It didn’t work then and it won’t work now.

Makes me want to give up my membership in the card-carrying elite, the educated members of our society who can hold two opposing thoughts in their brain at the same time who just can’t fathom that Trump won and want to keep focusing on his inadequacies. Just because you worked hard to get where you are that does not mean the less fortunate are ignorant people who should pay fealty to you. You rail against the corporations who whipsaw this country without acknowledging that they depend upon the purchases of the rank and file, why do you have no sympathy for the service workers who grease the skids of your life, the barista, the waitress, the street sweeper, the gardener, the nanny…the list goes on and on of people who can no longer make it here.

And you keep talking about your feelings. The microaggressions, the rights of African-Americans, women and every oppressed minority extant.

Enough with the feelings, IT’S MONEY THAT PEOPLE WANT!

Sure, the trauma your people experienced in the old country, the burden of the color of your skin, these are real problems that need to be addressed, but not now.

Trump won by appealing to those who felt screwed by the present administration.

Oh, that’s right, Obama couldn’t do much because of an intractable Republican Congress.

That’s true! But that fact does not help the disadvantaged.

When is the left wing gonna speak to the Trump voters instead of deriding them. Try criticizing your spouse, telling him or her they’re clueless, let me know how that works out, when he or she comes around to your way of thinking.

The left wing disconnected from its traditional base, all caught up in the successes it earned, and now that base has given it the middle finger. And what do the entitled and the powerful do? Cry all about it, as if they’ve got no powers of reasoning, never mind powers of cash and relationships.

Let’s start with the news media. Making fun of Trump tweeting.

First of all, I’ll agree with the Donald that SNL hasn’t been funny for years, ever hear of a punch line? But reporting on his thin skin is not gonna bring his acolytes to your side, no way.

And the Carrier debacle, wherein Indiana gave financial incentives to save some jobs… Do you really think gotcha is gonna grab the right wing right now, when they didn’t care that Donald grabbed so much and was revealed to do so during the campaign?

Business as usual is not going to solve our problems.

And you can start with the media. Scolding Trump and wagging its finger over his appointments. They’re no better than the Republicans who never proffered an alternative to Obamacare. Don’t like what’s going on, work to change it!

But the left won’t do this, no way, it’s too entrenched in its lifestyle.

While the Republicans started the Federalist Society, to move jurisprudence to the right, supported gun rights and decided to focus on the states to restrict abortion…

The Democrats were asleep at the wheel. Saying most of the public was with them.

I agree with that, but it’s IRRELEVANT! Who cares if Hillary won the popular vote, by the rules that are written Trump was victorious. What next, challenging the outcome of a football game, claiming that in certain burgs you get five downs? Then again, that’s the left wing for you, believing it can bend the rules. Scratch a rich person and you’ll find someone working the edges, while simultaneously boasting how honest and ethical they are.

People need jobs. And in the future more are going to disappear. Where is the left wing plan?

It’s not only minimum wages, although that’s a good start, it’s also the fact that technology is eliminating so many roles. But the bleeding heart liberals want to get rid of trade agreements and bring manufacturing back to America. First and foremost, turns out the public doesn’t care about TPP, more people are for it, but they do care about working. Sanders said the game was rigged, it is, but not in the way he said it was, nor in the way Trump does either. But at least they both speak the truth, as opposed to Hillary who spoke to Goldman Sachs.

Dishonesty… Not a feature of the poor. The poor are honest and compassionate. They can’t cheat on their taxes because they don’t get to itemize deductions. The poor are more charitable than the rich, you can look it up. But the left wing keeps looking down on people working, or wanting to work for a living, using their hands.

What did Depeche Mode say? People are people? Well, somehow the left has decided everybody who does not agree with them is not a person, rather a blob of ignorant protoplasm. Makes me want to throw in with the disadvantaged, they may not be educated, but they’ve got feelings, and you don’t need to go to Harvard to become wise, I’ll argue you’ll learn more going to the school of hard knocks, as opposed to spending daddy’s money so you can get a job at the bank.

