I  bought blue sneakers because that’s what Dean was wearing on the cover of the live album “Command Performance.”

And they were not easy to find. In Fairfield, Connecticut, everybody wore P.F. Flyers or Keds, in white, black had gone out with the fifties, this was not California, Fairfield’s a lonely town when you’re the only surfer boy around.

This was pre “Endless Summer.” The only way I knew about surfing was…

Records.

And the Beach Boys are the most famous musical exponent of the surfing culture, but Jan & Dean came first, they were already an established act when the Surfaris released “Wipe Out.”

“Command Performance” was not the first album I bought, but it was close. I played it so much it turned grey, back in the day of heavy tonearms, when you’d put a nickel or a dime on top to make sure the needle didn’t skip.

Guys, hold on to your girls
Girls, you just hold on…
HERE COMES JAN AND DEAN

And after a fanfare and tons of screaming out of the one speaker in the side of the record player came…

Two girls for every boy

At this point that was meaningless. I’d had no girlfriend, was not interested in the opposite sex, but this mellifluous sound..IT WAS EVERYTHING!

In case you’re under sixty, that line is the opening lyric of “Surf City,” now known as Huntington Beach, where Dean Torrence presently resides. Yes, he surfed.

I’m not sure if Jan Berry did. But Jan was no music nerd, they met on the football team, Jan was on his way to medical school and Dean was studying architecture at USC and…

Jan crashed his Corvette into a parked truck on Sunset Boulevard and although that wasn’t all she wrote, Jan was never the same thereafter, speaking was hard, but the records remain.

And the records got me to Pasadena last night. Come on, give up on a chance to hear “The Little Old Lady (From Pasadena)” in Pasadena?

OF COURSE NOT!

It’s a free concert under the stars and despite Periscope, never mind television, you can’t really understand unless you’ve been there, here, Southern California.

It’s a different culture. You don’t need a jacket and tie to get into a restaurant, a college degree is nice, but where it’s from is irrelevant… The most important things are your image and your outlook, if  you’re up for anything, Southern California is your place!

That’s why I moved here. For that attitude, for that mental perspective, and it was the right move, but once upon a time I lived on the east coast.

So, I’m sitting there reminiscing. The memories flowing fast and furious. Summer camp. School dances. This was the soundtrack…

To a time long gone, in the rearview mirror never to be replayed, eventually not even to be remembered.

Fifty channels and nothing on? We only had three networks!

And the radio was our internet, we were addicted, it was how we connected.

We were living in the dark and didn’t even realize it.

But it was the music that midwived our transition into the future. A sound far different from what came before, played on guitars, about subjects that would never be sung about again.

Surfing?

What did Jimi Hendrix say, we’d never hear surf music again?

And it won’t be long before you don’t even own a car, never mind drive. Spending hours in your garage tweaking your hot rod? Today’s kids have no idea what a mill is!

Dean is 76. But not only is he still alive, he’s still active. Retirement at 65 is out of the question for baby boomers, who still believe their best days are ahead of them.

But we’re fading into irrelevancy. Not even given a thought. We’ve seen the trick, the marketers want to reach the youngsters.

But we’re still around, and it’s so weird.

So it’s billed as a “Beach Party.” And the set is heavy with Beach Boys numbers, after all…does anybody know Jan & Dean’s deep cuts? Even hits like “Linda”? Go see your favorites now, because soon you won’t be able to. As for those album tracks you loved… There’s no money in that, so they’re never played.

Before the show Dean and band did a private rendition of
“The Anaheim, Azusa and Cucamonga Sewing Circle Book Review and Timing Association” for Larry, who paid for the show. I had hopes they’d play it in the show. But it turns out Jan & Dean never even played the song live, they never went on a bus tour, they were in COLLEGE!

But now Dean does thirty to fifty shows a year, keeping the summer alive.

And it’s still alive in my brain, but so much of what was there is now gone.

Like my dad. Who came into my bedroom and sang “Tell ’em I’m surfin’,” not “Surfin’ U.S.A.,” but the track from Jan and Dean’s 1964 LP, “Ride The Wild Surf.” There’s more to it than that actually: “Hey mom, if any of the guys from my baseball team ever call me on the phone to ask me to play in an important game, just say their captain ain’t at home, tell I’m surfin'”… That’s right, baseball took a back seat to my new passion for music, which my father understood, even if we could never talk about it or much of anything else.

