Everybody’s got a hustle.

I used to take a cab, once my friend Jeff told me there were coupons for flat rates. Before that I took SuperShuttle, I’m willing to travel with my brethren, but it picked you up so early so as to make sure you did not miss your flight and they had to pay off on their guarantee that it was frustrating.

Now I take Uber.

But I’m always worried how early to call one.

It’s amazing how they’ve improved the app. And I know, I know, I should be taking Lyft, since Travis Kalanick does not know how to do the right thing, but the truth is I don’t Uber every day and it’s on my phone and it’s easy so there.

And at first it says cars are 9 minutes away, then 4, then 3, and I don’t want to make the driver wait, fearful of getting a low rating, so I wait until the last minute to request a car and then find out that the time for pickup has lengthened and I start to get uptight.

And I really got uptight when traffic was gridlocked.

It’s not like the old days, where you guesstimated. I looked it up on Google Maps, I don’t trust Apple, the time is always wrong, and everything looked copacetic but now we were not moving and I was getting spilkes and how far in advance do you have to get to the airport for an international flight anyway?

And usually I’m chatting up the driver, looking for that good rating, but I had a lot on my mind, but the guy started to talk…

After putting my bag in the trunk. A taxi driver does this reluctantly, I almost didn’t have the balls to ask, but this guy picked up my overweight suitcase, I travel heavy, and slid it right into the trunk and the truth is we supposedly live in a divided country but one on one, we so often get along.

And he wanted to get me there fast.

So he scooted over towards Centinela.

And when that didn’t work he doubled back to 19th Street and I’m freaking that we’re wasting time all the way, but I don’t want to be tell him what to do, everybody hates a boss, I want to get along.

And while we’re waiting to merge onto Walgrove, this guy continues to talk.

Now I still haven’t figured out the profile for Uber drivers. I’ve had name actors and nobodies. Lesbian basketball players and kids taking time off from college. You know where on the socioeconomic scale your taxi driver is, but your Uber driver?

And for those who don’t live in SoCal, you’ve got to realize, it’s ultra-casual. No restaurant requires a jacket and tie, and when your Uber driver picks you up wearing shorts and a t-shirt, flip-flops on his feet, you don’t know if he’s declasse or he just grew up here.

Mine grew up here.

But he lived in Sweden. For sixteen years. He played professional basketball.

Everybody’s got a twist to their tale. They tell us we’re all alike, pigeonhole us, but each of us is unique with our own special story and if you’re curious, you can hear it.

He played at SMCC. Then transferred to Hawaii. And then got a gig in Upsala, the college town, where he played 33 games a year, 10,000 in all he figured in his lifetime, and he had to have a second job but he was thrilled to be doing what he loved.

What a concept, people pay lip service to it, but rarely follow this precept. Because they’re too scared.

And he met a woman and had a child and that kid is now twenty and plays in a band, successfully. He posted a pic on his Facebook page but his ex was pissed off, because the band wears masks and are supposedly unidentifiable and some things never change, parents never get it right.

And then he met some woman in Brazil. I never did hear how he got to South America, but this led to a discussion of travel and the old saw is travel is for the rich, but that ain’t so, and this guy was saying how it broadened his horizons and he just got back from three months in Sao Paolo and…

This is a new woman. An ex-dancer. The appeal? The zest! That’s what’s missing in our celebrity hype, we’re led to believe looks and cash are the sole appeal. But the truth is that only goes so far, we want personality, we want life, we want our adventure on the planet to thrill and complete us, we want an E-ticket ride.

But she’s uber-jealous. And that’s a problem, but he just can’t let go.

So he’s driving for the cash, so he can get back there. He can make a grand a week, but he’s working all the time. His friends say he’s crazy, but he’s determined. Ain’t that always the truth, people inured to the old ways judge you, they want to be free but they can’t.

And his plan is…

To import cars. He was reluctant to reveal the details, which he eventually did, and I don’t want to blow his cover, but there’s a vehicle down there that he can buy cheap and bring back and sell for beaucoup bucks.

