I can’t get this song out of my head.

I needed to hear something familiar, so I dialed up Classic Vinyl on Sirius XM. But when I hit a clunker I switched to 60’s on 6 and heard this, which I didn’t want to listen to, because the Walker Brothers never really made it over here, but I kept listening because something deep in my memory bank told me there was an entrancing change a’ comin’, and it did!

The sun ain’t gonna shine anymore
The moon ain’t gonna rise in the sky
The tears are always clouding your eyes
When you’re without love, baby

And it’s not about the words, I don’t think I ever understood their meaning until I just wrote them down, but the sound. The way the verse segues into this release, wherein the vocalist is suddenly set free, able to reveal his innermost feelings. Then again, there’s a scrim between you and him, it’s a Wall of Sound production even though it wasn’t produced by Phil Spector, but Bob Crewe, who got some ink upon his death back in 2014, having mostly to do with his sexual preference, which was unknown by the general public back in his heyday, but those of us who purchased 45’s knew his name, for it was all over the Four Seasons records, and as a matter of fact, Crewe cowrote this song with Bob Gaudio, and the original version was recorded by Frankie Valli the year before, ’65, after the Four Seasons had started to fade, but it didn’t quite break into the Hot 100, but when rerecorded by the Walker Brothers it went all the way to number one in the U.K., but it did not dominate in the U.S., it went to number 13, which meant it was not ubiquitous and in many markets was barely played at all, because really only a few records get spun religiously and in the days before MTV, before the codification of FM by Lee Abrams, radio was oftentimes regional, kind of like the food, I went to Park City and saw the same damn chains I see in L.A., from Subway to Burger King, and I revel in the fact that I no longer have to go blindly into some faceless emporium to eat the equivalent of shoe leather, which I remember quite vividly outside of Yellowstone Park back in ’74, they called it roast beef but it might as well have been billed Florsheim, but the point is you used to leave home and it was different, and now, statistically, no one leaves at all, they just stay where they are, not being able to afford to go where the jobs are, but the point is it used to be exciting to take a drive and listen to what was being played elsewhere before radio became homogenized and the satellite came along to save us.

And the weird thing is the Walker Brothers are American. But they had to go overseas to make it. Huge stars in the U.K. they became, and we heard their name now and again but we rarely heard their music, but tonight…

The Frankie Valli take is so out of time as to be almost laughable. You’ll hear the intro and know why this didn’t hit in the era of the British Invasion and then Frankie sings the verses like it could be the phone book, back when we had those, and then he belts the chorus in his classic way, albeit a bit reservedly, and it’s the same song but it’s completely different. You’re listening to the Valli version, but you want to know the singer of the Walker Brothers iteration, it’s all dark and mysterious.

The intro is hokey, but then it locks into a Gene Pitney feel and a deep vocal takes over akin to a Righteous Brother….

Loneliness is the cloak you wear

The scourge of life that’s somehow absent from modern art. Remember when songs were about the human condition, when you listened not to be a member of a group, but to bond with the singer in a twosome, a marriage where you felt safe and understood?

Emptiness is the place you’re in
Nothin’ to lose but no more to win

It’s when you’re stuck in neutral that life is worst. When you’re out of the game, when victory or defeat are not in the equation, only stasis.

You listen to the Walker Brothers’ recording and you visualize a whole movie. He’s lost without her, on the edge of despair, he’s got to testify, tell you, but it’s more than that, you can see through the record into the studio, a big room with everybody there at the same time, the rockers and the classicists, the electric instruments and the acoustic, the backup vocalists, the producer in a sweater.

It’s almost like a western. Something one step removed. What used to be. You’re intrigued. Deep inside there’s not only a story, but humanity.

Lonely, without you, baby
Girl, I need you
I can’t go on

The chorus is the hook, but it’s this interlude that makes the track a classic, it slows down and the truth is revealed.

And now you know what music was like fifty years ago. You couldn’t make it at home, you needed professionals in a studio, and they were shooting for the stars, doing their best to create something from heaven, that lasted forever, that would imprint itself upon listeners’ brains and make them buy it so they could hear it again and again, to get that same reflective feeling, from an era when music was totally personal, when melody was more important than the beat, when you sang along to bond yourself to the magic, when radio was a living, breathing thing and you never knew what you’d tune in and hear, when all the hits weren’t made by the same people, when every track was just a bit different, when music’s goal was to impart wisdom while at the same time taking you away, soothing you, helping guide you through life.

And the funny thing is the more they sing about the sun not shining anymore the more your own brain clears, the more optimistic you become.

That’s the power of a hit record.

