Sometimes you’ve got to sell.

You may not think this applies to you, two fading news enterprises fighting for survival, but there are self-satisfied owners across all avenues of business, those so caught up in their vision and their love of the company that they can’t see the forest for the trees, they can’t see it’s better to sell.

Sometimes it’s better to make the deal.

In the case of music contracts, it gets you in the game. Despite all the hoopla about old acts going indie and new acts having a low barrier to entry the truth is there’s a small cadre of experienced players who control the music industry, and if you’re not aligned with them, it’s almost certain you will not have success. They’ve spent years establishing relationships. You don’t get on CBS “Sunday Morning” by accident, you need help, and if you’re not willing to give up a few shekels to get there, the joke is on you. Your goal is to make everybody win, not just yourself.

And when everybody wants you you can charge top buck.

But when your asset value is declining, you make a deal. You agree to be on a triple bill of eighties acts. Your hits are in the rearview mirror, how do you maximize money today?

I don’t know what happens to newspapers. Once upon a time they were the only outlet, now there’s news everywhere, not all of it generated by independent, trustworthy sources, but you don’t need to go to the paper’s site, or buy the physical item, to know which way the wind blows.

Television news is history. They cut it to the bone and left none of the essence, there’s no reporting extant. It became all about profits, asset value was irrelevant, hell, Comcast owns NBC, it’s just part of a giant conglomerate. All you’ve got on television is beautiful people reading headlines and old farts bloviating their opinions, even though they’re constantly proven to be wrong. Want to get news analysis? You’re better off going online. As for talk radio, that’s for people so inured to their vision they cannot get out of their own way.

Tronc could not get out of its own way.

The “Los Angeles Times” is a pamphlet, that’s what Mark McGrath told me once and he’s right. I wouldn’t be able to convince anybody to buy it, there’s so little inside. It’d be like charging someone ten bucks for an album of four songs, with three of them karaoke versions of others’ hits. You’ve got to play to win, or you lose.

Now the previous owner of the “Times,” the Chandler family, sold the paper to the “Tribune,” which was run into the ground by Sam Zell. And you might think this was a mistake, that they sold too low and ended up in a quagmire, but the truth is you can’t eke out every last dollar, sometimes you’ve got to let go. Not everybody can be the Bancroft family, which sold the “Wall Street Journal” at top buck to Rupert Murdoch just before the newspaper crash. People like to boast, tell you they made the biggest score, they don’t tell you about their losses, and the internet sphere is littered with companies that refused to sell out to Facebook or Google that ended up being worth zero, because there was really nothing there, other than maybe a public offering that overvalued the company once. Would Tinder be so valuable if it wasn’t part of Barry Diller’s IAC empire? And I’m still not convinced Snap is worth all that much, seems flavor of the moment to me, another platform to exhibit content, albeit with a twist. Maybe there’s room for one more internet victor, but maybe not.

And there certainly isn’t room for all these newspapers.

The newspaper was the filter. It told you what you needed to know. But it was supported by advertising. That model doesn’t work anymore, the ads have fallen through the floor and in many cases, like with the L.A. “Times,” there’s just not enough news left. We need reporting. A couple of news outlets will survive. But it may not be the usual suspects, because they’re so busy cutting costs, trying to maintain their margins. Talk to Amazon about maintaining its margins, it was loss after loss, investment after investment, until it all turned around. And the Seattle behemoth got lucky with its Web Services, but that’s what happens when you stay in the game and have tons of infrastructure, you’re ripe for success, but if you keep cutting…

So we’ve got this outsider who buys a chunk of “Tribune” and thinks he’s got the answers. I’m not saying news won’t be disrupted, but I am saying that the usual suspects have expertise. No outsider has triumphed in music for eons. The hated insiders know something, they learned something during all those years of work. They might be less than brilliant, they might be risk averse, but they’ve got experience!

So this cracker is gonna focus on digital, as if nobody ever thought of that.

And Gannett comes up with a buyout offer and he thinks the company is worth more.

This is not Jeff Bewkes and HBO, which is banking coin, this is a fading asset, it’s only worth much more if you can pivot and rebuild it, and the odds of that are very long…

Try selling your CDs today, I just unloaded a bunch, for ten cents apiece. Value is seventy percent less than it was a decade ago, maybe a bit worse. Oh, of course, I could wait until it all turns around, when the discs become a fetish, like vinyl, but maybe that never happens and is my money best tied up in this asset?

This is not real estate, of which they are making no more. Live long enough and you’ll probably make money in real property, as long as you didn’t overpay, and it never goes to zero, but… All that MTV footage, all that stuff we thought was evergreen, it’s not, you want to sell it when you’ve got a willing bidder.