But you can’t bring that particular vehicle into California and there might be further regulations and he’s investigating it.

Everybody’s got an angle, everybody’s got a dream. And some of them come true. Used to be America was about working for the man, but then the man stopped caring about you and it was every person for themselves but the truth is you can divide the country into two types of people, sheep and independent thinkers. The sheep want to be told what to do, and the independent people don’t want to be constricted.

And in theory his plan makes sense. But the devil is in the details. But I’m sitting there listening and wondering, is the joke on me? Am I a sheep in independent clothing, do I pooh-pooh the indie ideas, talk about the long odds, believing if I have the idea someone else does too, and is the end result I’m left out?

Then again, he got in trouble with his girlfriend because ______ sent two _________ machines instead of one and he gave the extra to a woman who gave him a hammock, thinking it was a fair exchange for a friend, and I’m wondering if I’d do this, all of it, keep the extra machine, trade it for a hammock and I’m thinking…

These are the stories that make up America. Everyone’s got a tale and they’re all fascinating. And he who looks like a loser may end up a winner and vice versa. And you can judge people, but they know more than you think they do.

And the truth is our wits can deliver us from poverty, can grease the skids of happiness, as long as you make the effort.

Ain’t that America.

The land of hopes and dreams.

Why don’t they just buy all the record labels? Or Paramount and the rest of the studios while they’re at it!

That’s the canard we were exposed to again and again and again, that Apple and Spotify, all the distributors were gonna become producers. So far it hasn’t happened. Because their shareholders would scream. Distribution is a predictable business, creation is a license to lose money.

And they’re not in the content business anyway.

At least they didn’t used to be.

Netflix is the progenitor here. They leveraged a replacement for Blockbuster, DVDs by mail, into a streaming service that was so far ahead of its customers, never mind the industry, that everybody balked. People were pissed they couldn’t get their DVDs by mail and Reed Hastings blinked and kept coming up with new names and new strategies when the truth is he was right to begin with.

And you’ve got trust your gut.

That’s what Steve Jobs did, he never used consumer research.

It’s about innovation, new products, which you leverage down the line. That’s how Amazon got into the content business, via Prime. What else could they add to a two-day shipping service in order to get people to subscribe and buy more stuff. And now, Amazon has the Echo, an ecosystem which is driving further innovation and revenue. WHERE IS THE NEW APPLE PRODUCT??

If you want to talk about music streaming, talk about Spotify and Amazon. Apple is a zit on the ass of innovation, and it is coasting on brand name and we’ve seen that movie before, are you willing to overpay for a Sony product anymore? Never. As for Apple products… I’ve got an iPhone 7 Plus, love it, but the truth is outside America Android crushes Apple. And sure, Apple gets almost all the handset profits, but are you a user or a stockholder? Furthermore, I got one of those new Apple laptops, and now that my wallet is 4k lighter, I feel ripped off. I’m not gonna bitch about battery life and dongles, I don’t really care, but why is it that I’ve got to overpay by so much for what is essentially a tool? As for the Touch Bar, why in the hell would you use it if you know how to touch-type? It’s a gimmick at best. And my point here is if a dyed-in-the-wool Apple devotee like me is questioning Cupertino, SO IS EVERYBODY ELSE!

This is the same press that told us BlackBerry was gonna survive.

The truth is if Apple Music was branded something else, it’d be a nonstarter. It’s only succeeding because of the brand name. There’s not enough sizzle to entice those not blinded by the Apple light. And now they’re gonna add bogus reality shows in a world of 450 scripted series and you expect people to care? My issue is too much content and not enough time, I don’t need more “Carpool Karaoke,” I don’t even have time to watch James Corden when he’s on after midnight, or even on YouTube. And a reality show featuring whored out celebrities voting on apps… Come on, everybody on the street knows that apps are a way to go broke. They’ve got to be free and they barely last. Sure, there are outliers, but are the purveyors of those gonna go on this cheap reality show? Never forget what sold “Idol” and is still selling the “Voice” is music. Of course there was drama, but you got to hear the songs. Exactly what is the appeal of “Planet of the Apps”?