Camp Laurelwood is still there, but in pictures it’s different, my formative years in Botwinik and Fox live on in my memory, and there only, those photos are long gone.

I’ve still got the records, they’re on Spotify, but today oldies radio plays the music of the eighties and nineties. And sure, I can hear the originals on Sirius but…

The tracks are set in amber, they’re making no new ones.

The torch was passed when I wasn’t even looking. Other than the Beatles and the Stones, a bit of Beach Boys and a smidge of Eagles, all my musical building blocks have been plowed under.

I’ll never climb Everest.

I’ll never have my first girlfriend again.

The hourglass is emptying.

It’s bittersweet, but I couldn’t stop thinking about all this last night.

Dean sang about “The New Girl In School” yet I haven’t been in a classroom for decades and have no desire to return, but…

In my heart, I’m still ready to ride the wild surf.

Gotta take that one last ride.

Which is why I journeyed to Pasadena last night.

I took a left at Dead Man’s Curve, drove through Drag City, waved to Linda and the Honolulu Lulu and got my board and went Sidewalk Surfin’ once again.

The same way I did back when.

I’m still here.

Where is everybody else?

“Command Performance” – Spotify

More Release Radar – Spotify playlist

Yes, I’m cherry-picking, these are just a handful of the cuts I listened to on my “Your Release Radar” playlist, but they’re the ones that got me to react. It’s positively thrilling to be exposed to new music, to stop looking in the rearview mirror and turn your head forward, especially when you’re exposed to stuff that’s previously unknown to you, like Luke Winslow-King’s “I’m Glad Trouble Don’t Last Always,” the final cut below, if you’re pressed for time read about and listen to it first, it’s a winner!

“Hold On, I’m Coming”
Melissa Etheridge

Completely superfluous, not bad, but unnecessary. The last refuge of a has-been, a COVERS ALBUM! And isn’t it funny that it’s always whites covering blacks. I’m waiting for a black act to cover Night Ranger and Styx, HA!

“This House Is Not For Sale”
Bon Jovi

More of the same, but in this case mixed to a miasma that’s impenetrable, and did Jon always sing in this stylized voice, or is that just frustration that he can’t get arrested on wax.

He needs a new producer with a more modern and less dense sound. And sure, it’s got an arena rock chorus, once again, poorly mixed, with the vocal too far down, but this is really self-parody. He needs to work with Dave Cobb….

“Kiss The Sky”
Jason Derulo

This is fantastic, from Derulo’s greatest hits album. Sounds generic at first, but as it plays out you get hooked.

If we were living in the eighties, in a monoculture, with MTV ruling, everybody would know Derulo’s name, but now…

He’s part of the pop ghetto. (I know, that’s a dangerous word, fraught with subtext, but pop is a minority, even if it’s the loudest sound in a sea of noise, but my point is you think you’re winning when you’re on Top Forty but so many people don’t tune in but so many of these records…those not paying attention would like them, if they ever heard them.)

“Waiting For The Thunder”
Blackberry Smoke

If you were a fan of southern rock crossed with Foghat you’ll be stunned that a modern band has synthesized something new out of what once was, with an anthemic chorus putting it over the top. Sure, this is nearly paint-by-numbers, but it’s solid. If we were in the heyday of AOR, during the seventies, this would sit right next to the Outlaws just fine, you’d like it, you’d see them as the middle band in a triple bill.

“I’m Glad Trouble Don’t Last Always”
Luke Winslow-King

And here’s the winner. By someone I’ve never heard of, doing that swamp rock sound, hearkening back to what once was without being pure nostalgia, with a big fat chorus to boot, this unheralded nobody is doing soulful blues rock better than Eric Clapton, all the old farts should track this guy down and play with him, to reinvigorate themselves, you can’t think too much, you’ve just got to strap on the axe, turn up the amp, step up to the mic and feel the power, that’s right, rock music is all about feel, something that starts in the heart and then migrates to the genitals, gets your whole body shaking, the problem with too much of today’s music is it appeals to the brain, and in music, thinking is always secondary to feel.