That’s the power of music.

The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore – Spotify

This is what happens when entertainment abdicates its responsibility.

Reality triumphs.

The movie business is in decline, the China it depended upon has sputtered, if it weren’t for increased prices grosses would have tanked. And this is a result of the studios giving the public what it thinks it wants.

Nobody knows what the public wants. William Goldman was correct. Nobody knows anything in Hollywood. And now all the focus is on D.C.

This calcification, this predictability, this rule-abiding has infected music too. Credit Beyonce and Eric Church and most recently Drake for messing with the distribution paradigm, but they’re still selling albums even if they call them playlists and what they contain is moribund, we need more experimentation, speaking to the disenfranchised.

We’ve got a business selling hip-hop in a world where forty percent will never listen to the sound.

We’ve got a preponderance of beats and an absence of melody.

We’ve got songs written by committee because we’re afraid of individuality.

What we’re looking for is tracks that speak to those without a voice, those who are not rich or elected or in control of the press.

Instead, we’ve got an insularity that turns off fans and an overwhelming amount of fake music.

There are so many records by so many people demanding our attention that we can’t even find the good stuff. On a regular basis people e-mail me songs that have hundreds of millions of streams which I’ve never heard of. Try Duke Dumont’s “Ocean Drive,” links below, which made it to number one on the dance chart but only number forty on the Top Forty so most people have never heard of it, despite having 245,513,819 views on YouTube and 105,336,472 streams on Spotify. Who is gonna cut out the detritus and focus us on that which we need to hear? I mean I knew Dumont’s name, but with so much crap pushed down my throat I can’t see the forest for the trees, like an average American.

Or if Duke’s one listen smash is not your cup of tea, how about Mudcrutch’s “Hungry No More,” from their second album, “2.” If you lived through the seventies and eighties, when rock was king and you sat in front of the stereo stoned nodding your head, this’ll reach you, sit through the whole thing, as the aural adventure unfolds.

So, there is good new stuff out there, but it’s not getting to the public. The same way people don’t know the truth about the Affordable Care Act or globalization or so many of the issues dominating the economic landscape.

Then again, money is the root denominator, the only thing we think about more is love, although if you’ve got no mazuma good luck getting laid.

So, we’ve got a cornucopia of information and little coherence in music. No wonder it’s static, we need to entrance the public. But people are being force fed retreads and are saying no mas. When the truth is they want something brand new that’s different, they want someone to lead them to greatness the same way Elizabeth Warren cuts through the fog by speaking truth.

But maybe you don’t agree with that.

But your party just lost. Because when given the power you couldn’t get it done.

The artists have been given the power for fifteen years. They can record for nearly free, distribute for nearly free, publicize for nearly free, but all they can do is bitch that the game is rigged or put out derivative drivel.

It’s time to rise above. It’s time to lead.

Music has power. It can influence not only hearts, but minds. The Food Network turned the average American into a gourmand. Great new music can change people’s beliefs and make them take action.

Watching what was happening in D.C. was more riveting than anything coming out of the entertainment industrial complex, and we still have no idea where it’s going to end up, kinda like trying to predict “Sgt. Pepper” from “I Want To Hold Your Hand.” There’s gerrymandering, there are more Democratic Senate seats up for grabs the next election than Republican and…

Who’s gonna lead us out of the wilderness?

Artists. If they just grab the wheel and start to drive.

“Ocean Drive”

Spotify

YouTube

“Hungry No More”

Spotify

YouTube

P.S. “Hungry No More” has only 46,123 views on YouTube and 90,848 streams on Spotify. In other words, greatness is not enough. The cream can no longer rise to the top, like truth in our country at large. You need to push it, make people aware of it.

P.P.S. I like to get excited about things, I like to be passionate about things, I like to feel alive and following the shenanigans in D.C. I feel this way, but too often I feel dull when hyped and exposed to music, but there’s nothing as enticing as a track that titillates and stimulates, it’s just that we’re venerating wankers playing by the rules instead of celebrating those who think outside of the box and test limits.

The Bob Dylan Interview

Q&A with Bill Flanagan
Mar 22, 2017
Exclusive to bobdylan.com

Won’t get anybody to listen to the music. Actually, all you need to know is revealed in the answer wherein he says he listens to music on CDs. The plastic discs were supposed to be an improvement on vinyl, permanent and clear, but now the world has bifurcated, into vinyl purists and on demand streamers and if you’re listening to digital discs it just proves that you’re out of the loop. When did Bob Dylan become such an old fart? Then again, he’s 75.