Or maybe you’re one of those doofuses who’s all show and no substance. Who invests in declining assets like automobiles…

Well, the true professionals know better. And the true professionals are bankers. Gannett still wanted to make the deal but the lenders said no.

Now what?

I can’t imagine the L.A. “Times” resuscitating, I’d rather invest in
Vice, which at least has a hold on what the younger generation wants to know.

And Gannett’s engulf and devour strategy has hit a wall.

And we’ve got oldsters decrying the death of papers and reporters who are playing musical chairs, just waiting for the buyout or to be fired, who don’t realize that today you wear many hats, you don’t only write, but you market, and he not looking to the future will be squeezed out.

Talk about the destruction of shareholder value…

These CEOs fill their boards with cronies and then they drive their companies off a cliff.

I’m not saying to play it safe, but if the ship is sinking, sometimes it’s best to jump off.

And if you can’t see a future for your asset, maybe it’s time to liquidate.

I’d never been that way before.

Today was the day of my annual checkup at the House Ear Clinic. It’s the best in the world, they invented the operations, and they’re open to all, they take insurance, if you’re wondering about a loss, if you need hearing aids, House is the place.

But it’s a bear getting an appointment.

I go once a year, but this time, because of my shoulder surgery, I delayed it. But, as stated above, today was the day.

But Felice was doubled-over in pain.

It started on Sunday. She had to lie down. She complained of a pain in her back, on the lower right side.

Kidney stone, I was sure of it, I’d had too many.

But then the pain passed.

This is how it usually goes. The pain waxes and wanes. And then, holy bejesus, you’re freaking out!

My mother believed it was illegal to be sick. So I didn’t go to the emergency room the first time, the second time I drove there on a Sunday night and turned around a block shy, convinced that I was okay, and then there was the time I was all the way in and they wouldn’t see me right away and I puked all over the bathroom and I ended up having surgery to remove the stone…

I’m an expert.

But if you’ve never had one before…it’s scary.

So for me to wake up before nine a.m. is anathema. Castigate me all you want, but the truth is I love the hours after 9, into the next day, nobody is looking for me, I can relax, that’s when all the good ideas come, then again, it screws up my schedule royally and Dr. Brackmann only sees patients in the a.m., he operates in the p.m., so I went to bed earlier than usual and told Felice to wake me up at 8:45 but when the curtains parted and the light streamed in…it was before that.

She wasn’t saying much, but she obviously wanted to talk.

And ultimately, she complained of the pain, it was severe.

I told her to call the internist. The internist said to go to the emergency room, but was I gonna punt my appointment at the House Clinic?

Last night I listened to a Radiolab podcast wherein the protagonist was allergic to meat. Yes, it can happen, that’s what the podcast was all about, you react to the alpha-gal in the tissue. And when this woman was having her attack she implored her mother to drive her to the hospital but her mom said she had to take a shower first. She ended up going by ambulance. And I thought of how stupid this was, that you’re supposed to go NOW, and suddenly, the very next morning, I was confronted with the exact same question. I knew it was a kidney stone, but maybe not. For all Felice knew she was dying. But if I ran out without shaving and showering…how would the doctor treat me at House, assuming I even got there? And I felt I should go. After all, after dropping Felice at the ER she’d be in good hands, what else was I supposed to do?

Oh, be a good boyfriend and stay you’d say.

But then I wouldn’t be able to see Brackmann until the new year, when I hadn’t satisfied my deductible, and I needed to hear what he had to say.

But Felice had no idea where to go. She’d been living in her abode in Sherman Oaks for a decade but had never been to the ER. I know St. John’s in Santa Monica, that’s where I go, where to go in the Valley?

I started Googling. And I knew I needed more than urgent care. I came up with Sherman Oaks Hospital, but I wasn’t quite sure, I needed to call, no one picked up, I dialed again, eventually got to someone who could answer, could they see someone for kidney stones?

They said yes, far from emphatically, and my decision was made.

Felice was by the throne, puking… I told her to give me five minutes, I’d shower and insert my contacts just that fast, and I did.

But she didn’t think she was gonna make it. I’m spewing nonsense on the way over, trying to distract her, telling her about my various kidney stones, and reassuring her that no one ever died of a kidney stone, but she didn’t want to hear it.

And then she wanted to puke again. So I pull over on Van Nuys Boulevard, do I have to put money in the meter or do I have a good excuse, and Felice is hanging on to the door, half in and half out, and I implore her to get back inside, we’re only blocks away.

And then we were there.