It’s been going on for thirty five years, ever since the election of Reagan, the left wing boomers have been decoupled from the love your brother ethos of the sixties and have become all about self-satisfied greed. Just because you pulled yourself up by your bootstraps doesn’t mean everybody else can too. Ever see how the elites treat workers? Just board a plane, this entitled mass is hatable, no wonder the service people reacted.

The Democrats have to be a party of ideas. And should be less about inclusiveness than hard core solutions. Hillary thought she had the Latinos and the women and the blacks and she could not lose, the “New York Times” said her odds were greater than eighty per cent, the Republican party was supposedly in shreds, with no future, but we woke up to find the Republicans controlling everything.

And we can wait for them to screw up, and they will, but in the meantime they’re gonna appoint Supreme Court justices and we’ll have the usual suspects in Congress, labeled as irrelevant hacks by the right, making no progress at all.

We need more leaders. People willing to speak the truth. People who have priorities. Who know that food on the table is more important than any hurt feeling. That compassion far outstrips derision. That solutions are better than pointing fingers. That when you lose the game you don’t continue to keep playing it the same way, you shake it up.

Like I said, for eighteen months the left wing and the media played a game of Gotcha! with Donald Trump. But he steamrolled everybody. First the right wing clowns, then Hillary, the left wing hope. And he did it not by being politically correct, by kissing the ring of the movers and shakers, but by speaking to the disadvantaged, the left behind, people who are being ignored by the other side as they keep complaining about who’s in the cabinet and who’s calling who, all protocol.

Rock and roll was based on breaking protocol. And then punk stood up to classic rock. And in politics all we’ve got is the usual suspects doing the same damn thing. Hillary Clinton was Freddie Garrity, insisting that you dream of a better of America. When the truth is dreams’ll get you nowhere. And your word is your bond, and Hillary kept flip-flopping.

But she’s in the rearview mirror. Good riddance. She lost, next.

But who else has to be put out to pasture?

A left wing intelligentsia which believes since it beat the odds in America everybody else can too?

A media that plays to these same types, as it not only cozies up to them for quotes but sells wine and conferences to make ends meet at the same time begging for financial support?

And at the ground level, the reporters getting the story…

Turns out some right wing agitators at Breitbart were more in touch with the pulse of America than all the Northwestern and Columbia journalists with their notepads and laptops.

Because sometimes the story is hiding in plain sight.

And sometimes the game changes.

And the game we’re playing now is one of emotion, not fact.

Hell, the entertainment business specializes in this, knowing it’s all about perception.

And the perception is the Democrats are so worried about offending anybody that they end up standing for nothing.

And the press is so busy trying to be at arm’s length and fair that it ignores the truth.

And I’m stuck in the middle with you wondering what happened to this country.

Peter, Paul & Mary – Spotify

They’re not in the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame.

I got a hankering to hear “I Dig Rock And Roll Music.”

By 1967 Peter, Paul and Mary were an oldies act, with about as much of a chance of having a hit as Garth Brooks does today. They were the epitome of the folk boom, but now we were in the rock and roll era.

I used to have a Norelco portable cassette player. And if you bought enough adapters you could plug it into your stereo and tape songs off the radio. I know, I know, you could record records too, but that made no sense, you already owned them, you wanted that which you did not possess, like “I Dig Rock And Roll Music.”

The odds of me buying a Peter, Paul and Mary album were low, not because I wasn’t a fan of the trio, not because I did not own a bunch of their singles, but because there was so much else I needed to own! No one could afford everything they wanted to hear, which is why I found myself on the floor of my bedroom pushing that t-shaped button on the Norelco when WDRC-FM played “I Dig Rock And Roll Music.”

It was 1967 and FM radio was burgeoning, when I got my Columbia stereo I scoured the dial for what I could pull in, not only the New York stations like WOR and WNEW and WABC, but WDRC in Hartford. AM still ruled in New Haven, but in Connecticut’s capital…

And you get a hankering to hear these songs when you’re walking down the street, when you’re driving in your car, I can’t explain the science, I don’t think anybody can, but suddenly you can’t wait to hear something like “I Dig Rock And Roll Music” which I played so much after recording it with deejay patter way back when.

