The more the intelligentsia tells me he’s unelectable, the more I want to vote for him.

Nobody knows anything. Especially the smart and educated. We continually laud the graduates of Ivy League institutions, those with money and fame can do no wrong. But then they do.

Like Nate Silver.

Nate got it half right. Trump does have sky high unfavorables. But those became secondary to an electorate pissed that the Republican majordomos had paid lip service to them for decades, but ignored them on the street. And no one likes to be ignored, no one likes to be manipulated, revenge permeates all income brackets and social strata.

So how did this happen?

Trump started early. The “New York Times” said that was Bernie’s flaw, his late start, as if he never believed he could really win. We’ll never know if he could have, but we have learned that some rules are immutable. You have to be in it to win it, you have to lay the groundwork.

And Trump said the unsayable. The right wing may act prim and proper but it’s the left wing that has taken political correctness too far. Sure, racism should not be tolerated, but truth knows no bounds, it resonates with all. And if you’re so busy being hurt by literature that you need trigger warnings, good luck in business.

Which is where Trump triumphed.

But maybe he didn’t, maybe he was born on third base, maybe he’s just a mediocre licensor. But it’s hard for the media to get traction with that story after building him up decade after decade, hyping his books and his TV show… It’s the media who sold us on Trump’s bona fides, now the media wants to say otherwise, in an era where the media establishment is pooh-poohed and seen as untrustworthy.

Which brings us to Fox News. We’re supposed to have sympathy for Megyn Kelly, a beautiful anchor who’s on TV. Roger Ailes plays hardball and then wants those on the other side to pitch softballs? Give Trump credit, he doesn’t take that from anybody, he’s willing to call b.s. And like a country song before Nashville morphed into seventies rock we’re all looking to tell our boss to take this job and shove it.

We live in an attention economy. Where it’s about being recognized and known as opposed to veracity. Too many eggheads are sitting at home talking to the TV not realizing nobody’s listening. They’re afraid to jump into the fire, endure the maelstrom, take the heat. Have you been on the internet? The Trump blowback is experienced by anybody with an opinion online. He took the jabs and carried on.

The Donald nailed Jeb’s personality instantly. Bush was boring, sans charisma. Used to be artists triumphed by speaking the truth, in this case it was a politician.

As for Cruz and Kasich, the former didn’t realize that followers were everything, that a megaphone is meaningless unless you have acolytes. And the latter is that doofus in high school who refuses to see the writing on the wall.

And Karl Rove is that principal who loses control of the high school.

And Peggy Noonan is that aunt always saying “I told you so.”, who you’re sick of listening to, the one who lives in an alternative universe where all her opinions are right, even though it does not resemble the real world.

And Bernie’s fans are pissed off too.

But Bernie faced a viable candidate. Hillary has experience. Although even the most dyed-in-the-wool Democrat would refuse to fall asleep around her. You see Hillary does what’s expedient, tells you what you want to hear as opposed to what’s true. That’s so last century. Today light shines everywhere, and those who refuse to acknowledge what is seen have a hard time garnering belief.

So now Trump runs to the center, makes light of his wacky positions just like he just patted his enemy Cruz on the back. And when he attacks Hillary…

She’s vulnerable.

But the news media says he can’t win. That women and Latinos want nothing to do with him. The same media that said he had no chance. The same media controlled by the holier-than-thou who believe we should fall in line.

It’s every man for himself in America today. It’s a coarse country where you work ’round the clock for meager rewards. Sure, there’s a carrot out in front, but it can only be bitten by the same people who tell us to get in line, the one percenters who control corporations and education and are keeping us down. And it’s not only Republicans, but Democrats too.

So Bernie is done. The alternative is gone. Who are you gonna vote for if you’re mad as hell?

Certainly not Hillary. She’s the kind who will invite you to a party and leave you stranded when she gets a better invitation.

So everybody saying Trump can’t win…

He’s not as dumb as he looks. And he performed jujitsu, he knows half of what he says is b.s., but he’s the one in the driver’s seat, he’s the one with the nomination, and the people put him there. Because they’re sick and tired of being lied to, manipulated by those with money. And Trump may be rich, but he acted like a rich person as opposed to adopting the humble shtick most politicians shroud themselves in. Rich people feel entitled, to be heard, to get more. They have contempt for the little guy. They believe what they say is the law. Who doesn’t want someone who’s a wolf in wolf’s clothing to do their dirty work?

The rank and file did not screw up this great country of ours. No, the Larry Summers and the Timothy Geithners and the George Bushes and Dick Cheneys did. Those who knew better than us, who saw the country as their plaything. Do you really think people are eager to place their faith in another one of a long line of these people?

