the Axe Files – Ep. 147 – Gov. Jerry Brown

I know, I know, I’m overloading you with missives. Hell, I’m thrilled you’re subscribing and reading AT ALL! It’s just that I’m both excited about life and overwhelmed, and there’s just so much HAPPENING!

Like listening to the BBC re the election on Sirius this morning. What a great world we live in where we can tune into the source and get a take. But there are fewer outlets in the U.K., at least it seems that way, whereas in America we live in the land of chaos, nowhere so much as in the land of podcasts, most of which are vanity projects, but some resonate.

Like the Axe Files. Wherein David Axelrod interviews both right and left wingers. He gets their history, and if we’re lucky their take on what’s going on now. I mean he even had Karl Rove, and that guy who wrote “Hillbilly Elegy,” whom I now deplore. J.D. Vance may have come from nothing, but after Yale he became part of the tech/financial complex, working for Peter Thiel, and I’d rather listen to someone still in the belly of the beast. Did you read that story in the “New Yorker” about the opioid crisis in West Virginia? The EMT went to the same house for O.D.’s three times in one day, FOR THE SAME PEOPLE!

Now we live in a land of disagreement, where there’s little leadership and we feel that we’re on our own, then you listen to Jerry Brown on the Axe Files and you see a glimmer of hope.

That’s right, Governor Moonbeam. Who dated Linda Ronstadt. Who kept running for President and losing. He’s Governor again, but not for long, hell, he’s 79 years old. But he’s as fresh and as motivated as ever. And listening to him talk is stimulating and energizing and THIS IS THE BEST PODCAST I’VE HEARD ALL YEAR!

We need leaders. We need people who are speaking English. Brown pulls no punches, says exactly what he thinks, with no hems and haws. He just lays it all out. And I believe even if you disagree, if you’re on the right, you’ll think he makes sense.

And at the end he recites all the California triumphs. High taxes, but a great economy with a reserve.

But I don’t want to get into the specifics, I want you to LISTEN!

And no one’s got any time, I know. I went to the Dylan Nobel speech and it had under a hundred thousand listens. Now I see it’s got 661,050, and to tell you the truth, you don’t have to listen to all 27 minutes, when he gets talking about “Moby Dick” and “All Quiet On The Western Front” it’s boring, it’s like he had to appeal to the naysayers, say he’s part of the canon of literature. But BEFORE THAT? Wow, he talks about inspiration, locking on to Buddy Holly, hearing records, getting inspiration, finding his direction, not worrying about popular culture but going his own way, it’s so INSTRUCTIVE!

But even more I want you to listen to Jerry Brown. All of it. Because it’s the wisdom of experience. He himself makes that point, when he was first governor when he was 36, he thought experience was the problem, now he knows that’s wrong. And he learned how to get along, to compromise, and this is a better Commencement speech than you’re ever gonna hear.

If you listen to podcasts. If you’re worried about the world surrounding us. If you’re interested in stimulation… PLEASE LISTEN!

“The Addicts Next Door”

“2016 Nobel Lecture In Literature-Bob Dylan”

RapCaviar

Is driving the culture. It’s more important than radio. It’s where rap records get started, and rap rules America.

How did this happen?

MILLENNIALS! The pooh-poohed generation has taken over. They threw a monkey wrench into the British election and they’re skewing music listening. This is the way it always happens. Just when you think everything’s copacetic, when there is no change, change happens.

The debate about Spotify has been about compensation.

But the true story about Spotify is INFLUENCE!

Spotify is where records get started. And they do so very quickly. This is not radio, where you massage program directors and wait for your slot, where you have arguments about what and what doesn’t work. Spotify knows INSTANTLY! Either a track is saved or skipped. And with this data, the service places winning tracks on other playlists and they become hits. Radio is last. And at this point radio reaches more people, but 6,962,977 people are subscribed to RapCaviar, and that’s just plain NUTS!

And in the mobile version, there are videos interspersed in the playlist, there’s a whole culture, a whole ecosystem, lacking in other genres, especially those which have not moved to streaming. Once again, country and rock and every other genre should IMPLORE their acolytes to subscribe to Spotify. As for Apple Music, it’s a black hole behind a paywall with no readily discernible data. It’s anti-now. Apple should be publishing reams of data, to not only help artists but to cement their place in the culture.

But right now it’s limited to Spotify.

And why is it African-Americans are always on the cutting edge of technology? First with pagers, then with smartphones and now streaming. They’re open to something new, they go where the action is, they create the action, they’re aware of the rules whereas everybody else keeps whining that their cheese has been moved.

And African-Americans drive the culture.

So the whites are hip-hop fans, and they’re all aware of RapCaviar, they pay attention to it.

The most popular rock playlist on Spotify is Rock This, with only 3,664,155 followers. Even Rock Classics only has 2,315,715 followers.

