1

People in love get lost and foolish
People in love get everything wrong
People in love get scared and stupid
People in love get everything wrong

At least they’re not lonely
At least they’re not lonely
Never be lonely

I wish money solved all problems.  Then the path would be clear.  Kind of like winning a sporting event.  Just score enough points and you triumph.

But life is murkier than that.  There’s a cornucopia of choices, and no manual delineating appropriate behavior.  Our parents try to steer us, inculcating values and emphasizing education, hoping we end up with enough money to make it through when they’re gone.  And we’re bombarded by marketing messages, telling us if we just do this or that we’ll be the one.  And if the foregoing is just too confusing there’s religion, a glorified cult that will dictate how to behave.  But religion has a secret weapon.  It’s the people.  That’s the secret of life.  Others.

Loneliness is America’s great killer.  It’s not disease or automobile accidents.  If it doesn’t lead to suicide, loneliness causes enough pain to cripple the soul.  We yearn to be connected, to be a member of the group, but we’re not taught the steps, this is a mystery.

We’re in school and we just want to be popular.  We’re put down, kept in our place by football players and cheerleaders.  We hate them, but we just want to be with them.

And when we finally graduate, NOBODY cares what we do.  And therefore we go online, sign up for match.com, maybe even desperately sign up for a hit and run on craigslist.  We just want someone to lay down beside us.  And hopefully talk to us after we’re done, so we don’t feel so creepy.

But you won’t see the foregoing on the front page of the newspaper.  Nor on television.  Media focuses on the winners, while the losers, the lonely, stare on, just dying to be included.

That’s the goal, to figure out a way to be included, to gain some traction, to get a significant other and build a life.

But what are you supposed to do in the meantime?

Listen to music.

The music spoke to our alienation, it soothed us.  We felt the artists understood us, knew our pain.  If they would only come over for dinner and talk to us, life would be all right.

I realize the youngsters of today go to the club, all the action is happening at the club.  But what if you’re not good looking?  What if you can’t afford the threads?  What, if unlike A.J. Soprano, you can’t cash in an asset to buy everybody champagne?  Then the club must be a disaster area you avoid.  But you’re lonely, so you keep going back, looking for connection where none is available to those who don’t wear their desirability on the exterior.

Justin Timberlake’s bringing sexy back.  For those who never lost it.  Those who’ve never had intercourse, those with intimacy issues, they don’t know how to be sexy, they just want a chance to be sexy, they want to be on the dance floor, but it just doesn’t feel comfortable.  The club music is for winners.  The music on Top Forty is for winners.  In a country of lonely losers.

And Mariah Carey and Christina Aguilera urge us to look at them, validate their stardom, but what we’re really looking for is to be validated ourselves.  We feel so bad, we need to feel good.  We need music to feel good, that speaks to us, that comes from where we live.

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Gregory Markel:

http://www.myspace.com/thefeeling

New band, very 10CC.

Dr. Tony Shore

Thank you for writing about 10cc. I too have incredibly strong memories that go along with hearing their songs for the first time and buying their albums. Mostly relating to girls and relationships, but I was young and foolish then. I miss that. I loved most of their output and I am one of those weird people that really enjoyed the quirky solo stuff that Godley and Creme did as well.
 
I know you get people recommending new music and artists to you all the time and, if you’re like me, you’ve got a stack, or stacks of CD’s that you barely have time to get to, but based on your tastes, and what you like about 10cc, you have GOT to hear this new UK band called "The Feeling." They’re heavily influenced by 10cc, Wings, Brian Wilson and 70’s pop, but they don’t just steal or re-do, they have their own style. It’s pure pop like you rarely if ever hear these days. Right now it’s an import only. It was due to release here in the States this week but I believe it’s been pushed back. This doesn’t surprise me, because if I like it as much as I do, it’s probably commercial death. Please note, I have a music blog and run a tiny little label and work for a CD packaging company (R.I.P.?) but I am in no way associated with this band. I’m not a promoter or friend trying to get exposure for them, I’m just saying, I think you’d flip over their music. Unfortunately the clips I’ve heard online don’t do them justice. The album is brilliant in my *humble* opinion. It’s on Universal in the UK. They may have full videos up on their website: http://www.thefeeling.com/
 
Thanks once again for sharing your love of music with the rest of us geeks!

There’s a cult of Angelenos who think Gregory Markel missed his date with fame.  Check his band Altered State out and make your own judgment: Altered State

All I know is Gregory is a wild character.  Making his money in Internet marketing now, but worth spending an evening with to hear the stories of his ups and downs.

As for Dr. Tony Shore…  Who knows?  But the fact that he wasn’t financially involved, and Mr. Markel’s pedigree, got me to check this band out.

I’m stunned.  They’re GOOD!

Go to the aforementioned MySpace site, the one Gregory Markel is hyping above.

Maybe the intro is a reference to T’Pau’s "Heart and Soul".  I’ve definitely heard this sound before.  But the groove, I haven’t heard something like this in EONS!  A track with feeling, that IMMEDIATELY takes me away from the space I’ve been inhabiting.

But then come the CHANGES!  The song takes a left turn at the end of the verse and then explodes into HYPERSPACE!

And then comes back.

Like a fucking 10cc song.

Malcolm Gladwell posits in "Blink" that the expert, he with experience and expertise, can form an INSTANT judgment, he can TELL!

I don’t need a rock critic, some dude on a Website to tell me the Feeling’s "Never Be Lonely" is exquisite, extraordinary here in this twenty first century.  It just sounds, feels, SO RIGHT!

So right you want to hear MORE!

3

‘Cause you got my heart in a headlock
You stopped the blood and made my head soft
And god knows
You got me sewn

Eventually you find someone.

And then you’re in jeopardy.  Maybe they’re no longer attentive.  Or maybe deep inside you know the differences are just too great.  But you don’t want to let go, you don’t want to be thrown back into the sea.  That interior monologue is raging.  You just want to lie down and not get up.

This is the way "Sewn" sounds.

But there’s a buzzsaw guitar in the middle, the combination of opposing forces in one little pop song pioneered by 10cc.

And then there’s the half as long but ending with the same raging guitars of "Feel The Benefit" of the album closer, "Same Old Stuff".

4

The Feeling is already a hit in the U.K.

I’m not sure the band can make it in the U.S.
We don’t have Radio 1.  We’ve got Top Forty radio.  Which is urban, rhythm and blues, mindless beats.  The criterion isn’t that something be good, but that it FIT THE FORMAT!

Everything else falls through the cracks.

At least thirty-odd years ago we had FM.  Today, there’s no place with critical mass, for this music to be heard.

5

If you’re under forty, if you came of age after the advent of MTV, you’ve now got a chance to experience how it used to be.

We’d learn about a band from England.  We’d buy the album without hearing it first.  Not needing the validation of airplay or sales.  And we’d lie on our beds listening.  Fantasizing scenarios within which we were socially comfortable, cool.

Listen.