The engineer got here early.

I’m a stickler for time, if it’s booked for 11, I’ll be there, maybe with only seconds to spare, but I don’t expect anybody early, certainly not in L.A.

But Anna was. She came at 10:40. I was dressed, but in the bathroom, preparing…

Now this was for a podcast, with a household name, so I said yes. And while we were waiting for the phone call, I got some info. Anna was freelance, a radio engineer/producer, she’d gone to college in Wisconsin, she lived in Koreatown with a roommate and then…

The call came in.

And when it was over, we talked music. Because everyone’s got an opinion, and I always want to hear what the younger generation has to say. She’s on Apple Music, she says when she lived in London she had trouble connecting to Spotify, and she liked Kendrick Lamar and Kid Cudi and…we talked equipment, headphones, recorders, and then she asked for the bathroom and when I got up to show her I noticed, there was no car parked out front.

Did she Uber here?

YES.

So, I told her it was best to call a car, because it can take the better part of ten minutes for one to arrive.

So I’m gonna forgo tackling the email, the triple digits that have accumulated over the hours, that have me antsy, and engage in further conversation until the car arrives.

And that’s when I ask her, DO YOU OWN A CAR?

SHE’S NEVER OWNED A CAR!

She’s got a driver’s license, but no, she sees no need for  car, she’s got an Uber package. She pays ten bucks for a month of rides, twenty to be exact, and then it’s $6 if she takes UberX and $3 if she takes Uber Pool.

Huh? HOW COME I DON’T KNOW ABOUT THIS?

I dove deeper. She’s not committed to twenty rides, she’s just got to pay the ten bucks. And then she has the option of twenty rides, which she pays for as she goes.

WHAT IF YOU WANT TO GO TO THE BEACH?

No problem, she can go to the beach, she said she could go anywhere for $6.

And then I wondered why it paid to have an automobile at all.

WHAT ABOUT GROCERIES?

There’s a market on the corner.

And she has a bicycle, and…

You’ve got to know, how does the song go, NOBODY WALKS IN L.A? Without wheels you were a non-factor, you couldn’t even exist, everything was too far away, but now…

There’s a whole generation living in spread-out Los Angeles without wheels. And Anna’s not the only one I know, Richard’s son has got no car, and Daniel’s son doesn’t either.

Talk about a change in generations.

I wouldn’t have to get my car smogged, never mind pay insurance. I wouldn’t have to worry about maintenance, depreciation…

I’m over the whole car thing anyway, if someone offered me a new machine I’d say no. Why, so I can be anxious about parking it, scratching it? As for impressing others, ever since Larry David drove a Prius on “Curb Your Enthusiasm” that paradigm was undercut. If you’re laying out tonnage for an automobile, other than a Tesla, you’re a joke, you don’t see the importance of the environment, your priorities are screwed up, that’s right, we’re judging you, especially if you’ve got one of those exotic sports cars.

Talk about a change in generations, there’s a gap as wide as the one between boomers and their parents back in the sixties. Boomers think they’re so hip, so knowledgeable and up-to-date, but they’re the first to e-mail me about CDs or files and acquisitions, whereas the youngsters know it’s all about on demand, you want to be footloose and fancy free, to travel on a whim, uninhibited, baggage is anathema.

Just like Snapchat, they get it and their parents don’t. But also, they don’t care about its valuation, its usership, it fulfills a function and then they’ll go somewhere else, they’re not locked into a format, they’re fluid.

Ford just fired their CEO, because the one they had wasn’t forward-looking enough, wasn’t into driverless cars and electrics. It’s a wonder no one at the record label was fired because of a lack of knowledge of technology.

You can fight the old wars or jump into the pool. You can complain about recording revenue, you can talk about piracy, bitch about Ticketmaster, or you can realize those issues are all in the rearview mirror, because today’s generations don’t care about them. They’ll pay for convenience, they’ll overpay if they desire something, they’re about building their lives as opposed to accumulating goods.

This is not only a sea change for generations…

This is a sea change for America.

First they came for our CDs.

Then they came for our retail stores.

Now they’re coming for all our assets, all the stuff we thought immutable and desirable, that we had to have. You might build a shrine to yourself online, but in the real world?

Forget about it.

I do not know what happened here.

But I do know it stopped me in my tracks.

That’s how modern life seems to go, you don’t sit down at 7 o’clock for the news, you’re just minding your own business and you get a tweet, a text, an e-mail, and your whole life is changed.

That’s how it was today, when that message came through. And at first you try to be optimistic, and then you see the word “fatalities” and you go into shock, because dead is dead, and for every person playing Russian roulette with their lives there are zillions just going on with their business peacefully, who end up innocent victims.

And not only are their lives ended, but the lives of those left behind are ruined, it’s positively awful.