This is on Bloodshot, most famous for releasing Ryan Adams’s “Heartbreaker,” how does an indie label survive, one that cannot participate in 360 degrees of revenue, they must be doing it for the love of it.

And “Your Release Radar” relies not on radio, it’s not part of the winning through relationships and intimidation game, rather it’s all driven by science, algorithms, so something can surface if it’s good, and “I’m Glad Trouble Don’t Last Always” is…good, that is, it’s heavy without being fake, bass-driven but not bass-dominated. CHECK IT OUT!

What It Means – Spotify

What It Means – YouTube

What kind of crazy fucked up world do we live in where a band of whites from the south writes the protest song of the year?

One in which everybody in pop music is so busy self-promoting their hedonistic vision that the sideshow becomes the real show.

Glenn Yarbrough died. If you lived through the sixties you’ll remember him from the Limeliters, from his solo hit “Baby The Rain Must Fall.” He was inspired by Woody Guthrie, he saw music could be an agent for change, it didn’t just have to be mindless drivel.

But that’s what we’re subjected to, in a nation where facts are irrelevant, everybody’s got their own agenda and we have not only political gridlock, but cultural and economic gridlock too. Both sides shout loudly and the issue gets covered up and we all put our tails between our legs and move on. But a song, it has power that transcends and maintains.

He was running down the street
When they shot him in his tracks
About the only thing agreed upon
Is he ain’t coming back

Dead is dead, it’s final. That’s something seemingly only friends and families of the deceased seem to know, for everybody else the person gone is a bargaining chip, a point of discussion to hang your viewpoint upon, after you assassinate the character of someone who cannot defend him or herself.

There won’t be any trial
So the air it won’t be cleared
There’s just two sides calling names
Out of anger, out of fear

Fear, it rules our nation, drummed up by wankers on TV and talk radio, saying how bad our nation is when the truth it’s safer than ever before. It’s all about perception as opposed to reality. And the outside agitators want to fan the flames of despair, it suits them, then you’ll pay fealty to the powers-that-be, give up power over your own destiny, pointing at others as opposed to marching forward yourself, how ever hard that might be.

If you say it wasn’t racial
When they shot him in his tracks
Well, I guess that means you ain’t black
It means that you ain’t black

The Supreme Court says we live in a post-racial society, that voter equality laws are passe, oversight is eliminated, and then the usual suspects make it harder for the underclass to vote.

I mean Barack Obama won
And you can choose where to eat
But you don’t see too many white kids lying
Bleeding on the street

Just because we have a black President, just because separate but equal laws have been struck down, that does not mean we have equality. Today, unless they’re athletes, African-Americans are demonized, as opposed to being given a hand up.

And it happened last weekend
And it will happen again next week
And when they turned him over
They were surprised there was no gun
I mean he must have done something
Or else why would he have run

He’s running because once you’re entangled with the police the games begin, it no longer becomes about the traffic violation, your entire character and past come into question. So, you’re scared. And when people are scared they don’t make the best choices.

And they’ll spin it for the anchors
On the television screen
So we can shrug and let it happen
Without asking what it means

The media… Fox has an agenda. As does Murdoch’s “Wall Street Journal.” But call this out and the right wing just attacks the bleeding heart liberal press trying to get it right, it’s the left wing media that blinks, not Bill O’Reilly or Sean Hannity stirring up discontent. News is purely entertainment, it’s about the narrative, the personages proud of being on screen and rich, right and wrong are secondary to ratings.

And that guy who killed that kid
Down in Florida standing ground
Is free to beat up on his girlfriend
And wave his brand new gun around
While some kid is dead and buried
And laying in the ground
With a pocket full of Skittles

George Zimmerman may have gotten off, but he’s turned out to be a bad actor, the shooting wasn’t an anomaly, but the discussion is about black kids in hoodies and white fear.

We’re living in an age
Where limitations are forgotten
The outer edges move and dazzle us
But the core is something rotten
And we’re standing on the precipice
Of prejudice and fear

Just because we all have smartphones that does not mean we are not humans, with foibles and problems that need to be addressed. Instead we’re told to be thrilled by social media breakthroughs and to be happy because we have flat screens, huh?

