I’m high but I’m grounded
I’m sane but I’m overwhelmed
I’m lost but I’m hopeful baby

Life is complicated. It’s what happens when you’re busy making other plans. And it’s rare you see it encapsulated on screen.

Tears are in my eyes, I just finished the third season of “Transparent,” if it were on HBO it would be bigger news, but stuck behind the paywall of Amazon Prime it gets accolades but few views, and that’s a shame.

One of my favorite shows was “thirtysomething.” If you disagree you can tune out now, that’s fine. Kind of like friends, some get you, some don’t. But those who do make all the difference, they get you through, because lovers come and go, it’s family and friends that remain.

I started eighteen months ago, after finishing the latest season of “House Of Cards.” I wanted to do something important, I wanted to matter, I wanted my life to be one of visceral excitement, everything they do on “House Of Cards” COUNTS! And, at loose ends, trying to keep the feeling going, I pulled up “Transparent.” It took a couple of episodes to find its footing and then…

It was the opposite of “House Of Cards.” There were no big stakes, nothing mattered, other than our little lives.

When Sarah laments that she tries out for everything but is never picked… Cheerleading, student government, ultimately the synagogue board… I resonated, all my endeavors were not failures, but when you try so hard to belong and make a difference and they won’t let you it HURTS!

Forget the trans narrative. I mean don’t let that turn you off. That’s not what the show is about, that’s just the hook, the linchpin, “Transparent” is really about a family, we’ve all got one, people we rely on and despise and love all at the same time, the only ones who stick around, forever. They grew up in the same house, they have the same neuroses, and the parents of the baby boomers were just trying to get along, not get it perfect, something their progeny have been trying to right ever since even though they cannot, the truth is kids are screwed up, stuff happens, it changes your viewpoint, your life course, you’ve got to accept it and change it all at the same time.

So, Jeffrey Tambor is PHENOMENAL as the trans Maura. Even if you’re skittish with the topic, you’ll be intrigued. It’s stunning the same guy who played Hank on “Larry Sanders” can inhabit this character. And he’s on his own journey and his ex-wife Judith Light just cannot get over this fact. You place all your faith in someone, and they don’t place all their faith in you, it happens all the time.

And Sarah has everything, or does she? She rekindles a gay relationship from college and…

The youngest daughter, Ali, is lost. Birth order matters. The youngest is always the baby and this has consequences.

And in the middle is Josh, who works in the music business, successfully. You should see him negotiate for the band van, that’s how it really works, winners in the biz are rough and tumble people creating their own rules.

But everybody’s screwed up, everybody’s got more questions than answers.

As do we all.

Everybody’s putting on a brave face. Everybody’s sucking it up. Everybody’s a brand. Everybody’s on the pathway to glory. When the truth is no one really cares what happens to you and me, we live inside our heads and sometimes the world works, and then it doesn’t.

It’s fall in L.A. Even if it’s near triple digits. It reminds me of the past. Arriving here for the first time during this season. When the light is at an angle and everything is laden with meaning. You’re searching for new friends, trying to find your place, believing the destination is key when the truth is the journey is everything, because if you ever get to where you want to go the high will only last for a minute.

The holidays. The family trips. The things you don’t want to do that end up the hooks which prop up your life. They’re all here in “Transparent.”

You’ll laugh, you’ll cry and you’ll be freaked out, because you’ll see yourself.

You see we’re all unsure, we’ve all got more questions than answers, we’re doing out best but so often we’re failing. Am I cheap? Do I rage too much? Do I have sexual peculiarities? Can I follow through? We’ve all got an underbelly we do our best to avoid peeking at, but when we see it right in front of us we tingle with recognition and then our stomach gets queasy, do others see us this way?

Relationships come and go, because they’re hard to maintain.

What are the deal-breakers? Income? Trust? Sex?

Wish I could tell you, all I know is you know when something is over the line, when there’s no coming back from something said. Then you’re single once again, despite aching for the companionship of the person left behind.

And then there are the people who just can’t commit, who have to move on to something better. Even though their significant other is dedicated to them, through thick and thin.

