I’ve got to drive from Vail to Telluride.

And I’m becoming more frightened by the minute.

I used to do long distances all the time, twelve hours at a clip, I just put a cassette in the deck and off I’d go. But that was a long time ago, before Sirius XM, do I upgrade my rental car to include it? I think so. But forget the distance, what I’m worried about now is the snow.

Last January there was nary a drop. But El Nino is causing the sky to dump, the day I leave, and the day before and the day thereafter and…

My buddy Steve was gonna come up from Taos, take me in his four wheel drive, but his plans changed, he’s got to go to Mexico City. So I rented a car.

Oh, I could have flown. But it made no sense. To pay a hundred bucks to ride two hours back to Denver and then pay triple digits to fly to Montrose and still end up almost two hours away.

Or, I could have flown direct, if I’d come from L.A.

But I was too scared.

My hemoglobin is low, and the altitude at Telluride is sky high, so I figured I’d come to Vail and adjust.

Which is how I ended up here, which is how I ended up at Annapurna last night.

It’s an Indian/Nepalese restaurant. I found it on Yelp. We arrived on Saturday and needed lunch and I was looking for new alternatives and Annapurna’s rating was sky high, just like Telluride, ha!

So we went.

I’d like to tell you the atmosphere was a selling point, but it looked like an upscale Denny’s, although there were prayer flags, but food can overcome atmosphere any day of the week. But what do we eat? I know Indian, I’m clueless as to Nepalese.

So I asked Om.

I didn’t know that was his name at the time, it’s just that he was the only person in attendance that looked like he’d come from that region of the world. Yes, it was his restaurant. He told me to get the chicken makhani, and he recommended the lamb skewers too.

But Felice doesn’t like lamb unless it comes as chops, so we ordered some shrimp and some eggplant in addition to the makhani and savored every bite, the food was delicious.

And then Om came to check up on us, to talk.

That’s when we found out his name was Om. Yup, like the mantra. It’s common in Nepal. Where Om would like to go back to live. But he can’t, because the country is in financial straits.

Om and his wife immigrated at the turn of the century. Actually, his wife came first. They settled in Glenwood Springs, which is an hour from Aspen but might as well be an hour from Tulsa, it’s nowhere, how did Om end up there?

Word of mouth. There are a lot of Nepalese in Colorado.

But mostly Boulder. It seemed that they went to Glenwood Springs on a whim, almost throwing a dart, but they stayed there for sixteen years, until they sold the business and tried to move back.

But it didn’t work. The money just didn’t add up.

And it always comes down to the money. That’s how Om ended up owning a restaurant to begin with. You’ve got to put food on the table, pardon the pseudo pun. And you’ve got to send money back to your relatives. Om’s mother had two strokes and is partially paralyzed and his dad has dementia. Om’s brother looks after them, Om has to help him out.

But not only him, Om is helping out people in the village. Because all that money sent after the earthquake? The politicians pocketed it, you can see no evidence of it. Nepal is in bad shape. Right after the disaster people helped each other out, now they’re out for themselves, a cab driver tried to charge Om double to go the two miles from the hospital to his family abode. Om challenged him, and then ended up giving him the 100 rupees and letting someone else take the cab. That’s only a dollar, but that’s a lot in Nepal.

And Om’s daughter is in medical school in Kathmandu.

And his son is in medical school in the U.S.

I told him he must be very proud.

He is.

What’s all this hogwash about immigrants, stealing jobs, ruining the economy? The immigrants come with nothing and work hard and get ahead. If only all the people bitching put their nose to the grindstone.

But Om is less concerned with the politics of the U.S. than the politics of Nepal. He’s dealing with bigger issues. While we’re all on social media bragging about our possessions and experiences he’s earning money to help those who don’t have any, his brethren back home.

Kinda like my ancestors. And yours. Coming to the new land and helping out those left behind.

Which makes my anxiety about driving to Telluride seem inconsequential.

And it is.

But I try to exercise good judgment, I try not to take unnecessary risks. Automobiles are deadly weapons.

I may end up meeting friends at the Montrose airport.

The weather forecast could change.

But right now I’m consumed with the variables.

And the story of Om.