It’s not only the demonization of the blacks, but the poor whites and the hard-working immigrants too. It’s class warfare amongst the lower third, and those in charge, with power, are completely out of touch, or as even right winger Peggy Noonan pointed out…Syrians are settled in poor white communities as opposed to the Beltway. They don’t want people like them in their own neighborhood, even though they’re bleeding heart liberals.

How Global Elites Forsake Their Countrymen

Roger Ailes is a harasser who fostered a culture of sexual pressure and intimidation throughout Fox News. And when confronted, like every tribe throughout history the team just circled the wagons until Gretchen Carlson stood up for what was right.

Hillary Clinton is running for President as an advocate for us but she’s so entrenched with the rich financiers that she’s not sure what side she’s on.

Donald Trump has taken advantage of tax laws after being born on third base and confuses running for President with promoting a television show and this guy knows what’s going on on Main Street as much as a denizen of Ferguson knows what’s going on on Wall Street.

What’s a poor boy to do?

Play in a rock and roll band!

I don’t expect “What It Means” to get Top Forty airplay. Then again, it’s no “Eve Of Destruction,” it’s a rambling ditty which will make the band’s fans happy, they’ll sing along, but as for the rest of us…

We’ll never hear it.

Then again, I discovered “What It Means” via Spotify’s “Release Radar,” that’s right, algorithms are more trustworthy than personal recommendations, they’re unbiased, they surfaced this track for me.

And listening gives me hope.

“What It Means” won’t make the Drive-By Truckers rich, it will barely expand their audience, but they’re speaking from the heart, they’re doing what’s right, which is hard to achieve when a track has ten writers and just as many hooks put together for a short attention span audience.

Maybe it’s time we listened all the way through, to those saying something as opposed to trying to razzle-dazzle us into submission.

Every revolution starts with one step forward.

And the Drive-By Truckers just took one.

Now it’s your job to follow in their footsteps.

He not busy being born is busy dying.

Or, if you prefer your musical references via the UK as opposed to the US, as Dave Edmunds once sang,
Crawling from the wreckage, crawling from the wreckage, INTO A BRAND NEW CAR!

In case you missed the memo, and I doubt you truly care, Arianna Huffington ankled the “Huffington Post,” to focus on her wellness company, which is like A-Rod leaving the the playing field to become a Yankee advisor, he was toast and no one ever wanted to listen to him anyway, his expertise was doing his own damn job, at best.

And what is Arianna’s job?

Being famous and getting rich.

The HuffPo was a good idea that followed its initially hyped vision ever so briefly.

The HuffPo was gonna take back the dialogue from the right, was gonna own the web if not talk radio, all the liberals angsting about Bush would have their own platform, where they’d write…for free.

Think about that, it wouldn’t go over today. That’s a dead paradigm. We’ll cough up cat videos, post pictures of weddings and anniversaries, but those who provide content for a living, those who are writers, are on to the scam, they’re not working for free.

Not that there aren’t people who will.

Welcome to the modern web, where everybody’s posting but the caliber of writing is so godawful that no one is reading. We don’t even know if your ideas are half-baked, we can’t get past the headline.

And the HuffPo was all about headlines.

It was about search engine optimization to generate clicks which sold advertising. And the team that developed this paradigm wanted to cash out, and did, and the progenitor moved on to create BuzzFeed, and the HuffPo ended up a couple of years and a couple of changes behind it.

Now let’s give credit where credit is due… The HuffPo invented CLICKBAIT!

You know, all those saucy headlines that lead to non-stories. The HuffPo specialized in that, when it started we were still susceptible. But today, Facebook has mounted an assault against clickbait, it ruins the customer experience. But what kind of experience is it when the whole damn site is clickbait?

That’s today’s “Huffington Post.” A lot of headlines and images but no content, it’s the news equivalent of a Twinkie.

But Arianna became more famous and got more rich and the last laugh is on us.

That’s the game today. Marissa Mayer does bupkes at Yahoo but gets rich in the process. It’s about one and done. Having your payday. And then living the good life ever after.

This is not Steve Jobs on a mission to change the world taking a dollar a year in pay. This is all about cashing out, and staying out.

So, you know that the HuffPo was sold to AOL, and you know that AOL was sold to Verizon. And now there’s no place for Arianna, she’s a cog in a machine that doesn’t want her. But the truth is Tim Armstrong and the AOL brass ultimately didn’t want her either.