And through the magic of streaming services, these tracks are readily available.

I pulled “I Dig Rock And Roll Music” up on Spotify and I was stunned. The sound was so clean and so present. The track was mildly ersatz back in ’67, but today it’s MINDBLOWING!

So I decided to go deeper, what did I need to hear next?

The funny thing was I recognized all the titles. Even if I hadn’t heard the tracks in decades. Like the opener on “The Very Best of Peter, Paul and Mary,” “Early In The Morning.” Whew, this took me right back to the early sixties, when folk music ruled, when your voices, a guitar or two and handclap percussion was enough, when it was just about us, human beings. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate electronic sounds, but there’s a striking humanity in “Early In The Morning.”

So what to spin next?

“500 Miles” was a staple at summer camp, before the Beatles broke through.

And we had the single of “If I Had A Hammer.”

And we sang “Leaving On A Jet Plane” in youth group long before it was a hit single, it was part of “Album 1700” (named that because that was the Warner Brothers catalog number!) and “Blowin’ In The Wind” is where it all began for Bob Dylan, we knew the words and sang along before we had any idea of who the bard of Minnesota ever was.

And we wouldn’t have known of any of them if it weren’t for one Albert Grossman. He managed both acts, Peter, Paul and Mary and Dylan, and he put the former together! Funny how most managers are written out of history, but without them their charges never ever would have happened.

But scanning through the song list the cut that stuck out, that I needed to hear next was, TOO MUCH OF NOTHING!

Too much of nothing
Can make a man feel ill at ease

Funny how these songs suddenly make sense. You’ve been listening to them for years, know them by heart, but with age their truth is revealed. We think we need time off but then we get it and not only do we not accomplish what we’d planned, our heads go into places they should not go and…

There’s no way “Too Much Of Nothing” could be a hit today, but it’s a revelation, something that would turn the heads of millennials, never mind teenagers, because it’s so pure, honest and direct, it’s like it’s all done in one take and the changes are like the Matterhorn bobsleds at Disneyland, smooth, not jerky, but thrilling nonetheless.

And I’m lying on the floor in the dark and I see the history of music laid out in front of me, I can see why Bob Dylan won that Nobel prize, and then I remember…HE CUT IT ON THE BASEMENT TAPES!

Peter, Paul and Mary’s version was a hit in ’67, it was the only one we knew, back when you had no idea who wrote the songs on the radio, we were clueless as to its Zimmerman provenance. But then word started to leak out, what Dylan did up there in Woodstock, and then Robbie Robertson cleaned up the tapes and in 1975 there was a double album, which contained “Too Much Of Nothing.”

But that version was not the one I played first last night, rather it was the iteration from 2014’s “Basement Tapes” collection, and this one…was magical, not as magical as Peter, Paul and Mary’s, but better than the one from ’75, which I played next, and my memory proved to be true.

But now I needed to know more.

And that’s when I pulled up the Wikipedia page and found out Peter, Paul and Mary fell out with Dylan because the latter was pissed they’d changed a lyric.

Hmm… At this late date everybody lets everybody change everything, because they’re looking to get paid, why did Dylan get a bee in his bonnet?

It turns out he was angry Peter, Paul and Mary changed the name from “Vivienne” to “Marion.” And I always thought “Marion” worked so well in the hit single, I couldn’t fathom why Dylan was displeased.

Until I read that the “Vivienne” in the original song was the the first wife of poet T.S. Eliot. What?

I think I’m educated, but every day I find holes in my learning. And here’s this college dropout who knows more about literature than I do.

So then I Googled Eliot and saw those poems I read in Mrs. Hurley’s class in high school, and it turns out that Vivienne was the inspiration for “The Wasteland”…

And now I needed to see what she looked like.

No wonder Dylan didn’t want the name changed, the backstory is EVERYTHING!

And was Peter, Paul & Mary’s the only cover?

I checked out a live take by Fotheringay, which did not feature Sandy Denny, and then went down the rabbit hole with the woman who sang on “Battle Of Evermore” and learned how respected she was in the U.K.

