What about the people who are not trying to get rich?

I spent the weekend in Carpinteria, California. Less than ninety minutes from L.A., it puts you in a completely different headspace. With tall mountains on one side and the ocean on the other, this middle class place reminds you of nothing so much as the sixties, when we were all equal, when we were all in it together.

Assuming you don’t try to buy real estate.

But there’s a camping park. Carpinteria is egalitarian, it’s where the California dream still thrives. Where you’re three hours behind New York and couldn’t care less.

California summer is different from the east coast. There’s no humidity. You don’t sweat. It’s warm enough to not wear a jacket, although a sweatshirt might be necessary at night, still, it’s your best dream of summer come alive.

Driving up the 101 puts you in the mood.

After passing through Ventura the freeway hugs the ocean. Which seems like a desecration of the landscape, but allows you a view of the water, and the Channel Islands, and the drilling rigs. There’s nothing like it anywhere else, at least not in America. Mountains as tall as the Appalachians, but the snow never falls. You’re cruising along at 70 and you’ve got that bliss meditation promises, but your eyes are wide open.

Last night we went to Zookers, a local haunt with food so good I’d tell you to go, but my point here is as you get older these are the experiences you treasure. When you let go of trying to make your mark, when you realize you’re only here temporarily and you might as well let go, relax and float downstream, albeit with your mind still turned on. Good friends, good food, good stories, good laughs, that’s about as much as you can ask for in this life. You eventually find that out. When you can’t remember whether you’ve seen that band or not and you don’t want to see them now anyway, you just want to listen to the records, from when the members were still alive and they weren’t going through the motions, looking for cash, but burnishing their music in a quest to conquer minds and bodies, never forget, rock and roll runs on sex.

And we woke up early this morning to go to La Super-Rica, a Santa Barbara legend. Down the street from the County Bowl, the only other time I’d been there it had been closed.

Stephen insisted we get there before it opened. Just like he offered more than the asking price for his abode, he refused to endure the lines that snake after the 11:00 AM opening.

And despite finding a handful of people in front of us, despite there being a plethora of people behind us, the restaurant did not open at the appointed hour. It seemed to run on its own time. As if being a business was secondary.

The media is clogged with people getting rich.

Whereas real people know life is about living. That money is just grease, a conduit to experiences. And if you think you need a Ferrari, you’re not prepared for the carless society in the offing. Yes, not only will automobiles drive themselves, you’ll rent them when needed.

And I’d like to tell you a level playing field is in the offing, that income inequality will cease to exist, that no one will go to bed hungry and everyone will be able to pay their bills but the truth is nobody in America cares about anyone else, you’re on your own, struggle to establish a beachhead, but you don’t need an entire island, Larry Ellison doesn’t get to cut the line at La Super-Rica.

That’s right, before I left town I had dinner at Nobu. We were lucky to get a reservation, albeit inside, which is Siberia in Malibu. Everybody was dressed to the nines, at La Super-Rica, they were barely dressed at all.

No, that’s not true. But there was a plethora of flip-flops, and a  bunch of imperfect bodies, but everybody was smiling and no one was going anywhere. That’s right, at Nobu it’s about ascension, how can I climb to the top.

La Super-Rica is already there.

A legend, most of the food is under five bucks. I had the most expensive thing on the menu, and it was $6.80.

And everything is handmade, everything is unique. And unlike Chipotle, the food is not only fresh, but enticing. The dishes don’t look the same. The servers are not teens in the penalty box, but workers who love their gig, serving delicacies to the proletariat.

That’s what we are, the rest of us, who are not setting the world on fire. We are the workers keeping this country alive, we are the ones who make it work. Facebook would not exist without its users, Google either. We spend, we make the rich so. How come we have so little self-respect?

But when you can detach, go on a little vacation up the California coast, you gain some perspective.

You realize that we’re all looking for something unique, that we can tell each other about.

That our friends are our bank account.

