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1

I’ve given up on politics. Sure, I read the headlines, but now I’m detached, I’m going to see how it plays out, I’m going to live my life, take a respite from the eight year long movie that had me riveted.

Which means I’m not ping-ponging between the news channels on the satellite dial. It’s back to music. Oh, what a long, strange, trip it’s been.

However, how do you find new stuff?

JOHN MAYER!

John Mayer’s got a channel on SiriusXM that pays for the monthly subscription all by itself. What it is is his favorites, interspersed with his own tracks. And the favorites of a musician are different from the favorites of a deejay. A deejay needs to feel good about themselves, needs to know they’re building a flow, is worried about their taste, for others will judge it. A musician? Music is a calling, they’re just exploring, Mayer is turning you on to stuff HE’S listening to. And in most cases it’s not in the Spotify Top 50.

But it’s all over the map. No specific genre. Could be old, could be new. But it doesn’t stop with classic rock. As a matter of fact, when I tuned in today whilst on Sunset Boulevard, John was giving an introduction to Madonna’s “Cherish.”

I LOVE THAT SONG!

He talked about playing it via Bluetooth when he was down on the playa in Mexico with Dead and Co. Being in the shower. These private listening experiences are the best, when you’re in a trance, that no one can break, just you and the music, it energizes you.

There’s a point in “Cherish” where… It zings back and forth… Hell, I’m not a musicologist, if you were here right now, I’d point it out. These are emphasis points, and they get me every time. So often it’s the little things that put something over the top, make it great. Then again, there’s also the cheery melody…something too often absent from today’s hit parade.

So then I turn onto Beverly Glen, knowing I’ll hit traffic at the top, below Mulholland. And now it’s one of Mayer’s numbers emanating from the speakers. And it’s not fully clicking, but at the end there’s this guitar part, with this delicious tone, it was exquisite.

And now I’m in bumper to bumper traffic. Up a hill. Red on the map. And my car… Does not have good low end torque. I know how to drive a stick, I’ve been doing so since I graduated from college. I could power my BMWS up La Cienega, you know, the steep part, up to Sunset, no problem. But this car… You pump it and it doesn’t engage, it slips backward, it stalls… They knew they had a problem, they improved it the following year, they added that low end torque, and ultimately they put in a hill-holder, but my car ain’t got those. And people pull right up to my bumper on these hills and it makes me uptight and…

John’s playing a song I don’t know that starts ringing my bell.

Now you’ve got to know that they played soul music on AM radio back in the sixties, a lot of it. But albums… Let’s just say soul was a singles world. Albums were a rock thing at the time. We can argue when that changed, maybe with Stevie Wonder’s “Music of My Mind” back in ’72?

Now there were all Black stations, in the inner city. But this song “Fool for You” by the Impressions…I’d never heard it. Turns out it was released on the album “This Is My Country,” the act’s first for Curtis Mayfield’s Curtom Records, back in ’68.

Now you’ve got to know we knew who Mayfield was, but the soundtrack to “Superfly” truly made him a household name. Blaxploitation was its own genre. “Shaft” and its instrumental had preceded “Superfly,” they were both huge hits, but “Superfly” doubled-down, did “Shaft” one better 

The song “Superfly” was as cool as Ron O’Neal’s performance in the movie. “Superfly” was the “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough” of ’72. People who had no interest, who were not paying attention, heard the song once and got infected, they couldn’t let go…they had to buy the album, you had to hear it ad infinitum, you couldn’t take it off the turntable…this was a hit record. And in its own way, “Freddie’s Dead” was just as good, what a groove. And “Pusherman”…  This is music that you lock on to instantly, that becomes one with you, that may be foreign on the surface, but you throw off all your preconceptions and join the tribe.

But how good was “Fool for You” really. Did it merit an essay, or would I just be trying to play to my audience, writing about music… Mayfield’s vocals were indelible, so sweet, but not a ton happened in the record…worked great on Mayer’s show, but…

I was happy I was being turned on to a song I hadn’t known previously, this is what my detachment from politics is yielding.

And then…

2

The road flattens out, I no longer have to ride the clutch and the accelerator pedal simultaneously. And in a shorter time than I thought, I made the turn onto Mulholland, which was flowing speedily, I was in a good groove, and then the song switched to…

There was so much information in the readout…

“Raphael Saadiq/Rob ‘Fonksta’ Bacon – ‘Something Keeps Calling'”

This is WAY out of my wheelhouse.

And at first it’s just like “Fool For You,” a hook, repeated, but there’s also a sweet vocal, which is resonating, it’s penetrating, and the sun is setting as I’m driving west and I’m starting to self-check…wait a minute, is this a great song?

And then all of a sudden the track switches, to a guitar solo. Maybe this is why Mayer knows it. This guy is WAILING, TASTEFULLY!

The guitar… We got to a point where it was about how fast you played, how many notes, everybody was showing off, but this guy, he’s in tune with the track…it’s part of the canon, could be out of yacht rock, it’s got a lot of touchpoints, then again at one point he’s sustaining, that’s like a regular rock record, and then the lyric starts again…

“Something keeps calling”

And now I’m nodding my head. I’m past the point of no return. When I ultimately park my car, turn my engine off, I’m still singing the lyric in my head.

Raphael Saadiq… Wasn’t he in Tony! Toni! Toné?

Not really my bag. But he’s moved on from that group. But I didn’t think he was making music like this. That doesn’t play to the strictures, it’s like he’s just doing what he wants to do, the way it used to be done, commerciality be damned.

But this Rob “Fonksta” Bacon… Is he the singer or the guitarist? You can never really know with these featured players. I mean I know Saadiq sings, and I assume it’s him, but I ultimately get to my computer and Rob “Fonksta” Bacon…

Doesn’t have a Wikipedia page. Doesn’t even have a website.

He’s on Instagram. He’s a guitarist.

I’ve never heard of him before. But he’s been around long enough to have a nickname.

Now it turns out that John Mayer is not the only person who knows “Something Keeps Calling”… It’s got 15 million streams on Spotify. But to tell you the truth, don’t be too impressed, you’d be stunned how many cuts have this number of streams that you’ve never heard of. But obviously some people know this record. As far as the other twelve songs on the album, only two even break a million streams, one at 2.4 and another at 1.7.

And the album, entitled “Jimmy Lee,” came out in 2019. How does Mayer know it? I certainly don’t. But he turned me on to it.

And Raphael Saadiq hasn’t put out any solo work since. And that’s five years. Does Columbia even want to make another record?

But this track… Play it once and you might as well play it twenty. It’s not “Superfly,” but it’s on the continuum.

So maybe we’re hitting a new era, or maybe I’m hitting a new era, maybe this is when music triumphs once again.

And I’m thinking about John Mayer… His cred, his image, has only grown since he’s stopped having hit singles, it never used to be that way.

But it’s a brand new world.

And today Mayer was entry point.

“Something keeps calling”

That’s what we’re looking for, something that calls out to us. And it doesn’t matter if it doesn’t call out to you, as long as it calls out to somebody. The world has changed. Not everything worth hearing is a hit, and the business is truly driven by those not making hits, just doing it their own way. How many of the Spotify Top 50 could sell out the Sphere?

“Something keeps calling”