And as of this writing there are a lot of facts but no definitive answers. The police are saying it’s terrorism. The alert was high and there were threats and you never know what’s gonna happen…

And then it does.

We believe we’re immune in the U.S. Somehow, by being an ocean away our citizens feel they’re invulnerable, until 9/11, and then San Bernardino…but most people have never been to San Bernardino, whereas Manchester is the cradle of the industrial revolution, where the first computer was built, where Tony Wilson and the ravers built a culture that still survives, albeit having morphed into what is now called EDM.

So if you’re living in the U.K…

It feels really close.

But everything is close today, there is no refuge, and you can’t bury your head, there are so many threats.

So what are we going to do?

We’re gonna march forward, we’re gonna play music, we’re gonna have concerts.

Of course we’re gonna honor the dead. Of course we’re never gonna forget. But this is what we’re fighting for, our way of life, the ability to go to a show for a couple of hours and exalt in the sound of music, to be taken away and have a reason to live. That’s right, we play these tracks on our phones, they’re part of our DNA, and then we need to bond with those that make them, an especially desirable desire in a phony world where everything’s evanescent and duplicity reigns.

So we track down the real killer, we hold those responsible accountable, we institute new safety systems, but we don’t blink, we go on.

We didn’t expect it to be this way. The future was so bright we had to wear shades. The wall fell, Communism ended, and then terrorism burgeoned and the rich got richer and the poor got poorer and we ended up divided with more questions than answers.

Trump is a sideshow.

We are the main show. The creators, the artists, and the infrastructure that supports them. We create the culture, we influence people, it’s our responsibility to take a stand.

And what stand is that?

Well, right now, we’re emotionally gutted, I get that.

But when the shock starts to fade…

You’ve got to stand for something. Besides money. Your music should say something. And that money you make, or the power to make it, should be harnessed for good, not only lifestyle.

Maybe this is the inspiration we need to reboot our musical culture. Maybe it is not what is going on in D.C. And I’m not sure how we can fight terrorism, but I do know we can bring people together, support each other, cast aside the infighting and look to bigger issues.

Yup, music reflects the culture at large, where it’s every person for him or herself, and this stuff sucks and that stuff doesn’t and the acts all have beefs and no wonder we live in a Tower of Babel society, no wonder we can’t get along.

Your job as an artist is to spread unity, to spread love, our army is much stronger than theirs, that’s the power of music, it’s the hottest medium in the world. We can raise funds, but even more we can spread a message.

It’s early, it’s a war.

But we have power.

We will have further losses, but never underestimate the power of a leader, the power of togetherness, the power of a SONG!

Songs got us into this and songs are gonna get us out.

We’ve got creators on every street corner, in every village, we just have to stop shrugging our shoulders and unite on one message.

This is our way of life. We live to hear the note played pure and easy. We love to come together with our brethren in our own religious experience at the club, arena and stadium.

And it’s incumbent upon our leaders, the artists, managers and promoters, to stand up and tell us where to go, what to do, how to cope.

That’s right, first you’ve got to cope.

Nothing heals like song.

I challenge a superstar to write a healing number.

But that’s only the beginning.

This is a wake-up call, in a seemingly too long history of wake-up calls, are we just gonna sit back and wait for the next tragedy or are we gonna rise up and fight back?

We can do this.

Today’s Playlist – Spotify

“The Song Of Purple Summer”
“Spring Awakening”

Do they do “Spring Awakening” at high schools yet? I’m kinda stunned, this is from 2006, over ten years ago, and I can’t say the rest of the score resonates with me/I remember it, but I absolutely LOVE THIS!

It reminds me of the finale of “Fame,” I guess I love the majesty, the melody, it simultaneously makes you want to conduct the choir and sing along at the same time.

Your hitmaking era is usually brief. Give Duncan Sheik credit for realizing this, and you must realize how hard it is to have a Broadway success, not only to write but get it mounted and stick on the Great White Way.

ALL SHALL KNOW THE WONDER OF PURPLE SUMMER!

“So Little Time To Fly”
Spirit

From 1969’s “Clear,” and it’s amazing how crisp and clear this sounds considering that was almost fifty years ago.

I never knew that this was covered by Status Quo, just found that doing research, and I won’t say it’s as good, because the English band is lacking the exquisite vocal of Jay Ferguson, who is most famous for “Thunder Island” and is still around, but no one seems to know this, unfortunately.

But when you listen to the original…

You’ll get an idea of what it was like way back when, when underground FM ruled and it was anathema to have a hit on AM, when you bought the LPs and played them in a marijuana haze and nodded and knew every note and went to hear your favorites live more than to take selfies at the show.

It’s impossible to listen to “So Little Time To Fly” without nodding your head, without feeling you want to get behind the wheel and lower the window, put your arm on the sill and mash the accelerator.