Annapurna Vail

The Doors could never replace Jim Morrison and Apple can’t replace Steve Jobs.

They teach us to get along, tell us institutions are king, but the truth is America succeeds because it’s the land of rugged individuals with a vision who need to do it their way.

That’s one of the reasons the music business blew up. There was no other home for the hustlers who inhabited it. The roll-up of concert promoters was good financially (for some, anyway), but all the innovation comes from outside. Coachella was started by independents. All of the big festivals, from ACL to Bonnaroo to Lollapalooza…from guys who thought different.

You think Steve Jobs had edges? Try hanging with Marc Geiger, who helped birth Lollapalooza. Geiger’s a bubbling froth of opinions and emotions, always talking about the bleeding edge, he may have been too far ahead with ArtistDirect but he was right, and now he’s having a second act at WME, just like Steve Jobs. You see the true revolutionaries just can’t help themselves, they want their ideas to be realized. Anybody can get lucky once, but if you do it twice…

Did anybody expect Apple to burgeon after the passage of Steve?

There’ve been enough movies since his passing to completely assassinate his character, but people love his devices and those left in charge can’t seem to come up with a new one. I torched the Watch, and now Walt Mossberg has too

Mossberg: Smartwatches need to get smarter

And after app developers abandon it you’ve got a dead platform, kinda like Google Glass.

I still hope they’ll get it right, because I want something to believe in, I need something to believe in. Musicians used to fulfill this role before their goal was solely riches and fame, they keep telling us they’re entitled to success, but they don’t take a different road, they keep plying the one already trodden upon. Come on, did you ever hear “The End”? Who came up with that stuff? We always want new people who can come up with stuff that will surprise and amaze us.

But the millennials are all about getting along, being a member of the group. Bill Gates could barely have friends. He handed Microsoft to Steve Ballmer who nearly buried it. Buying the worthless Nokia. Only Gates could steer that ship.

We’re jealous of the envelope pushers, we keep criticizing them, saying they can’t get along. But they’re the ones we secretly lionize.

We don’t need entrepreneurship courses in college, we need to teach creativity, we need to tell people it’s okay to be unique, to think different. Instead of focusing on the bullies we should look at those they attack and build them up. No one in America wants a nonconformist and then they end up supporting Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders.

Trump’s a joke, born on third base with a checkered business record he thinks just because he’s rich and can finance his own campaign he knows best. At least give Bernie credit, he comes from nothing and has never wavered in his views, never done what’s expedient, the people have come to him. That’s right, the leaders are always one step ahead, we play into their hands.

Isn’t it funny that musicians abhor Spotify but it’s a cutting edge techie who developed it, helping them and their listeners even if they don’t know it, eviscerating piracy and paying forever, making the history of recorded music available at everybody’s fingertips. That’s how you know you’ve won, when the Luddites lost in the past get angry.

The future is coming. But it’s just that half of America has decided it wants it to look like the past. Inane Democrats want manufacturing to come back to our shores and ridiculous Republicans want to get rid of the safety net and have “those people” work meanwhile wanting their Medicare protected and benefiting from a disproportionate amount of federal money given to their red states.

But that’s arguing over what’s been, what’s in the rearview mirror, the cutting edge individual wipes the slate clean and creates something new. And he needs to get it exactly right, we all know what a horse created by committee looks like, an ass.

Sure, individuals don’t triumph in a vacuum. Steve Jobs needed a team and Jim Morrison needed a band. But Avie Tevanian left Apple and the company experienced no hiccups. I’m all for paying these individual creators billions, it’s when the game-playing corporate lifers ascend to the throne and pay themselves a fortune that my dander gets up. What did they build? All they can do is manage!

The “New York Times” believes its masthead is bigger than any of its reporters, but the Op-Ed page still hasn’t recovered from the loss of Frank Rich and the Gray Lady is still feeling the sting of Nate Silver’s absence.

Meanwhile, our society keeps looking to the organization, the political parties, the judges and the system to solve our problems.

I hate to sound like a right winger, a Libertarian, but we’ve got to empower those who can truly make a difference, those dedicated to their ideas who will stop at nothing to see them realized.