It was strangely calm. There was not another soul in the waiting room. Not even a nurse. Which scared me a bit, was this place together?

But ultimately someone showed up and I filled out the form and then I was confronted with the “Harry Met Sally” question… How long do I have to sit here before I can leave?

I’m checking Google Maps. I seem to have time to make it downtown to House. But if I go my usual way, it’s gonna be tight. Google is telling me to take the 5 instead of the 101, which is like taking the elbow instead of the hypotenuse, I’ve got to be on my way.

So I fire up the map app, and I can hear it, because I’m not playing the radio, because I don’t want anything to affect my hearing, and traffic is horrendous but then I segue onto the 134 and I’m breezing along, way out of my way, and then I get on the 5 and the woman inside the phone tells me to get off at the 2.

But I know the 2 only goes a mile or so. But the map app is never wrong, so I obey.

And I ultimately merge onto a drag by the reservoir and I’m stunned that I got here from there. That’s the amazing thing about Los Angeles, it’s so spread out. When I first moved here I investigated every neighborhood, now traffic is so bad I go almost nowhere. But suddenly, the city all made sense.

And then she told me to bear right on Alvarado.

It never occurred to me this was the street the House Clinic was on, I always came the other way, my reference street was Third.

And as I’m cruising down Alvarado it looks nothing like West L.A. It’s closer to Caracas than Los Angeles. I’m thinking about all the people who live here. Is it families, transients? How can you live in L.A., and be so far from the beach? Like Silver Lake and Echo Park, the hipster neighborhoods, if I came from thousands of miles away, I’d want to be closer to the Pacific, but that’s just me.

But I made it to the House Clinic on time. But I was uptight I was failing the hearing test, the part where they ask you to repeat words. As for the sounds before that, the beeps, I’m constantly raising my arm, I’m the king of false positives, but I’ve got to get the comprehension right. And at first the volume isn’t loud enough and there’s no white noise in the other ear and then I can’t repeat the words and I believe I’m failing, I ask for a retest, which shocked the technician who admitted there was a screw-up at first, but this is oh-so-important to me.

And then Dr. Brackmann saw me almost on time, which is a miracle at House. 45 minutes late is on time, sometimes you can wait an extra two hours. And my hearing hadn’t changed and I got an education on loud music, which I’ll save for another day, and when I got through so was Felice. I’d felt guilty telling her to Uber home, but what’s Uber for?

They gave her morphine. She had two stones.

So I drove back to Sherman Oaks and this time the waiting room at the hospital ER was full. And they wouldn’t let me in so I said I’d been there before and I got a pass and a doctor told me where to go, which I never would have found myself, and there was Felice.

Now the problem is if you’ve never had a kidney stone you think you’re down for the count, gonna be under for weeks. But I know if you drink a ton of fluid, chances are you’ll pass it in a day or two. Not always, you can hold the e-mail telling me I’m wrong, but I bet I’ve had more stones than you have.

So we go to CVS for four medications and Felice cancels her board meeting and now…

I’m a bit too discombobulated to get back in the groove.

But the funny thing is I so enjoyed being out of my groove. Yes, I wish Felice didn’t have two stones, one at the top of her ureter, the other not quite there, but by screwing up my day I had all kinds of new experiences, dealt with different people, evaluated what life was about.

And I’d hate being one of those technicians stuck behind the counter all day at CVS.

And I wonder what kind of degree you need to give a hearing test at House.

And Brackmann is over 70, not that you’d know, but how much longer will he practice, when you’ve got the right guy you don’t want to switch.

And I know that anything can happen. You can wake up thinking your day is going one way, but then your plan changes.

But as I was cruising down Alvarado, seeing another entrance to the 101 that would be a better way home, noting the El Pollo Loco I ate at before that show at the Echoplex, I felt a resident of the city, part of a giant continuum, I belonged, and it felt so good.

If you look at the Spotify Top 50 and wince…

Chances are you’re over thirty, probably forty, fifty or sixty, and are wondering where all the good times have gone. Because now, the music is only about good times. Whereas it used to be about deeper meanings, plumbing one’s soul and revealing your warts and all.

But that was back when there was a strong middle class and no billionaires and you felt that your life would be better than that of your parents.

Not anymore.

Life is coarse. As is society. Hell, Donald Trump might be President when a hallmark of the hated Lyndon Johnson’s regime was the “Great Society.” Johnson wanted to eradicate poverty. Now if you’re poor it’s your own damn fault.

The English cats were just thrilled to escape the factory. That was their destiny. Music was a lark, not a career. And if you tested limits and failed, who cared. It was all gonna end anyway.

But then it didn’t.