As for Spooky Tooth’s recording… The less said the better. I love “Dream Weaver,” but Gary Wright was not fully-formed in his previous band, and if you weren’t around then you don’t need to hear it now.

So that brought me back to Peter, Paul and Mary’s version.

There’s that piano, that mouth harp and then that groove. Why is it as human beings we’re always hooked by the grooves?

And lines were jumping out and hooking me…

Say hello to Valerie
Say hello to Vivienne
Give them all my salary
On the waters of oblivion

They were the two wives of T.S. Eliot. Valerie was thirty years his junior, she outlived him. Vivienne died in a mental hospital…

Gimlet Media – Crimetown

Crimetown

Podcasts are the new music.

There have been three revolutions in music, the Beatles/British Invasion, MTV and Napster, and for the past fifteen years we’ve been living in a moribund world…quick, name a new sound!

But we’ve all been too focused on technology to notice.

But when was the last time you bought a new piece of gear? And the artificial scarcity of the Snap Spectacles doesn’t count… Those are toys, Xmas gifts, but remember the mania over the iPod?

It’s happening now in podcasts.

Remember… The iPod didn’t burgeon until it went Windows, people thought it was an overpriced curio, despite owners testifying about it. Same deal with podcasts, there are those who are clued in and those who don’t care, but they soon will.

The standard podcast is about to be eclipsed. You know, the man with the microphone interviewing someone promoting something. The same way AM pop was eclipsed by FM rock. There’s a maturity happening in the podcast world, and it all began with “Serial.”

A narrative that hooked the populace. Never underestimate story, it’s what we all hunger for. Which is why we go on Netflix binges and television is triumphant, in a disconnected world, where we’re at loose ends emotionally, despite being interconnected with our devices, we’re in search of humanity, we want that personal touch, and that’s what podcasts provide.

“Serial” was “Sgt. Pepper.” An even better analogy is “Myst,” the computer game that broke that vertical wide open. They showed the POSSIBILITIES!

It’s no longer sufficient to have a mic only, you need production. Which is how Malcolm Gladwell broke through. His podcast series, “Revisionist History,” was seamless, a tour-de-force, despite being the ramblings of a self-anointed nobody.

Yes kids, that paradigm is dying. We’re looking to scientists, originators, who’ve spent their entire lives dedicated to the subject of study. Gladwell just comes up with theories and searches for stories to prove them. Gladwell gets collegiate financial aid SO wrong in “Revisionist History” that I may never trust him again. Then again, he writes so much better than Clayton Christensen, whose latest book, “Competing Against Luck: The Story of Innovation and Customer Choice,” is a must-read, if you can get through it. Christensen has been analyzing innovation for decades, he’s gone in search of how best to disrupt yourself, and I’d trust an academic over a self-promoting wanker every day of the week.

But Gladwell’s podcast is another step in the journey. Funny how you can get instantly noticed in podcasting and sustain, whereas no record has ubiquity, despite acolytes of hits saying it’s otherwise. Music has become too niche. We’re looking for those who can speak to everybody, who can make us feel part of a tribe. And I’m betting at least half of the country has no interest in the Spotify Top 50.

But my purpose here is not to delineate the failings of the music business, or to point out Gladwell’s flaws, but to hip you to this new podcast “Crimetown.”

It’s number one on the charts.

And the podcasting chart means something. It’s not like SoundScan, where albums come and go in a month, if they last that long. You can scroll through the podcast chart and take the temperature of what people are listening to, and what they’re listening to most right now is “Crimetown,” an expose on the Mob in Providence, Rhode Island.

Now “Crimetown” is not hosted by wannabes down the street, held together with duct tape and chewing gum, rather it’s steered by Marc Smerling, the guy from “Capturing The Friedmans,” possibly the best true crime documentary in history, and Zac Stuart-Pontier, who was part of the team on “The Jinx,” last year’s HBO true crime caper that spread like wildfire and put its protagonist, Robert Durst, in jail.

Did you know that Providence was a hotbed of Mafiosi?

