NEVER TRY TO CORRAL THE CUSTOMER

People balk at being controlled. Once you place limits, the public abandons you or finds a way to circumvent what you are doing. Give people the opportunity to do more, to expand their horizons, to share. Once you tell them what they cannot do, you’re screwed.

This is why no free tier music services will not dominate in the short run. The public has options. Whether it be YouTube or piracy. Trying to convince people that stealing is immoral doesn’t work, the RIAA already tried that. Don’t demonize your customers, EMBRACE THEM!

COHERENCE NOT CONFUSION

When it’s all said and done there’s going to be a ton of dough in recorded music. But the rights holders are doing their best to forestall this result. They believe competition is key, not understanding that online one service dominates and the rest carve up tiny slices. You want to have one service win. Otherwise, there’s customer confusion. No one wants to embrace what everybody else does not. That’s the lesson of the Tower of Babel society. Nitwits speak about a long tail, human beings want to belong, feel connected, they don’t want to be down in the niche alone, but together, with everybody else. Which is why there is only one Facebook, one is enough, you don’t want to build your digital home in multiple locations. And you want a good chance of being seen. Balkanization is death.

COMPETE ON SELECTION AND SERVICE, NOT EXCLUSIVES

That’s positively brick and mortar. The labels gave exclusives to Best Buy, indie retailers screamed, but it’s the indie retailers who remain. You think you’re getting a leg up by offering exclusives. You’re just pissing people off.

EVERYONE HATES BITCHING AND ENTITLEMENT

We live in a nation of vast income inequality. We don’t want to hear winners complain. Ever. And we don’t want to hear how a product benefits you, but how it benefits US!

PRODUCT FIRST, PUBLICITY LAST

Word of mouth built Google, Facebook and Amazon. In a world where it’s impossible to reach everybody via marketing, your only hope is you gain users and have them spread the word. People will listen to their friends, they ignore advertising. The key is to build something so cool, so utilitarian, that others will spread the word. And when you do publicity, it’s about explaining the growth. You don’t LEAD with the publicity, you FOLLOW with it.

This is about to whipsaw the music industry, which believes in frontloading. But no one can garner enough streams in the first week to make their numbers. The key is to get people to stream for years. How do you tell the story then? Awareness is important, but it’s all about the sustained build and the story. And the story isn’t who you worked with and what TV outlets you’re appearing on, but how people have embraced the tunes.

PEOPLE PAY LAST

They believe it’s their god-given right to check something out for free. And they eventually pay, but way down the line, because of CONVENIENCE!

The mobile industry did not force everybody to give up their flip phones for smartphones. Rather, users adopted them and convinced others to get them. And then everybody signed up for a data plan so they could play!

Mobile didn’t eliminate the flip phone, it came up with something better.  And you had to pay, handsomely, to get one and play. And you could not play without one, there was no free tier/competition.

However, people ARE cheap. Which is why T-Mobile and wi-fi calling are making inroads. Tell someone all day long that Verizon has a larger LTE footprint and they don’t care, they focus on price. Proving that some people will pay for quality, the others have to gradually get there. Kind of like cable television. There were early adopters, then everybody else came aboard and cable raised the price.

Once everybody subscribes to a music service, then you can raise the price, as did SiriusXM.

The convenience may come via bundling, i.e. with a cable or cell phone contract, or it may be about functionality, but that’s what closes users.

Right now, Spotify has learned that giving mobile away for free creates new subscribers. Don’t ignore the data. Your intellect is not always right. This is one thing tech understands and the entertainment business does not. When you’re talking about the internet, ignore your gut and go with the data.

DON’T LIE!

The truth is there to be found online. And sure, some might not Google it, but once someone does, the word spreads like wildfire. Jay Z says Tidal pays more. There is no evidence of this and it is contrary to the standard label contract. This is blowback just waiting to happen.

DON’T CONFUSE INDIVIDUALS WITH MASS SERVICES

No one person is as strong as a service. Evan Spiegel could kill someone, but it would not kill Snapchat. Taylor Swift cannot kill Spotify. Once something reaches critical mass the only way it dies is if the service itself screws up or something superior appears and supersedes it. Never yell about behavior, never complain, create something better, ahead of the marketplace, that will draw people to it.

PEOPLE DON’T RETREAT

We’re not going back to dialup and we’re not going back to flip phones. Never base your play on taking something away, that’s never ever gonna work. You always want to deliver MORE!