And then there are those taken advantage of.

All of this is swirling around inside our heads. We’ve got no outlet for it. We’ve got to play the game, get along, at school, at work, in social situations, whereas we’re dying to tell our story, to be known, to feel so not alone.

Somehow Jill Soloway has wrapped this all up in a TV show. Given free rein by by Bezos and company she didn’t make a show to play overseas, a big tent to include everyone, rather she got personal and ended up universal.

“Transparent” is a secret hiding in plain sight.

Like all great art those who are believers will testify.

And those who are not don’t care.

But if you’re a member of my tribe…

P.S. I’m leading with “Hand In My Pocket” because it ends season three, sung slowly, with emphasis on the lyrics, it’s amazing how much wisdom the words contain, by expressing her angst, Alanis Morissette became the biggest star in the world.

Tonic Mountain – Spotify

I discovered this on Daily Mix.

I heard Barenaked Ladies’ “Baby Seat,” skipped through a song by Beck from “Sea Change,” heard another number that was blah and then…

You know it when you hear it, paraphrasing the Supreme Court on pornography.

I always thought Tonic was a wimpy act, closer to Starland Vocal Band than Alice In Chains, BOY WAS I WRONG!

Yes, they had that big hit “If You Could Only See,” but “Mountain” isn’t playing to the cheap seats, it’s not pop music made for coin, it’s like something out of the glory days of FM radio, when testing limits and providing substance was the goal, the empty sugar calories of Top Forty being completely irrelevant.

Oh, what a long strange trip it’s been.

MTV started with the classic rockers with videos, Rod Stewart, other acts that had broken in Europe where the visual format mattered.

Then the rest of the oldsters poured through the gate, Tom Petty, Don Henley, and then Duran Duran blew the paradigm wide open, it was all new acts with new music.

And then Michael Jackson widened the horizon, MTV became a big tent.

And then when the decade turned, from the eighties to the nineties, production became everything, pop made inroads, but rock soldiered on, even if we sometimes considered it ersatz, with the ultimately underrated Matchbox Twenty ruling.

And then it went totally urban, hip-hop and pop, and that sound has been dominating for the entire twenty first century, it’s like rock is a lost art, except for the shoegazers, you know, the boys with the thin voices and the thin guitars who believe they can bring the magic back if they just get enough attention.

And then you hear something like “Mountain” and you’re brought back to where you once belonged, it feels so good, it’s like discovering a Dead Sea Scroll. Whew!

It starts with an acoustic guitar, like a graybeard sitting around a campfire, completely disconnected from society, picking for himself as opposed to the audience.

And then there’s this descending figure, like someone’s telling you their life story, not someone famous, but a regular joe, like you and me, the people who count, and then…

A bit after thirty seconds, the guitars start to spit lightning, lighting up the sky, and a mellifluous voice sits atop the whole thing.

She
She came down
From the mountain
And I
I stood my ground
On the mountain

And the guitars ring like bells in a cathedral, spouting religion, you become an instant believer, and that descending figure hooks you in its electric iteration and Emerson Hart is twisting and turning the words and you can feel it in your gut.

Like a fire I’m drawn to her lust
I can’t run from her, but lord I must
Like a demon I’m drawn to her flame
I’m gonna burn calling her name
I’m gonna burn calling her name

It’s loud, but it’s intimate. You’re twisting and turning in this section, like a roller coaster after the big hill, and then…

The whole thing amps up, everybody turns it up to 11, everybody’s firing on all cylinders, but unlike with today’s speedy metal it’s not overbearing, it’s not too much, it’s not made to turn you off, rather it’s a pill you cannot help but swallow, one that will take you on a magic trip.

And when it gets quiet again, with the acoustic instruments reappearing.

And then it gets so HEAVY!

It’s like Led Zeppelin filtered through a modern paradigm, the dynamics, the loud to soft and back to loud again, with lyricism and melody baked in, it’s INFECTIOUS!

