Someone always thinks the rules don’t apply to them. That’s the hardest part of being a leader, keeping everybody in line. You think you want to run a large organization, that manpower is appealing, as is the money raised when your company goes public, but I’m of the one man band variety, I want to be in charge of my own destiny, because I’m sick and tired of people who know little telling me what to do.

Isn’t that the ethos of Silicon Valley? Misfits doing it their way?

That certainly used to be music, before the goal was to become a brand and sell out to the corporation, play by the rules and reduce innovation for fear you’ll be left off the playlist.

But I’d rather watch “Narcos” than listen to most new music. Because it takes me away, removes me from this fast-paced world where you’ve always got to be available and are in fear of missing out, and shows me what life is really about…living.

Pablo Escobar died.

But you knew that. I didn’t ruin anything for you. That’s what the second season was all about, his escape from prison and eventual decline and ultimate demise.

We finished it last night. I just spent ten hours dedicated to a TV show when I complain that I’ve got no time. Guess I just have time for what is truly great, for what I think is primary.

And the second season of “Narcos” is not as good as the first. The first was a lark, no one had any expectations. Whereas the second… That’s what success will yield, eyeballs, attention, can you succeed under the glare? The filmmakers did, but they added too many arty angles, overreaching, Shakespearean metaphors, whereas the initial season was down and dirty.

My number one takeaway?

I want to go back to Colombia. In a world where everybody wants to be more comfortable, I’m looking for danger, for excitement. Somewhere they don’t speak English and the values are different. Like St. Petersburg or Bogota. Those are the two best places I’ve gone to recently. Because they kept me on edge. I felt that something was going on that I couldn’t completely grasp. I didn’t feel totally safe. The people weren’t playing by my rules, in St. Petersburg it was all about coping with corruption, in Bogota it was all about not getting shot. And…I felt fully alive.

Of course Pablo Escobar was a murderer. Of course he deserved to die.

But he did it his way. Came from nothing and built something. Went against the grain, did it via his own smarts. Today we venerate those with chips, education, parentage. But the world is really changed by thinkers. Those who see things differently.

It is all about being wise. Something we don’t revere. We think being rich makes you smart, but that is not true, although sometimes they go hand in hand.

And it’s about having insight. Something we pay fealty to but no longer teach. Yes, we quote the great Gretzky, about skating to where the puck will be, but we don’t teach kids how to see where the puck is going, how to unpack the facts and reassemble them in a way that makes sense.

Kinda like income inequality and climate change. You can deny them or go deep, try to see what’s going on.

But no one wants to go deep anymore. They’re too busy building out their identity online.

Pablo Escobar believed the rules didn’t apply to him, that institutions were to be manipulated.

That’s one thing that’s opened my eyes in my ascension up the food chain. Leaders see the press as something to be manipulated, to their advantage. And the press is not as omniscient as it appears. I’m stunned how much doesn’t make the news, and how often reporters get it wrong. No, I’m not talking about Sarah Palin’s “Lamestream Media,” she’s clueless, publicly decrying a world where idiots don’t reign. Whereas true players…work behind the scenes and their fingerprints are undetectable.

As for taxes… Have you noticed the big corporations don’t pay them? That their effective rate is near zero? How can you complain they’re too high when they only exist on paper? But, once again, the rank and file have no understanding of what’s truly going on. While those with power wield it to their advantage.

This is the world we’ve arrived in. One of drudgery. Where a few have exciting gigs that stimulate them and the rest of us live for entertainment. We’re dying for entertainment. Hollywood has never been more powerful. There’s all this hogwash about haunted models, the techies taking over. But the techies don’t know how to tell a story, how to take us away and fulfill us. As Steve Jobs famously said, Apple made tools, he was an industrialist. Whereas those in Hollywood are capitalists of the mind.

My problem is I’m left empty. With nothing to watch.

Oh, the papers are full of hype, there are a zillion channels and services. But nothing that titillates me the same way as “Narcos.”

Life is a struggle. Where you can’t survive without family. Where some are out to get you and you must follow your own counsel.

It’s all right there on the screen.

Take the time.

This is the story of a notorious drug lord.

But it’s simultaneously the story of today’s world. Where government has its own agenda while business people tie it in a knot while nitwits think owning a gun protects them from the establishment.