And that if you find yourself a hundred miles up the California coast from L.A. you must stop at La Super-Rica, for the watermelon water if nothing else, you’ve never had anything like it.

There is no social media campaign.

Only word of mouth.

That’s all you need.

That’s all that counts.

I’m telling you now.

I’m worried. I wanna be happy.

And at 11:30 AM today, eating Chile Pasilla in the California sunshine, divining the tastes in the dish…

I was.

Individuals matter.

Jimmy Iovine willed Interscope to success.

And Steve Jobs did the same with Apple. But now he’s gone and Apple is hurting.

APPLE WATCH

Tech is about a level playing ground, albeit an oftentimes expensive one. Everybody gets to eat at the buffet, as long as they can afford the entry ticket. But please explain to me the three different Apple watches that work exactly the same, that are evanescent products with a useful life of two years at best. Sure, iMacs came in different colors, but they were all the same price. Fashion is subsidiary in tech, it’s the cherry on top, never the whole enchilada. Functionality comes first, and a $10,000 Apple Watch works no better than one for $349. Which is why Apple has only sold 2,000 copies of the 10k Edition in the U.S. Proving that the bad press the company got is not worth the extra revenue.

How did they get it so wrong?

By not having a visionary who could say no.

Unless you’re making clothing, fashion is a feature, not the essence.

APPLE WATCH 2

Yes, Steve Jobs never employed research, but he also developed products he thought the public would want to buy. Only early adopters want the Apple Watch, and there’s no word of mouth. Publicity will get you started, word of mouth will make you triumph.

The Watch was dead from the get-go.

Maybe it should have been introduced as a hobby, like Apple TV. So people would have low expectations and know they were along for the journey.

The Watch tells time poorly and has a steep learning curve for uses you’re not sure you need. Sound like a winning product to you?

Of course not.

Steve Jobs didn’t play in all arenas, only ones in which he could win.

The Apple Watch proves there’s no vision in Cupertino, not that we can see.

And no one who can say no.

APPLE MUSIC

Me-too is usually death. Its success is predicated on market share in a world where there’s little penetration. Which is how Windows 95 almost put Apple out of business. And the truth is streaming music adoption is still low, so Apple has a chance. But it’s a little more complicated than that.

You see streaming has already won, on YouTube, it’s just that that’s free to the customer. So if you’re not free, you’ve got to be a whole lot better, and Apple Music is not.

So…

Once again, Steve Jobs only introduced a product when he knew he could win. Design did not sell the original iPod, however appealing it might have been, but functionality/usability. The iPod was the first MP3 player that transferred tracks at high speed, FireWire instead of USB. Furthermore, the software eliminated stupidity. That’s right, you just plugged your iPod into your computer and the software, i.e. iTunes, took care of the rest.

There is no great advance in Apple Music. Even Songza had hand-curated playlists. So the company’s only hope is it’s so early in the game that they can end up winning.

One can argue that Apple should have truly differentiated its product. Maybe by giving less. No playlists, but easier functionality.

FUNCTIONALITY/USABILITY

This was Steve Jobs’s credo, make it easy to use, with no flaws. Apple Music is MobileMe on steroids. And there are so many options included that functionality is crippled, users are overwhelmed.

MobileMe sucked and heads rolled.

Whose head is rolling for the bugs in Apple Music? Someone needs to be fired, someone needs to take responsibility. People are afraid to download the software for fear of it screwing up their library. I’m still waiting for a fix to library corruption, but Apple is mum.

Not only is there no admission of fault, there’s no manual. Steve Jobs may have put up a press blockade, but he was unafraid of explaining his product, which Jimmy Iovine and his cohorts did so poorly during the WWDC presentation.

Jimmy Iovine. He succeeded by being a friend to the artist, by working relationships. At first the money was Ted Field’s, but it turned out Jimmy just needed that to get him started. Jimmy’s biggest triumph was the 9/11 TV broadcast. Give the man credit.