And in the U.S. the scene burgeoned in San Francisco, the land of the hippies. Where people dropped out, dropped acid, and lived off the fat of the land, even though there wasn’t much. You loaned out your car, your house, your significant other… Now people live behind gates. One of the big sellers is the Ring Doorbell, god forbid someone you don’t know comes to your door.

Music is escapism, because life is so damn hard.

Many mothers didn’t even work in the sixties. Musical instruments were affordable and you learned music in school whether you liked it or not. Sure, you might have been bitten by the bug and taken lessons, but every week you had to go to the band room to learn how to read music and appreciate classical scores. Seemingly no one knows how to read music anymore, and this was all taught in the public schools!

Before government became the enemy, school budgets were cut and everybody was struggling under the weight of taxes. We made a conscious decision folks, to lower the tax burden on everybody to stimulate the economy, so the rich could create jobs. The end result? Teachers have to bring their own paper to class and roads and bridges are falling apart. But at least you got a tax cut.

And you can complain about the above, but we’ve got a gridlocked Congress run by Republicans who don’t agree. Health care for everybody is bad, the IRS is bad, everything the government does is bad. Do you really expect the best and the brightest to drop out of college, move to the coast and strum a guitar for a living, singing ditties about love, peace and happiness?

No, you’ve got rappers boasting how good they’ve got it. Both white and black. They don’t know how to say no, only yes. If the corporation is willing to write a check, they’re willing to cash it. And the goal is to become a brand, to broaden your base, sell jeans, perfume and what not, because the main goal is to become rich, screw the music.

And the companies purveying said tunes… They’re public or owned by conglomerates and as a result are risk averse. This is not the indie heyday of way back when, when A&M and Island were indie and even Warner Brothers utilized independent distribution. When your stock price is key, you take little risk. And acts sell out to the man and then complain about being hamstrung, like Kesha. So don’t take the money. But then you might be poor and unrecognized, that’s unfathomable.

And there’s an endless line ready to take the bait, to work with the forty and fiftysomething men who make the hits.

And for those doing it by themselves… Their sensibility is…

Mariah Carey supposedly wrote her own hits, but her trademark was her voice, any wonder there’s a TV show with that name, with people imitating her?

But take the focus off the acts, they’re just giving people what they want.

Does someone want to sit at home and hear about politics, when they feel they’ve got no voice and D.C. is unchangeable?

Do they want to hear about distant crushes, the girl who got away, when they know without money and the latest fashions they can’t even get a date?

Do you know what it’s like to be under twenty five today?

Drop out of college and you’ve got no future. You work for minimum wage and live in your parents’ basement.

Graduate from college and your career starts now, no taking time to find yourself, you’ve got to pay off those loans and if you’re not busy getting ahead someone’s gonna take your job.

All those people experimenting back in the sixties, Stevie Winwood with Traffic, Jimi Hendrix… They had record companies who would stand behind them, who wouldn’t drop them after one stiff, the labels were obligated to release what they recorded, but no more.

And society was all about testing limits, questioning authority, doing drugs, finding your best self, who you were was more important than your job or your bank account. But now everybody’s playing it safe, they don’t want to be without a chair when the music stops.

So you listen to the Top 50 and think it’s mindless boasting. Easily discardable music with no meaning.

You’re mostly right! But that’s what people want!

The acts don’t know any better, they never lived through the golden era. And they’re mostly lower class denizens who’ll do whatever the company tells them to.

As for electronic music… We live in a digital age, one of 0’s and 1’s, is it any wonder we’re embracing a cold sound built on laptops? Easily sendable, easily deleted?

As for listening to one album over and over…

Who’s got the time?

No one has any time anymore. Even babies are scheduled. Sitting home and being bored? That doesn’t happen, stimulation is at your fingertips.

So when will change come?

It won’t be from the outsiders doing it the old way, there’s a limited market for that. First, society must change. People must believe they’ve got a future and that music can fulfill them, give them direction as opposed to being stuff you bump your ass to in a club. And who would blame the listener? Do you really want to listen to the opinions of the nitwits who make this stuff? Most uneducated and young? No way!

So when you decry the state of the sound, know that what’s being sold is exactly what young people want. If they wanted different, the labels would make it and radio would air it. They don’t care what they sell, as long as it makes money. And it’s this vapid stuff that’s making money now.

But don’t blame them, blame yourself. Blame society. Blame government. We got ourselves into this mess, one wherein we stopped getting together and smiling on our brother and stepped right over one another to get ahead and completely ignored the disadvantaged. If you think this sounds like today’s music, YOU’RE RIGHT!

Surf City: The Jan and Dean Story

This is strangely readable.