Hot Country has 3,794,358.

ElectroNow has 4,253,946.

Ultimate Indie has only 1,707,052.

None of the Folk and Americana breaks seven figures, they don’t even get to half of that. Metal is even worse. Punk is just about as bad.

So if you’re focusing your fans on downloads and CDs you’re only hurting yourself. People discover new music on Spotify. And it will only become more powerful. They’re going to steal radio’s thunder while stations keep putting out press releases how healthy the genre is. In an instant world, who wants to be last? In an on demand world, who wants to wait to hear what they want and be unable to skip?

Right now hip-hop rules Spotify, that’s where all the money is going. If you want to get paid, you need to advocate for your genre’s playlist, you’ve got to play the streaming game.

Or you’re gonna be left out.

There’s no story here. And to the degree there is one, it’s not about Swift.

Streaming won, we live in an on demand culture. Furthermore, those at the top of the streaming chart are making beaucoup bucks. And with new chart formulas, it’s the streamers who top the chart, sales are nearly irrelevant. Hell, they’re up in arms in the U.K. over Ed Sheeran’s dominance of the singles chart, he had almost all of the positions! But that’s what happens when truth outs. We need a way to break songs, but we can’t argue that those who’ve already made it dominate the majority of listening.

But not Taylor Swift.

Come on, we already had this debate over a decade ago. Remember when acts wouldn’t go on iTunes? Hell, even Kid Rock woke up, even though his hero, Bob Seger, is still living in the last century. Want to be marginalized in today’s society? Just make yourself unavailable. You need to be everywhere today, never say no, and if you’re LUCKY people will spend their time with you.

Taylor Swift will be over someday. How do I know? BECAUSE EVERYBODY IS OVER SOMEDAY! You don’t want to cripple yourself in the middle of your career. Look at Kesha. Now what? Stay in the game, play out your contract. That’s the rule of the music business, it’s not about justice, it’s about being around long enough to write your own rules. Sorry that’s unfair, but dem’s the rules.

Taylor Swift is living in a bubble. You can’t blame her, she grew up with fame, but she’s got no idea how she’s perceived. She overplayed her hand with that photographed holiday party, she got in online tangles she shouldn’t have, with other, more streetwise performers, and then she went on hiatus.

Bad move. She should have stayed on social media, people would have forgotten the faux pas. But by going silent that’s all we remember. I mean come on, letting Kim and Kanye take you down? As for Katy Perry… Just stand up and apologize, say it was somebody else’s fault, you weren’t aware. Then again, you wrote that song…

She’s got to stop dissing people. That’s a one note game.

Not that Taylor Swift’s career is gonna die tomorrow. Because the whole world is Nashville now. Meaning it’s about songwriters getting their wares on hit records. And with albums history, you’ve got to have the single, that’s what streaming has taught us. So, Taylor gets her choice of the best of the best. And if you think she’s writing these numbers independently, you probably still believe in Santa Claus.

But Swift is not stupid. Which is why she made this move. She realized the marketplace had changed. Two summers ago Apple was not gonna pay for free streaming, for the trial period, today Apple Music has 27 million paying subscribers, only dwarfed by Spotify’s more than 50. It’s where the money is. Sure, Adele triumphed without Spotify, but that was eighteen months ago, and sure, she sold albums, but the singles on “25” were not as successful as those on “21” and some of that has to do with quality, but even more has to do with availability.

You don’t want to be too early.

But you certainly don’t want to be too late.

Taylor Swift realized streaming has won. And she hasn’t even restricted her tunes to paid streaming, which Spotify now allows, she wants to continue to be the biggest star in America, and she can only do this by playing by the new rules.

She realized the game has changed.

Have you?

P.S. After writing this, but before sending it, I got an email from someone in the demo who wrote:

“But the same night, at the same hour that Perry’s new album drops? She couldn’t wait a week? That seems like a pointed shot. And super petty.”

I think that’s right. I think that’s brilliant insight. This is the kind of thing the internet was built for, the scuttlebutt that will ensue, no matter what the truth. This illustrates Swift has learned no lessons, because the truth is irrelevant, the perception will be she’s still at war with Katy Perry, which is kind of funny for someone who refused to take a stand on the election, if Taylor Swift had come out for Hillary, Clinton would have won, that’s how powerful Swift is. But she abdicated her power all in an effort to further her career, while hurting it in the process. You punch UP, not DOWN! Which is why it worked when Swift attacked Apple but it doesn’t when she attacks Perry. Swift is seen as a truthsayer who composes her own music, her body of work hangs together, Perry is all over the place. But Swift cannot accept her superiority. And when you’re fighting all comers, which seems to be Swift’s M.O., you ultimately lose.

