I don’t know what happens when people die
Can’t seem to grasp it as hard as I try

“For A Dancer”
Jackson Browne

My friend just died. You can Google him, search for him on Facebook, you won’t find much. Although he was addicted to Foursquare for a time. He loved being the mayor.

I met Andy Oliver at the Vail Mountain Club. New members, we knew nobody and he seemed to be the center of attention, everybody came up to talk to him, I told Felice to say hi.

And thus began a beautiful friendship. One of my closest. That didn’t quite last five years.

Andy was the only person I’ve ever met who was as into skiing as I was. He knew all the hills, the lifts, the vertical drops. He’d been everywhere from Whistler to Val d’Isere, but now he was in Vail, because he could no longer work.

It wasn’t long before you knew something was off. You see Andy had a very soft voice. And when riding the lift the day after we met, I can tell you exactly which one it was, #26, the Pride Express, I asked Andy what was up. I mean he could barely talk and I could barely hear.

You can do that when you’ve been afflicted too. That was my ace in the hole. My own experience with the Big C. It’s kind of like being Jewish, you can tell anti-Semitic jokes when you’re a Jew, but if not…

Andy was Jewish too. Maybe that was part of our bond, the shared values. There was a streak of Jewish skiers in the sixties, back when assimilation was everything and skiing was an everyman’s sport, before it became about the haves and the haves only.

Andy told me he had salivary gland cancer. That it was a result of radiation for lymphoma two decades before. That it had been hard to diagnose, he’d gone to multiple doctors and spent time uncovering the cause of something that wasn’t quite right.

There was treatment.

And then there was the day Andy removed his feeding tube to ski the powder.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Andy grew up in Baltimore. At least that’s what I recall.

But then he went to Boston University. My sister and mother went to BU.

Then he went into real estate.

Then he got sick.

Then he got another job.

Then that job ended and Andy skied and traveled.

He took a train trip to Russia. He’d e-mail me from Asia. Sounds fantastic, I know, but Andy knew that time was running out.

Then it became harder to eat. It could take Andy an hour to finish a sandwich. People lost patience with him. But Andy was always up for making some turns. He was always optimistic, then again he bitched that people were beating the EpicMix system. He was high on the leaderboard, since he skied every day. But there were some with so many vertical feet that Andy couldn’t believe it was real. Andy had a strong sense of fairness.

But life was not fair to Andy.

Andy’s wife Nancy would talk about Andy not being around, not living forever. I didn’t believe it.

But then Andy got worse.

It happened two years ago. I got to Vail and went to the VMC, the Vail Mountain Club, where everyone knew Andy, where Andy held court…and he was not there.

I called, I texted, and there was no response.

Days later he sent a message that he had pneumonia. He’d been in the hospital. He was recovering at home. But I knew the truth, he was too depressed to connect, I’ve been there.

But after going back to NYC and returning to Vail Andy was back on the slopes. However, he was using a feeding tube. Ensure was his friend. But I’d get off the lift and see him there in his puffy Uniqlo jacket, ready to hit it.

But then Andy faded further. His voice got worse.

Oh, there’s much more. Much, much more. The stuff those who’ve been dragged through the travails of the Big C are utterly familiar with, but don’t broadcast. For all the advancements too often cancer is a slow sink to the bottom. With endless doctor visits. Trials. Hope that is too often extinguished.

There was radiation for spots on his back. The first time the doctor told Andy he couldn’t ski. But Andy found a doctor in Vail who said it was okay. And if you can’t do what you live for, why go on living?

But then the spots returned. Andy would go underground when things were bad. That’s how I knew they were bad, I’d e-mail him ski stories and get no response. Andy lived for ski stories.

And I’d see Andy in New York. And we’d get together during the summer.

And when the double vision came and went it seemed Andy had nine lives. If only he was that lucky.

There comes a point when you know the screw has turned, that you’ve passed the point of no return. That was last March, when Andy was complaining of pain on the chairlift. He wasn’t even trying to speak.