PAYWALLS ARE ONLY FOR THE HARD CORE

Most people don’t even know the “New York Times” has a soft paywall. Because they don’t care enough about the “Times.” Then again, Facebook users far exceed subscribers to the “Times.” If your service can sustain on the payment of a few, create a paywall. If you want everybody, start free and figure out a way to add desirable features and functionality to get those people to pay.

Furthermore, value can be unlocked in unforeseeable ways. The aforementioned Snapchat was a free messaging service, now it’s an entertainment hub. Create mass, then evaluate opportunities and pivot. If you don’t think audience size is key, you were never in a rock and roll band. Audience is everything. It will follow you and support you as long as you respect it and treat it right.

THE INTERNET IS FOR US

Especially with net neutrality. The public believes it OWNS the internet. Forget the truth, the backbone, the last mile. They see it as a democratic village where they have a voice. Impinge upon this at your peril.

DATA IS VALUABLE

It’s a fine line between privacy and data collection, but the truth is what you learn about user behavior has incredible value. Once again, this only comes from mass.

ARTISTS ARE NOT WEBSITES

Amazon is inert. Artists live and breathe. Artists are separate from services. Artists have an identity. Artists don’t just accept, they question. Tie yourself up with a service at your peril. The service functions 24/7, you don’t come to bat that often. If you’re seen as a tool, even of a good service, it will come back to haunt you. Don’t always say yes, artists gain traction by saying no.

Do you want to sleep with other people?

There’s a podcast revolution taking place. Like the digital photography revolution, its arrival comes long after the hype. We heard for ten years that digital photography was going to kill film, and then, seemingly overnight, it did. And the funny thing is a picture is no longer what it once was. You snap photos incessantly because they’re free, you forward them to friends and then you forget them. Photography is no longer expensive and rare, it’s plentiful and the most trivialized moments are being memorialized. So, will podcasts triumph overnight and change “radio”?

I’m not sure. But there’s so much fascinating listening that I almost don’t have time for music. Radiolab is the progenitor, and still great. Marc Maron has established a beachhead. And Alec Baldwin evidences erudition and insight heretofore unheard from an actor.

But right now I’m hooked on Dear Sugar Radio. And it’s all because of Cheryl Strayed.

Yes, she had that chart-topping book, “Wild,” but unlike a successful rock star she’s still unfiltered, unguarded, she’s a real person giving her honest opinions, never mind revealing personal truths that we won’t even admit to our loved ones.

Like her husband had an affair.

That she couldn’t sleep before her book came out.

That a poet friend lives with her husband and boyfriend under the same roof.

HUH?

So it used to be an online advice column, started by Steve Almond on the Rumpus.

And then Cheryl Strayed took it over, albeit anonymously.

Now it’s a podcast, wherein people ask Cheryl and Steve questions about life. Should I stay or should I go? Do all men admonish women for their weight? Is it all right if I want to stay married and screw other people?

And Steve bugs me. Because he’s absent testosterone. That’s one of the things the anti-bullying, politically correct modern communications era has wrought. I’m not saying boys should always be allowed to be boys and get a pass. But the truth is women often don’t understand or misunderstand men. And by refusing to admit how they think you skew the whole discussion. Men do tend to be visual. They do tend to want to impress their friends. If Steve had only stated this there would have been a good starting point, instead he avoids the truth, for fear of offending the audience, which is primarily women. That’s right, women are focused on relationship problems, they wrangle their emotions.

Just like me.

I can’t get enough of this stuff.

And as much as Steve makes me wince, Cheryl makes me smile.

She says she learned one thing from all her e-mail. That EVERYBODY feels like an outsider! Imagine that, instead of feeling inferior you should be comfortable that you’re one of the tribe, that you’re human, that we’re all flawed and equal to boot.

And Cheryl says the number one thing people want in a relationship is ATTENTION! That’s not hard to give. Or is it? Makes sense if you think about it, if we’re all outsiders, we want at least one person, our significant other, to get us.

And I’m not sure I approve of the format. Where they make calls and get opinions/takes. But as the series evolves, the people on the line have gained in status and importance and viewpoint. I think George Saunders is an overrated writer, he’s part of the “New Yorker” echo chamber, kept alive by his teaching job, why does he get all the accolades when those more popular are denigrated? But his insight into negative feedback was wise.

Now you’re pissed. You love George.