Don’t get your knickers in a twist. If we can’t criticize the giants we cannot push them to test the limits and exceed their previous work. We’ve been giving Dylan a pass for far too long. I’ll piss him off, and his Grammy speech taught us he’s listening, intently, and say the last great thing he did was “Things Have Changed” from the “Wonder Boys” soundtrack. It was a one-off. Which percolated in the marketplace long after the movie stiffed, even though it was quite good, better than the book, then again, Michael Chabon’s one who’s gotten an unjust pass himself, too much focus on the writing and too little on the plot and I’ll posit his best work was his very first, “The Mysteries Of Pittsburgh,” but now I’m getting so obscure and referential you might be lost. I’m doing what Dylan is doing in this interview, and it’s utterly fascinating.

Getting back to the marketing element, in today’s world it’s so hard to gain attention that your product must be available simultaneous with the hype. Just ask Drake, who just proved it, or Beyonce. It’s only old farts inured to the movie business who believe in the buildup. To tell you the truth if “Triplicate” had been on Spotify today I would have checked out some of the cuts Dylan talks about, but I won’t when it’s released, whenever that might be, because I will have already moved on to new stuff and Bob’s disappointed me with his frog-throat voice and rearranged songs for far too long unless I hear from a trustworthy source I’m missing out. Then again, Dylan’s from a previous generation, he’s like God coming down from the mountaintop with the tablets, we pay attention to him, we don’t need no stinking penumbra. But I’ll bet your life and mine that this interview is better than the three disc set. Because that’s what Bob does best, opine, give us insight into the culture. He’s now lived long and is still obfuscating whilst revealing truth and instead of covering old chestnuts he should be blogging, now’s when we need him most, when our country is in turmoil, we’re looking for insight, we’re looking for art, we’re ready for his tricks. Instead he’s bunting, using up his capital hyping a project that no one cares about that will be instantly forgotten, like his previous cover LPs, and if you think he doesn’t care then why did he do this interview in the first place? A fake one to boot. Bill Flanagan is interviewing him but it debuts on Bob’s own site? Did Flanagan even get paid? Hell, Flanagan’s questions are the worst part, it’s Dylan’s cryptic answers that intrigue. Riddled with truth and falsehood. Bob’s the original Keyser Soze. We don’t know what to believe, but we can’t stop paying attention.

So just when we need him most, when he could put out one cut that could change the world, Dylan overloads us with irrelevant product in a world where we’ve got no time. How come all the old acts can’t come up to speed. Not only should the release be day and date with the hype, but one track is enough, we’ve got time to listen to one track. And then follow it up with another not that far down the line. We’re interested in what Dylan has to say, but the fawning press has been kissing his ass for so damn long that we’ve gone on react and are tuning his work out. Because how many times can you go to the well and find out it’s dry?

Dylan makes Minnesota come alive. Cites Twin Cities bands from far after he left. Creates myths about his family and friends not knowing or caring about his appearance on “Ed Sullivan” when he was always close to his mother and even brought her to a Yetnikoff event. Bob’s creating a character, who knows who he really is, and when he says he’s got nothing to say and is not worthy of the hang time you either protest too much or roll your eyes and say “there he goes again,” evading the punch, dancing like a butterfly while he stings us like a bee.

Yes, Dylan’s still here, unlike Muhammad Ali. And his insight and chops are as sharp as ever. But he’s squandering them. He refuses to reach for the stars. Refuses to write a song that will change the world. Refuses to come down off the mountaintop and interact with us in the new world. Sure, he did that XM series, but imagine Dylan on Twitter or YouTube. Imagine him writing with Drake. Imagine him risking.

Because he still cares. And he’s still stuck in the old ethos, where music is everything and you’re a student of the game. Bob Dylan still gives a damn, in a world where most aged acts are only about the bread, collecting cash from Live Nation when they pass Go!, and plying the boards endlessly giving people what they want. Dylan never played that game, he gave us what we needed. And what we need now more than ever is leaders who make us think for ourselves, who sharpen our vision, who get us to investigate and come up with our own conclusions, to question authority and brave the road untaken. This interview is a marvelous start, but the “Triplicate” project is a nonstarter, dead on arrival in a world where what happens in the morning is already forgotten in the afternoon and if you take chances and create greatness you can impact society, but there’s no greatness in covering aged tunes, however much insight they might contain, not when your voice is ragged and nearly unlistenable. For that, you’ve got to write a song that’s solely your own. We’re waiting Bob…

I went to Park City to go powder skiing. It started out as a group of eleven, all fired up to ride the cat in the backcountry, but as the temperature rose and the snow melted the participants dropped out one by one until there were only six of us left.