But this is less about Arianna than the site, the HuffPo itself. It was cutting edge once and didn’t keep up with the times and is now marginalized. A thrill when it launched, now the left wingers would much rather go to Nate Silver’s 538, at least there’s data there, to go along with the analysis, it’s not all puff pieces, empty calories.

And it’s not only the HuffPo, it’s Perez Hilton too. They both kept expanding into new territories, the HuffPo even launching a divorce vertical and Perez/Mario getting into fashion and pets. But these expansions looked exactly like what they were, land grabs to sell more advertising, and we’re sick of ads, we want substance.

So, BuzzFeed does clickbait better than the HuffPo. It’s clickbait with a twist, they create the content, and source it out everywhere, as opposed to the HuffPo consolidating others’ stories. Aggregation sites are history, we’re inundated with links, we now live in an app economy, on our mobile devices, we choose who gets through the filter and if you don’t, you’re irrelevant.

And Facebook at least pays lip service to its users. The HuffPo was almost always above its target audience, holier-than-thou just like Arianna herself.

It’s a modern tech story, no different from Osborne Computer or Kaypro or WordPerfect or other titans that triumphed and faded away.

They stopped innovating, they didn’t keep up with the times, then they were extinct.

Music is better, because if you’ve had hits you can trade on them forever, people always want to relive the good times.

Then again, the who moved my cheese people can’t get over the death of rock and the rise of pop music and EDM, they refuse to embrace change, they want the past to return, and that’s never gonna happen.

And the new music stars know the game has changed. Only an oldster spends three years polishing an album, the new kids on the block, led by the rappers, personified by Drake, are constantly in the marketplace, even releasing mixtapes for free. Because they know if you’re not in the show, you’re soon to be forgotten. There’s a tsunami of info and if you don’t catch the wave, ride it to the beach and hold on for dear life, you’ll be plowed under, taken out to sea and never heard from again.

Still, the joke is on us. Because we buy this crap. The concept that Arianna Huffington is a star with gravitas entitled to our attention. Not admitting she’s a creature of the media, she’s barely different from Kim Kardashian, but the latter is richer, and if not educated, even more street smart.

So, if you’re following Arianna into her wellness venture I’m laughing. Why exactly should we be listening to her, because she wrote a book? If I want to know about sleep I’ll go to a doctor, I’ll go to an expert, someone who dedicated his life to the cause as opposed to a trendmeister out for a buck.

But bucks she has, from her divorce and the sale of the HuffPo. Arianna’s a winner. Because that’s the American game, making something out of nothing and getting rich in the process.

But when so many are struggling, when the real problems of this nation not only go unsolved, but unaddressed, it’s unseemly that we’ve got a coterie of people who’ve rigged the game to get rich and famous yet have contributed almost nothing to society.

You might hate the cops, but on a good day they keep the peace.

As for teachers, there are tons of bad ones, but they’re on the front lines of the future, educating our children, they’re where the rubber meets the road but we keep complaining about their unions. Come on, teachers haven’t been well off since Reagan, many have other jobs, they can’t live on their pay.

And I don’t want to go down the rabbit hole of either police or educators, all I’m saying is they’re underpaid people who are truly making a difference.

Does Mark Zuckerberg make a difference?

Well, he allows us to connect with everybody we ever knew, but is this the basis for a productive society? Where you roll up the world’s population to sell them ads and bogus information?

We’ve got it wrong folks, we need a reset. Don’t confuse today’s tech titans with the progenitors. This is not Bill Gates contributing to productivity, putting a computer on every desktop, this is mostly wankers coming up with lame ideas that hoodwink us so they can get rich.

Of course there are exceptions, Uber is a breakthrough, Airbnb too, however disruptive.

But selling advertising in new ways? Utilizing subterfuge to get us to pay attention?

If that’s your goal, if that’s your achievement, you should be exposed.

And I’m exposing Arianna Huffington here.

Furthermore, she was a bad techie. Steve Jobs brought us the mouse, got rid of the floppy, kept killing the past to get on with the future. Arianna just stuck where she was, a one hit wonder with a pretty lame song to begin with.

Good riddance.