Get over it. And know that you feel superior when you love that which has a small audience, you want to be a member of a private club. And right now, Dear Sugar Radio is a private club. But when you listen to Arielle Greenberg testify about her husband and her boyfriend you’ll want to tell everybody you know.

She and her mate were not sexually in synch. She wanted to open the marriage. She got in touch with an ex. Who was married without kids. She got attached, she made him tell his wife, he left her and moved to Maine to be with Arielle. First he lived down the street, then he moved in.

Arielle’s kids were told that people could love more than one person.

Arielle and her husband’s sex life was reinvigorated. Then it evaporated.

And I can’t believe what’s coming into my ears. Not only did you tell this story, BUT WITH YOUR NAME ATTACHED??? What will your neighbors say? People aren’t THAT tolerant!

I’m not talking about rogue Mormons, I’m not talking about scripted TV shows… I’m talking about a regular person.

Personally, I don’t buy it. I believe people become attached and they can’t handle polyamory.

Or, they’re like me. I can’t handle polyamory. I could never have an affair, the telltale heart would evidence itself, I’d have to tell, in order to survive.

I don’t think Arielle Greenberg’s marriage lasts.

But it’s one HELLUVA story!

And it’s the kind of story you get on a podcast. Where people go deep into what only gets surface treatment in major media, if it gets coverage at all.

Because mainstream purveyors believe people only want to know about the beautiful people, they don’t want to see the warts.

But we do!

We all have warts.

And an artist is one who reflects them back upon ourselves, with insight.

Will Cheryl Strayed write another hit book?

I don’t know.

But she’s an artist and she’s a star. She’s one of a kind and she’s everyman. She’s just like us, but she can not only tell her story, but give us insight into our own. She makes this crazy life just a bit more coherent. And a lot more entertaining.

So subscribe to Dear Sugar Radio.

Go into the podcast app on your iPhone, it’s light purple, it’s there, it was pushed to your device by Apple.

Then touch the search button in the bottom right-hand corner.

Then type in “Dear Sugar Radio” and hit the return button.

Click on the resulting icon. And then touch the button to subscribe.

Then click the cloud icon to download “Dear Sugar, Episode 8: Big Love (Polyamory And Its Discontents) Apr 4, 2015” to your device.

Or, you can go straight to Arielle Greenberg’s story here:

Dear Sugar, Episode 8: Big Love (Polyamory And Its Discontents)

Fast-forward to 21:00.

Or start at the beginning to get the feel, the set-up.

You won’t be able to get this podcast out of your head.

Don’t believe everything you read.

Or to put it more bluntly, if “Rolling Stone” can get it wrong, what makes you so sure what’s on Fox News is correct?

In the information age, we’ve got plenty of gossip, a lot of rabble-rousing, but truth can be hard to find. Because not everyone wants to go on the record, because people shade the story to their advantage, because reporters want to become famous.

HUH?

Go back to Judith Miller. If she hadn’t been writing in the “New York Times” would liberals have voted for an Iraq invasion? A lot fewer, that’s for sure. People trusted the “Times.”

And we used to trust “Rolling Stone.”

The biggest story today is the Viacom write-down. How long did we have to hear that MTV raped the music industry? But all these years later, MTV has few salable assets and the record companies have catalogs that will seemingly never expire, and the acts built upon MTV’s base are still touring to this day. Would anybody in the U.S. want to see Culture Club otherwise? But few employ the long perspective. Because we live in an immediate gratification culture where how you look is more important than who you are. Lease a mansion and a sports car and people will think you’re rich when the truth is your bank account is empty and you’re two months from bankruptcy while the person driving a Chevy and paying down his mortgage is prepared for retirement. Then again, you never thought you’d live that long.

I never thought I’d live so long that “Rolling Stone” would have no fold, never mind be shrunk down to the size of other magazines. “Rolling Stone” was a paragon of music news, both criticism and in-depth reportage, and it made its bones on the back of the Patty Hearst story, which it got first. That’s why they made that movie “Perfect.” Suddenly our media won.

But now it’s lost.

Because the writer wanted to be a star.

That’s the story here. Not that “Rolling Stone” didn’t exhibit enough skepticism, although with Matt Taibbi off on what turned out to be a brief hejira in the online world they needed someone new they could hang their reputation on.

Turns out she blew it up.

At least “Rolling Stone” has a fact-checking apparatus, unlike so many publications. But when a writer hears something too good to be true, he never prints it without hearing it from another source, because of the spin.

