Not all of us can be rich and famous, not all of us can grab the brass ring.

And personally I’m sick of the wankers singing about their lifestyle, flaunting their wealth, warbling their phony, broad stroke lyrics which say little and are completely unrelatable.

That’s right, I spent an hour going through the rock hits of the day and was horrified how low the bar had sunk, how there wasn’t even innovation musically, never mind lyrically, bring back 10cc.

And then I switched to country, where the formula was in full swing. The songs were written by committee with the audience in mind, trying to pull a heartstring here or there or creating a beer-drinking anthem just as fulfilling as Bud Light, which is not very much. I thought of all the great country artists of yore, who told the story of their lives, couldn’t one of them be covered by one of the capped tooth wonders? And then I heard “Little Bitty Dreams.”

Will Hoge has made almost ten albums. His major label deal is far in the past. He’s never had a hit. He doesn’t look like a movie star and his voice is imperfect. But he’s gotten better, isn’t that what life’s about?

I was enraptured from the initial picking. That’s all you need, an acoustic guitar and a story to tell.

I spent my small town Saturdays watching a big ‘ol movie screen
Hoping someday I’d be up there living all my dreams

We all have them. Dreams. A desire to go from here to there. To gain some recognition, to gain more money, to live a better life.

And I could be a Hollywood hero, make the girls all smile and weep
Think that someday they might have a boy like me

Acceptance. That’s what we want most, even more than wealth and physical beauty. Do you like us? Do you want to hang with us? What can we do to achieve this? Do we have to reinvent ourselves, change our look?

And I’d remember playing baseball, standing on the pitcher’s mound
Thinking someday a fastball might get me out of this town
And maybe I could wear the pinstripes, be a Yankee true and proud
But all that seems a million dreams away right now

I lived to play baseball. Every day after school. Long before parents drove you around in minivans to tournaments, before high schoolers went to Florida for spring training, I fantasized I could make it.

And then I realized I couldn’t.

Cause I met you and then I knew my big dreams were done

What is life about? Achievement or happiness? Is family a bigger dream than career?

And I’d settle down in the same small town and swear you were the one

The goal is to get out, that’s what I always thought, I was champing at the bit to go to the big city, to get away from the insularity. And I don’t regret my choice, but there is a benefit in familiarity, living where you feel comfortable, where everybody knows your name.

Some might call it giving up, but it don’t feel that way to me
I think it’s just the two of us and our little bitty dreams

I’ve been on this planet for decades but it wasn’t until I heard these lines that this life choice finally made sense. Maybe success is achieved in different ways, maybe stardom isn’t the only way to emerge victorious.

And we hear about people giving up all the time. But maybe they know something we don’t, maybe they aren’t afraid of competition, they just see another way to play the game of life.

Cause I met you and then I knew my big dreams were done
I’d settle down in the same small town and and try to raise a son
Some might call it giving up, but it don’t feel that way to me
I think it’s just the three of us and our little bitty dreams

Maybe that’s what it’s all about. Finding someone you love and having a family. Staying together, growing something.

I couldn’t stop playing “Little Bitty Dreams.” It was quiet and personal, I could relate to it, it seemed like I was entering someone else’s private world instead of them beating down the door to mine. My mind was set loose and my body relaxed. I was reminded what music could do.

And you can do this too. If you focus on yourself instead of us, if you follow your dream instead of ours, if you tell us what you feel instead of what we want to hear.

Rhinofy-Little Bitty Dreams

From: Michael Rapino
To: Bob Lefsetz
Subject: Re:

You like show so far

 

From: Bob Lefsetz
To: Michael Rapino
Subject: Re

Screen is unbelievable.

They had it backwards. Should have gone on tour before the album. Create word of mouth. Just a few shows. Then sell tickets.

We live in a pull economy not a push one.

Pretty incredible.

And Bono is such a frontman.

 

From: Michael Rapino
To: Bob Lefsetz
Subject: Re:

Smart idea agree they build buzz on the road connecting not pushing as u say

Yes he is one of the best frontman

 

From: Bob Lefsetz
To: Michael Rapino
Subject: Re

We live in a live world, not one of recordings. They’re kings of live, they should capitalize on that!

What kind of crazy fucked up world do we live in where the kings of rock blow their album release yet triumph live?

One in which those at the top are afraid of a changing paradigm, one in which they believe if you just push hard enough down someone’s throat your project will take, one in which those at the top don’t realize that the public is in charge and if you entrance the people you’re on your way to success.

RUN to get one of the remaining tickets to the U2 show.

And that’s what it is, a show, not a concert.

And that’s why it was so good.

