There was a common enemy.

And Neil Young was Canadian. Talk to today’s Canadians, the electors of a snowboarding instructor, they’re completely flummoxed with what’s going on south of the border. And in the seventies they sewed Canadian flags to their backpacks before they ventured overseas, so they wouldn’t be confused with their American brethren, responsible for Vietnam.

Yes, Vietnam united us. Our hatred for our country’s policies. Our fear that we’d die there. Truly palpable. A lot different from being executed in a video game. Rich men could get their kids in the Coast Guard, the Reserves, but there were not that many rich people and not that many who were connected so you turned eighteen, registered for the draft, and started to worry.

But the bifurcation of society began before. One can try to pinpoint the separation of the youth from their parents but let’s settle on 1964, when the Beatles appeared on “Ed Sullivan.” Overnight kids had new heroes. And this mass was just that, a huge segment of the population, known as the baby boomers. And at first the Beatles were singing about love, but it wasn’t long before they weighed in on deeper topics and we listened.

To “Surrealistic Pillow” too. Then Cream and Jimi Hendrix. We were implored to “feed our head,” on national radio, in an era when most people had never even heard of marijuana and most considered drugs to be heroin. And then, suddenly, you knew someone with reefer, and people switched from alcohol to herb, it was a badge of honor, to reject your parents’ lifestyle, beliefs and mores. You took your instructions from countercultural heroes, mostly musicians.

Now it’s not like “Ohio” was created in a vacuum. Stills had written and Young had been in the group when Buffalo Springfield had a monster hit with “For What It’s Worth.” Even though most listeners were unaware of the Sunset Strip riots, had no idea what Pandora’s Box was. Still…

There’s something happening here
What it is ain’t exactly clear
There’s a man with a gun over there
Telling me I got to beware

There’s the dividing line right there. Awareness as opposed to conformity. In an era where guns were anathema amongst the youth, long before the NRA permeated their consciousness, demonstrating that music and love are more powerful than firearms.

And the Byrds made their bones on a cornucopia of protest music, providing insight into the happenings of the day.

And then, on the second side of Crosby, Stills & Nash’s debut, David Crosby penned and sang “Long Time Gone.”

Hear, you must hear what the people say

Powerless? The younger generation believed it could move mountains.

Speak out
You got to speak out against the madness
You’ve got to speak your mind
If you dare

If you dare… You’re home in your bedroom with the album you bought that everybody owns and your hero, your teacher, was not only telling you what was going on, but he dared you to take action, to do something about it.

And you were not the only one. There were protests in the street. There was a path to follow. And then there was a trigger moment.

Kent State. Proof of all our paranoia. Not radically different from last week’s FBI shenanigans, only in this case four of our brethren died, how many of our brethren will die if Obamacare is overturned?

And action begets inspiration. The famous photos in “LIfe” magazine had Neil Young putting pen to paper, pick to strings.

Tin soldiers and Nixon coming
We’re finally on our own

We. The youth. There was no division. This was a wakeup call.

Most people had little idea who Neil Young was. He was just the fourth guy added to Crosby, Stills & Nash, but his songs, his playing, had been included on “Deja Vu,” that spring’s monster hit, with Graham Nash’s composition “Teach Your Children” high on the chart.

And Young’s scorching guitar was a sound unknown to most. But when it emerged upon the airwaves in May of 1970 the audience clamored, became aware, ultimately made his fall album “After The Gold Rush” a monster.

Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are cutting us down
Should have been done long ago

What should have been long ago? Upgrading your mobile phone? Posting to Instagram?

A hit is not what it used to be, the “Billboard” chart is irrelevant, most of America does not know the hits, ubiquity is history. However there are stars. But as close as most get to saying what’s going on, standing up to the insanity permeating our nation, is Kenny Chesney singing about “noise.” No one wants to take a side, for fear of alienating a potential customer. So leadership goes elsewhere, listeners are on their own, even though they’re hungry for direction, but musicians have abdicated their power.

But the songs are written by committee, oftentimes by Europeans, who see it as commerce rather than art, who seem not to know the power of a song, how it can impact people, change their thinking. Hell, most baby boomers were for the war before the musicians convinced them otherwise. It’s always the artists who think for themselves, at least true artists.

How can you run when you know

That’s one thing for sure, today everybody knows. It was easier to tune out the news back then, just turn off the TV, stop reading the newspaper. But today we’re bombarded with messages. Yet there’s no unification, there’s you and me and we just disagree. Because we no longer have similar values. Because life is so much harder in the twenty first century than it was in the twentieth, when you could survive on a minimum wage job and upward mobility was rampant.

So you’ve got a vocal crew telling musicians to shut up. But they’re not the only ones being told to keep quiet.

And since there was an election we are supposed to shut up, which is like asking Neil Young not to sing about Kent State because Nixon was President, he just called him out.