That’s right, people have an agenda. That’s why famous people talk to the press, to get their viewpoint across. And sure, there are mentally ill persons like Jackie telling fibs, and everybody wants to be nationally known, but if your business is telling the story, you’ve got to get it right.

The main culprit here is Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s methodology. She had a precept, all she needed was to fill in the details. Campuses are a hotbed of rape, fraternities are bad, and if we just reveal these details there will be change. But this is not how a reporter does her job. A reporter might have the outlines of a concept, and then she fleshes out the details and finds out if she has a story. Which she might not. Which might be different from what she first believed. I’m telling you now, not every CEO is a crook. Not every politician has done heinous things. Sometimes you find out the people you hate are actually nice, when you get to know them. But most people never get access. What if Ms. Erdely had hung with the frat brothers? Would she have written the same story? Would she have found out that all of them were Neanderthals? But she didn’t do this, it would mess with her world vision. Everybody’s fearful the facts will get in the way of their vision.

Like the fact that Obamacare is working. The right wing hates this, so they just state that it isn’t.

Kind of like bilingual education. Sounded good to liberals, but the truth is its efficacy is weak at best.

Life is about the middle. The gray. And we trust our news sources to suss out the truth and bring us together.

But “Rolling Stone” pushed us apart. And now Jann Wenner says no one is going to lose their job.

WHAT?

Kill someone and you go to jail. Cheat and you get expelled from college. Perpetrate a myth that hurts real people and it’s business as usual? OF COURSE ERDELY SHOULD LOSE HER JOB! Judith Miller did.

Just because you admit you’re wrong, have an outside source investigate you, just because you go the extra mile that others will not, that does not absolve you of responsibility.

We’ve got to show people that not only are we correcting processes, we’re correcting behavior of individuals. If Erdely doesn’t lose her job, why should anyone else at “Rolling Stone” be afraid, why should anyone else worry about getting it right?

Tony Wilson taught me a lesson. You remember Anthony, the star of not only “24 Hour Party People,” but Manchester, England England, the perpetrator of Joy Division and New Order and the Hacienda. Well, Tony started off in television news. And one night the anchor read the football scores wrong. He blamed Tony, the researcher. Tony blamed the anchor. But the boss believed the anchor, and he told Tony he should fire him, but he was going to give him one more chance. Why? Not because anybody really cares about the football scores, they fade away in a day, but because if they can’t get the football scores right, viewers won’t believe they can get the big stories right, like war and diplomacy.

I’ve got no faith that “Rolling Stone” can get the big stories right. Because they had the twenty first century reaction. They apologized, went to intellectual rehab, and there were no consequences. But what about the frat brothers, what about UVA? But that’s collateral damage, the institution must live on.

Like the aforementioned Fox News, which rips reputations willy-nilly and perpetrates a false viewpoint all in the name of right wing demagoguery. Bill O’Reilly can never lose his job, his ratings are too high. But at least Brian Williams got suspended, as he should have, because the news isn’t about stardom, but TRUSTWORTHINESS!

Who do we trust in the digital age?

Not Mark Zuckerberg. He just wants your private information to sell to advertisers.

Amazon specializes in putting competitors out of business, they’re no different from a pitcher who puts tar on the ball.

And Google competes with Apple by giving away its main product, its mobile operating system, for free.

And Steve Jobs illegally rigs the employment system, preventing job mobility via agreement with Apple’s competitors not to poach.

And how do we know all this?

THE NEWS!

Brad Stone’s Amazon book is an account to be read by all.

The rest comes out in the paper. Pros dedicated to the truth more than fame.

But they’re rarely rich. And we keep on hearing that the newspapers are toast. And no one takes a long view.

And the truth is BuzzFeed is MTV. All those online news services of the moment, they’re gonna burn out, there’s nothing there. No reporting, only stealing. At the end of the day, real reporting survives.

Maybe not in “Rolling Stone,” but…

When competitors come along you don’t get down in the gutter, you climb up, you become even more of an authority. We’re hungry for facts, for truth, where are we going to get them?

“Rolling Stone” put a stake in its own heart. And by not firing Erdely they’ve become laughable. There are consequences in life, and one of them is if you screw up, you pay.

Erdely screwed up. Maybe she should never write again. Pete Rose can’t be in the Hall of Fame.

But in today’s rich and famous world we circle the wagons and defend our friends. That’s the college story, the groupthink. Not only the frat brothers, but the women labeling all men as potential rapists.

