Chris Stapleton – “Nobody to Blame”

He doesn’t look into the camera. It’s like he’s in a honky tonk, another night on the endless road wherein he’s downed a bunch of beers and is entertaining the assembled multitude, who are there to imbibe and check out the opposite sex (and the same one too!) This is not SNL, but something blasted in from a prior generation, when the music was paramount and image was secondary, when carrying a few extra pounds was not anathema, when how you played was a demonstration of your expertise and value, not how many likes and views you’d accumulated. This hearkens back to an era so long gone that I don’t think anybody watching the show understood what they were seeing, but they GOT IT!

Welcome to the Chris Stapleton hype, wherein credibility’s been pushed out front to the point where a few have checked him out. It’s not a viral enterprise, certainly not outside Tennessee, he’s been gently pushed down the throat of those who might care, but when you check out his album “Traveller” you’re flummoxed, this is not Bonnie Raitt’s “Nick Of Time,” not a nineties Grammy winner that you put on the turntable and immediately get. “Traveller” is subtle and dare I say it…at first not great. It’s good. But today that’s not good enough, when we’re surrounded by the history of recorded music. And then you let it play and the album takes a left turn, just when you feel superior to the critics you become riveted, the deeper you go the more passion and desperation that is evidenced, and you’re closed.

The tour-de-force is the last track, “Sometimes I Cry,” which is closer to the blues breakers of the U.K. sixties than anything coming out of Nashville today. It’s slow and meaningful and when Stapleton exclaims that sometimes he cries, you’re stopped in your tracks, not by some nitwit melismaing, but a guy with talent and experience who’s expressing true emotion, true pain. It’s a slow and dreary number, like one a.m. after too much Jack Daniel’s, when you believe your world will never work out, and rather than get up your gumption to go on, you wallow in the mess you’ve made of your life, believing there’s no way out.

But the best track on the LP is number 11, “Was It 26,” which is as dark as Alice In Chains’ “Rooster,” but wiggles through the swamp like a bayou snake. There are changes and a sound that immediately enraptures you.

Livin’ hard was easy when I was young and bulletproof
I had no chains to bind me, just a guitar and a roof
Emptied every bottle, when I poured I never missed
I had bloodshot eyes at twenty five, or was it twenty six

It was twenty eight for me. Too much alcohol and too many dead ends, I’d stopped living with my girlfriend and was still searching for the best night of my life. And in case you’ve never tried this, you don’t. Ever. But bad turns and dead ends, I’ve seen them. And to know someone else has too…

Actually, “Was It 26” is one of the two songs on “Traveller” that Stapleton didn’t write, but he makes it his own.

More accessible is the coming to L.A. story “When The Stars Come Out.” Can you get up off the couch and make a change, set yourself up for new opportunities, for happiness? Most people can’t.

After “When The Stars Come Out” comes the dirge “Daddy Doesn’t Pray Anymore,” a quiet number that sounds just like its title. All this darkness, all this truth, is in the second half of this fourteen cut LP. It’s like some exec said we can’t scare ’em away, we’ve got to load ’em up with the easy stuff.

The album opens with the breezy “Traveller,” which lightens your mood but does not stick to your bones. There’s a cover of the classic “Tennessee Whiskey,” which Chris did to such acclaim with Justin Timberlake on the CMAs. The jaunty “Parachute.” And none of this stuff evidences the pain, never mind the quality, of what comes after. Like “The Devil Named Music.” Which is too slow to lead with, but opens your heart and brain, takes you away from this complicated game we call life, the one with iPhones and constant communication, and puts you in the driver’s seat with your personality intact, not the one you polish up for social media, where it’s all nice all the time, assuming you want to get ahead. And after “The Devil Named Music” comes “Outlaw State Of Mind,” another one of those English-styled blues numbers filtered through a modern mentality. It’s so dark the label must have been afraid to feature it. This is Skynyrd country, heavy and edgy, from guys you want to listen to but you’re not sure you want to hang with.

And that brings us back to “Nobody To Blame.”

On wax, it’s a cross between Merle Haggard and the Dead. A bouncy tale featuring some fine picking.

But then you see the iteration on SNL. It loses its popiness, it settles down into the groove, it waltzes as opposed to foxtrots, it’s a hair slower and more meaningful.

Credit Stapleton’s vocal… He starts off weak, for an instant you think he ain’t got the pipes, but that’s just a line, he’s away from the mic, making sure he’s picking the notes on his Jazzmaster correctly, but then you hear him exclaim that he’s got nobody to blame and you can’t believe this mellifluous vocal is emanating from this burly dude. People aren’t supposed to sing this good, everybody’s a fake, talent is something we used to experience before tech allowed average people to employ seamless recordings to get corporate endorsements.