But Jimmy’s no visionary. He had one success, with Beats headphones. You’ve got to have two to prove it’s not luck. Jimmy failed with Beats Music. Disastrously. Unless you say selling to Apple was a victory.

Steve Jobs had multiple victories, the original iMac, the iPod, iPhone and iPad, never mind the Apple II and original Macintosh.

But now the company is running on fumes.

Because it needs a Steve Jobs and all it’s got is Tim Cook, a supply chain expert.

Let’s investigate what has been achieved since Steve’s death.

A smaller iPad, whose sales have now been cannibalized by a larger iPhone.

A larger iPhone, after Samsung cleaned Apple’s clock with bigger handsets for years.

Software releases are hitting deadlines, but there are so many bugs loyalists are frustrated. And I used to be a loyalist.

There’s a fiction that corporations rule in America.

The truth is it’s all about individuals. Sure, a group can effectuate the vision, but it always comes from one person, maybe a team of two, certainly not a committee.

Jeff Bezos is Amazon.

Mark Zuckerberg is Facebook.

Larry and Sergey are Google.

Daniel Ek is Spotify

Evan Spiegel is Snapchat.

Who is Apple?

This was the one that broke him in the U.S.A.

Donovan’s gotten a bad rap, ever since that Bob Dylan movie, where the bard from Hibbing cuts him down.

At this late date we can see Mr. Leitch was no match for Zimmy. But that does not mean he was not great in his own right. In 1965 Dylan made it to number two with his iconic “Like A Rolling Stone,” but “Sunshine Superman” topped the chart a year later. That’s right, in the summer of ’66, when the tide turned and the youth took over the nation, even though we didn’t realize it until two, maybe three years later, after the Summer of Love, after Woodstock.

Now Donovan was not completely unknown, everybody paying attention, the old folkies, not the AM denizens, was aware of “Catch The Wind.” Some knew “The Universal Soldier,” but now Donovan had switched labels, to the CBS powerhouse Epic, and he changed his sound, went electric, and got the big push.

And sure, the lyrics of “Sunshine Superman” were important. But really it’s the sound of this record. To hear this coming out of the speaker, and at this point there was usually only one, in the dashboard, in the transistor, at home, was to be transported, set free, feel good. Today’s music is too often exclusive, it’s people singing about how much better their lives are than yours. But “Sunshine Superman” drew you in, addicted you to the radio, made you want to buy the record, made you want to go to England. Today everybody wants to stay home, watch television, there’s a fiction that it’s the same everywhere, but the truth is foreign countries are still that, foreign, i.e. different, and what was happening in the U.K. in the midsixties was far more exciting than what was happening in the U.S., at least musically, they were breaking down boundaries, they were testing limits.

There was that bass intro.

And then the harpsichord.

And then that screeching GUITAR!

A magic elixir that immediately enraptured you. A one hit listen. That needed no time to build, that grabbed your mind and your body and took you away.

Sunshine came softly through my a-window today
Could’ve tripped out easy a-but I’ve changed my ways

HUH?

Today if you’re not on the road to victory, you’re not even playing. That’s right, everybody’s a winner, being a person is not enough. In this land of income inequality the rich are pulling away and either you chase them or are forgotten. Hard to imagine there was a whole decade based on setting your mind free, bonding with your brother, becoming your best self. And to many the road was paved with drugs. Which we all heard about, but refrained from, for fear of becoming addicted, until…everybody was doing them and we did too. Our parents may not have known what taking a trip meant, but we certainly did!

It’ll take time, I know it, but in a while

PATIENCE!

That’s another thing that’s out the window. Everything worth having doesn’t come easy. You’ve got to plot, you’ve got to wait. But that does not mean you cannot believe.

You’re gonna be mine, I know it, we’ll do it in style

Style… It’s so important today, how you look. But that’s not what Donovan’s singing about, he’s talking about attitude, something inside, you can be a king if only you decide and stop trying to convince everybody else.