Life is fluid. We get to make choices every day. What would you do for a buck? Are you willing to bend the truth? Does longevity supersede quality?

The renegades run this world. Whether it be outsiders like Pablo Escobar or insiders like Vladimir Putin. We’re just pawns in their game.

Unless we decide to play.

Are you willing to play?

Bad Company, Shooting Star, September 3, 2016, LA County Fair

If this doesn’t make you tingle from the inside out, if this doesn’t make you shiver, you’re no fan of rock and roll, you’re no friend of mine, you’ve got no idea what the experience really is, you’re too set in your ways and afraid of letting loose and enjoying the true power of music.

I’m against fan videos. I don’t mean they should be illegal, I’m just saying they never capture the magic. I could describe some technical mumbo-jumbo regarding mic specs, but…

When this dude sent me the link to these clips I was stunned.

The sound was imperfect, but it captured the essence, and then…what I experienced in my bones, what I felt in my heart, was right there in the above clip…the assembled multitude standing and singing along like this was the most important moment in their lives, like it was the only thing worth living for.

Don’t you know that you are a shooting star
Don’t you know
DON’T YOU KNOW!

“Shooting Star” was the last song on side one of Bad Company’s second album, so inconsequential, so irrelevant, not a single to the point where it doesn’t even have its own Wikipedia page!

There are entries for “Good Lovin’ Gone Bad” and “Feel Like Makin’ Love,” but this album track…THE AUDIENCE KNEW IT BY HEART!

And speaking of album tracks…

Are you ready for love?

Listen to the audience sing along here, to this even less-heralded cut.

Bad Company, Ready For Love, September 3, 2016, LA County Fair

They’re singing earlier in the video, unprovoked, but you can hear them here and then… Listen at 4:28, when Paul Rodgers lifts the mic stand and twirls it, the release of human emotion, the joy in attendance, walking down this rocky road of life and having such an exquisite experience.

If you want to hear the power of the band, that freight train that rock and roll specialized in, the turning up of the amps to the point it demolished everything in its path, check out some of “Gone, Gone, Gone”:

Bad Company, Gone, Gone, Gone, September 3, 2016, LA County Fair

But the mix is a bit off, the overall sound is not as good as it is in the previous clips, but that driving element, that power, it’s there.

And you can also check out a bit of “Feel Like Makin’ Love,” a gargantuan smash from the summer of ’75. Paul’s vocals are a bit buried, but those staccato guitars, they shoot machine gun fire like we’re still back then and the internet has not been invented and we know who the real heroes are, not the next door neighbor pretenders, but the stars on stage who’ve paid their dues and earned our fealty.

Like I said, I’m against fan videos. They’re curios, they’re souvenirs, evidence that those in attendance actually were, there, that is.

And I was.

And I’m loath to post them. For fear you’ll tell me I’m wrong, that I’m clueless, that the band wasn’t that good, that the gig wasn’t that great.

But then I watch and my body starts to tingle and how can I not share.

Feel like makin’ love?

I DO!

P.S. You can catch all the clips from the beginning here:

Bad Company, September 3, 2016, LA County Fair

It’s about the wireless. The Beats purchase finally makes sense.

I have a pair of Sennheiser Bluetooth headphones. Whenever I wear them, which is nearly every day, someone comments. They’re stunned. I love them. But the sound is limited, in quality and volume. It appears that Apple has solved this problem, with its W1 chip.

I’d love to tell you today’s Apple presentation was a home run. But they’ve lost touch with the fact that it is a presentation, that it is entertainment. The Carpool Karaoke opening was a left field stunner, it humanized Tim Cook, who’s badly in need of being seen as more than a droid. But then it went on too long, with Pharrell in the back seat. There’s a skill in performance. We in Hollywood get pissed on by those up north. But without our content, without our ability to tell a story, their devices are useless. Sometimes you’ve got to leave the best stuff out. But no one at Apple knew where to draw the line.

And the presentation got boringer and boringer, with not only Cook, but a rainbow coalition of women and ethnicities. Is that the nation we’ve become, where we’re so busy being politically correct that it affects our culture? We want to give everybody an opportunity, a leg up, but when it’s the bottom of the ninth and you’re two behind…

You bring out Phil Schiller.

The Watch guy… Didn’t tell us if the Watch itself was improved. It was all about software, there was no mention of charging times, of functionality re the screen staying on. He blew his chance.