Writing is an art, a talent that most people don’t possess. After finishing this, I tried to crack the new Brian Wilson book, it was unfathomable, short sentences as if you were in the room and the man himself was free-associating. That’s Brian, but that’s not a book.

But both Brian and Dean Torrence collaborated in the old days, along with Jan Berry, of course, a rich kid with a high IQ who owned the record charts when hits were teen fodder and the Beatles had not yet legitimized the pop sound. Jan and Brian heralded the revolution, the latter sustained, but both were trailblazers.

They grew up in Southern California. That’s the heart of this book. Growing up in West L.A. and going to Uni High and playing football and going surfing, it was a simpler time. One all of those alive were exposed to on national television, where all these shows were shot, where it was sunny every day and if there might not have been two girls for every boy, you believed you had a fighting chance.

Dean met Jan on the gridiron. The latter was cool, the former was not. And when Jan invited Dean to a party at his house he was over the moon.

High school. It’s not all mini-Mark Cubans cooking up inventions promoted by social media. And despite today’s moms complaining to the authorities when their kids get bullied, back then you were on your own, and it was the hardest battle of your life, just surviving. Sure, as an oldster you’ve got to earn a living, but that’s nothing compared with walking the halls of high school and trying to remain unscathed.

So Jan’s dad bought him a bunch of recording equipment and turned their garage into a studio. That’s the way of the world folks, the rich have advantages, their charges don’t work at Dairy Queen and can indulge both their fantasies and desires. No equipment, no act. And only a rich kid would be cool with being dropped by his record label.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Jan was the driver and everybody else cared very little, one by one they dropped out, and when Dean went up north for Army Reserve training he was excised from the group, but then Arnie, the only other man left left, and Dean filled his spot. Because Jan needed somebody. But the label didn’t like the change and that’s how they lost their deal but…

Life is about accidents. For all the planning you read about in business books, most people float through and are thrown into situations that they either take advantage of or not. Dean wanted to sing, but he also wanted to make sure he didn’t get drafted.

And the people they were involved with! Lou Adler and Herb Alpert were their managers. Who ultimately passed them off to guys who could better penetrate the movie and TV business. Who you’re aligned with is everything, you need a manager with relationships, or one who is bullheaded and can make them.

And the act succeeds and they play football against Elvis Presley’s TCB team in a park in Beverly Glen and then Jan cracks up his Corvette on Sunset Boulevard and is brain-damaged.

Thank god Dean was going to USC, whose degree he could employ to become a graphic designer.

And then there’s a TV movie of their story fifteen years later and ultimately more touring and…

You end up with a charmed life.

Or maybe it just looks that way in hindsight.

After the reunion, Jan got hooked on cocaine. Dean had to shut down the act, work with Mike Love, he ultimately made Jan an employee, he needed to be in control. When the hits dry up that’s everything, for then it’s all business. And speaking of control, Dean talks about working with James William Guercio, who kept getting punted by acts by exerting too much of it. It’s a constant struggle, the acts think you’re wrong and sometimes they’re right and we only know for sure years down the line.

But what I do know is it used to be different. Music was a lark, not a road to riches. Some were bitten by the bug and there was a coterie of youngsters willing to slurp up every drop. Your parents did not have a hold on you, the most important thing was what kind of car you drove and the boys were in search of the girls, the boys are always in search of the girls.

And if you read this book you’ll learn nuggets heretofore untold. Like the reason Jan had a cast on his leg in that album cover photo was… They were filming a movie and there was a train wreck, Dean was off in search of lunch, he escaped.

And he’s now 76. And some of what he says in the book, you cannot say. Maybe it’s just humor, but youngsters may view it as sexist. These faux pas are minor, but glaring. Funny how we all think we’re so hip and find out we’re behind the times.

And the book could have used a proofreader. Sam Cooke’s name is spelled without an “e,” and that’s only the most obvious of errors. And there are some timeline issues, but…

The book kept calling me back. I wanted to immerse myself in what once was. See it from the viewpoint of someone who’s not complaining, just testifying. As to how it was when Southern California was a hotbed of hedonism and a recording industry was built by musicians bitten by the bug promoted by self-appointed hustlers. The disruption came from those making the music as opposed to those distributing it.

And I’d be lying if I didn’t say I loved “Surf City,” and “The Little Old Lady (from Pasadena).” And to hear any stories about Dennis and Carl Wilson floats my boat.

But I also realize that back then, in the era I grew up in, money wasn’t everything, following your dream was. The last place you wanted to work was the bank. You wanted to be on the beach, playing volleyball, having fun, experiencing life with the radio on.

With the radio on.