Tim Cook is a supply chain expert, he can never fix Apple. And Jony Ive may be a great designer, but without Steve Jobs he’s nearly irrelevant. He’s like a great session musician without a song.

They don’t like Jeff Bezos.

They don’t like Mark Zuckerberg.

They didn’t like Steve Jobs.

Isn’t that interesting, everybody revolutionizing our society is disliked, and all of them made tons of money but ultimately considered it to be secondary, it was about the product, the vision.

Which is why music is a backwater, we’ve got the spoils but no stars. Shake me up. Hell, Frank Zappa’s documentary is the talk of Sundance.

Who are they gonna make a doc about today?

No one.

Kim Kardashian is the biggest star of the twenty first century.

Because she told us so. Because she and her family realized the way you win today is by being the story, day after day, month after month, year after year.

The hip-hoppers know this, it’s why Drake releases a steady stream of product. He’s satiating his customers. He’s the biggest star in their universe.

And Taylor Swift won not because she’s that damn good, certainly not since she went pop, but because she owned the news cycle, inviting reporters to her house, baking cookies for fans, the music was an afterthought, the campaign was king.

Kind of like Donald Trump. The reason he’s winning in the polls is because he’s dominated the news cycle, it’s all Trump, all the time. And like the Kardashians, the Donald knows that controversy sells, and that the audience knows you’re playing a game and gives you a break. Nobody thinks Kim Kardashian has any talent and few believe that Trump is really gonna build a wall and do the rest of the outrageous things he says. He’s just vying for attention.

And it works.

You might be living in the last decade, wherein quality could go viral. But now you’re the sucker. The audience has been buried in a tsunami of hype, of forwarded articles, there’s so much information that they ignore most of it, no matter how good the underlying content might be, they just gravitate to what’s been anointed by the media.

But the tail might still wag the dog.

That’s the story of the year, how Bernie Sanders got no love from the media but was revealed to own the youth vote and be a significant challenger to Hillary despite being labeled an irrelevant socialist. As for that moniker, does it mean anything anyway, since the Republicans have labeled Obama a socialist his entire term?

And then we have the surprise victory of Chris Stapleton at the CMAs. Turns out the voters were sick and tired of the formula, no calorie snacks known as today’s country music. They reacted.

So when there’s a vote…

Don’t trust the polls. People just say they like who’s being promoted, they figure no one else counts. Not that many people love Trump. But they do hate the establishment.

Do they hate the music too?

Maybe.

The self-promoting made by committee Top Forty stuff gets love from those still addicted to the old formula, the radio game. But is that really where America’s heart is today?

So there you have it. If you don’t control the discussion, if you’re not a media maven, you’re irrelevant. You’re playing the old game, releasing an album every other year not knowing it’s over in a weekend and people are wondering what you’ve done for them lately. You can’t bubble up from the bottom. And the other radio formats are nearly irrelevant, because except for the diehards, everybody’s abandoned them, there’s no there there. Come on, if you haven’t been amazed who’s number one at Active Rock or some other meaningless format you’re making your living chasing the meager returns in those genres from the brain dead people who believe that music still counts.

In the twenty first century you’ve got to tell a story every damn day. And if you’re sitting there saying you’re an artist and you want to do it like they did in the seventies…chances are you weren’t alive back then, when people of your ilk could not even get a record deal.

So start by creating and talking and pushing the envelope constantly. The press may not have cared, but Bernie was out stumping incessantly.

And Bernie’s the anti-Kim. She’s style, he’s substance. She’s plastic surgery, he’s Geritol. And it turns out in this topsy-turvy world we live in we’re looking for authenticity. That’s why Trump succeeds, he says what no one else will but we all know as the truth. We’re hungry for the truth.

Hillary’s a great politician, but she’s so busy polling she’s got no idea what the truth is anymore. Truth is intrinsic, you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. You just combine your education with what comes across the plate and make a judgment.

I’m excited about the future. Turns out the American public has no time for b.s. And those who thought they were in control are not. You could wipe D.C. off the map and most people wouldn’t care. The elected officials are sold out whores who will do whatever it takes to keep their jobs. Meanwhile, those they supposedly represent can’t get a job, certainly not one that pays the bills.