But Phil Schiller, the old white guy…

He blew us away!

It’s about keeping our attention. Something Sia is not doing as I write this. The breakthrough would be to have no music, the idea of a star du jour playing at the end of these shows is so stale that it should not be repeated, but, once again, no one left at Apple has a sense of theatre.

So, Phil comes out without any bells and whistles, tells us he’s got a ten point program, and keeps us in rapt attention as he goes through the list. This is the modern paradigm, we don’t have a short attention span, just an incredible detector of b.s., we change the channel if you’re not great, that’s the world we live in, where excellence triumphs and everything else is left in the dust.

The cameras… Those were impressive.

As well as the performance specs.

As for design… To hear Jony Ive testify is to think of an SNL skit, this guy has become a parody of himself, this element should be abandoned too, get someone else to narrate, better to do live.

But, it’s what was left behind which is most interesting. We’ve been hearing for months that Apple is abandoning the headphone port. It’s been lamented, no one has explained the change until yesterday, when David Pogue gave a convincing case.

Why The Headphone Jack Must Die

That’s the nation we now live in, where facts are irrelevant and everybody wants to stay in the past. We need a national explainer, like Walter Cronkite way back when, to keep everybody up to speed on what is really going on. If you watched this presentation you’d be glad the headphone port is gone, and, to boot, they included a lightning adapter for your old phones! Headphones, that is.

But it’s the wireless ones that were intriguing. The pods looked…futuristic and funky, you almost don’t want to be seen wearing them. But when they said the Beats headphones would include the W1 chip and the resulting wireless I was intrigued, that’s what I want, high quality wireless sound, this is a breakthrough.

Will they license the technology? Are the specs really that good?

That’s unclear.

What is clear is that the star is the product, built by human beings.

The star is the music, built by human beings.

You lead with the product.

People care about the product.

But most people believe they deserve attention when they cannot get out of their own way and cannot deliver something deserving of interest.

We need thinkers. We need pushers of the envelope. We need people who pay their dues who are willing to do it different.

That’s the Steve Jobs way.

P.S. Too many old people in the audience. Makes Android look like a youth movement.

P.P.S. Only 17 million Apple Music subscribers, who skew old too? It’s like Apple Music is spinning off into its own universe that the rest of us can comfortably avoid. Bells and whistles are irrelevant when the underlying infrastructure sucks. You watch this presentation and wonder if this stuff really works, whether you can swim with the Watch, but today we expect everything to work right, right out of the box. Apple Music didn’t and still doesn’t. It needs a rethink and a rewrite. And no exclusive appearance by Sia will push it forward. We’re looking for visceral excitement, the only person who delivered it today was Phil Schiller.

P.P.P.S. I want a date with Toadette!

This should have been bad. Seventies act far beyond its years playing to a multitude that didn’t care in a faraway land where no discerning eyes are present. But that wasn’t the case, this show was FANTASTIC! INCREDIBLE! ASTOUNDING! THE BEST OF THE YEAR!

And how can that be?

Some people say I’m no good
Laying in my bed all day
But when the nighttime comes I’m ready to rock
And roll my troubles away

In a world where how EARLY you wake up is a badge of honor, it’s refreshing to be re-rooted to a world where all the good things happen at night, and it’s not when you get up, but how long you STAY UP!

There’s no place more bizarre than a county fair. In this case in far-off Pomona, a sea of people you see nowhere else, bad bodies, various ethnicities, only an hour from L.A. but in mind-set and visuals as far away as Iowa or Mississippi. You’re forced to walk through a midway of vomit-inducing rides, vittles that might cause a heart attack and ultimately funneled to a grandstand that looks like it hasn’t had a dime invested this century. And then the screens light up, introducing the band, yes, they brought their full production, and the guitars start to scream, the drums start to pound, Paul Rodgers twirls the mic stand and sings the above lyrics and…

I’M TINGLING AS I WRITE THIS! I IMMEDIATELY JUMPED TO MY FEET AND THRUST MY ARM IN THE AIR! It was like it was still the seventies and music was the most important medium in the world and fully worth living for. This was a show where you didn’t pull out your cell phone unless it was to take a photo, you didn’t want to take your eyes off the band, you felt when they left the stage you might not get another chance.