Comey is not the story. Democrats are creaming in their jeans over today’s testimony, believing Congress is gonna bring Trump down.

But that is untrue, the public’s gonna bring Trump down. How do I know? BRITAIN!

Brexit was the first indication that the underclass was angry, left behind, that they were afraid of losing their identity and believed globalization was the cause. And these same views played out in the Presidential election, it’s just that no one wanted to believe them. Not Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who propped up Hillary, nor the reporters who loved hanging with the rich and famous as opposed to the poor and unknown, nor the pollsters, who believed data was infallible.

Now the loss of the Conservative majority is predicated on exit polls. And who knows, those could be wrong. But one thing’s for sure, Theresa May miscalculated, she shouldn’t have called an election. She thought her party had the support of the people.

It didn’t.

And neither does Trump’s.

Of course he’s President. But if you think he’s headed for imminent impeachment you don’t know the wheels of justice grind slowly and everybody’s expendable but the President. He’ll sacrifice Sessions, even his son-in-law Jared Kushner. And even if there’s an offense, getting the Republicans to evict him from office is hard to fathom, especially after they all rallied around Trump after denigrating him.

But this is not about D.C. This is about the tenor of our country, the tenor of our world.

People are dissatisfied. They’re sick of business as usual. They didn’t like Trump so much as they hated Hillary. They didn’t want four more years of Obama not because they were racist and sexist, but because their lives had become economically stagnant in the interim. Barry was so busy being cool, appealing to the insiders, that he lost touch with the outsiders, the little people, whom Bill Clinton spoke to so effectively.

But if the elites are wrong about Theresa May, WHAT ELSE ARE THEY WRONG ABOUT?

This is the takeaway, this is the story.

I too am glued to the news, watching for every Trump faux pas. But it’s entertainment, I’m powerless, but he won and he’s in office and he’s debasing our country but the only way out of this is to wait for another election.

Now the game is rigged, via gerrymandering, but the truth is Trump’s eviscerated his support. How do I know?

Let’s start with the Paris Agreement.

Turns out corporations and governors are gonna take action independently, the tone deafness of the Administration is palpable. When you play to your core, you ignore the rest, and pulling out is not gonna save jobs, it’s not even gonna save coal. Elected officials are caught up in how things look… That doesn’t matter, it’s how things ARE!

And the truth is people trust neither politicians nor corporations. Nor should they. Politics is show business for ugly people. And the elected officials just want to get rich, just like the newsies who want to hang with power. They’re detaching from the rank and file, and it’s gonna bite ’em in the ass.

How do I know?

NAPSTER!

Why did people need poor-sounding files? Why didn’t they keep on buying overpriced CDs with one good track?

Because they were sick of being ripped-off! And they were ahead of the record labels!

The people are way ahead of the politicians, the newspeople too. The people have boots on the ground everywhere, and if they can get a job it pays poorly and they can’t get ahead and everyone’s addicted to dope. Stop crapping on the rank and file, they know more than you think they do. Just like you hated on rioters burning down buildings in their own neighborhoods, when you’ve got nothing, you’ve got nothing to lose, when you’ve got no seat at the table, you resort to anarchy to have an effect.

That’s how Trump got elected. Don’t dive deep into fake news and Comey, that’s inside baseball. People wanted a change.

But most don’t want the change Trump is delivering.

So expect a wicked correction. And I’m not talking about one in the stock market, but that could tank too. You see most people don’t own stock and they don’t pay income taxes either, but they’re paying taxes all the while…payroll, sales…

As for institutions, they believe they’re rigged. They like health care, but they hate the insurance companies. You’ve got to be rich to get service in America, and they’re not.

Everybody believes it’s gonna be business as usual, go on the same forever. Russia is gonna be democratic, CDs are gonna rule and internal combustion engines are gonna pollute until the end of time. But change comes rapidly. Look at Kodak. We heard for ten years that digital was gonna replace film. Never happened. But then in ONE YEAR Kodak fell, the switch was just that fast.

So what does it all mean?

Don’t pay attention to the bloviators, the professional commentators. Everybody’s trying to get rich and have a better lifestyle and by time you make it on camera you’ve left most of humanity behind. Humanity without money, humanity without leaders, but humanity with a voice.

Want to succeed tomorrow? Champion the downtrodden, the underclass. That’s how Bernie Sanders went from zero to hero overnight. Want to be a credible rock star? Ensure your fans can get in for a cheap price, go build houses in Appalachia. Show that you remember where you came from, your roots.

But the problem is in the last few decades people have been born with silver spoons in their mouths, they’ve gone to Harvard and flown private and have no idea what’s going on in the rest of the world.

These are the CEOs, the nitwits turning airplanes into cattle cars.

And these are the politicians.

Ignore them. They’re on the wrong path.