Nobody wants to hear new music from U2, not even the fans in attendance. It was astounding how silent people were during everything but a few hits, even those in the pit.

Then again, they were astounded by the screen.

Forget the lightbulb. A red herring if there ever was one. We keep reading everywhere that the show begins with one lone bulb. What they don’t tell us is it’s GIGANTIC! A stage prop bigger than a baseball bat. It’s cool, but having read about it one is underwhelmed, like Nigel and his bandmates were with the miniature version of Stonehenge.

But the screen, that screen…

That’s why I went. U2’s 1992 “Achtung Baby” tour indoors was one of the three best I’ve ever seen. The band is famous for its production. It’s just the last time around they went too big. We read endlessly about the Claw, but it didn’t translate beyond the first few rows of the stadium. And stadiums are for sports, for communal audience experiences, they’re rarely for music, you’ve got to see bands indoors, and U2’s indoor show was a tour-de-force with no word of mouth because the hype machine killed it. With all the advance press about the production no one is talking about it. Whereas if they’d just done a few shows, people would have been shooting video, talking about it incessantly online, because the show is so COOL!

The new music works at the gig because it’s secondary to the production, it’s the score to the movie, and oh what a movie.

It’s an oldies act. They played too much new material. The silence of the audience was deafening. We were thrilled to hear “I Will Follow” but still didn’t find what we were looking for, never mind hear it.

Even the hardest core U2 fans have little depth. Or, I’ll say they were not in attendance last night. But when the images begin to fly…

Let me tell you how this works, and words cannot do it justice. There’s a stage on each end, with no backline, all the sound reinforcement equipment is flown, around a rig in the center of the arena, you have your own special speakers pointing at you, then again there are sometimes stereo effects. And it’s just a band, which is so antique today, it’s like going into a time capsule. And then…

Bono starts talking about his mother, and images of her wedding start showing on the screen.

The screen… The screen sits LENGTHWISE, down the center of the arena. You certainly don’t want to sit at either end of the bowl, and a high seat is better than a low one. Because it’s like being in a stadium movie theatre, watching a film.

So, the screen is gigantic. And it’s somewhat transparent. And then…

There’s an animated street. Which is cool enough. But then it begins to RAIN!

How did they come up with this shit? The person who did is a creative genius. Credit U2 for finding him.

And there’s a narrow catwalk between the two screens. And the band walks in it and sings in it and plays in it and the effect is completely different from the usual concert, you’re not there to sing along to your favorite hits, kiss your significant other, but to be wowed by the special effects. Whenever the screen shut down, went blank, the show went flat. Because the screen was the star, the band was supporting it.

Bono was extemporaneous. He was both offhand and rehearsed. Which worked to make the show unique, as opposed to the typical…HELLO CLEVELAND!

And it was cool when they spread out along the walkway between the two stages and did “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” but it was not the anthem of yore, just support for the images on screen, of Irish conflict. There was a power that music alone cannot provide.

Maybe this is the future. No one wants to hear a whole album by a has-been band, you’ve got to find a better way of exposing people. The new tunes were a great soundtrack for the visuals, it worked that way, you didn’t care if you didn’t know the song, your eyeballs were bugging out.

And, astoundingly the highlight of the show was a new song, “Ordinary Love,” which is not on the Apple album, but was featured in that Mandela movie soundtrack. You can hear greatness, you know it right away. And the problem is U2’s new album is good, but not great. It needed a hit it did not have. Every band is built upon hits. You need a few as linchpins to keep the whole act together, to keep people coming.

U2 can move forward from here. If it just throws the old paradigm out. If it realizes that recordings are now subservient to live, and that he who creates the best live show wins, financially as well as artistically.

And U2 has the best live show of the decade, probably of the century.

Go.

What’s wrong with giving $400 million to Harvard?

Nothing if you don’t mind being castigated by Malcolm Gladwell and becoming part of the billionaire backlash.

If you had asked me if Bernie Sanders had a chance, I’d have laughed at you. He’s an old socialist from a tiny state and his religion doesn’t resonate (I know, I’m a member of the tribe.) However, his message does.

They laughed at Occupy Wall Street.

They’re not laughing now.

We don’t care how smart John Paulson may be, he’s got his money, but can he donate it to those who need it?

As the “Wall Street Journal” said in response:

“The gifts highlight the diverging fortunes of the nation’s colleges. The 10 richest institutions held nearly a third of total cash and investments at four-year schools in fiscal 2014, while the top 40 accounted for two-thirds.”

Hedge-Fund Manager Paulson to Donate $400 Million to Harvard

The rich are getting richer while you struggle to pay your rent on your miniscule salary. But that’s because you’re lazy. We all know that. If you just tried a little bit harder you could be rich too!