You cannot predict history. But you can see for all the similarities to what was, today is completely different.

Musicians were rich. They followed their own muse. They were brought up in an era of possibilities and felt it their duty, were thrilled to push the envelope.

Today the best and the brightest put their head down and rape and pillage in the name of the almighty dollar. Working for Goldman Sachs, the tech company, they’re afraid of being left behind so they screw you, they don’t care about you.

And you wonder why we have no protest music.

Oh, we’ve got a lot of niche acts, veritable unknowns, protesting loudly. But what we need is those with power, those with influence, to take a stand, like the Republicans in Congress.

Good luck waiting.

Ohio –
Spotify
YouTube

 

Sounds best with no distractions.

But we live in a distracted world. One in which concertgoers can’t get off their mobiles, where we need a hit of adrenaline 24/7, otherwise we become depressed, feel like we’re falling behind. But what if someone made a record for a different time, when we lived life much more slowly, when we paid attention!

In case you haven’t been, paying attention, that is, Chris Stapleton is the number one hero in Nashville. Because he did it his way. He’s old and experienced and overweight and that does not seem to bother him whatsoever. He’s just walking into the wilderness, doing it his own way. Wowing people, especially his fellow artists, who are forced to cowrite and make radio-friendly music or risk obsolescence. He not on the hit parade does not matter. But is this true?

Please, let’s separate the wheat from the chaff. I hate to even stoop down and say this, but most people are wannabes, even if they believe in themselves. In the old days they never would have gotten a deal, never would have been heard, and that’s a good thing. Today they’re in our face, spamming us all the while, saying THEY’RE DOING IT EXACTLY LIKE STAPLETON!

Only they’re not. They’re not aged journeymen with hit songs under their belt who lived the life of AC/DC’s “It’s A Long Way To The Top (If You Wanna Rock ‘N’ Roll).” And what’s amazing is Stapleton’s new album, “From A Room,” is not rock and roll. It’s like he’s had the radio turned off for a decade, maybe longer, when country music evolved into the rock of the seventies. That’s right, if you like country because it’s the closest thing to classic rock, you’re not gonna like “From A Room.” It sounds like it was made in the south decades back, all languid and loose, it’s all the stuff you hated…

Before you began to hate rap music.

Rap made its bones on its honesty. Who knew it would be so lucrative? But now you can’t leave the money out of the equation. It’s a motivator and an influencer. And rap is filled with braggadocio, you know the story if not the music, but Chris Stapleton is nearly mute.

And pop music is a producer’s medium. No one is as big a star as Max Martin, not Katy Perry, Lorde or even Harry Styles. It’s Martin who lasts. But what is fascinating is he lasts because he keeps changing his sound, which is astounding when you consider all the legendary producers in the rearview mirror, who could not make the transition to modernity, like Roy Thomas Baker and Mike Chapman, never mind Stock, Aitkin & Waterman. But if you read the Martin interview you’ll see that he’s playing by modern rules, a world wherein attention is precious and you’ve got to grab the listener right away, otherwise they’ll be on to something else.

But either you give “From A Room” your attention or you ignore it. There’s no flash, no bombs, few obvious hooks, but if you turn off your phone and do nothing else, it resonates.

Now in the old days you’d buy a record unheard, except for maybe the single, you’d drop the needle and get a first impression. Hopefully a track or two would pop out, which would be hooks for further listening, to bring you into the album.

And I found two of those cuts on “From A Room,” but mostly I felt this was a guy cutting a record who didn’t give a rat’s ass what I thought, that this was a musician following his muse not worrying about the chart, only himself and his peers. That’s right, first and foremost Chris Stapleton is a musician, and we haven’t had that spirit here in quite a long time.

The first of those two cuts is “Last Thing I Needed, First Thing This Morning.” Which you’ll notice is so SLOW! Who would risk this? Right after the opening initial single, “Broken Halos.” And “Last Thing I Needed, First Thing This Morning” is a 35 year old Willie Nelson hit. Don’t acts do covers to fill out LPs, for obvious radio play? But this rendition fits neither of those paradigms, but it does set your mind a’thinking. Which is what music used to do, when it was everything.

And the best cut on “From A Room” is the final one, entitled “Death Row,” just when you think you’ve digested the message, the gestalt, like “Moonlight Mile” at the end of “Sticky Fingers,” Stapleton goes all quiet, all touch-feely, and  you are enraptured.

Well up here’s the window sitting way up high
I can’t look up enough to see the sky
There ain’t no good light here below
Death row

This is not that celebrity movie starring Sean Penn, nobody cares about this inmate, nobody cares about you, you’re faceless, most of us are, and that’s why “Death Row” is so haunting, you believe if not for fate, you could be there too.

And there’s a forty five second intro, sans explosions, just a groove, enough to lay your body and mind within before Chris starts to sing.