And really, it’s all about the picking on that Jazzmaster, I won’t say it’ll launch a zillion players, but it’s truly inspirational, and it sounds so GOOD!

Kinda like the harmonica and the steel guitar. Is this truly live? You sure it’s not on tape, like the usual SNL fare, like Ashlee Simpson?

But unlike the skits on the show, this performance is not now, tickling this week’s memory banks, but is positively retro, positively what music once was, when it existed outside the mainstream, was the stuff that set our minds free that we couldn’t get enough of. This is why we went to the show, to bask in the sound of people who were all about the playing as opposed to the mugging.

There’s no buzz. Because the people who saw this show are not the target audience, they’re the fly-by-night kids who believe it’s all about documenting their present so they can become stars.

And Chris Stapleton is not demonstrating any starpower, not by the usual standards, his antics don’t fill up TMZ and he’s not demanding our love as he tells us how much better he is than us.

As a matter of fact, he’s taking responsibility, he’s telling us it’s his fault.

And it is. Nobody’s perfect, even Donald Trump, all the rich people who look down upon us, they put their pants on the same way, they just think if they evidence weakness they’ll fold. But those who can reveal their warts, those are the ones we want to get close to, because they’re human, just like us.

Nashville embraced this guy, because he played their game, wrote hits, and then veered from it, refused to be defined by what was but went in search of what felt right. And in a corporatized world where everybody’s playing it safe that’s a revelation.

And if you were bitten by the music bug of yore, you’ll find this video a revelation.

And if you listen to the second half of “Traveller” you won’t be able to stop.

And if you allow yourself to extricate yourself from the rat race and let it all wash over you…

You’ll have hope.

EMOTION

We want to know you’re alive, that you’ve got feelings, that you believe in your message. Rational is passe. Jeb is rational, Trump is emotional. Who’s got a grip on the public consciousness? Who is mired in the morass? In an internet world where words inflame and everybody is pissed off to put on a smile and act like everything’s copacetic and if we all just got calm things would work out is to be marginalized. The internet has allowed the feelings of the public to enter the public eye. One does not want to be “other.” One wants to be just like the people playing the home game, which they’re doing, on their devices, constantly. To ignore this change is to be left behind.

PASSION

An analogue of emotion. If you don’t believe it, we won’t either. Raise your voice, even yell and scream. Not so loudly you drown everybody else out, but to the point where we know you’re feeling something.

TRUTH

Something the Republican candidates cannot get a grip on. Yes, there are all kinds of internet rumors, but in the new world truth always outs, a visit to Snopes will deliver this. You don’t want to lie. This is the conundrum of Trump, he delivers his message passionately, but then he makes up whoppers that the rest of the Republicans don’t attack because they’re lying too. But when it gets to a general election, your past comes back to haunt you. Everybody’s hungry for straight talk. They’re sick of duplicity. It’s why TV is burgeoning and music is faltering. Come on, can you believe in some nitwit performer who’s taking money from a corporation that few believe in? Used to be life was an inside game, who you knew was most important. Now there’s a giant window instead of a steel curtain and everyone can see your behavior so unless you specialize in being dishonest, or are completely off the radar screen, you’d better hew to the truth.

DON’T PLAY IT SAFE

Legacy is for the antiquated, left behind in the rearview mirror. Apple abandons ports seemingly willy-nilly, imploring its customers to either get on the bus or be left behind. Microsoft was so busy making their software backwards compatible that they got lost in the dust. Not only must you innovate, you must shed old paradigms that no longer apply in the new world. It is no longer business as usual. We are not only going to self-driving cars, but a near lack of car ownership completely. Adele selling tracks and CDs is akin to selling flip-phones to the aged. That’s right, adult women are the drivers of the Adele phenomenon, and this strategy has hurt the performer, because she’s absent from the playing field, the one where everybody else is, streaming. You never want to take yourself out of the game, you never want to reduce eyeballs. Putting money first is a shortsighted strategy that will come back to haunt you.

TAKE THE GLOVES OFF EARLY

Hillary refused to attack Bernie and now it may be too late. Say what you’ve got to say. If you’re honest, truthful, display emotion and demonstrate passion people will be with you. In tech there’s a first-mover advantage. It applies in all walks of life today, where it’s so hard to get your message heard at all and you’re defined by your opening remarks.