Maybe.

P.S. No, I’m not gonna vote for Donald Trump. I’m far to the left of Hillary. But I love seeing the establishment shaken up. I’m sick of hearing that these people know more than me, as they pull shenanigans behind closed doors that screw me.

P.P.S. People want jobs. Manufacturing ain’t never coming back to the U.S., that’s a left wing canard. So what is Hillary gonna do to help us? Sure, the Donald may have insane ideas about reducing taxes on the rich to drive up the economy, but he’s got more new ideas than Hillary and he’s more believable.

P.P.P.S. If this weren’t a popularity contest Arnold Schwarzenegger wouldn’t have defeated Gray Davis. And Arnold didn’t do much in office, and I don’t think the Donald would do much either. But he might appoint a right wing Supreme Court justice and that would be tragic. But he also might not play nice with the nitwit right wingers, the Tea Partiers and the establishment who have held this country hostage.

P.P.P.P.S. The Presidential campaign is more intriguing, more honest than any art this year. It’s out-Kanye’d Kanye. It shows the fallacy in “Batman v. Superman.” It truly is a jungle out there, and if you want to know what’s going on you watch politics, not some lame Disney production which puts money first and truth nowhere.

Dust – YouTube

Dust – Spotify

It comes through the window
It comes through the floor
It comes through the roof
And it comes through the door

Dust, that is. But that’s not what you’ll be focusing on first time through, the Dada-esque lyrics take a back seat to the pure sound of this record, its aural hooks.

On paper I hate Parquet Courts. Overhyped by the Brooklyn establishment today we despise bands we’ve never heard because of their hipper-than-thou acolytes hyping them.

But “Dust” is a revelation. A hit in all its minimalist glory. If this were 1981 and Rick Carroll still programmed KROQ, the Roq of the 80’s, he’d spin this and it would become a giant hit. You see back then being outre, being different, was a badge of honor, whereas today everybody’s music sounds the same and you only differentiate yourself via your social media statements.

Not that “Dust” is completely original. It it resembles in conception nothing so much as Kraftwerk’s “Pocket Calculator,” which was a progenitor. And the vocal is reminiscent of Jonathan Richman, when he sang with the Modern Lovers.

Still, “Dust” is a breath of fresh air.

HA!

Singing about dust?

Today it’s all platitudes, or endless statements on how much better you and your life are than those of the listener. But this minimalist statement is about the dirt and grime that piles up. Rust may never sleep, but dust ACCUMULATES!

Dust is everywhere
Sweep
It sneaks in ignored
It stacks up around

Devo-esque, with a hint of Frank Zappa thrown in. It’s when you don’t play to our preconceptions that you have a chance of hooking us, wowing us.

Still, “Dust” succeeds primarily on its hooks, which are broad and heavy, simple, like those of the Ramones.

You may not like it at first, with its cheesy, flimsy, trebly guitar intro.

But then the track settles into a groove that’s familiar but unremarkable and then…at 25 seconds in, there’s a guitar lick that catches your lip and drags you in.

And then at :35, there’s a change that grabs your heart.

And then at :45 the whole thing devolves into an instrumental with cheesy sounds playing lyrical changes and you don’t want to turn it off!

It doesn’t have to be about dust, it could be about anything, you’re completely enamored.

Just because you can fiddle endlessly to get it right, employ a zillion writers, buy beats from others, that does not mean you should. By breaking it down to the elements, by leaving so much air, Parquet Courts wins us over.

And the instrumental section that starts at 2:20 is an aural adventure akin to a guitar solo of yore, only this time the musician isn’t shredding, but adding digital sounds that are basic, but take you on an ethereal trip that is so enjoyable. You’re enraptured by music not on the hit parade, played by people who are almost committing a prank.

But we’re all in on the joke.

This was the genius of the Ramones, their music was the antidote to what was popular. While prog-rockers demonstrated their training in side-long opuses the Ramones purveyed a sound that was basic and compact, that lasted only a couple of minutes.

You can still get rich playing music.

But most people will not.

Thus, the early sixties have returned. The Beatles and the Stones never thought it would last forever. Today music is a lark, something you do for a few years before you get a straight job.

But since it’s not a career, you can take chances, you can turn the system on its head.

Which Parquet Courts has done here.

“Dust” should suck. Should be easily dismissed. Marginal talents selling indie rock.

But despite all that being true, the end result requires endless plays. “Dust” gets under your skin, it follows you everywhere, you’re in your own space, you don’t care a whit whether anybody else is listening, you just want to feel good.