That’s what they don’t tell you about cancer, the pain.

And then Andy disappeared. Except for the wedding invitation. His only daughter was getting married in August, would I come?

Of course I would.

By this time Andy was wearing glasses with one lens fogged, the double vision had returned. His voice was so low and indecipherable that he typed his words on his iPhone. Andy was happy that night. But when I put my arm around him, all I felt was bones.

You can’t will someone to health. The latest studies show positive thinking to be a myth. You just pray for a miracle. That’s what Andy told me a couple of weeks back, he was praying for a miracle

But at least he was responding, I thought Andy was on the upswing.

But when I texted him on Sunday about coming to the VMC for wine and cheese, Andy never missed wine and cheese, he said no.

I then asked if he could ski.

And he said…

I don’t want to pull up the text. But the essence was the double vision remained, he couldn’t turn his head, and if someone ran into him on the slopes it would be very bad, he didn’t think he could ski.

Nor did I think he could. But he’d come to Vail. Andy was so sick, but sometimes people hang on for years.

But not Andy.

Andy Oliver died last night. Not even sixty. Unlucky in life.

And this might all be meaningless to you. But the time will come when you’re touched by the Big C, when Mr. D. comes dancing into your neighborhood. Suddenly life will get very narrow, very constrained, what was important just moments before will lose all meaning. You’ll be left with the question WHY? You’ll be soldiering on in a fog, like a zombie, not one on TV, but one who is truly marching in one’s own universe.

It’s the nature of life, it ends.

We just don’t know when.

Get old enough and health dominates conversation. Some become hypochondriacs, still others are deniers, believing if they just don’t go to the doctor they’ll survive forever. There’s a trail of dead who adhered to this philosophy. You might feel fine, but be completely unaware that plaque is building and you’re about to stroke out. Happens every day. Doesn’t have to, if you go to the doctor, but you don’t want to.

But that wasn’t Andy. Andy went.

But he didn’t make it.

No one does.

But what is important is what you do while you are here. Andy provided for his family, his wife Nancy and daughter Danielle. And Andy skied.

You’ve got to live to do something. Time passes slowly and then it accelerates so fast, you want more, but you see time running out of the hourglass and then you’re done.

You can’t play it safe.

But you can’t test all the limits either.

You can just reach out and grab it. You can live for moments. You can be thrilled by exhilaration.

That’s why we’re skiers. Because of the thrill. Of sliding down the slope. Of being amongst the mountains.

But there comes a time when we can’t even do that. You think you’re gonna live forever, but you don’t. And you are not healthy until the day you die. My mother still regrets she can no longer play golf, she’s using a walker.

But my mother is still here.

Andy is not.

Andy is now pain-free. He’s been released. His pain has been transferred to Nancy and Danielle and me and the rest of those who loved him.

You’ve got an Andy in your life. Whether you know it or not. The Big C lurks everywhere.

So smile. And laugh. And gaze at the landscape and treasure this great world of ours.

Because you’re not gonna be able to forever.

Trust me.

Unfortunately.

FALSE MODESTY

“I’m such an idiot.”

“I’m so stupid.”

“I’m so ugly.”

When I hear guys say these things, and it is usually guys, my eyes roll. This self-righteous blather does one of two things, it either takes the person out of the equation, eliminates risk, so you won’t judge them, or it demonstrates their superiority.

Let’s dig deeper. There are the wannabes, the insecure, who are too lame to compete. Rather than take the assets they possess and play, they want an advantage, they want to get a pass because if they played for real and lost they’d go home crying.

And then there are those who believe their poop doesn’t stink. They think that by telling us how inadequate they are it removes them from judgment, it makes them just like us, even though they’re gorgeous, rich and accomplished.

I mean come on, just own it.

But everybody in America is afraid to own it except for the rappers. That’s right, if you’re playing to the faceless masses you can boast, but if you’re one on one you have to be self-denigrating.