Hogwash!

Try being a teacher, making a difference, helping the younger generation…you’ll be struggling financially for the rest of your days. There are only a few professions that pay stratospherically, and a society they do not make, but we revere those with bucks and lower their taxes, because after all, they’re job creators.

This is the story of our day, income inequality. After global warming. Have you ever seen it be in the fifties in June in NYC?

And what this has to do with art is too many artists are on the wrong side. They don’t know what the job of an artist is. Which is to reflect our humanity back upon us, to soothe us and point the way. Instead, all we hear are platitudes and sponsorship stories.

Then Bernie Sanders builds on decades of truth and the public resonates.

Hillary Clinton is Jay Z. She made it to the top, but her history ain’t clean.

Is all we’ve got Jay Z?

Is all we’ve got Hillary?

Jay Z is rapping how he won’t live on Jimmy Iovine’s farm. I mean is that really the issue here? Artists being kept down by Apple? Have we come to that, where our targets are those who we compete with personally, as opposed to those who impede the greater good?

Everyone can use more money.

But Harvard is already our wealthiest university.

It’s already got a $42.8 billion endowment. Can we share the wealth people?

No, that would be communism, that would mean the terrorists have won!

To watch the inroads Bernie Sanders is making is remarkable. Because he’s saying what the people want to hear. That’s right, he’s paid his dues and his time is now, like artists used to.

Not that Bernie’s gonna beat Hillary. If Hillary fails it’ll be her own damn fault, she’ll be so busy triangulating that her phoniness will kill her campaign.

So do you want to be cynical or optimistic?

I hate that the press is salivating over the election eighteen months in advance, most interested in the horse race. The papers are not on our side, certainly not the television stations.

We live online. Our power is online. That’s where you spread the story, that’s where you break the bands.

And what resonates online is truth, justice and the American Way.

And we haven’t had that spirit here since 1969.

Paulson couldn’t see the backlash coming. The rich live in a bubble.

Which side are you on? Do you want to elbow your brother as you try to climb the greased totem pole or band together with like-minded people to change this world of ours?

Hard work should be rewarded. But it should not ensure the continued wealth and power of a single class. Most can’t go to Harvard, which is need blind to boot. Instead you have to go to the state school with less money which won’t cover your costs even if you’re broke. Tough noogies. Taxes can’t go up and you didn’t have the right parents, too bad.

Something is definitely happening here.

And what’s astounding is artists are nowhere to be found. So busy triangulating themselves, they’re afraid to speak the truth for fear of missing out on endorsements and opportunities. But the twentieth century is dead, we are not all one big happy family, a country united. Rather we’re made up of the haves and have-nots. And, ironically, the rich are just as ignorant as the poor, but in a different way.

Ferguson, Garner, Baltimore, something’s brewing, it’s happening here.

It’s a living movie, we all have roles.

Live yours to the fullest.

“Malcolm Gladwell just went nuts on a Wall Street billionaire’s $400 million donation to Harvard”

THE HYPERLOOP

California isn’t thinking BIG ENOUGH!

I’ll never get over Chris Christie nixing the tunnel to New York. The future is coming, we’ve got to prepare for it. Which is why we need high speed rail, right?

Not if it’s the slowest bullet train in the world and it’s gonna take until 2029 to complete.

They say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one

Used to be we counted on politicians and artists to inspire us, to presage the great leaps forward. Now the only people doing this are techies. Hell, the music industry still hasn’t gotten over Napster and is selling CDs and arguing about streaming payments when the public has already moved far beyond it. What kind of bizarre world do we live in where the public is ahead of an industry? It’d be like United introducing coast to coast turboprops or taxi companies promoting less punctual, dirtier cabs. The key is to get ahead of people! Have them come to you!

I’m going to print Musk’s explanation of the Hyperloop below, because although it seems like science fiction on the surface, once you get into the details it seems…possible. Then again, I’m just an arts guy and don’t know much about science. But I remember the sixties, when John Glenn orbited the Earth and we were all enthralled and inspired by science. What are we inspiring people to do now, post tinted pictures on Instagram?

We need leaders. Don’t bother watching the parking meters.

PAYPAL BANKING

Squeezed out of PayPal, one thinks anything Musk has to say about the company is sour grapes. Until you dig down into his vision for the enterprise.

PayPal’s success was built upon the low cost of transactions. To turn it in to more than a payments service is to both revolutionize banking and serve the customer. Once again, when you read Musk’s explanation below it will all make sense. Especially the money market fund that paid more than any other just to keep customers in the system. It would make no money for PayPal itself, but cement customers to the system, for their ultimate benefit. That’s a far cry from the modern banking system that wants to charge you at every turn and deliver less.