And we’re so long in the tooth with meaningless music made by the usual suspects that a revolution is gonna come and wipe it all out. Don’t doubt me, just ask all the acts that disappeared from the chart after the Beatles came out.

But there will be very few winners. That’s what tech teaches us, we gravitate to the best, to where everybody else is. And we don’t need no me-too. Come on, is there a reason for Bing to exist? So there will be very few successful artists. And I say hallelujah, I’m sick of the cluttering of the airwaves and inboxes by the marginally talented who can play because the new tools have democratized creation.

But those few who win won’t sit on the mountaintop with their arms crossed. No, they’ll be part of the discussion, we’ll hear about them every damn day. Just like it was Adele all day long from mid-November until New Year’s.

But what has she done for us lately? Does anybody know anything but “Hello”? The soccer moms drove her album up the charts but she’s not even on streaming services. She’s thinking she won, but she’s losing. She should be on TV constantly. She should be doing covers on YouTube. She should get down in the pit and be one of us. Putting out an album we all buy and promptly forget? That’s so old school as to be laughable.

But the media propped the story up.

The media is where we now live. We don’t want the words of the unanointed, we want to know you’re somebody, with a track record, with veritas.

Trump won the media war.

Will he win the election? Even the nomination?

Only the people will tell you.

But one thing’s for sure, those who thought they were in control, who were telling us they knew, who were pulling the strings…

Are not.

We want story.

We want truth.

And we want to know that everybody else is paying attention and you’re important.

That’s how you win today.

And those who will win tomorrow won’t play the old game, and they’ll be a whole hell of a lot more trustworthy than the bozos we’ve been paying attention to for years.

That’s right, Kim Kardashian opened the floodgates.

But she’s gonna be washed away.

But who replaces her?

That’s gonna be fascinating.

I went to hear “Look At Miss Ohio.”

But I heard so much more.

When I was in elementary school we sang. We’d open up books of songs that I still remember to this day and then sing in unison, loudly. That self-conscious want to fit in ethos of the millennial? We didn’t have it. We were going to the moon, we were pushing the envelope, our futures were so bright we had to wear shades, even though no one did, we all squinted in the summer.

And when the Beatles hit we all got guitars and songbooks and learned how to play their songs which we sang. Would happen spontaneously a cappella. You’d be with a bunch of friends, hanging out, and one would drop a line and you’d all join in.

Just like you did at summer camp, when folk songs which were embedded in the national consciousness were vocalized around the campfire. Don’t ask me how I knew “Blowin’ In The Wind,” I just did. Even though Bob Dylan was not yet a household name and my family owned no Peter, Paul & Mary albums.

But we did have a piano. Music was important. We studied it at school, it wasn’t about money so much as being intertwined with the culture, part of the fabric of our society.

And I was brought back to those days when I saw the Dave Rawlings Machine last Saturday night.

There was no drummer. No backdrop. Some lights.

And a full house. Of people my age. How did they know?

You see boomers follow the scene, they’re less interested in trends than satiation, and they’ve decided Dave and Gillian are satisfying.

And they were.

Their act was filled out with a couple of fiddle players, and a standup bass. It reminded me of our old pharmacist, Marc Zimmerman, proprietor of Marc’s Drugs in Bridgeport, who’d schlep his double bass to a party, our parents were always having parties. No photos were posted on Instagram, but memories were made.

And memories were made Saturday night.

I loved hearing Dave append Neil Young’s “Cortez The Killer” to “Method Acting.” And he sang that number he cowrote with Ryan Adams, the opener to “Heartbreaker,” “To Be Young (Is To Be Sad, Is To Be High).” Dave’s an in demand producer, those who are looking for authenticity employ him.

And Gillian started off on Almo and then went indie, she got to do it her way, but the truth is her audience supported her, it’s all about fans.

And the best song was the second, “Bodysnatchers,” which sounded like a summer night on the porch long after dark with little light. There was amplification, but the instruments were acoustic. It was the same as it ever was.

And when we all helped Willie Watson now solo after Old Crow Medicine Show sing “Stewball”…

I was brought back to what once was, I remembered how much fun, how satisfying it is to SING!

“Bodysnatchers“