And five of them bolted yesterday, the designated cat skiing day, because with this heat it was a no-go.

Now when I lived in Utah, back in the dark ages, before many of you were even born, it never rained in the mountains. But Saturday in Salt Lake it was eighty degrees. In Park City it was topping out at sixty. So on Monday I made turns at Deer Valley with Toby Mamis, who decamped from the City of Angels for Utah thirteen years ago and is as happy as a clam. Toby says he never goes to a seder, but they’ve built a synagogue in Park City, along with a Catholic church, the mountain hideaway may be one of the only places in the Beehive State that is not LDS-dominant.

And on Tuesday, the aforementioned six returned to Deer Valley to cruise the groomers before the sun beat the slopes to shreds and after surviving our dash, when you get a group of guys together the testosterone flows, we partook of a bountiful buffet at the Stein Eriksen Lodge and the other five departed, to get earlier flights than planned so they could go back to their desks and earn their keep.

I take my desk with me. I can operate anywhere. And I was not going to give up a day of skiing.

This was a mistake.

I’m addicted to Dark Sky. Weather forecasting is notoriously dicey, but what’s great about the Dark Sky app is there’s no human involvement, only computers, and at this point I trust zeros and ones more than people and Dark Sky said it was gonna rain all day Wednesday, today.

And it did.

My plan was to get out at nine, hit it hard, get back to the room by noon and check out at one, the latest time available. Now if it had been midwinter, I would have stashed my bags and skied till the end of the day, but that’s impossible now, with the weather so warm, so…

I woke up to the sound of rain on the roof. No, John Sebastian and his fellow band members were not doing a gig in Utah, but the drops were literally bouncing on the balcony and my brain said no but my heart said go so I suited up. And when you do, you get into the groove. Pull on the long underwear, buckle up the boots…

And in this case I took my winter jacket.

Good move. But not enough to counter my bad move, which was to leave my iPhone in the room.

You learn your lessons. I learned mine today.

I’m thinking the rain will soak through my spring jacket and I’m feeling confident in my choice when I exit the hotel and the drops are a’flyin’, and I’m smart enough not to raise my goggles off my face, you don’t want to get the insides wet, and I’m laughing as I ride the Frostwood Gondola to the Orange Bubble Express and that’s when I noticed…

I was the only one out there.

Now normally one would be elated. But this had me wondering. Was I a dunce?

Yes.

But I’m still in a good mood as the rain is bouncing off the bubble, and I must say, I’ve never skied the Canyons side before but I’m good with a map and just before I get to the top…

It starts to hail.

Or maybe it’s graupel. I won’t walk you through the various types of snow but one thing was for sure, when my skis hit the ground on the exit ramp, there was an inch or two of new stuff.

Good call on the winter jacket.

Bad call on being out there.

Because visibility was bad and the snow was STICKY!

And there you have the essence of my problem, the snow snakes were out in force.

So my plan was to cover the entire mountain, get a peek at each lift, and I go off in a direction from which there is no return and there are huge clumps of snow in the middle of the slope and my skis are being grabbed again and again and that’s when I realize, I’ve got to go low.

You learn from experience. I knew that where it was raining it wouldn’t be sticky, but with so much snow having melted there was no way I could ski to the bottom, I could only go up. So I did.

Where it was a veritable sea of Maypo with Marky there to reach out for my skis and when I finally got to the next juncture, I decided to take the chair that went across instead of up.

But this took me to another chair that went straight up and it was snowin’ and blowin’ and I realized…

I’d made a big mistake. Skiing down from there could leave me in a cast.

And I didn’t want that.

So I took the road, which was completely unskied. And I’m going straight in fits and starts and I end up at the Quicksilver gondola which goes to the original Park City, which is higher in elevation, so I decide to ride it.

But it’s occurring to me, like that old Foreigner song, I’m a long, long way from home and I’ve got no PHONE! So not only can I not call my hotel to pick me up at the original Park City base area, if I fall on a slope and need to be rescued…

There will be no one there.

Furthermore, I’ve got an iPhone 7, which is waterproof, but my OCD makes me afraid to get it wet and the day is just a cornucopia of bad judgment.

But it’s only getting worse.

I get over to the original Park City and I see people! Two or three of them! This will solve my problem! They’ll tamp down the new snow!

But when I got off the lift the main way down was completely untracked. And with two inches of new snow, I could barely go. And when I did, it felt like the bottoms of my skis were made of sandpaper, and I never knew when they’d hit a knot in the wood and I’d grind to a halt, instantly.

Now I’m starting to lose it. I’m literally miles from my hotel. I’ve got to ski many slopes to get home. How am I going to do this?