Steve Jobs knew it was about pushing the envelope with new products that people did not even know they needed. Tell me again how these dopey shows fit that paradigm?

And, of course, there is consolidation. Everybody’s bulking up. Facebook is into video and Google is a monolith of many elements and Amazon is a behemoth of one stop shopping and attention, but that does not mean everybody can execute!

The problem Apple has is no visionary founder. Which its competitors possess. No one with skin in the game who was there at the beginning. One can argue major labels are moribund because of this. Unless you personally are at risk, you don’t get it. Who is at Apple who was there at the beginning? Nobody!

What Apple needs is a new product, hopefully hardware, not some also-ran creative plan.

And we’ve got to hear about the future of Apple services when the truth is everybody knows they suck. The sync is much worse than Google’s.

And then there’s Apple TV. Walter Isaacson reports that Steve Jobs says he’s figured it out and what we’ve ended up with is an overpriced device with apps. Whoop-de-doo. And since everybody in Hollywood has seen this movie, no one will give Apple an inch. But suddenly Apple’s gonna develop in-house!

But they’ve got Jimmy Iovine!

Who turns out to be a marketing genius, selling lame headphones to the masses.

But tech never made it on marketing, it always made it on products. And if lame TV shows pushed icons over the limit Yahoo would be sailing now. Remember when Terry Semel was gonna turn it into an entertainment juggernaut?

Disruption comes from outside. And when it comes to content, Apple was never even inside, it’s a beginner. No one has any experience, but they’re gonna beat Hollywood at its own game. Oh, they hired Ben Silverman. Go deep or go home. If they hired ten producers and invested billions…then maybe they’d be Amazon, chasing Netflix, which has a giant head-start. But instead, they’re just  bunting.

Where is the commitment?

So when you hear the press trumpet every Apple move again and again, ignore the reports. Listen to your friends on the street. People talk to me about Spotify every damn day. How often do I hear about Apple Music from a user? Once a month would be generous. There’s no heat, there’s no buzz, other than that which is coming from the company and the press.

I’d be excited if Apple announced an Echo competitor, hell, if Siri actually worked. But Apple launching TV shows is like Goldman Sachs making a new social media app.

There is no catalog in tech. You’ve got to innovate every damn day. You can’t tread the boards playing your greatest hits decades down the line.

Phil Schiller insulted commentators by saying the Mac Pro proved Apple could still innovate. A device no one wants that has never been updated.

The Watch is a joke.

Hell, it took them eons just to update their laptops.

But this is the company that’s gonna triumph in the future, by executing a formula that others have perfected.

I don’t buy it.

And neither should you.

It’s a mainstream show in a niche world, no wonder everybody is unhappy.

It’s no longer 1985, MTV does not rule and we do not live in a monoculture where everybody knows the same hits. The internet blew that paradigm apart, but the old media lions did not get the message. Recorded music lost half its value yet TV and film believe they’re immune. Thinking people respect their wares and execs are smart and the truth is we lived through the greatest disruption of our lifetimes and those in the arts still have not gotten the message.

The proletariat owns the arts. And when you try to falsely purvey to them they puke.

The truth is no one likes all the music sung on the Grammys.

And the show is playing to a theoretical audience that doesn’t exist. One in which we love everybody and everybody’s deserving of a trophy.

Whereas the truth is our nation has never been more divided in our lifetimes. And what music has done is to put its head in the sand. Selling the same sound over and over again. We’ve got the same damn spirit we had in 1969. The classic rockers are still traipsing the boards, country music is a pale imitation of what once was and rap has been ruling for so long, decades at this point, that one forgets that in the MTV era one sound replaced another every couple of years. Hair bands were replaced by grunge which was pushed aside by pop and hip-hop. Where’s the new sound today?