Actually, I didn’t know this way back when, we couldn’t afford everything, it surfaced for me during the Napster/download era, of course I’m deep into “Dr. Sardonicus,” but this is just as magical.

“Sewn”
The Feeling

If you’re under twenty five have you ever heard this?

Certainly not if you’re living on this side of the pond, the Feeling had some huge success in the UK back in 2006, and if you’re the type of person who loved the Raspberries, who believe catchiness is cool, who believes the ability to sing and employ melody are a good thing, you’ll love this, it’s magical.

I yearn for the return of stuff like this.

I feel I’m gonna have to wait a very long time.

“Sewn” is deceptively long, be sure to hang in there until the transition at 3:25 when the guitar slashes and the song gets intense and builds to a release, you cannot listen to this and feel you’re alone, you believe you’re part of a vast audience with this mellifluous sound washing over you and it feels so GOOD!

“The Long Goodbye”
Paul Brady

Being a songwriter used to be different, you weren’t a topliner, improvising, your goal was to capture life in verse, a few minutes, much shorter than a book or a movie but encapsulating life even more accurately and powerfully, that’s the essence of music, sure, it’s a sound that makes you move your feet, makes you feel good, but…

Sometimes I ask my heart did we really
Give our love a chance

That’s something that went out the window with the turn of the century, commitment. Or maybe we’ve got to go back to the seventies, or back to the sixties, with the birth control pill, when everybody thought there was something better around the corner if you could just break up and take the risk.

I don’t believe this is true. I’m not saying you’ve always got to stay together, sometimes breakups are right, but too often one partner is unwilling to do the hard work, it’s so hard to get this far, to find someone, to click, to get along, you don’t want to throw that away too fast, without thinking about it.

“What Comes After”
Stories

Michael Lookofsky, aka Michael Brown, is gone now, but his work with the Left Banke lives on, deservedly so.

And after that act Brown was in a band called Stories, which ultimately had a hit with “Brother Louie,” but that’s not representative of what the band was about, “What Comes After” is.

Now music has become communal, despite being listened to via earbuds, it’s all about being a member of the group, but “What Comes After” is for you personally, I had the album “About Us” on a cassette I played driving cross-country, to hear “What Comes After” made me feel like it was all gonna be all right, and I don’t always feel that way…

“Blue Of Your Backdrop”
Honk

Be your own saving grace
Tip your hat, take your place
And shine on

California used to be different. Actually, it’s different once again, only in a different way. It’s the anti-D.C., the anti-Trumpland, we’ve got our own emissions standards, we’re fighting for a more equitable society and taxes are high but no one wants to leave because living is so damn good, even if real estate is astronomically expensive. And if you don’t believe that, you probably don’t live here, so save me your exhortations, that’s what’s wrong with America, everybody telling everybody else they’re doing it wrong, if you like to live where it’s every person for themselves, sans safety net, be my guest, but don’t rain on my parade.

But the mentality used to be different, before the world shrank, when the Golden State was three hours behind the rest of the country and didn’t care, when it went its own way and let its freak flag fly.

This is from the soundtrack of one of the greatest surf flicks of all time, “5 Summer Stories,” and you don’t have to see it but everybody active back in the seventies knows this album and this band from the soundtrack.

I want you to shine on. I want you to cast off the shackles, stop worrying about the limitations, forget about who your parents want you to be and be your best self.

I’m gonna try too.

“Dandy”
The Kinks

Did you know it was a Kinks song first, before Peter Noone and his band of merrymen made it a ubiquitous hit?

Of course, it all makes sense when you listen…

“Fountain Of Sorrow”
Jackson Browne

From back before he was a rocker, before the Fender became upfront and center, when he was America’s wise before his years troubadour without a hit but a growing audience.

Looking through some photographs I found inside a drawer
I was taken by a photograph of you

My father took slides, but that was an era of snapshots, I wish I had some now. Every once in a while someone will send one along from back then and I’ll be stunned, was I ever that young, that thin, why was I so insecure?

And the thing about memories is they fade but they never go away, you’re alternately haunted and elated by what once was, and fifteen years ago, maybe ten, it was cool to reach out to all those you’d been disconnected from for decades but I did not, because it’s too unsettling, there’s a reason you left them behind or vice versa…and I’m not a stalker, I don’t want to see what an ex-girlfriend is doing every damn day, and I don’t think they’re stalking me, but what if they are?

There were one or two I know that you would have liked a little more
But they didn’t show your spirit quite as true

Why does everybody hate themselves in photographs, why do they hold themselves up to unattainable standards, when done right a photo captures a part of you, but not all of you, and that part of you is true.