How did we get to this point? To where you have to put yourself down to fit in?

That’s what I hate about the corporation, all the gamesmanship. All the falsehoods.

So do me a favor, give it your all, own your strengths and do your best to make do with your deficiencies.

As Bob Dylan so eloquently put it, “each of us has his own special gift.” When you keep putting yourself down I want to run from you, I don’t want to take you seriously, you’re not dealing in the real world.

And it’s not only men.

It’s the women who talk about their “fat ass” who look like they haven’t had a meal in a week. Or those who worship their figure who say they’re full after a french fry. Just say you’re on a diet because if you weren’t a skinny-minnie you’d have no worth, even though this is untrue.

And the truth is most winners don’t undercut their assets. They own who they are. They play with all they’ve got.

Life is hard enough as it is, why do you have to play this phony game?

TOP TEN LISTS

Let’s call them what they are, not the ten best records or books, but the ones that are gonna make you look good by quoting them.

Earlier today I was reading the Top Ten records from the L.A. “Times” critics. In some cases, I’d never even heard of the albums.

Check ’em out here:

Top 10 lists reveal harmony among Times pop music critics

Have you heard of “Ought” and “Cold Specks”? They’re on Chris Barton’s list.

How about Tinashe, White Lung and Arca? August Brown listed them.

I could keep listing the obscurities, but it’s just going to give fodder to the experts, so deep in their holes that they think this off the radar stuff deserves to go mainstream and the problem is radio doesn’t play it and Spotify doesn’t pay for it and you wonder why most people tune out music.

You can’t list Eric Church’s “Outsiders,” because too many people bought it, it’s too popular. You can’t be a member of society, you must be an “other.”

This is an old paradigm run rampant.

Used to be there were comparatively few albums released and you made yourself feel good by denigrating the taste of the masses. That’s right, you put on your black and judged anything popular as junk. But the internet blew a hole wide open in that paradigm. With so many albums released, that which is not successful is just obscure. And when you tell those who are not deep into your hole they’re great and these people check them out and discover they’re not, you do a disservice to music in general.

That’s right, what’s holding back music is all the self-righteous pricks who need to believe their obscure favorites are the best, that they’re being ripped off by the system. It’s these people who are muddying the water, making the scene incoherent.

Let’s assume you’re not a fourteen year old addicted to Top Forty radio… How do you penetrate the scene, how do you discover what to listen to?

You certainly can’t trust these critics. Who go to the shows of favorites and crap upon them and then recommend stuff few are listening to and even fewer can comprehend. You just end up listening to the oldies and watching television.

And then there are the algorithms and the playlists and…

Recommending music is a skill. Talk to a program director. It’s not about their taste, but whether the music will resonate with the listener.

Think about that when you recommend stuff.

ANTI-STREAMING RANTING

This is an old topic, but I experience it every day.

Please don’t react with your emotions, but with intelligence, having digested the facts. Low payments from Pandora don’t translate to unjust Spotify payments. They’re calculated differently, they’re two completely different services.

But you just want to pile on the future, you just want to bitch that someone moved your cheese, as if the reason you’re broke is because Spotify exists. As for paying attention to the words of Taylor Swift, it’s her right to put her music wherever she wants, but she’s an uneducated wealthy person who’s got little idea what’s going on. If she weren’t already a platinum artist, she’d be begging to be on Spotify. She’s like a Democrat who gets rich and becomes a Republican.

But this is not about Taylor Swift, who has no power anyway. This is about you complaining that the public doesn’t hew to your vision, that the public doesn’t want to overpay to buy your album. Automakers keep improving their products, as do tech companies. Hell, where are Nokia and BlackBerry today? But somehow in music everything must remain the same.