‘Cause I made my mind up, you’re going to be mine

The key line, the most famous, he was emphatic, he was sure, he was empowered and so were WE! Back then you held back, you didn’t want to appear aggressive, have desires that were too big, but when it comes to love we’re all looking for confidence and security, and listening to “Sunshine Superman” we got it. COME ON, if you’re a guy from the era and you didn’t use this line to get up your gumption…you never played.

And there’s a whole story, standing on the beach at sunset, we did not know that this song was about a real person, Linda Lawrence, who Donovan eventually wed, years later, this was before the internet when we knew everything about everybody, we thought Donovan was singing METAPHORICALLY!

Now the weird thing about “Sunshine Superman” is it’s a period piece, a curio from the sixties. But at this distance, it doesn’t sound dated, but otherworldly. Play it for a young ‘un and they’ll say they’ve never heard anything like it, unless they’ve heard it already!

So it’s the summer of ’66. The radio is populated by the legendary Lovin’ Spoonful cut about the season in the city. The Troggs had their legendary hit. The Stones and the Beatles were prevalent, with “Mother’s Little Helper” and “Paperback Writer” respectively. Paul Simon had a huge hit with Garfunkel, the downcast “I Am A Rock,” but the Cyrkle also had a hit with an upbeat cover of his and Bruce Woodley’s “Red Rubber Ball.” And in the mix, was this chart-topper, “Sunshine Superman.”

Maybe it was the Zeppelin element. That’s right, both Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones are on “Sunshine Superman.”

Maybe it was Mickie Most, who was now working with Mr. Leitch.

Whatever it was, “Sunshine Superman” is lightning in a bottle. Hearing it back then made you feel powerful, that you were living in a world of possibilities, where there was plentiful opportunity provided by like-minded people.

It still does.

Rhinofy-Sunshine Superman

1. Karma exists. It may not be instant like in that John Lennon song, but it happens. May take a long time, might not be easily seen, may not be visible to anybody but you, the one who was scathed, but it’s real.

2. Niceness triumphs. Although no one can be nice all the time. And sometimes you have to push back. But if you’ve got the option, be nice, people appreciate it.

3. Be yourself. We’re all individuals. That’s what attracts others to us, our uniqueness. Don’t try to imitate someone else, focus on your strengths and heighten them. Everyone can’t do everything. Don’t try to fit your square peg in a round hole. But your trapezoid will appeal, if you just let it shine.

4. You can’t please everybody. It’s a phony concept that flames out. Be thankful you’ve got your group, your friends, your family, your fans. There are those who would appreciate you whom you’ve never met, focus on meeting them, not those who don’t care.

5. Education is everything. And it doesn’t have to happen in school. But at this late date we can understand why reading, writing and ‘rithmetic are so important. Yes, in the internet era, reading and writing are everything (typing too!) As for math… You can’t do a deal without knowing the numbers. And everybody wants to do a deal.

6. Learning is lifelong. You keep gaining insight and then you die. Life is a puzzle, one in which you’re constantly delivered new pieces. And you can’t figure some stuff out until you get this new information. Which is why age equals wisdom and the young may have their youth, but the old have all the happiness.

7. Possessions mean less as you age. You can’t take them with you. Furthermore, we’re evolving into a no possessions era. One in which you can rent a ride and you don’t even have to own a car. Experiences are everything.

8. No one has the answers when it comes to love. There’s no perfect partner, if you’re looking for one you’re doomed. The key is to play. Relationships are the salad dressing of life, without them it tastes very bland.

9. Do the right thing. Not only will it make a difference, you’ll feel better about yourself.

10. Time starts accelerating sometime in your late thirties or forties. If you’re not paying attention, if you’re not steering, chances are you’re not gonna get where you want to go.

11. Inspiration comes from displacement. Get out of your comfort zone, the rewards are legion.