No wonder nobody cares.

But you’ve got a cheerleading media beholden to the labels so you’re told that music is healthy. Forget the business, music is on life support. Because the best and the brightest have abandoned it and everyone left in the building is solely about cash. Art is about speaking truth to power, where was the truth tonight?

Over on HBO, John Oliver was analyzing why Trump could get away with uttering falsehoods, why people believed them, what we could do about it.

And on CBS we had uneducated nitwits fawning over each other in duets as if we cared.

We don’t.

Trump is the biggest rock star extant today. Because he got everybody’s attention, and we live in an attention economy. Whereas most people avoid the Spotify Top 50 and you need a guidebook to listen to the music, you’ve got to be a history buff, it’s so self-referential.

Trump understands shock and awe. Something Andrew Loog Oldham and the Stones specialized in, remember when Mick and the boys were dangerous, and Alice Cooper perfected. The world was against Vince Furnier, except for his audience. And one of Vince’s big songs, after “Dead Babies” and “Under My Wheels,” never mind the angst of “I’m Eighteen,” was “Elected.” He made a joke of the ’72 election, which truly was. Who’s poking fun at the political shenanigans today?

Vince/Alice freaks out the public with a record shrouded in panties and today the goal is to sell your own panties or hoodies or perfume, anything the lemmings who listen will consume. What happened to art? Art is all about conception. Housing your album in a school desk, brilliant. Hooking up with Samsung, lowest common denominator.

Music is ripe for disruption. And said disruption will be something inimitable that appeals to everybody. A new sound that’s less niche and more mass. Kinda like Trump, a dividing line that got us all paying attention. The Donald, love ’em or hate ’em, but you can’t stop paying attention to him. And the truth is however much it might bug you, he won.

And CBS and the artists were afraid of the blowback. Imagine if someone did take a political stand, a swipe at the President on the show, it’d be front page news, it would spread like wildfire over the internet. Instead, Adele won another couple of awards. For an album that’s mediocre that wasn’t on streaming services. There you have the music industry in a nutshell. Mercenary, hocking second-rate products. Read the press and you’d think Adele was the next Beatles, listen to “25” and you were bored silly, you wanted to take it off. But we had to hear how great she was again and again again. The same way these same wankers told us Hillary was gonna win.

But no one can say no to being on the show. They think by reaching everybody they’ve won. When the truth is it just demonstrates they’re pawns in the game, tools of the system. Have a little self-respect. If duets were that popular they’d dominate the airwaves, and they don’t. And all the trappings, the dancers on stage, in what world does that really happen?

And the truth is TV is bad for you, your image, your career. This is not the grainy clips of yore, rather you’re broadcast in HD on the big screen and the end result is it makes you look small. Music is something you feel, and you feel it at the gig, not on TV. And first and foremost it’s something you listen to, but that paradigm left the building eons ago.

Who cares who wins these awards? Other than those on the undercard who are trolling for bio material, the truth is everybody forgets who won and the awards have no impact, kinda like awards shows themselves. Remember when we all live-tweeted, well, the music has stayed the same but we’ve moved on, we realize no one is listening, does anybody on stage realize most people watching really don’t care about them?

But we want something to care about, desperately. Give us some truth, sold with songs we can sing along to. We are your audience, not corporations. And no amount of hype will convince me any of the nominees were groundbreaking, one listen songs that will be repeated and listened to in the future. It’s all grist for the mill. Everybody’s shooting so low.

So you hated the show. Don’t feel so unique. EVERYBODY hated it. You stayed tuned in to see your favorite, but they were compromised and you winced. And what you want to do most is crank up your favorite tune and forget the whole thing.