We’ve got no leadership in the music business. It’s run by old men inured to the old ways who don’t want to break the game. That’s right, eliminate radio and the major labels would be clueless as to how to proceed. Music is so old school even Will Ferrell doesn’t want to participate in it. The reason the Top Forty dominates is because the rest is nearly incomprehensible, and too much mediocre stuff is promoted instead of the good.

BOB DYLAN’S SINATRA ALBUM

This is the future. The press release is the album. The music is irrelevant and goes unheard. No one wants to hear Dylan’s Sinatra covers, no one. It’s dead on arrival. Even worse than that Metallica/Lou Reed abomination.

This is how far we’ve come. Where albums by superstars go unheard. Because we’ve got so much at our fingertips and we’ve only got time for that which is great. And believe me, Dylan can barely sing, we need his covers of Sinatra standards like we need an album of pre-schoolers singing Led Zeppelin.

But the brain-dead media, the same one with the obscure Top Ten lists, prints this promotional drivel giving it the appearance of news when nothing could be further from the case.

We’ve got all the time in the world for great music.

But everybody in the music business is busy propping up dreck. It’s like allowing Pop Warner players to be considered next to NFL stars.

I don’t really care. The music business can drive itself off a cliff, that’s fine with me, along with the self-righteous people who believe that the Bruno Mars/Mark Ronson funk number is anything but a retread of what once was. How come music has become so insular? Is it that the barrier to entry is insanely low and those who’ve dedicated their lives to it can only feel good about themselves by championing that which is not mainstream?

Give me mainstream any day of the week.

Remember, these are the same pricks who castigated the Carpenters and are now in love with them.

There’s a reason Luke Bryan and Florida Georgia Line dominate the chart. Your bitch is that you had nothing to do with their success and your fandom is no different from that of the great unwashed.

Get over yourself.

That couldn’t possibly be his name.

In the late sixties America was inundated with British acts, a second wave that was not about hit singles, but albums, wiping away the detritus of the British Invasion and pushing the populace forward via the newly embraced radio format known as FM.

Previously littered with simulcasts and classical music, because of the higher quality bandwidth, suddenly FM was the home to free-format rock, where owners let hippies do what they wanted, the government decreeing that they could not broadcast the same signal on both AM and FM.

Suddenly, we heard Phil Ochs, “Outside Of A Small Circle Of Friends.” And Cream. FM was a club which was accessible to all but only the hippest were members. Seemingly every week there was a new act deserving attention. Including, in 1969, the guy with the indelible cover of “With A Little Help From My Friends.” Joe Cocker, wasn’t that a sexual reference, wasn’t the real name “Crocker,” like the deejay’s, took an untouchable classic and made it his own. His rendition even got a second life as the theme song to “The Wonder Years,” but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Records were expensive. You didn’t own them all, no one could. You were glued to the radio, to hear what you should. And it wasn’t only the Beatles cover that entranced us, but the one by FM compatriots Traffic, that seemingly no one knew until Joe covered it.

I’m speaking, of course, of “Feelin’ Alright.”

Seems I’ve got to have a change of scene

We were looking for more. We were not satisfied with what we had. And it was the music that opened our horizons.

And Joe Cocker took Dave Mason’s reflective number and turned it into a triumph of not only introspection, but exuberance, with the background vocals of Brenda Holloway, Patrice Holloway and Merry Clayton sealing the deal. Joe and his troupe found a groove that was not present in the original, he made the track his own, this was no karaoke star, Joe Cocker was going his own way.

And then we heard he was playing Woodstock.

You’ve got to know, we didn’t think it would happen, it seemed a fantasy, how could all these acts appear on one stage? But just by being included, you knew Joe was cool, he possessed stature.

And the debut LP blazed the trail.

But really, it was all about the second album.

Where do we start?

How about the beginning, with “Dear Landlord.”