COAL

My inbox is filling up with naysayers pointing out that the Tesla’s electricity, its fuel, is generated by coal-fired plants. And that is true. But nowhere do you see it written how inefficient the internal combustion engine is, that’s one of the main selling points of electric cars, they they’re much more efficient in turning their energy source into propulsion. Cars are 10-20% efficient, a Tesla is 60% efficient.

Welcome to the new America where everybody lives in an echo chamber and has knowledge an inch deep. They know what a Tesla is, but have no idea how it works, what its benefits are. This is a major issue in the information society, people just don’t know what’s going on. Furthermore, those with a negative agenda can spread falsehoods to achieve their goals. I mean how many people know about the above-stated efficiency of electric vehicles? I certainly didn’t.

Find a further explanation below.

GOING PUBLIC

That’s what those with short term thinking who want to lose control of their companies do. Tesla went public because it needed the cash. But Musk wants to keep SpaceX private because public scrutiny would hammer and ultimately hobble the developing company. But what about the workers? What about their ability to profit on their stock?

Musk sent SpaceX employees a memo containing the below:

“‘For those who are under the impression that they are so clever that they can outsmart public market investors and would sell SpaceX stock at the “right time,’ let me relieve you of any such notion. If you really are better than most hedge fund managers, then there is no need to worry about the value of your SpaceX stock, as you can just invest in other public company stocks and make billions of dollars in the market.'”

Everybody’s a self-stated expert, everybody can do anything, hedge funders are dumb people making easy money. No, the truth is running a hedge fund is a skill. And if you think you can compete with the pros, you’re truly demonstrating you’re an amateur. Eric Clapton can play rings around you on the guitar and George Soros can eat your portfolio for breakfast.

SPELLING COUNTS

“Marketing people who made grammatical mistakes in e-mails were let go…”

People judge you by your mistakes, especially if it’s your gig. Ever hear of spellcheck? Use it, especially if you’re looking for a job or interacting with someone higher up the food chain. I know a woman who judges who to date based on the spelling mistakes. You think looks are everything…not to many winners.

If you can’t perform the essence of your job flawlessly, we’ve got no time for you.

CONCLUSION

All of the foregoing are lessons learned in Ashlee Vance’s excellent book

“Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future”

You can read it for tips, but you should really read it for inspiration.

Not everybody can win, not everybody can rule the world, but you can certainly try. Or align with a leader who is trying to accomplish these goals. Life is most fulfilling when it has value. It sucks to live with no cash, but once you get a certain amount you’re happiest when your life has meaning, which is usually accomplished through work. Ignore the constant trumpeting of numbers, they’re oftentimes fake, instead of focusing on the dollars look for the accomplishments. Did the artist have another hit? Do they still play their music? Does someone experience your product and smile? Are you changing the world?
That’s today’s goal.

For the loser now will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin’

THE HYPERLOOP 2

“‘The sixty-billion-dollar bullet train they’re proposing in California would be the slowest bullet train in the world at the highest cost per mile,’ Musk said. ‘They’re going for records in all the wrong ways.’ California’s high-speed rail is meant to allow people to go from Los Angeles to San Francisco in about two and a half hours upon its completion in – wait for it – 2029. It takes about an hour to fly between the cities today and five hours to drive, placing the train right in the zone of mediocrity, which particularly gnawed at Musk. He insisted the Hyperloop would cost about $6 billion to $10 billion, go faster than a plane, and let people drive their cars onto a pod and drive out into a new city.”

Musk is famous for overpromising when it comes to cost and delivery date, but he always delivers. With fifteen years to accomplish his goal, wouldn’t we be better off giving him a chance as opposed to investing in an antiquated system?

This is how the Hyperloop works:

“Billed as a new mode of transportation, this machine (the Hyperloop) was a large-scale pneumatic tube like the ones used to send mail around offices. Musk proposed linking cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco via an elevated version of this kind of tube that would transport people and cars in pods. Similar ideas had been proposed before, but Musk’s creation had some unique elements. He called for the tube to run under low pressure and for the pods to float on a bed of air produced by skis at their base. Each pod would be thrust forward by an electromagnetic pulse, and motors placed throughout the tube would give the pods added boosts as needed. These mechanisms could keep the pods going at 800 mph, allowing someone to travel from Los Angeles to San Francisco in about thirty minutes. The whole thing would, of course, be solar-powered and aimed at linking cities less than a thousand miles apart. ‘It makes sense for things like L.A. to San Francisco, New York to D.C., New York to Boston,’ Musk said at the time. ‘Over one thousand miles, the tube cost starts to become prohibitive, and you don’t want tubes every which way. You don’t want to live in Tube Land.'”