Not easily

I make it back to the Quicksilver Gondola. I ride up.

But the map is confusing, I find the unskied slope that will supposedly take me down to the Canyons base but the truth is it’s bringing me back to the Quicksilver Gondola, I’m in a living “Groundhog Day,” and I’m starting to freak out, because it’s so flat I can’t go, and there’s not a soul in sight.

And then I grind to a halt and there’s a non-functioning lift that will take you across the flat so I’ve got to walk.

Now you’re never as alive as when your life is in danger. But then I realize I’m no longer twenty five and I could have a heart attack and I’m about to have a complete meltdown. I’m trekking across a hill, alone, in the snow, on March 22nd, and everybody else down in town is oblivious, but I could literally die out here, and they might not find me until…

At least the end of the day, when the patrol does its sweep.

So I decide to talk myself off the ledge. Since I’m walking, the snow snakes can’t get me, so why not just bask in the atmosphere, enjoy the landscape, or at least try, and, I know where I am, I’ll make it eventually.

To a lift that’s gonna take me up.

No f’ing way. As I told you earlier, I need to go DOWN!

So I take a road and it’s sticky and there are bare spots and rocks but I find the lift that went cross-country that got me into this mess and the signs all say it’s gonna take me to the Red Pine Gondola which will take me home and I’m starting to relax but it’s untrue. Just when I thought I was out of the woods, I had to go back up. And up. And up.

But it’s only one run down to the Red Pine Gondola. I can do this.

Well, maybe I can’t.

I get off the lift and there are all these signs saying not to take this way, to go on the road.

But the road is nearly flat and that’s where you can truly break your leg, with the stops and starts, better to be on a steeper slope.

Or so I thought, because skiing down this run was like skiing in molasses. I could barely move. And it was long and…

I’m freaking out all over again.

And now we’re at the part of the story where you think I protesteth too much. I mean hell, I’m back in Los Angeles writing this, how bad could it be?

Well, have you been out in the elements? Mother Nature cuts no breaks. One false move and it can be all over. And I didn’t think I was gonna die at this point, but the odds of hurting myself were extremely high. And I’m not even fully recovered from my shoulder surgery. You see my bindings are set to release at a value too high to eject me at such a slow speed. And they don’t release upwards at the toe, meaning if I fall backward, extremely rare in regular conditions, my leg is a goner. Or, I could fall sideways and still get hurt when the bindings don’t release. And the instinct in this situation is to sit back, but then you’re setting yourself up for instant failure, you can’t recover from a jolt. But if you lean forward, you could tip over your skis, and there’s no way my bindings will release at this slow speed, even though they have the theoretical capability, so I can snap a bone and…

It happens all the time. People get hurt. Because they do stupid things. They think they’re immune.

Like me.

I didn’t need to be out there. I could have said no, like everybody else. But I just couldn’t help myself, kinda like those wingsuiters competing in events where ten percent of the contestants die, they don’t think it’ll happen to them. But it does.

So I can see the shore, er, the Red Pine Gondola, but I’m far away and if I ski where everybody else has, the three or four people before me, hours into the day, I’m okay. But there’s a dad and his two kids trying to make it down in front of me, the only people I’ve seen on the Canyons side all day, which forces me to the side where the untracked new snow is and I grind to a halt and I’ve made it this far, almost all the way back, I’m in sight of safety, but I’m far from safe!

Needless to say, I made it. Got to the Red Pine Gondola as the snow turned to rain and when I got off at the bottom I felt like an idiot. A safe idiot, but an idiot nonetheless.

P.S. If you’d like to play the home game, you can pull up the Park City trail map and visualize my trek here:

Park City Winter Trailmap

I started on the Frostwood Gondola. From there I went to the Orange Bubble Express. Then to the Sun Peak Express. And then I skied all the way down to the cross-country chair known as Timberline. From there I went up the Iron Mountain Express, down to the Quicksilver Gondola, over to the original Park City where I rode the Silverlode Express. Then back to the Quicksilver Gondola. Whereupon I got off in the middle and skied the Highway, thinking it would take me to the base, but instead I ended up back at the Quicksilver Gondola, and refused to go up on Flat Iron or Dreamcatcher, so I took the road, White Pine to Cascade, and got back on Timberline where I discovered I had to go up to get to the Red Pine Gondola, so I took the Tombstone Express and ultimately skied down Sidewinder to the Red Pine Gondola which took me to the main base and then I rode the Frostwood Gondola back to my hotel, where I stripped off my soaked clothing, took a shower and continued to question why I’d gone out in the first place.