Whoa, dear landlord
Please hear these words that I speak

Those words were written by Bob Dylan. “Dear Landlord” was on his comeback LP, “John Wesley Harding.” Which at this time I did not own. I learned the words I recite so frequently from Joe Cocker:

Now each of us has his own special gift
And you know this was meant to be true
And if you don’t underestimate me
I won’t underestimate you

Actually, Joe changed a few words, but the meaning was the same, from back when music could affect your life and change your soul, when it just wasn’t about mindless dancing and money.

Then there was “She Came In Through The Bathroom Window,” which was every bit as famous as the iteration on “Abbey Road.”

Then comes my personal favorite, opening side two, “Hitchcock Railway.” I was at a party last June and writer Don Dunn came up and introduced himself to me, I couldn’t stop testifying how much I loved this song, Joe did the definitive version.

Credit Milt Holland’s percussion and the Grease Band, “Hitchcock Railway” is a tour-de-force.

Then, of course, comes Joe’s rendition of “Darling Be Home Soon.” It was the piano groove that added the magic, taking one of John Sebastian’s best songs and making it Joe’s own. That was his specialty, his skill, the ability to take songs we knew by heart and reinvent them, turn them into something new. Joe took “Darling Be Home Soon” into the stratosphere.

And then, of course, came “Delta Lady.”

You’ve got to know what it was like to hear this come out of the speaker, to not be overhyped, to not find it on the countdown, just a random FM track. This romp that enraptured you immediately and then built to a level where everyone was firing on all cylinders, you couldn’t help but drop the needle on Leon Russell’s composition over and over again.

Yes, Leon Russell. Joe Cocker’s friend and foe all at the same time.

You see not only did Leon provide Joe this signature song, he then constructed the largest band ever to appear on a rock stage, and then utilized the success of the Mad Dogs & Englishmen tour to ensure his own stardom. Joe ended up drunk on the sidelines, he gained weight, disappeared and then stunned us by climbing back up to where he belonged.

I saw the Mad Dogs & Englishmen tour. With not only Joe and Leon with his top hat, but everyone whose name you’d seen in the credits and hadn’t. Everyone from Jim Gordon to Don Preston, to Claudia Lennear to Rita Coolidge, the tour’s other superstar in waiting.

You’ve got to imagine this. Rather than bring tapes or hard drives, rather than faking it, Joe Cocker fronted a veritable orchestra. The double album was a must have. For the rendition of “Cry Me A River,” Matthew Moore’s “Space Captain” and…”The Letter.”

Give me a ticket for an airplane…

Without Joe’s take, the song would never be as famous.

Then came “High Time We Went.”

It was a disappointment. We’d waited, Leon was blazing up the chart, and Joe released his first…dud. It failed on the chart and in our minds, to the point where many stopped paying attention and missed “You Are So Beautiful” and “I Can Stand A Little Rain” when they were released years later, in 1974. That’s right, even back in the album era, people had short memories.

But it wasn’t until 1982 that Joe was truly back, over a decade past his initial success, with a Jennifer Warnes duet that wouldn’t die, the theme song to the Richard Gere/Debra Winger pic “An Officer And A Gentleman.”

Debra Winger was the Jennifer Lawrence of her day, only she radiated more maturity and intelligence. Back when the movies were still an American addiction, when a song could still reach everybody, you could not escape “Up Where We Belong,” it was ubiquitous, not a cover, but an original, composed by a who’s who of writers, Jack Nitzsche, Buffy Sainte-Marie and Will Jennings.

And then Joe’s career was capped, he was ensured a place in the firmament, he was a certified legend.

Yes, the good guys win in the end. Elton John may have made an album with Leon Russell, but it’s Joe Cocker we love and remember.

Of course there were other tracks. Everything from the cover of Randy Newman’s “You Can Leave Your Hat On” to a take on Jackson Browne’s “Jamaica Say You Will.” One of my favorites is “Shelter Me,” from Joe’s 1986 album, “Cocker.”

That’s right, Joe soldiered on, from label to label, album to album, his work always demanded attention, he seemed to gain a second wind, he was running on Sheffield steel.