Lisa’s dad keeps telling me this, but I haven’t believed him. Bridgeport was pretty Mobbed-up, they used to dump bodies on the fairway of the country club.

But “Crimetown” makes a good case that Providence was part of a Mob triumvirate along with Chicago and New York and then it goes deeper, it sets the scene.

It’s theatre of the mind. You can PICTURE IT!

Funny how we’ve gotten here. Radio is line readers, its dramas long disappeared, but now, in the most visual era extant, it’s all about listening!

There are two hills in Providence, one with the Mob, the other with Brown University, and there’s City Hall in between, by the river. And Raymond Patriarca controlled it all.

They tried to put him in jail for murder, but he skated.

But the more you listen to the stories about Patriarca, the more you recognize people in today’s world. The ones who do favors for everybody, but are not afraid of doing what’s untoward. Some things never change, despite digitization, people are people and some exercise power and some pay fealty…

And that’s how Jerry gets involved, he meets the big shots in prison and then he goes deeper.

One bad move and your life is ruined. We live in an era of redemption stories, but the truth is you make your own bed and not only do you sleep in it, you frequently die in it.

Killing, protection, loan-sharking, they were in it all.

But “Crimetown” is less about the activities than the people. How do you end up where you do?

Maybe your dad broke your nose when you were two. Maybe you stepped in to protect a brother. Maybe you were just running for mayor and…

That’s the main through-thread in “Crimetown,” Buddy Cianci, the mayor who went to jail and then became mayor again.

You think the techies can eviscerate crime? They’re some of the worst offenders!

And after listening to episodes you can go online and see pictures, learn more, the new tools are enhancing the underlying podcasts.

And it’s all built on quality and word of mouth.

It won’t be that way forever, we’re still in the podcast wild west, but for now…

It’s like it was in the sixties in music, the late nineties in techs, there are podcasts that are wowing us, whenever you get together with someone they ask what you are listening to. There’s an underlying excitement that not only thrills you, but makes you feel proud you’re a member of the club, the same way you did when you were listening to FM radio and your classmates were not.

Forget Steven Dubner and his pontifications on economics. Steven Levitt is the economist, Dubner is just a writer!

That’s right, there are a lot of poseurs in the podcast world, who leverage fame in other pursuits to gain traction.

But they’re not gonna last.

Because the professionals are invading. Not only Smerling and Stuart-Pontier, but Gimlet Media, the company bankrolling them.

But the beneficiary is the listener.

“Crimetown” is like “The Godfather” but it’s real. It’s about bad people doing bad things and good people doing bad things and as one of the characters opines, “If you are going to be bad, be good at it!”

There’s too much production. And the story is not as riveting as “Serial,” but…

“Crimetown” is a harbinger of what’s to come.

We embrace the new, that which is not fully-formed. That’s one of the main reasons the young flocked to Snapchat, to see it evolve on their watch.

Podcasts are evolving on our watch right now.

P.S. If you’re out of the loop… The iPhone comes with the Podcasts app built in. It’s purple, you’ll find it. After opening the app click on “Top Charts” at the bottom. You’ll see “Crimetown” is number one. I also recommend number 17, “Undone,” which sometimes gets it wrong but illustrates the possibilities. And if you just like stories, check out #27, “The Moth.” And if you’re interested in interviews, subscribe to David Axelrod’s “Axe Files,” he’s been there and done that and therefore the conversation is at a higher level. (And now I’m gonna be inundated with readers’ favorites, but that just demonstrates the mania.)

P.P.S. We all come from somewhere. Crime is not limited to Providence. The reason we enjoy these true crime stories is a double whammy of wondering what truly is going on where we live and the notion that one false move…might lead us where we don’t want to be.

P.P.P.S. Episode four just went live today! This is the serialization that worked for network television before it inserted too many reruns and lost our interest and was usurped by cable. And, like Netflix, if you come to the party late, you can just binge on ’em all.

We went to school for twenty years to make our parents proud.

Now they’re stealing Medicare, what’s happening for crying out loud.

We thought the rich were bluebloods who inherited their wares.