And when he does…

He reminds me of Lowell George, who didn’t have the best voice, and neither does Stapleton, but both have a way of singing that’s completely unique that touches you, evidences humanity, you know there’s someone home.

And there’s so little on the track. Almost nothing beyond Chris and occasional guitar accents, but the axe never starts to wail, this definitely does not go to 11. As a matter of fact, the break at the end is even less dramatic than the playing in the verses, as if the lead were wiped off, and then the whole thing walks down a country road and fades out.

WHAT?

It’s like Stapleton heard none of the hype, wasn’t on all those TV shows, is uninfluenced by the pressure, to have another hit, to belong.

And I’m not sure “From A Room” will be a big hit. But I’m positively stunned the number one star in Nashville has gone down this path. As if to say I’m a musician, not a money machine, a creator, not a star, if I can’t do it my way, if I can’t explore, I don’t want to do it at all.

But that’s what happens when you’re 39 instead of 19. You know life is full of ups and downs, and if you don’t do it your way you’ll end up regretting it.

I’m not sure people can slow down enough for “From A Room.”

I don’t know if the music industry knows how to sell something based on music as opposed to beats and statistics.

But if you care, turn off the lights, tune out the noise, lay back and check this out. Tell me what you think. Does it set your mind free, do you think to way back when, when you lived to buy albums and discover them, go to the show not for the fireworks but for the tunes?

I’m not predicting huge commercial success for “From A Room.” I don’t hear that obvious radio track that ensures that.

But it’s an artistic triumph. Because of the RISK!

“Death Row”-
Spotify
YouTube

Comes before attention.

Once everybody’s paying attention you can’t walk back your personality, you can’t undo the changes, whore yourself out to get noticed and that will be an imprimatur upon your “brand” forevermore.

But maybe you don’t care.

Kind of like Kim Kardashian and the rest of the influencers. Sure, they’ve got legions of followers. But it’s truly about fashion, style, something evanescent, skin-deep at best, which has no meaning.

But Bob Dylan and Eddie Vedder have authenticity.

What does authentic mean?

You can look it up in the Oxford Dictionary and find it’s “of undisputed origin; genuine,” but really it’s something you feel, it’s a resonance, deep inside, that what you’re encountering is human, albeit more successful, that the authentic person is making the same choices you are or would, or is more experienced and more informed and therefore you can learn from their work.

Learning…

That went out the window in pop culture long ago. Hell, just look at the movies! It’s been proven that fame attracts acolytes. But that’s very different from the flies drawn to the light of authenticity.

Authenticity means focusing on the art first. Even if it’s uncommercial.

Authenticity means saying no to that which does not feel right, which is evidence of your privilege. Kurt Cobain famously wouldn’t take a limo in South America, because he thought it wasn’t “punk.” He hated fakeness, he didn’t want to be that person either. He wanted his life to be a living badge of who he was. Unlike Bruce Springsteen, seen frolicking on David Geffen’s yacht. Geffen is rich, smart and connected. But sometimes you have to say no, because it doesn’t square with your fan base. Or make fun of it, kind of like Grace Slick planning to go to a school reunion at the White House to drop acid in the punch.

Now before you can become authentic you must become an artist.

An artist has chops and inspiration. No one emerges fully-formed, everybody woodsheds, and not only do they get better, they discover the path they want to go down. That’s the great thing about art, it’s not zeros and ones, it’s more free-form, you can make it up as you go, go your own way. As for inspiration… Talk to any creator, the irony is you’ve got to live a life to be inspired. If you’re on the computer 24/7 you’ll get little inspiration. You’ve got to go old school, experience the great outdoors, read a book, make a phone call. One of the greatest halls of inspiration is the shower. Some of my best ideas are hatched there. And they come from thin air, they’re not business plans built brick by brick, they emerge intact.

And then you’ve got to lay down your art when lightning strikes in an unfiltered way. There are always excuses not to work. You’ve got to get up early, you’ve got commitments, but artists know inspiration is fleeting, you’ve got to nail it while the thought is hot.

And you can’t self-edit. That’s death. That’s the antithesis of authenticity. Once you’re worried about the audience you’re inhibited, vast plains of creativity are no longer reachable. And contrary to what wankers say, much great work flows directly from the brain and requires little editing, it’s the editing that kills it.

Right now we’ve got music made by committee that fits a formula. It’s sleek and it shines and it sells.

But what we’re looking for is something with rougher edges, that captures the zeitgeist. You know it when you make it and people know it when they hear it but the truth is you can achieve these goals only on rare occasions, the rest of your work is not of the same caliber, it’s the filler between the hits.

But the people are drawn to the hits.

And by “hits” I don’t mean radio-fodder, just something you’ve got to hear again and again, see again and again, that you can’t get out of your mind, that you can’t stop talking about.