But now he’s gone.

Another one bites the dust. Another member of rock royalty. Not someone who manipulated the media, but led with his music, imagine that!

Back when a song was enough.

And, of course, the “Woodstock” movie helped cement his reputation, we made fun of his movements. But one thing was for sure, the music lived in Joe Cocker, he had it in him.

And unlike so many stars, there’s not much to say about his personal life, no scandals, nothing to note but alcoholism, which he seemed to recover from so dramatically, at least artistically.

So, will these songs last centuries? Will Joe Cocker be remembered by our children’s children’s children?

I don’t know. Get old enough and you realize almost no one is remembered. You see it’s all about your own personal experience, what goes in your ears and eyes, what fills up your memory banks.

And way back when records ruled the world, you had to go to the show to get closer to the music, to sustain your soul.

And if you were lucky enough to see Joe Cocker you know he never phoned it in, he was always the genuine article, he was always about the music.

And what more can we ask?

Joe Cocker – Spotify

It used to be a leak trashed an album’s commercial chances. Could just the opposite be true now?

Madonna’s a has-been. Like Paul McCartney and Tom Petty. Someone everybody knows who has trouble selling new music. But unlike McCartney and Petty, Madge is a trendster, she didn’t just replicate an old sound on her new album, she worked with hitmakers of the moment. However, this is no guarantee of success.

But now, unlike in the early part of this century, when the leak occurred the label didn’t just fold its arms and huff and puff, they put out a bunch of tracks, they capitalized on the leak, right now the album dominates iTunes, why it’s not on Spotify I don’t know.

Because everyone knows Madonna makes her money on the road. The best result would be to have people hear her new music. That’s the goal of all artists, and especially the oldsters, who tour to the classics.

Will the album continue to dominate iTunes?

We’ll find out.

But the point is we’ve done a 180. The criticized labels now react swiftly. And with this and last year’s Beyonce album and this year’s D’Angelo and J. Cole LPs, could it be the paradigm is shifting? Could it be that the front-loaded game of yore is dying?

The old game was about making a bunch of noise so the album would have a big first week and retailers would reorder. But today, physical retail is dying. And album after album has a huge lead-up and then dies after the first week. It’s all about records being listened to. The worm is turning. No one’s gonna care how many you sold in week one, how many you sold at all, but how many times people listened, on Spotify, YouTube…

Think about this. Once you eliminate the first week game, there’s no reason to release a single in advance of an album, no reason to promote intensely for a few weeks and then give up. It’s no longer about the media, but the audience. The media likes news. It’s news when an album is released, it’s not news when the audience embraces it and continues to listen to it six months later.

Madonna herself was initially tone-deaf in her response to the leak. Then again, everyone gets angry when their well-laid plans are upset. But that’s the world we live in, where everybody knows everything and it’s hard to keep a secret. And why should music creation be such a secret anyway? PledgeMusic built a business on letting pledgers in on the creation of the record.

The X factor, of course, is radio. Radio turbocharges hits. Makes careers. If radio picks up on Madonna’s new music, she’s home free.

But does it have to be this way?

It does because there’s chaos in the rest of the marketplace.

Radio is stupid, antiquated in an on demand culture. Radio’s only advantage is adding coherence to the scene, delineating what records to listen to. This doesn’t have to be done by radio, but so far no one else has picked up the mantle. We’ve got endless playlists, when we really only need a couple. There’s only one “Billboard” chart for every format, only one MediaBase report. If we could clarify online listening, we could capture the flag from radio and create a new power.

Something like this will happen, that we can be sure of. The same way leaks are no longer death to an album.

Once again, Madonna could be ahead of the curve. She got intense publicity for a couple of days, the music is available, and if she’s smart, and we know Madge is brilliant, she’ll make an appearance on “New Year’s Rockin’ Eve,” or another first night of the year special, stealing the thunder from Taylor Swift.

It could happen.