RISK

It’s everything today. If you’re not willing to go into uncharted territory, you’re moribund, kind of like the music business. Top Forty is endless repetition of safe work to the point where most people have tuned out. Music will not be healthy again until those with the purse strings enable those with vision and convince gatekeepers that doing it the old way is death. Record stores were killed by iTunes and iTunes was killed by YouTube and Spotify. The bleeding edge is everything. And once you gain adherents you must constantly change and continue to explore and adjust. Uber just lowered rates in L.A. As if UberX wasn’t cheap enough, they now have a carpooling option. And what broke Uber was word of mouth. You build it and then they decide to come. If you think publicity is the way to break a new product, you believe early adopters pay attention to hype, but they don’t.

DON’T PLAY IT SAFE

The Democrats scheduled debates on the weekend so few would view and they would be out of the public eye and Hillary could sustain her front runner status. Now that Bernie is neck and neck Hillary can’t get her message out, because no one is watching!

PLAY FOR TOMORROW, NOT TODAY

Life is long, the road goes on forever, and if you’re looking to win instantly I hope you’re also planning to get out of the game just as fast.

TRACTION

If you’ve got none, abandon. Marginal Republican candidates didn’t go up in the polls, they stayed low and then their money ran out and they gave up. Imagine you have a limited amount of money to fund your enterprise. Would you give up with the little headway you’ve made? Would you beg, borrow and steal for more with the little success you’ve had? Professionals cut their losses, amateurs keep persisting, believing their passion and personal stamina will make a difference. No. Not everything is a good idea, not everything generates cash. Techies are famous for the pivot. Take what’s good about what you’re doing and turn it into something else. Or take what’s good about your personality and pour it into a new endeavor.

DON’T IGNORE TRENDS

The NFL keeps fighting the concussion backlash. If you don’t own your flaws, they will come back to haunt you. Society is riddled with that which is huge today and over tomorrow. The truth is a growing number of citizens are disillusioned with football because of the injury rate. If owners were smart, they’d diversify. Kroenke would buy a soccer team and install it in Inglewood. But too often the rich and famous believe their own hype, that they’re better than others and smarter than the marketplace, which then craters, making the way for new players. The Silicon Valley ethos is that change happens. You’d better believe it.

CHANGE DOES HAPPEN

Oil prices crash, real estate goes up and down, if you’re an investor you diversify, if you’re a creator you know that your time may come, or it may not. This is what keeps the game interesting. We’re moving towards a great consolidation, life is too overwhelming, there’s a cacophony of messages. Only a few tech companies triumph and only a few artists/artistic enterprises will gain all of the mindshare. Everybody can play, but few can win, because people are overwhelmed with choice. The future is about a great unification of our country. With fewer outlets and fewer winners. Everybody can’t have a podcast, every streaming music service can’t survive… We want to be where our friends are, having a conversation about what we all know about. And we want our leaders to play to us, with truth, passion and honesty, that is the American Way. Risk-takers in touch with their audience leading us to the promised land. Either adopt the new plays or get out of the way, for the times they are a-changin’.

Inspired by:

“Why Are SO Many Millennials SO Uncool”

It’s about the money.

They came for the record stores, then they came for the MP3s, everything we knew disappeared, we didn’t know they were gonna take the music itself.

It started in the nineties.

Or maybe we’ve got to go back to the eighties for perspective.

The music business was in the dumper, disco killed corporate rock, and then a deejay in Chicago blew up dance records and revenue cratered. But at the deepest, darkest hour MTV came along to save the day.

And suddenly, along with the new technology known as the CD, record companies were rolling in dough. And when there’s that much cash involved, you don’t hand the wheel to someone who just got their license, you only let the experienced drive, and old men solidified their hold on the business and ironically they’re still running it today, I mean you Doug Morris and Marty Bandier, and the acts have been supplanted by the execs, they’re the ones who not only make all the money, but have all the power. Dr. Dre may be worth almost a billion, but as talented as he is he’s got to credit Jimmy Iovine, who shepherded Beats to Apple, another moribund company run by the clueless.

Used to be different, that’s what the classic rock revolution delivered, creative control, you cut the album in the studio of your choice and the label had no input, under contract they had to release it as is. Today they don’t, and they’ll make you work with a co-writer, cut the same damn track over and over again, and the so-called “artists” agree to it!

Why? Because they want to get rich. And they’re too uneducated to take another path.

Mark Zuckerberg famously refused to relinquish control of Facebook to adults, he wanted to steer, he needed no supervision. Who are the twentysomethings running the music business? Don’t say Scooter Braun, who took Wall Street money he could never pray to repay and has foisted the fake known as Justin Bieber upon us.