The future will not be ruled by CBS, never mind the Grammys. Music has historically been the hottest of media, the fastest to react with the truth, via songs embodying the character of those singing them. Come on, is that new Katy Perry track disposable or what? Overworked, as they all are, with multiple writers and producers and beats, how about a bolt of inspiration transferred to wax that we can all relate to? Like Keith Richards dreaming of “Satisfaction,” singing it into a tape recorder by his bed and laying down the indelible riff that was inescapable way back when and still works today.

Art, especially music, is not about overlaboring, but pure inspiration, channeling the zeitgeist.

But there was no zeitgeist on television tonight, it was just a look in the rearview mirror.

And what scares me is today’s youth have never been alive when music pushed the needle, when it was ubiquitous, written by the artists channeling their truth.

We’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden.

And nowhere do I see a new Joni Mitchell, the woman who wrote that song.

I’ve been wowed by technology, astounded by politics and all the while…

Music has become a second-class citizen.

You ain’t gotta know how to sing, you ain’t gotta know how to play, you need to know how to capture lightning in a bottle and lay it down on tape. Some of the greatest records are poorly recorded. Many of the legendary players can’t read music. But they know art is about latching on to mood, laying down in sound that which you feel, so that others can resonate.

If you resonated with tonight’s show you must be Neil Portnow or Ken Ehrlich.

As for the rest of us, we were sitting there dumbfounded, if we were watching at all.

It’s a clusterfuck. Where the nobodies take the dress code seriously and show up in monkey suits and the somebodies might wear sneakers like George Drakoulias and if you’re an insider it resembles nothing so much as a summer camp reunion, where you see everyone you know and catch up and the only problem is the cocktail party is too short.

And then the show begins.

There’s a painful auction. Inane introductions. And endless covers of the honoree’s songs. And on paper it all looks good, but in reality it usually falls flat. Because although the backup band is stellar, the performers are oftentimes underrehearsed and reading from an obvious teleprompter at the back of the room and for an evening that is selling magic, there’s very little of it.

If I had to pick the highlight of the program, I’d go with George Strait singing “You Wreck Me.” This should not have worked whatsoever, but George hit a line drive over the fence and if you knew who he was you were grinning from ear to ear. But, as one of his promoters, John Meglen, remarked, nobody there had any idea they were in the presence of superstardom. That’d have to be the CMAs, and Musicares is a positively west coast enterprise. George is standing there in his cowboy hat, the man with the voice who does not write, and you’d have sworn those were his words and that he’d gone to the Whisky to see Tom way back when.

Which I did. Back in ’77. When KROQ was still a free-format station and “Breakdown” was starting to get some traction and the press wasn’t sure whether Tom Petty was a punk.

And I’ve seen TP many times since and wondered if I ever needed to see him again and…

Neil Portnow gave a long, drawn-out intro to Tom for the award, they should have gotten a musician, and then Tom strode up to the mic.

And seemed genuinely chuffed. And let’s be clear, this is just about raising money, for a good cause, but that’s why they honor someone.

And Tom’s rambling as a good Southerner should. And you know he waxes and wanes between friendliness and edginess and you’re not quite sure where he’s going but then he points out Mo in the crowd and talks about playing “Free Fallin'” with George and Jeff at his house, just as the Wilburys were coming together, and Lenny Waronker exclaims it’s a hit, which it certainly became, but Tom said his label refused to put it out.

Which was true.

But then Tom started talking about Leon Russell, one of the majordomos of his initial label, Shelter. Tom goes over to his house and when he emerges into the night with a group of household names Tom puts on his shades. And Leon chides him, tells him he’s got to EARN that right. That Lou Adler didn’t don them until AFTER the Mamas & the Papas and when Jack Nicholson was making genre pictures he didn’t wear them and Tom said at this point he thought he’d earned them, and after telling that story he pulled his dark glasses out of his pocket and put them on and the crowd roared!

And after talking about how Johnny Cash told him he was a good man to go down the river with, Tom strapped on his guitar, strode to the middle of the stage, looked at the Heartbreakers and started to play.