PAYPAL BANKING 2

“‘Almost no one understands how PayPal actually worked or why it took off when other payment systems before and after it didn’t. Most of the people at PayPal don’t understand this. The reason it worked was because the cost of transactions in PayPal was lower than any other system. And the reason the cost of transactions was lower is because we were able to do an increasing percentage of our transactions as ACH, or automated clearinghouse, electronic transactions, and most importantly, internal transactions. Internal transactions were essentially fraud-free and cost us nothing. An ACH transaction costs, I don’t know, like twenty cents or something. But it was slow, so that was the bad thing. It’s dependent on the bank’s batch processing time. And then the credit card transaction was fast, but expensive in terms of the credit card processing fees and very prone to fraud. That’s the problem Square is having now.

‘Square is doing the wrong version of PayPal. The critical thing is to achieve internal transactions. This is vital because they are instant, fraud-free, and fee-free. If you’re a seller and have various options, and PayPal has the lowest fees and is the most secure, it’s obviously the right thing to use.

‘When you look at like any given business, like say a business is making 10 percent profitability. They’re making 10 percent profit when they may net out all of their costs. You know, revenue minus expenses in a year, they’re 10 percent. If using PayPal means you pay 2 percent for your transactions and using some other systems means you pay 4 percent, that means using PayPal gives you a 20 percent increase in your profitability. You’d have to be brain dead not to do that. Right?

‘So because about half of PayPal’s transactions in the summer of 2001 were internal or ACH transactions, then our fundamental costs of transactions were half because we’d have half credit cards, we’d have that and then the other half would be free. The question then is how do you give people a reason to keep money in the system.

‘That’s why we created a PayPal debit card. It’s a little counterintuitive, but the easier you make it for people to get money out of PayPal, the less they’ll want to do it. But if the only way for them to spend money or access it in any way is to move it to a traditional bank, that’s what they’ll do instantly. The other thing was the PayPal money market fund. We did that because if you consider the reasons that people might move the money out, well, they’ll move it to either conduct transactions in the physical world or because they’re getting a higher interest rate. So I instituted the highest-return money market fund in the country. Basically, the money market fund was at cost. We didn’t intend to make any money on it, in order to encourage people to keep their money in the system. And then we also had like the ability to pay regular bills like your electricity bill and that kind of thing on PayPal.

‘There were a bunch of things that should have been done like checks. Because even though people don’t use a lot of checks they still use some checks. So if you force people to say, “Okay, we’re not going to let you use checks ever,’ they’re like, “Okay, I guess I have to have a bank account.” Just give them a few checks, for God’s sake.

‘I mean, it’s so ridiculous that PayPal today is worse than PayPal circa end of 2001. That’s insane.

‘None of these start-ups understand the objective. The objective should be – what delivers fundamental value. I think it’s important to look at things from a standpoint of what is actually the best thing for the economy. If people can conduct their transactions quickly and securely that’s better for them. If it’s simpler to conduct their financial life it’s better for them. So, if all your financial affairs are seamlessly integrated one place it’s very easy to do transactions and the fees associated with transactions are low. These are all good things. Why aren’t they doing this? It’s mad.'”

Makes complete sense, right? That’s what separates the winners from the losers, the innovators from the also-rans, they see a problem and come up with a solution the average person could not think of, which is why analytical skills are key. Which is why Steve Jobs said to get a liberal arts education, because if you know how to think, this ever-changing world is your oyster.

COAL 2

“For both engineers and green-minded people, the Model S presented a model of efficiency. Traditional cars and hybrids have anywhere from hundreds to thousands of moving parts. The engine must perform constant, controlled explosions with pistons, crankshafts, oil filters, alternators, fans, distributors, valves, coils, and cylinders among the many pieces of machinery needed for the work. The oomph produced by the engine must then be passed through clutches, gears, and driveshafts to make the wheels turn, and then exhaust systems have to deal with the waste. Cars end up being about 10 – 20 percent efficient at turning the input of gasoline into the output of propulsion. Most of the energy (about 70 percent) is lost as heat in the engine, while the rest is lost through wind resistance, braking, and other mechanical functions. The Model S, by contrast, has about a dozen moving parts, with the battery pack sending energy instantly to a watermelon-sized motor that turns the wheels. The Model S ends up being about 60 percent efficient, losing most of the rest of its energy to heat. The sedan gets the equivalent of about 100 miles per gallon.”