And if we, are patient
Then maybe, we’ll get it straight
On the mountain

Oh, this image resonates. I love the city accoutrements, everything at your fingertips, but it can become oppressive, I can breathe in the mountains, atop a hill, free, that’s where the insights come, in a vacuum where you’re alone with your thoughts.

And the music.

Used to be we knew the songs by heart, we sang them to ourselves, they were playing in our head. Now we can take them everywhere.

I couldn’t believe it, I had to fire up Wikipedia, learn more about this act.

I read this track was from their debut, “Lemon Parade,” and that they’d remade it acoustically just now, in 2016, via PledgeMusic.

So I pulled that up.

Same song, but different. I missed the dynamics of the original, even though it was satisfying on its own merits.

But, was this album so popular, was it the “Jagged Little Pill” for a subsection of the population, to the point fans were clamoring for a redo?

“Lemon Parade” went platinum, then again everything went platinum in 1996.

Then again, albums come out today and instantly disappear. And when you go back to them, eh.

So now I’ve got to listen to more of “Lemon Parade.” I start with the opening track, “Open Your Eyes,” I can’t believe it, it’s so heavy yet so lyrical, I get it immediately. I’m coursing through the album, I play “If You Could Only See,” find out that after the light intro it too gets heavy. I go on Deezer Elite to hear “Mountain” in CD quality.

And it’s all because of Spotify’s Daily Mix.

We live in a golden era. I must not have been on the mailing list back then, I don’t remember owning “Lemon Parade.” And it would have disappeared completely if not for the modern paradigm, wherein everything’s at your fingertips for one low price.

But I needed someone to lead me to it.

And the algorithm did. Lord only knows how it knew. Lord knows how I missed this the first time around, “Mountain” could reestablish your allegiance to rock music, if you only heard it.

But it was cut twenty years ago. The band members are now fifty.

But what I wanted most was to SEE THEM!

Not for the production, not for the dancing, but the sound. I wanted to nod my head and mouth the words, be entranced, taken away.

“Mountain” is as fresh as yesterday. I mean Wednesday.

You’ll be stunned.

Tonic Mountain – YouTube electric

Tonic Mountain – YouTube acoustic

The only problem is people HATE HIM!

Expecting Lyor Cohen to make peace with labels is like believing Roger Waters will get back together with David Gilmour for a concert in support of Israeli statehood.

This shows how out of touch YouTube is, I hope the ink isn’t dry.

As for Lyor himself…KUDOS! He crawled from the wreckage into a brand new car.

Every other majordomo has faded into the woodwork. From Yetnikoff to Mottola, take away their checkbook, their power-base, and they’re done. Lyor opened his label, the 300, and ultimately had a hit with Fetty Wap, but despite that hit, despite all the hogwash about establishing a new paradigm, using Twitter data, not much else materialized.

As for YouTube…

They don’t need any hand-holding, they don’t need anybody explaining their position, they just need to agree to one take-down notice and higher royalty payments, something Robert Kyncl and his team have repeatedly said they would not do.

This isn’t Spotify or Apple, with playlists and exclusives…

And if you think the music industry wants to deliver those to YouTube… You don’t know that YouTube is more hated than Lyor.

Lyor is known for loyalty. Like Pablo Escobar, his team would take a bullet for him. He’s a smart guy, but he’s street smart, and that doesn’t work in tech, it’s about the numbers, data doesn’t lie.

Come on, can you imagine Lyor in a meeting convincing a label head or a manager? Do you even know how this guy speaks? And he needs to sit atop the pedestal, humility is not in his bag of tricks.

This just proves that YouTube is clueless.

This is a breakthrough.

The problem with Apple Music is it’s locked behind a paywall, and unlike Sirius there’s no amnesty, no free weekends, once your trial period is up you’re gone, forever, unless you want to pony up.

I know, I know, it’s hard to compete with a free tier. On YouTube and Spotify. But have you forgotten the deep dark ages wherein piracy ruled, when MP3s were de rigueur? Did you buy the iPhone 7 with 256 GB? Why? We used to need to cart all our music around with us, now it’s available on demand, and we can sync a modicum of playlists to the device for listening off the grid.