Life is complicated, life is difficult to comprehend. As a result we fall for the work of those who sneak up on us, with work that is startlingly human in the way it affects us.

It follows, now swallow
You’re biting it now
Suffocate, suffocate

Is this the Silicon Valley titans talking to everyone? Imploring us to get on the gravy train without thinking, coughing up our personal data, because the future is so bright?

No, this is artists, questioning the precepts. Which is what they used to do before they all dashed for cash.

Dust is everywhere
SWEEP!

Has it really been nine years since “In Rainbows”?

Then the issue was getting paid.

Now the issue is getting attention.

That’s what the greedy bigwigs don’t understand. If you lock it up behind a paywall you could end up broke, or hobbled. Think of how much money Prince would have made if his music was on YouTube, Spotify, et al.

But how do you get noticed on those services? How do you get heard?

By being already famous or getting on a playlist. We want to hear the work of acts we already know and although we also want to hear new music we are overwhelmed by the amount of product, we don’t know where to start.

Which is why the big get bigger, they’ve already got a name.

And that Radiohead does. Like Beyonce, it was built under the last gasp of the old system. When MTV still had power, when everybody could know who you were, and almost everybody heard your music.

Radiohead’s publicity campaign will far outstrip the number of people who ultimately listen to the music. Still, the U.K. band has played the modern era like a fiddle, kudos.

In an era where everybody is vying for attention, where all is revealed, Radiohead decided to pull back, not only not post but delete its presence, however slowly. They said scarcity was dead, but this is a new spin on the concept, if you’re there but then not we’re interested, for a while anyway.

And this campaign was very brief. A matter of days. Any longer and the project would get stale, people would lose interest. Once again, the long buildup is history, you announce and then you sell. You pounce when everybody is paying attention. Hell, Beyonce got it right. She did HBO and put out “Lemonade” and went on the road nearly simultaneously. And it’s worked, she’s got the whole world talking about her efforts, if not listening. She’s owned the music news cycle, for ten days anyway, and today that’s a very long time. Will the hysteria continue? Only if radio plays “Lemonade,” but still, we can see that Beyonce outdid Adele. Adele’s campaign was positively old school. Wherein you carpet bomb the media with the same damn stories again and again and then release the record for a first week sales burst that will also be news, in the fourth quarter to boot. But it’s not quite six months later and Adele’s name is rarely heard, and her music has no purchase on the public mind,
because she’s absent from radio and streaming services. Remove yourself from the arena at your peril.

But Adele is a party of one, the world’s biggest superstar. She gets to do it her way, the usual rules don’t apply. And in a business where people only care about the money, rash decisions are made that are fan unfriendly, and you never want to be fan unfriendly. But this has been the paradigm for eons. Remember when Tom Petty protested about being the poster boy for sky high album prices? That’s what windowing is today, that’s what refusing to be on streaming services is today, a way for the man to grab cash. The acts come and go, the companies remain. Performers who bitch about not making enough money have lost their stripes in the artistic wars, they’ve become denizens of our coarse modern society, believing that mazuma is everything when the truth is art rules.

And Radiohead is ruling today.

You see it’s all about conception. The idea. And there’s no revolution, no revelation in holding your music back, doing the aforementioned windowing. But this disappearing act is a revelation. It’s more than publicity. It’s a comment on our society. Furthermore, this is all you get. Old players would now give interviews, spread the word, explain, double-down on what they’ve done. Modern superstars hold back, what the hell is going on? How the hell should I know!

But Radiohead did use modern tools to get the word out. Not only did the band recede from social media services, it employed them when it reappeared, Instagram and YouTube. He who denies the modern world is left out. And never forget these tools are free. Bitch about that when you’re worried about getting paid.

So the whole world is watching. But then they won’t be. But this stunt will be remembered. As was the “In Rainbows” pay what you want one. The band has triumphed twice, demonstrating innovation and thought in a world where most pop acts just do what they’re told, which is an imitation of what came before.

But just like bands tried to imitate the “In Rainbows” formula unsuccessfully, if you’re sitting at home dreaming of replicating Radiohead’s vanishing formula, forget it. You can only do it once, successfully. And it can only be pulled off by an act with an extremely high profile.

But the paradigm remains, in today’s economy attention is everything. It’s what we all vie for, especially on social media, it’s fleeting, but it precedes monetization. In the old days distribution was king, if you couldn’t buy it, it didn’t exist. Now everything exists, how do you make people aware, how do you get them to sample?

That’s the question.