And it wasn’t just me. The middle-aged women next to me were twisting and turning their bodies, singing every word at the top of their lungs. The Latino men in front of me were doing the same thing. The fat white guy to the right, he was getting more exercise than he probably got in a month. The assembled multitude was gyrating like rock music was the most important thing in the world, the elixir of life, they were taking it all in AND GIVING IT ALL BACK!

Come on, “Ready For Love” was a Mick Ralphs cut on a Mott The Hoople record that was redone more slowly for the initial Bad Company LP, an album track for sure. But when Paul Rodgers dropped the mic and stopped singing…everybody in attendance sang in unison that they were READY FOR LOVE, OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN! It was like an alternative universe, where not only rock ruled, but Bad Company were legends, the toppermost of the poppermost, rock royalty come back to get its just accolades. WHEW!

They get no love. The punksters and hipsters at the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame pooh-pooh them, lauding fraudsters like Patti Smith and Joan Jett when it’s groups like this that are the heart of rock and roll. And I’ve been to see Kiss, but the mania for Bad Company was bigger. And I love the guys in Rush, but this audience was half women, and they weren’t dragged by their boyfriends, THEY NEEDED TO BE THERE!

It’s almost like they don’t exist. No one ever talks about Bad Company. But here they are, in plain sight, and they’re LEGENDS!

And it wasn’t only “Ready For Love.” The audience took over for “Shooting Star” too.

Johnny was a schoolboy
When he heard his first Beatles song

So was I, so were you. We heard this sound and it changed our lives, it gave us something to live for. And Saturday night I felt like I was at the church, the synagogue of my life, re-centered, I’m a rocker, always was and forever will be.

And speaking of rock…

This is the show you want to see, not Guns N’ Roses, they ran circles around Axl and Slash. You see there were TWO lead guitarists. Howard Leese of Heart and Rich Robinson of the Black Crowes. And not only did they riff off each other, they played in unison… We went there to relive what once was and we didn’t know they were gonna reinvent it and push the envelope into the future. Leese doesn’t get enough respect, he WAILED! And after watching Robinson… Just because you’re not the frontman, that doesn’t mean you don’t deserve credit, Chris Robinson gets all the accolades, but now I’m re-evaluating.

And speaking of re-evaluating…

Legend has it Paul Rodgers still has his voice, when almost no one from that era still does. And not only is that true, he played the guitar and the PIANO! He tickled the ivories and I was stunned, this was not some lame singer, this was a MUSICIAN! And except for a storm effect at the beginning of “Burnin’ Sky,” nothing was on hard drive, it was just real music, all the time, played on guitars, how it once was and seemingly forever more will no longer be. It was like being jetted back to the past where everything was different. Where how you looked paled in comparison to how you played. Where it was all about a big sound emanating from the speakers, one you created by practicing in your bedroom for eons, alone. IT WAS REVELATORY!

Sure, they played “Can’t Get Enough,” but they also played “Crazy Circles,” it was just as hypnotic as it was on wax.

Life is like a merry-go-round
Painted horses riding up and down
Music takes you and you’re gone again

ABSOLUTELY!

What if I told you there was an era where we were glued to the radio, where we lived at the record store, where being into music wasn’t only one thing, it was EVERYTHING! That’s what it was like during the seventies, when you went to the show not to be seen, but to connect with the band, which wasn’t featured in social media, which made it on the music alone, which went from town to town living a life of luxury and debauchery, with wine and drugs and sex and…it was everything we wanted, everywhere we wanted to be, musicians were the richest and most powerful people in America…AND WE LOVED IT!

Yes, it’s all part of my rock ‘n roll fantasy…AND THEY PLAYED THAT TOO! I knew every lick, every word…AND SO DID EVERYBODY ELSE! Was it all that airplay on classic rock radio, could it be that this band with no respect and no ink RULES?

YES!

Bad Company, and I can’t deny. Paul sat at the piano and began the riff and the crowd swooned, they immediately recognized it. Simon Kirke pounded the drums like he was still looking for his ticket out of obscurity and the entire joint levitated, high on the sound.

We were rocking steady, which was the second encore. We couldn’t believe it. We were at the heart of rock and roll, and it was still beating. The band was not punching the clock, they were feeding off our energy.

And I still haven’t gotten over it.