But in this internet era everything’s become quantified, we’re data-rich and content poor. Social media is about image as opposed to truth. But truth resonates.

And authenticity is just an element of the package. Wrapped up with talent, dedication, inspiration and creation. But it’s the conscience you must pay attention to if you want to stand out, if you want to be different, if you want to last.

Everybody’s telling you to take the money, to do it their way.

But the only way out is to do it your way.

Discover your way and stick to it.

You will always feel left out, left behind, out of it.

Everybody is cool in their own way. The old concept of coolness was based on scarcity. In a limited universe we look inward, in an unlimited one we look outward.

Posting is not belonging, just a facsimile thereof.

Everybody is a star. When there is no mystery, when everybody’s warts are revealed, there’s a great leveling of the playing field, the old icons fade and the proletariat is empowered. Right now all the talk is about personal branding, becoming a mini-empire, but not everybody is deserving of mass notice. The future is amplifying your identity based upon your work. Think local, not global. Especially in a world where those perceived to be global are not, they’re just the beneficiaries of massive publicity campaigns, how many people actually go see that movie, how many people actually listen to that album. You have such power and surprising impact as long as you stop shooting for the stars and focus on a goal you can see. This is the opposite of the seventies ethos, developed by the band the Police, who toured the world in an effort to achieve domination. No one has domination anymore, own the piece you’ve got.

Say no, not yes. In the information economy there’s too much, information that is. So you’ve got to learn how to separate the wheat from the chaff. Read the headlines but not the articles unless they’re in a publication that filters for quality. Writing is a skill. “The New Yorker” is always readable, the links sent from other publications and blogs…are not. A concept is not a story. Most of what is written is ignored and you can ignore it too. You can never keep up and there is no catching up. Find your trusted sources and depend upon them.

You’re on your own, baby. There’s no tech help and no one will curate your Twitter feed, you have to decide who to follow. Which is why so many have abandoned Twitter, it’s easier to post photos on Instagram. Not that you have to be addicted to Twitter, but if you’re an information junkie it’s the best way to keep up to date. But you must forage the internet to find out who’s worth following.

Everybody wants your money. It used to be clear who was selling and who was not, and most everybody was not, but now they are. They want you to buy their wares on Etsy, spend your valuable time online looking at their stuff and promoting it. We’ve been overrun by salespeople, to our detriment.

It’s not news, it’s HYPE! So much of what fills the pages of newspapers and websites is glorified press releases, stories on subjects that are supposed to make you want to buy. Ignore the stories on the actors and musicians and all the rest of the purveyors. If you hear the movie’s good, go. If you hear the record’s good, listen to it. And then if you want to go deeper you can Google them and find a cornucopia of information. It’s all about time management, yours.

Tech serves us, not vice versa. We’ve been enraptured by tech for two decades, but the tide has turned, we’re not wowed by new websites and don’t need new devices and know that most of what is announced will fail. You don’t have to be first on your block anymore, with either hardware or software, you must see the Silicon Valley creations as tools, no more. Once they were the essence of cutting edge cool, but now you are.

Create in a vacuum. Read the Richard Russell piece in “The New Yorker”:

Richard Russell’s XL Recordings Empire

Although disappointing, it illustrates you must create and consume without distraction, without worrying about what others think, but only yourself. Artists dig down deep into themselves, but once Napster eviscerated sales they got so into interacting with their audience that they lost touch with the art. If the art is good enough, the fan base follows.

You’re climbing the hill every day. If you’re not confronted with something you do not understand, if you’re not flummoxed, trying to figure something out, you’re doing it wrong. It could be a political situation, it could be how to extract more power out of your mobile device. Life is about stimulation and we’ve never lived in a more stimulating era. Life is also about learning, and functionality. Oldsters have all the devices but don’t know how to use them, which is why youngsters run circles around them. You have to know how to change a light bulb, and the settings on your computer, you personally are responsible for making things work. If you depend upon others, tech help, employees, you’re losing touch. You never want to sacrifice your everyman status, because you have to reinvent yourself every day.

Ignore conventional wisdom. E-mail is dead, but it survives. Slack is superior, but you don’t work in a corporation. Do what feels right to you, no one knows your world better than yourself. Sure, poll your friends, take advice, but make your own decisions.

Define your own success. Much harder to say than do in a world that is hell-bent on making you feel inadequate. Revel in your personality and accomplishments.

Don’t be defensive. Everybody gets it wrong. Credit Silicon Valley for expounding this ethos. You fail, you pivot… When someone criticizes you for contradicting yourself laugh in their face, have principles, sure, but situations change and knowledge is gained and if you’re not willing to re-examine your positions and statements you will be left behind.

There is no center. No one has the answer, no one knows what’s going on, despite them telling you so. This is incredibly frustrating, but it’s the world we live in.