How Do I – Soundcloud

What do you do when nobody’s paying attention? When you’re too old to be new and you got your big chance and missed the target?

Faithful readers know I’m a big Wendy Waldman fan, the great singer/songwriter hope of 1973, she wrote “Vaudeville Man” and “Mad Mad Me” on Maria Muldaur’s solo debut.

But then she didn’t live up to her promise. She took a detour to Muscle Shoals, confounding her audience, and despite getting five whacks of the bat at Warner Brothers she never connected, her moment expired.

Same thing happened to Bonnie Raitt, who then resurrected her career by speaking her truth on “Nick Of Time.”

Wendy Waldman speaks her truth on “How Do I.”

They make it look easy
To stand your ground
To let those bridges burn

We’re overwhelmed with stories about entrepreneurs doing it their way, celebrities talk trash in public, but we’re too afraid of loss to let go and speak our truth, and when we do and don’t get the result we desire we’re wounded. That’s the story of the baby boomers, they’re wounded, by loss, by unfulfilled expectations, by failed dreams. It was supposed to work out, then it didn’t, and what do you do with that?

If I had known how fast it goes
I would have shown you every day

That’s the cliche. Along with high school and college are the best days of your life.

I don’t agree with the latter, but the former…it’s true. Soon we’re as old as our parents, then we’re in the rearview mirror, then we’re done. How did this happen?

Wendy Waldman took a left turn, moved to Nashville, became a producer. Never seeking accolades for being a woman in a man’s field, she was a ground-breaker. And also a hit songwriter, most famously for the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band with “Fishin’ In The Dark” and Vanessa Williams with “Save The Best For Last.”

She made an LP for Epic.

Another, an independent for Cypress.

But few paid attention.

Then it was the nineties.

But Wendy soldiered on. She reformed her group Bryndle with Karla Bonoff, Kenny Edwards and Andrew Gold. But they were independent before that was cool and old to boot, MTV was only interested in fresh faces.

And suddenly you find that nobody cares.

Do you feel that nobody cares?

I often do. The world is made for someone else. Someone who believes his or her best days are in front of them, who can take the world by storm, preferably an entrepreneur who can run herd over this great nation of ours.

But that wasn’t me, I grew up in an era of personal development. I can tell you what I read, what I listened to, where I went, but that doesn’t fill your bank account, and that seems to be the only thing that matters these days, especially as you get old and bills pile up and the workforce no longer needs you.

I was lying on my bed, depressed. I felt a song would make me feel better. I pulled up Wendy’s “Restless In Mind” on the Sonos app…and I saw a new track.

How could this be? I had no idea. I thought Wendy’d returned to college, finally pursuing her degree, pointed her arrow in a new direction, honing her composer chops.

I was almost afraid to listen to “How Do I,” because I was fearful it would be bad. It’s sad when your heroes disappoint you, when you realize they’re washed up, when they keep swinging for the fences in a stadium that’s empty.

But the sound was authentic, it cut me to the bone, I felt like Wendy was only singing for herself, that I was peeking in on the process.

She’s got the skills, she can write and play, produce too. So the end result is anything but amateurish. But it’s not what’s on the hit parade, more like an album track from 1973.

Late last night
I heard a tune
That only you could write

Girls and their fathers. Their deaths devastate them.

Wendy’s father was Fred Steiner, famous for writing the “Perry Mason” theme, never mind the childhood favorite “The Bullwinkle Show.” Fred’s gone now, as well as his wife, Shirley. The next generation carries the torch, but cannot forget those who came before.

“How Do I” nails this. Would fit perfectly in some TV show, you know that moment of loss and reflection. But the supervisors are young and want those wet behind the ears to fill out their schedules. When you’re aged you’re discarded, even if you’re a superstar, you just haven’t gotten the memo yet.

How do you go on?

There’s just one question in my mind tonight
How do I go on
How do I go on

Wendy maintains her optimism. I’m wobbly, I can’t always keep mine.

Not that she puts out new music on a regular basis. She’s been releasing intermittent singles, with an eye on an eventual album. But it’s not like “How Do I” got a ton of accolades, it barely made a ripple in the water when it was released last month.

But it’s out there, on Spotify, CD Baby, the aforementioned Soundcloud.

Because that’s how an artist goes on, by creating. Doing it whether anybody pays attention or not.

“How Do I” resonates because it’s not calculated, rather it’s a burst of sheer inspiration. That’s what an artist does, channel that revelation, create something out of it, capture that moment.

“How Do I” is not au courant.

But it’s forthright and honest and it resonates.

And that’s what I’m looking for.

How Do I – Spotify