also-ran and Fox does little reporting, only bloviating, they're both reacting to the NYT and WP. And we've got a President denigrating both.
But the NYT and WP are sticking to their guns. They can handle it, can you?
That's the story of today. Not about arguing with the other side, but standing up against injustice. When pushed to the wall, people react.
And change results.
This is a wake-up call, as big as the one in the sixties. But then the war was overseas, now the war is right here at home. There's been a cleaving of society. And despite the b.s., there are facts, and many people know them, and despite the government and the rich trying to lead with misdirection, telling us they know better, we're not taking it anymore. Because when something smells fishy, it is.
Not every enterprise has to scale like Silicon Valley.
Not every hardworking stiff needs to be discounted because they're not making beaucoup bucks.
It comes down to people. And fairness. And truth.
And the truth is the nineties are coming to an end. That's right, forget all that hogwash about the humming economy. The spoils are going to the same sector. A tiny sliver of society. They've rigged the game and told us they're invulnerable. But they're not.
For twenty years tech ruled. But now it's hit a wall. Turns out the people steering the ship had no maps for where they were going.
But now we're here.
Money isn't everything.
Those who have it don't know better.
It's down to you and me baby, we have to change this country, we need to stand up, AND WE ARE!
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But the remaining reporters at the "Denver Post" just might.
For far too long we've revered money. And believed that those in possession of it know better. We've been sold this canard, that the rich are job creators, that if they triumph, so do we, that if we just unfetter them, release them from regulations, we'll all be lifted up.
Wrong.
This is the story of Trump, this is the story of the Republican Congress. How they've lost touch with the people.
Forget "Roseanne," forget the ignorant angry at immigrants and globalization. They've been left behind, unfortunately, they need to be propped up, but it's the intelligentsia who are going to remake this country.
Remember when that was the goal? To be educated and smart? Before college became a glorified trade school? Before Ivy Leaguers went to Wall Street and became beholden to the Benjamins?
So they shoot black people and the white people don't care. Some bleeding heart liberals do, but the truth is racism is rampant, despite what the Supreme Court said in its voting rights decision. As for a compassionate America... When scores of Muslims are killed in the Middle East, it barely gets any ink. Seems you've got to be white and Christian to matter.
But we've got cameras now, we can document and see, and what we view is not pretty.
So then the teachers in Virginia say no mas. They're entrusted with our foremost responsibility, educating the young, and they're treated like fast-food employees, viewed as unreliable unionists who must be quashed.
And then the same thing happens in Oklahoma, a red state if there ever was one.
And the teachers don't even agree with their union, they want more, they want a fair deal. Why should all the energy companies get a pass?
Why should they be subsidized by the government?
Think about that!
Meanwhile, the Kansas Supreme Court keeps saying not enough is spent on education in a state bankrupted by no tax supply side economics and then students, MERE CHILDREN!, are fed up with school shootings and capture the nation's attention and not only protest, but produce change.
This was not supposed to happen. The NRA was too powerful, they had politicians in their pockets.
But that's no match for the truth.
And now comes the story of the "Denver Post."
You're supposed to feel lucky you've got a job, you're not supposed to rock the boat. The whole damn country is about not rocking the boat. I'm not talking about the agitated on the internet, I'm talking about the working stiffs, trying to feed their families. Sure, you can be a greeter at Wal-Mart, while you subsist on welfare, but if you're a professional, you need to shut up, for fear of being squeezed out of the marketplace, especially if you're aged.
And now these reporters have had enough. The hedge fund owners have bled the enterprise dry, using the profits for other endeavors, including lining their own pockets and building buildings.
When you've got nothing, you've got nothing to lose.
But even if you've got something, and you see it slipping away, living in a game of musical chairs, people are now standing up for their truth.
We've been at the mercy of these mercenaries for far too long. They're billionaires, they should be revered like rock stars.
Only there are no more rock stars.
A rock star was someone who made it on their creativity who was all about credibility and truth and not selling out. If a musician makes it today, they're eager to make a deal, IT'S ALL ABOUT SELLING OUT! Which is why no one's listening to them, other than the nincompoops who don't know what time it is.
But the internet was supposed to save us.
Now the truth is these unregulated pricks in search of bucks have belittled our society. The press builds up Sheryl Sandberg as she destroys our country and our minds. But the woman educating your children is pissed upon, told to make do, get a second job.
Our values are screwed up.
Only they're not.
The truth is we know better, and we're finally saying it.
Sure, news is a challenged business. But we don't need extra layers of challenge added on. The truth is the "Denver Post" owners, as well as Tronc, are all about preserving their profit margins, double-digit ones, as not only reporters lose jobs, but the papers lose relevance. First they came for the classifieds, then they came for the full page ads, then they came for the news... The "Los Angeles Times" is a pamphlet, there's more nutrition in a box of Froot Loops!
But a billionaire bought the "Times."
And another billionaire bought the "Washington Post," which went from also-ran to leader. The WSJ is an also-ran and Fox does little reporting, only bloviating, they're both reacting to the NYT and WP. And we've got a President denigrating both.
But the NYT and WP are sticking to their guns. They can handle it, can you?
That's the story of today. Not about arguing with the other side, but standing up against injustice. When pushed to the wall, people react.
And change results.
This is a wake-up call, as big as the one in the sixties. But then the war was overseas, now the war is right here at home. There's been a cleaving of society. And despite the b.s., there are facts, and many people know them, and despite the government and the rich trying to lead with misdirection, telling us they know better, we're not taking it anymore. Because when something smells fishy, it is.
Not every enterprise has to scale like Silicon Valley.
Not every hardworking stiff needs to be discounted because they're not making beaucoup bucks.
It comes down to people. And fairness. And truth.
And the truth is the nineties are coming to an end. That's right, forget all that hogwash about the humming economy. The spoils are going to the same sector. A tiny sliver of society. They've rigged the game and told us they're invulnerable. But they're not.
For twenty years tech ruled. But now it's hit a wall. Turns out the people steering the ship had no maps for where they were going.
But now we're here.
Money isn't everything.
Those who have it don't know better.
It's down to you and me baby, we have to change this country, we need to stand up, AND WE ARE!
--
Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/
--
http://www.twitter.com/lefsetz
--
If you would like to subscribe to the LefsetzLetter,
http://www.lefsetz.com/lists/?p=subscribe&id=1
If you do not want to receive any more LefsetzLetters, http://lefsetz.com/lists/?p=unsubscribe&uid=0eecea7b60b461717065cbde887c8e25
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