You’ve got to understand. We grew up in a different era. Where the radio was our Facebook and the musicians were our Steve Jobs’s. Today’s players, and they rarely do, are just vessels for stardom, there’s rarely any there there. And Tom Petty is positively second generation, he didn’t hit until the seventies. But so many baby boomers weren’t born until the fifties, and the band fires up and…

You’re taken right back to what once was. You’re in the pocket. You remember when it wasn’t about texting on your cellphone at the show, but pushing up to the stage, needing to get closer.

And Tom implored everybody to do this. And all the overdressed people surged up from the back and surrounded the stage and after playing a relative obscurity, “Waiting For Tonight,” he went into his eighties hit, “Don’t Come Around Here No More.”

It was all over MTV. When a hit was ubiquitous. And with backup vocals from the Bangles it was like hearing our national anthem, it was like Washington, D.C. and the shenanigans didn’t exist. The band locked into a groove and we were magnetized to it. You just stared at the stage in wonderment and recalled why you were there. Because we were all in thrall to the music, we were in service to the music, and it felt so good and it felt so good last night.

And when Stevie Nicks emerged to sing “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” I was jetted right back to 1981, when you had to buy the album. Stevie was famous for Fleetwood Mac, you had no choice but to go to the store and buy the LP without hearing it first. And sure, “Edge Of Seventeen” was all over the radio, but then came…

Baby you’ll come knocking on my front door
Same old line you used before

No one even knocks on your front door anymore! You ping them on your device, there’s not the same anticipation of magic or loss and…

The guitars are singing, we’re on the aural adventure, and then…

So you’ve had a little trouble in town
Now you’re keeping some demons down
Stop draggin’ my
Stop draggin’ my
STOP DRAGGIN’ MY HEART AROUND!

I’m thrusting my arm in the air, singing at the top of my lungs, because that’s what I did and still do when I’m moved by the music, you can’t hear me over the band, over the record player, but I need to involuntarily join in, because this is my religion.

And then Jeff Lynne implored us not to back down and when that was done there was that indelible riff…

It was a beautiful day, the sun beat down
I had the radio on, I was drivin’

Again, again and again. We got our license and took off down the highway with the tunes cranked. There were no selfies, but if there were you’d have seen our long hair blown back and shiteating grins on our face.

Trees flew by, me and Del were singin’ little ‘Runaway’
I was flyin’

Kinda like Harry Chapin in his taxi. Our feet were not touching the earth, and last night they weren’t either. How could Tom and his band be so much better than everybody else? It’s the same instruments, they wrote all the songs, but when the Heartbreakers were firing on all cylinders they levitated the whole building and we were all on the same page, eagerly nodding our heads in service to the songs.

We’ve got a sense of history. We heard Del Shannon on the radio, all the progenitors. And then we picked up guitars and some never put them down and came to Los Angeles and played the game and now we all know their names.

But rather than whore himself out to the Fortune 500, TP remains on his own journey, all in service to the music, money is a byproduct.

I felt so good like anything was possible
Hit cruise control and rubbed my eyes

We’ve been on cruise control for far too long. Boomers are all about lifestyle, they gave up moving forward years ago, but then they go to the show and they return to who they once were. Matrons are singing every word, men with lumpy bodies are dancing, that’s the power of music to inspire and change your life, you’re runnin’ down a dream one more time.

We believed anything was possible. As long as the music was playing. And it was, on the radio, on the stereo, it was not portable but it was everywhere.

And it felt so good.

And it still does.

Last night Tom Petty and his band of merrymakers proved they belong in the pantheon, where very few other bands reside. Because instead of worrying about hits played by the last deejay they’re all about getting in a room and making that sound.

And last night we were in the room with them and…

I tingle just thinking about it.

We were workin’ on a mystery, and it led us to a life of incredible fulfillment, and when we hear these songs played live we don’t even think of backing down, we recover from our breakdowns, we’ve got to come around there…

Again and again and again.

Music, when done right, makes magic moments.

AND LAST NIGHT WAS ONE OF THEM!