Justin’s no different from what came before the Beatles. A pretty face who could sing. And since the audience has developing hormones, and knows no better, they embrace him. And want to be him. And everybody’s on social media promoting themselves in the desire of being discovered, while those who truly change the world are going to school and studying engineering in their bedrooms. Nerds and outliers ultimately triumph, they’re the only ones with the balls to do it differently. And eventually it’ll be done differently in America when we all burn out on the pabulum being fed us and admit although hooky today’s music has got the nutritional value of a Slurpee.

I mean what kind of fucked up world do we live in where the biggest star in America makes her bones speaking the truth, unveiling her teen warts in country music, and then hooks up with the songwriter/producer du jour to make music that sounds just like the rest of the crap on Top Forty. Sure, it sells. And that’s now the only criterion that counts, if you’re rich, if you make a lot of money, if you control the chart, you matter, we bow at your feet, if you don’t, you’re irrelevant. Take the road less traveled? Most people think there’s only one road to go on!

But so many are disaffected with no future, with little upward mobility. That’s what’s turned the Presidential campaign topsy-turvy. But when it comes to art, we lionize the latest Max Martin record and J.J. Abrams’s remake of “Star Wars.” Hell, even George Lucas was pissed, wishing J.J. had pushed the envelope. George had to apologize for that, because we live in a fascist country where it’s all groupthink all the time and if you say something negative, if you go against the grain, you’re a pariah.

But that’s what all the hit acts of yore did, challenge precepts, make us uncomfortable.

We’ve got a cultural problem, caused by money. As long as it’s hard to make a good living, the educated middle class, or what’s left of it, won’t risk a future in the arts, they play it safe. Hell, when I graduated from college I was a ski bum, nobody I knew went to a job interview, but today if you don’t start your career right after you get your diploma you’ve already been left behind!

And the parents reinforce the paradigm. Thinking going to college is all about getting a job as opposed to opening one’s mind. Hell, most people’s minds are closed, to truth, to insight, to anything that contradicts what they’ve been told previously. And isn’t it interesting that the artists of yore were the leaders, who got us to smoke dope, question authority and end the Vietnam War while we were at it.

So I could tell you about a few hit records, champion the underdog and extol the virtues of those who’ve succeeded. But the truth is we all feel the malaise, the seamy underside, the feeling that what once was is here no longer. Hell, didn’t David Bowie say if he started today he’d be in tech?

And as powerful as tech is, it’s not art. Tech needs to be seamless, art has rough edges, it challenges us, it doesn’t give us what we want, but what we need.

This can’t go on forever. A revolution is gonna come. But it won’t be led by wet behind the ears kids who can sing but can’t write because they haven’t had enough education, never mind enough experience, to have something to say.

And that something is gonna have to be the truth.

And although I don’t agree with all the causes of the situation delineated in the above article, I must chuckle at the juxtaposition of Grace Slick and Beyonce. Grace was an upper middle class woman who had no problem challenging authority, she was all about exposing bad behavior, while behaving badly herself, whereas Beyonce is in bed with corporations like Pepsi, which makes people fat and sick, while being thin and squeaky clean herself. Isn’t it funny that millennials have abandoned soft drinks, but the acts endorsing this crap believe their audience will suck it up.

Or they just want the check.

But the end result is there’s no trust, there’s no believability. When questioned, acts just say they’re doing what it takes to get by, to feed their family.

Is that what Van Gogh said? John Lennon? Other than mercurial Gene Simmons, who owes what success he has to uber producer Bob Ezrin, responsible for Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” and Peter Gabriel’s solo debut, none of the hit acts of yore paid penance to the man or the money. They prayed to a higher power.

When are we gonna pray to a higher power again?

I just don’t care.

I never go to the movies and I’ll never see the Rams play live.

Despite media telling me I need to pay attention, the truth is I’m on my own subliminal trip to somewhere, as is everybody else, it’s the twenty first century condition.

Used to be entertainment was scarce. And those who got to play in the sandbox took their jobs seriously. We hung on every word, these artists defined the culture. But today the public defines the culture, Instagram is more important than any movie at the multiplex, including “Star Wars.”

Kind of like “25.” Have you heard anybody discuss the music? When was the last time you heard the music? Is anybody even listening? You can dazzle me with sales figures, but on YouTube Adele doesn’t rule. Media tells us she’s the biggest thing in music, but she’s not really that big at all.