The truth is somewhere in the middle. Like a very few men perpetrate most of the rapes. That was in the “New York Times.” But that doesn’t make headlines. Better to believe UVA is unsafe and you can get raped if you walk by the Row.

I don’t want to see any woman raped.

But I don’t want to live in an hysterical culture where good stories trump facts.

And it’s not only “Rolling Stone.” A scientist wanted to become famous so he falsified data and said vaccines cause autism. And now measles have returned because the so-called “educated” class has read his report and wants the best for their children. Meanwhile, no amount of data can convince them otherwise.

I don’t know what the rape situation is on campus.

But one thing I’m sure of, “Rolling Stone”‘s story has added to my confusion.

Just give me some truth.

My favorite cut on the first Led Zeppelin album is “Your Time Is Gonna Come.”

Didn’t used to be, I came to that one late. I first liked “Good Times Bad Times,” it was a perfect single in an era where FM and AM were diverging and the latter would never play anything like it. And then there was “Communication Breakdown,” with its machine gun intro, exploding out of the speakers right after the acoustic intrigue of “Black Mountain Side.” The cut I loved next was “How Many More Times,” which finished the album on a dark note, that was always an element of Zeppelin’s greatness, the darkness, something was always hidden, you wanted to go behind that door.

And then came “Your Time Is Gonna Come.”

Not made to be a single, it began with a long organ solo (never underestimate the influence of John Paul Jones), and after settling into a groove, the guitar and bass locking in, Robert Plant sang…

Lyin’, cheatin’, hurtin’
That’s all you seem to do

I found these lyrics going through my brain at the strangest times, they were a sidekick when I needed one, even if I didn’t know it. That’s the power of great music, it’s there for you, it lifts you up when you’re down.

And it took months for Led Zeppelin’s debut to gain traction. It was spread via word of mouth, when that was literally done with your lips, before the internet allowed something to catch fire overnight, oftentimes undeservedly. Everybody who was deeply into music acquired it, little was written about it, and then came “Led Zeppelin II.”

Imagine having a favorite fishing hole, one where only the biggest trout are caught, that only the cognoscenti know about, and in one week the whole damn world shows up and fishes it out and you’re done with it.

That’s what happened with “Led Zeppelin II.”

Unlike with the first album, radio embraced “Whole Lotta Love.” You didn’t have to be locked in your bedroom to know it. Retailers stocked enough copies. Everybody rushed out and bought it. It was ubiquitous. Led Zeppelin was suddenly the biggest band in the land. It was like PSY’s “Gangnam Style,” if that song was better and there were eight more and there were no visuals to speak of. Sure, Jimmy Page had played in the Yardbirds, but they were never that big over here and Keith Relf was the frontman. All we knew about Zeppelin was the credits. And there wasn’t much there.

But the strange thing about “Led Zeppelin II” was how playable it was.

Even back then, in 1969, at the height of album rock, LPs contained a bummer or two, a track you lifted the needle over. But not “Led Zeppelin II.”

My initial favorite cut was the unheralded and nearly forgotten “Living Loving Maid (She’s Just A Woman).” I was into the roller coaster rides, those cuts that twisted and turned at high speed and deposited you on the tarmac of the amusement park wanting to get right back on the ride, salivating for more.

Of course there was the scatological “The Lemon Song,” and there were a bunch of cuts with stereo effects that made for great headphone listening when they still did that, but the tracks that refused to fade away and continued to radiate were the ballads. Most notably “Thank You,” which Tori Amos does a killer take of, and “Ramble On.’

Now I bought “Led Zeppelin II” the day it came out, borrowed the Vista Cruiser and drove up to Korvette’s and laid down my allowance. I came home and dropped the needle and heard it for the very first time, played it incessantly for a week and then gave it up, I knew it, I’d digested it, but worse, everywhere you went you heard it. I know times have changed, but they’re still the same, we had highly-marketed acts back then, but if you put out music this infectious today all the trappings would still be irrelevant. They certainly were back then.

And I didn’t listen to “Led Zeppelin II” again for six years, until I was stuck in a condo with that and “Physical Graffiti” and a couple of Doobie Brothers albums for a month straight. All those years later I could listen once again. And “Ten Years Gone” became my favorite cut, and it still is, but when I pulled up Zeppelin on my phone the other night and heard “Ramble On” I was astounded.