So, Daily Mix is a daily playlist. You can read about it here:

Rediscover Your Favorite Music with Daily Mix

Jimmy Iovine promises future miracles to Buzzfeed

Inside Apple Music’s Second Act

Spotify surprises us with anew feature available today, as Steve Jobs famously did at the end of almost every product introduction. You give us what we didn’t even know we wanted and we can test it out immediately, this is the instant gratification the internet was built on.

The internet was not built on hype. The internet was built on product. Marketing a website is a waste of time. You want to enable users who spread the word.

I can’t tell you exactly what Daily Mix is. But I just checked it out on my handset and…there are only fifteen tracks. Playlists need to get shorter, otherwise they’re incomprehensible, we’ve got to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Now upon launching the Spotify app I found six Daily Mixes. There’s only supposed to be one a day, but I guess I’m seeing the beta prototypes as well as today’s.

Daily Mix 1 has got all the old rockers. From the Stones to the Beatles to Zeppelin to Jackson Browne. All winners, it’s good to see what I’m familiar with.

But more satisfying is Daily Mix 2, which focuses on my country listening. It’s got Luke Bryan and Eric Church and Steven Tyler and Florida Georgia Line as well as some tracks I haven’t heard.

That’s the essence of Daily Mix. Some of what you already know mixed in with that which you don’t. It’s an evolving process. But it’s satisfying.

The goal is to get more people to listen to more music.

And Spotify has done this here.

And, for the canard that per stream payments are going down… OF COURSE THEY ARE!    Did you flunk math? There’s a pool of money that’s divided by listens, so the more people subscribe and the more people listen the less each stream is worth, if you’re concentrating on a penny rate (or fraction of a penny rate!) you’re doing it the old way, now it’s all about a percentage.

Spotify is running away with this game. By being married to the technology first and the art form second. Innovation always comes from outside, those who are not inured to the old ways. The company has some of the worst marketing known to man, but it’s the leader, as it should be.

iHeart has got no chance. Haven’t we learned in digital that there’s a first-mover advantage? The only way you can supersede the starter is by doing it grossly better, incremental improvement is not enough. And the only way you can win is if the leader lags, fails to innovate.

Innovate or die. That’s how Apple became the world’s most valuable company, that’s why it’s gonna flag in the future. You can only ride the old hits so long, and unlike a classic rock act, no one wants to listen to their old iPod.

This is good. Piracy has been eviscerated, people are inside the walled garden and subscribers and revenue are going up. One company will be the leader, and right now you should bet on Spotify. Forget all the hogwash about the fundamentals, the loss of cash, if they stopped investing right now they’d be profitable. But like internet hero Jeff Bezos they understand it’s a long game, you look to a far distant destination, when you’ve corralled the market and own it, and are making tons of money to boot.

Remember when people were afraid to buy things on the web?

Remember when humans used to curate Amazon recommendations?

Remember when Amazon stumbled on to Web Services, driving growth?

Never listen to the naysayers married to the past, it’s already in the rearview mirror. Bet on those risking, changing it up. And this applies in art too. The new and different ultimately rules. And now that streaming has won we can focus on the tunes. And the more we get the tunes in front of people the better chance they have to gain traction.

Sure, radio was great, banging the same few tunes over and over again.

But few got a chance to play back then.

Now, everybody can play, but there’s chaos.

Discover Weekly, Release Radar and now Daily Mix are steps to end that chaos, to make music listening and discovery comprehensible.

The rocket has left the launch pad.

And we’re all on board.

Partake of the riches.

And know that subscription revenue is only gonna go up.

Sometimes you’ve got to give it away for people to be convinced.

Some people will never pay.

But music is addictive, it’s the spice of life, and people show up for it, as opposed to so many other products.

YouTube is a lame free service based on video. Its Red application has no traction. This is what happens when you rest on your laurels.

Forget about stream-ripping.

Forget about YouTube.

Tell everybody how great Spotify is.

BECAUSE THEN YOU’RE GONNA MAKE MONEY!