“Fountain Of Sorrow” is nearly seven minutes long, and when I say they don’t make them like this anymore, I mean it. No one’s shooting this high, a record is what you use to rationalize the tour, and even if you nail it you’re just part of the endless wash, why be new and different and independent when even those playing the game can’t get recognized?

I’m not sure.

But “Fountain Of Sorrow” cut us to the bone, it was unforgettable, it’s stuff like this that keeps us still going to the show today.

“Tell Me Why”
Taylor Swift

All of the above songs are from my iTunes Top 200. I go back there now and again, to reconnect, when I need to be rooted, the app is so damn bad and I never download music anymore, I’m a streamer, but when I hear these old songs they remind me…

Of 2009, when Taylor Swift was still a secret, only known by the country world and her fans.

I took a chance
I took a shot
And you might thing I’m bulletproof
But I’m not

How brave, how inspirational! They keep telling us to take a risk, we get it, but it’s so hard to do…

You took a swing
I took it hard
And down here from the ground I see who you are

This was back when Tay Tay was still punching up, when she was still the geek, the underdog, before she achieved world domination and felt it was her duty to be loved by all and to excoriate those not on her team. And that’s just plain sad, that she grew up in the spotlight, that she doesn’t realize that no one really cares, that we’re all equal and forgettable, only known for a moment. Fame has its perks, but it’s got its costs too. She’s licking her wounds now, and that’s good, but I wish she’d go back to rock and roll/country instead of the pop tripe she’s purveying today, hey, look even her old paramour Harry Styles has!

I’m sick and tired of your attitude
I’m feeling like I don’t know you
You tell me that you love me then you cut me down

Look at this through the lens of 2009, not 2017, she was hurt and she was expressing her anger, this was before she evolved into her GOTCHA! persona, when she started to settle scores, when the truth is you never can, you’ve got to declare individual victory and march on.

Tell me why
Why, tell me why

In ten short years the world has turned completely upside down, Taylor Swift was once the great white hope, and then she bought in and helped bring the whole edifice down.

It was all about sincerity, credibility, changes and the ability to sing along, those first two Taylor Swift LPs are exquisite, documents nearly equal to Joni Mitchell’s peak, in their sheer honesty and insight, and listening now you do wonder how much responsibility she had, her voice is thin, she’s not playing the instruments, but it’s her name on the record.

We’re all just people. Insecure. With more questions than answers. Geeky. Taylor Swift too.

But she made a career out of it, and an audience clamored for her authenticity, it could not be gotten anywhere else, she invented the paradigm and now…

She’s standing up for stuff that doesn’t even matter.

You know this isn’t even on Spotify?

Why?

What battle is she fighting here? One she’s already lost. Along with all that money.

And I think Taylor Swift is too old and too experienced to recapture the zeitgeist, but…

Imagine if she pulled back the layers and sang the truth about what she’s been through this past ten years, the journey from zero to hero, nowhere to everywhere, everybody wanting a piece of her but fumbling towards ecstasy in public, that’s an album I’d want to hear.

Like “Tell Me Why.”

Tell Me Why – YouTube

Could anyone have been plastered over the mainstream press more than Sheryl Crow? She even made the cover of “Parade,” talking about her home life.

But nobody wants to listen to her new album, on Spotify not a single cut has exceeded one million plays, which means if she’s counting on streaming revenue to pay her bills…she might be able to buy a hamburger.

Meanwhile, someone e-mailed me about this track by this act Russ, “Losin’ Control,” an act you’ve probably never heard of, and it’s got 63,982,611 streams, another cut, “What They Want,” has 98,875,488, and the most any cut from Crow’s album “Be Myself” has is the 649,847 for “Halfway There,” and two more cuts have broken six digits, barely, but the rest are in five.

How about Bob Dylan’s “Triplicate,” his covers of classics that we had to read about endlessly. Well, on Spotify they’ve just got a sampler, ten tracks instead of the entire package, but not a single cut has been streamed a million times either, although all are in six digits, albeit in most cases low six digits.

What is going on here?

People are ignoring the hype, if they even see it at all. They know that’s what it is.

And old fans are just not that interested in new material by people who’ve burned them so much in the past. For all the people trumpeting Dylan’s later work, there are zillions who are saying NO MAS, who just don’t get it, as for Crow, she hit the jackpot but then she went in search of coin, jumped to pop and country and no one’s quite sure what she stands for anymore, although people will still go to see both acts live to hear the hits of yore, that accompanied their upbringing.

Turns out it takes a lot to get people to click to stream, even though it may not take a train to cry. That jump from printed page, even from webpage, to Spotify, is gigantic. Forget the initial sales burst, the idiotic Top Ten you see in the newspaper based on rabid fans going out and buying CDs, the truth is most new projects by old acts disappear immediately.

Deservedly so?

I’ll let you decide.