Mine’s a tale that can’t be told
My freedom I hold dear

Did you watch the last episode of “House Of Cards”? When they were in the desert? I used to spend a lot of time driving cross-country, before there were cell phones, when if you were lucky you got the farm report on the radio, life was so much different then, we weren’t all hooked together, we had a freedom we’ve given up that we are only now realizing we’ve lost.

That’s what I loved about listening to music, the ability to shut out the rest of the world. I didn’t want to be social, I didn’t want to share, I just wanted to play my records and go to the show and bond with the act.

Jimmy Page recently remastered “Led Zeppelin II.” There was a ton of press about it, as if everybody was gonna go out and buy it, as if everybody still had a CD player/disk drive. Today we listen to files, tomorrow it’ll all be streams. And big announcements like this and attendant instant sales will be history. It’s about setting the record straight, getting closer to the artifact, finance has to take a back seat.

Which is all to say I didn’t bother to spin the Zeppelin remasters, the 1990 boxed set was good enough, but when I stumbled upon the remastered “Ramble On” I heard stuff I never did before.

It’s John Bonham. Is he playing with his hands? He may be dead, but he’s so alive here.

And then John Paul Jones, so lyrical on the bass. From back when bands were such, before records were made by a committee of undertakers called in to compose a hit. When you put four people in a room, a plane, a bus, you come up with something superior to what anyone can do alone.

Not that I want to understate the importance of Jimmy’s acoustic guitar, but I could always hear that. And Page is not dominating, he’s accompanying, they’re all in it together, on the journey of life, led by Robert Plant.

Leaves are falling all around
It’s time I was on my way

The funny thing is the record came out in the fall. And I hate that season and love it too. The days are getting shorter, the landscape is dying, but as you approach the darkness of winter the mind takes over from the body, this is the season of heavy thought.

Got no time for spreading roots
The time has come to be gone

I used to be this person. I was itinerant. If it didn’t fit in my car, it didn’t make the journey. I was searching for experience, for happiness, and there was little love along the way, not that I didn’t hunger for it.

Ramble on and now’s the time
The time is now, to sing my song

Funny how the distance give you insight. Get old enough and songs make sense in a way they never did before. Robert was a rock star, he wanted to devour life, he didn’t want to get stuck in one place, he wanted to experience it all before he settled down.

And like I said, so did I.

I was inspired by the music. Loud and sometimes bombastic, like Led Zeppelin, and quiet and insightful, like Joni Mitchell. If I wanted to know which  way the wind blew I turned on the radio, not for the weather report but the records. They were my guide. Inspiring me to take chances, to be all I could be.

There’s that break, with one of Jimmy’s guitars in each ear, setting your mind free, to contemplate your direction, to take stock and then…

Ramble on.

I saw Led Zeppelin one year later. In the rain at the Yale Bowl. I’d love to tell you the show was transcendent, but they were more disappointing than great. The third album had not yet been released and they played too much of it and they did nothing so much as punch the clock, because once you leave the metropolis it all runs together and rarely matters.

But I did see them again at the Forum in L.A., during their week-long stand back in the spring of ’77, when they came to conquer and achieved their goal. It was a tent show for believers, and at that point Jimmy and Robert were more powerful than any religious deity, fans would follow them anywhere. But they were in it for the money and the girls and the music. They needed the adulation but they didn’t want to bask in it, because they were different from us, other…which made us want to draw even closer.

Ramble on and now’s the time
The time is now, to sing my song

It’s always now. Jimmy may be unsure where to turn, but Robert’s still searching, a golden god casting aside his robes and walking amongst men, a beacon to us all to keep pushing the envelope, to test limits and do the unexpected.

And the glue is music.

Tech is tools.

Music is an essential elixir that changes your chemistry when it flows into your ears. It soothes your wounds and makes you powerful, and keeps paying dividends as time goes by.

I’d heard “Ramble On” enough for a lifetime back in ’69. And although I have fond memories of Crazy Elephant, I rarely go back there, the pop music is good for nostalgia but then there are some cuts that keep delivering new insights, like the Bible.

Led Zeppelin were not critically revered in their heyday.

Their manager thought so little of the legacy of their music that he sold the rights to the record company.

But younger generations picked up on the tunes and the internet made Led Zeppelin almost as big today as they were yesterday.

For now I smell the rain
And with it pain and it’s headed my way
Sometimes I grow so tired
But I know I’ve got one thing I got to do

I actually like the smell of rain. But no one enjoys the pain. And the older you get the more tired you become. But then you realize there’s only one thing you’ve got to do…

RAMBLE ON!

Ramble On – Spotify