I haven’t got any time. Not only do I not make it to the theatre, I don’t watch the flicks when they come to TV. The hype has evaporated and there’s always something new, I can barely keep up with the present, never mind catch up with the past.

As for Kroenke moving his team to Inglewood, I’ll watch a bit of the playoffs, go to a Super Bowl party, but I’m not dedicating months of my life to sitting in front of the screen watching men maim themselves for life. And the truth is, I’m on the bleeding edge. Boxing died, football has already peaked, the owners and the inane Commissioner have lost touch with the public, they think it’s all about the money, that the audience just can’t get enough. But even Depeche Mode can’t sell out stadiums anymore.

As for movies, chasing foreign bucks they lost touch with the American mind. If I want a comic book, I’ll read one. And I’m an adult and I don’t want one. That’s what happens when you chase the dollar, you lose your soul, and then the public wakes up and walks. Kind of like baseball, so-called “America’s Pastime,” I’ll argue it shot itself in the foot when it put the World Series on at night. Too late for young ‘uns to watch and no longer special. They stopped respecting the game. And then we did too.

Live long enough and you can see the arc, you can see that most things are fads, hell, even American auto manufacturers no longer dominate, I’d never buy any of their iron, I want my investment to last!

Then again, anybody with a buck is leasing, because they want the latest and the greatest all the time. Kind of like with smartphones. But Apple’s stock has tanked because after you’ve got LTE, do you really need the latest iPhone? When does good become good enough? No, that’s not the issue, when does the mobile phone become a commodity, when you can’t tell the brands apart and the manufacturers can barely make money. That’s right, look at all the TV dropouts, those who no longer make sets, the mobile area is coming next.

Unless there’s innovation.

But it turns out everything hits a wall and then the public moves on to something new. Seemingly nobody under twenty one goes to Facebook anymore, Zuckerberg is smart enough to diversify, but if the big Kahuna can’t last, what’s the chance anything else will?

And the truth is we’re all so overwhelmed that we’re doubling down on our own lives, our own activities, our own friends. Sure, some want to get famous on social media, but the truth is we want to connect with our circle of friends, who are known only to us, that’s who we want to impress.

And we’ve got the tools at our fingertips. We love being in charge. The record companies don’t want to let us remix, talking about antiquated rights, not realizing it’s all about public participation in the new era. Take Taylor Swift off of YouTube and her career goes in the dumper. Not only do people watch her videos for free, they do their own versions, they lip-synch. And after doing this and checking out the work of their peers do they have any time to go to the movies?

Well, some teens do.

But the rest of us wrote off the flicks long ago. We used to pay attention because we wanted to belong, have starting points of discussion. But now we just talk about apps. And the media is hung up on the election but the truth is the rank and file have given up on Washington, it hasn’t done anything for them lately, so they’ve tuned out.

Or are angry. Hell, at least Bernie Sanders is a real person speaking the truth, what a breath of fresh air. And Trump ping-pongs in his message, but his lack of b.s. is appealing, in a world inundated with b.s.

Like with the Oscars.

I don’t even watch anymore. I don’t care who wears what and I’m sick of the insider attitude. Life today is about the big tent, including everyone, that’s why tech is so successful, it scales.

The movies no longer scale. People talk about TV.

As for the NFL… Why not put a game on every night, why not burn the franchise out completely in pursuit of greed.

But the truth is the rich, and this applies not only to sports and entertainment, are living in a bubble, out of touch with you and me. They want us to believe they count, they create jobs, without them we would die. But the truth is we have a cornucopia of tools and information at our fingertips, and we like to play. We’re sick of being dictated to.

The story isn’t how white the Oscar nominees may be, but how the whole show and organization became unmoored from popular culture years ago. Want kids to watch? Have it hosted by PewDiePie!

As for color, Killer Mike’s endorsement of Sanders is more meaningful than nominating another entertainer bitching about recognition. You earn your status in the trenches, not on the awards shows, and we respond to honesty, truth and smarts, which Killer Mike demonstrated on Bill Maher, check him out, he made me a fan nearly instantly:

That’s today’s world. Not the triangulation of the Clintons, not adjusting your message based on polls, but being authentic, human, just like us.

And then we may embrace you.

We don’t need a football team in Los Angeles. Hell, without one we get better games on TV.

And the only person I know who’s seen all the Oscar nominees gets the screeners from their next door neighbor.

Something is happening here, and it’s plenty clear, if you pull your head out of your rear end and walk the streets, surf the net. The people may not have the money, they may not run the corporation, but they own the culture. They’re creating it every day online. That’s where the action is.

We don’t need your stinkin’ entertainment!