Now we find the rich earned it and think they deserve it and create the jobs and know better than you and me, whose crime is we just don’t have enough money.

And our kids know the Beatles but believe in Beyonce, even more Jay Z, because when it comes to entertainment the African-Americans are king, but behind their backs everybody sneers, saying they’re not entitled to a thing.

And Mr. Jones knew nothing about Dylan, but now Mr. Sulzberger knows nothing about Trump, meanwhile life goes on all around us.

Save the planet? Save yourself! That’s what George Carlin said, after he told us not to bother voting, because the owners of this country weren’t gonna let us in. And despite the disadvantaged no-future blue collars electing a businessman President, they’re not gonna have a seat at the table. The Cabinet says just to trust them. But we’ve learned to sleep with one eye open.

And everything seems the same yet it’s different. We’ve got the same spouse, the same car, the same house. But institutions are no longer to be trusted, facts are irrelevant and only money matters. After TV. Would the President-to-be be without TV?

I don’t think so.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. We were supposed to do better than our parents, instead of them shtupping us cash while we broker their decline. Our fathers didn’t have fantasies, they were raising families. We bought the future hook, line and sinker, but then the American Dream was extinguished, check the facts, er, we already established facts are irrelevant.

So it’s everybody for themselves these days. And if you just trust the fat cats it’ll all work out well, but they cut taxes and tried to stimulate business and then Kansas went to hell.

Used to be we had idols, musicians, who marched to a different drummer. But that was back when you wrote your own songs and being rich was a million and middle class values reigned. The poor will do what’s expedient, that’s the nature of those without, they’re desperate, ethics go out the window, you’re just trying to survive.

And those on top want to stay there.

And I’m stuck in the middle with you.

Meanwhile, the guy who sang that song is six feet under, along with the heroes who ruled for decades, as opposed to one day.

And since you can’t make money, they dangle fame in front of your eyes. That’s the nature of reality television, social sharing, admit it, you know how many Facebook friends you’ve got, you revel in lording your adventures and accomplishments over your minions. They promised us a forty hour work week and two cars in the driveway and all we got was a virtual home, a residence on networks run by billionaires, built on air, but don’t you ever criticize the technologists, they deliver our craved constants, the mobile phone, the internet…without them we wouldn’t know what to do with ourselves. Distractions all, that’s the truth. We’ve sacrificed our privacy and our income for a life where we’re connected but more distant. Explain again how that works to me?

But there’s no there there.

Even our music is virtual. And as much as we’re protesting, the players bitch more. Nobody’s got any answers, they just like to complain, while they’re not begging for attention, for money, can you explain GoFundMe to me please, is it really any different than lettering some cardboard and hanging out at the intersection?

We just took a wrong turn. We’re headed in a bad direction. There’s less acceptance and there will be fewer rights but at least the old lifer won’t be in power, then again, what did Pete Townshend sing, “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss”? But that was back before he sold his songs to “CSI,” when he still had creative juice, when he still had something to say, before he died inside because he got old.

And speaking of old, do you enjoy seeing the aged farts again and again and again? On the original album tour, the turn of the century comeback tour, then the cleanup tour and now the retirement tour? No mas for me, I’m living on my memories, I’ve seen them all and none of them are what they used to be, because they’ve got bills like you and me, and this is how they pay them, art isn’t in the back seat, it’s not even in the car.

But cable is a bastion of story. And in some ways life is better than it’s ever been?

But with this wake-up call we’re re-evaluating, have we been asleep at the wheel in an era where the only country left in the music is the fake twang of the vocal and groupthink rules?

You don’t want to be an individual, you don’t want to let your freak flag fly, you’ll be excoriated, you may not go to jail but you’ll be a social outcast, which is anathema to a millennial, baby boomers can handle it, but if baby boomers aren’t running the operation they’re gone, they’re already in the rearview mirror.

We can’t make it here, so we need someone to blame. The fat cats, the uneducated, the educated, the poor, we’re pointing fingers at everyone, we used to be in it together, but that’s before life got coarse and we went off course, steer while you still can, they’re gonna take the wheel out of the car soon.