My goal is not to die in the 405 reconstruction.

Let me explain this to you. The Democrats voted for stimulus, and money was appropriated to extend the carpool lane from deep in the San Fernando Valley so far south it’s a different time zone, assuming time zones changed from north to south, which they might as well, with traffic so slow in Los Angeles. And you might think this is a good idea, but that would mean you’ve never studied highway science, wherein it’s stated if you build it they will come, yup, if you make more lanes it’s only a matter of time before they fill up with traffic from citizens living ever further away.

So I’m against the reconstruction. Which has now lasted so many years I don’t expect it to ever end. I expect to see Kiewit workers married, having babies and dying before traffic ever flows freely again. Yup, Kiewit is the contractor, their yellow trucks are everywhere, that’s where the real money is, not in entertainment, I’m sure Mr. Kiewit is a billionaire.

So let me explain this to you. Realizing that L.A. is gridlocked almost as bad as Brazil, construction doesn’t start until dark, when reasonable people are safely home in bed. But I’ve predicated my whole life on being unreasonable, I’m a contrary, I come from the Yogi Bear school of life, I may sleep til noon but before it’s dark I’ll have every picnic basket that’s in Jellystone Park. In other words, you won’t find me in rush hour traffic, but when everybody’s car is in the garage, that’s when I ply the freeway, with the drunks and the professional drivers. And I’m on that freeway, the dreaded 405, every damn night, it’s the main route from Santa Monica to Felice’s house, her exit is Skirball, just a hop, skip and a jump before this endless construction, but now…

You can never figure out when exits are open or closed, never mind lanes. I’ve driven south to go north to have to go east to pack it all in and take Beverly Glen more than once. And I hate the loss of time, but even more I’m worried about my life.

Yes, what do they say, in a massive construction project they factor in the deaths? Yup, like if they build a skyscraper “x” number of people will die? I think they’ve made that same calculation with the 405, I feel my days are numbered.

Let me explain this to you. While they were fixing the Sunset bridge, I oftentimes got on in Bel Air, I think it’s Moraga, I don’t even pay attention to signs, I just run on instinct. But the problem is… You get on and your lane ends…instantly. And there’s no warning to those zooming down the track.

Now my car’s got a ton of power. Which is why I leave so much room between me and the car in front, to the point where people behind me flash their lights and beep their horn…I want room to maneuver. God forbid you drive a Chevette, you’re gonna get crunched.

Yup, you accelerate and the orange cones tell you your lane is ending but there’s no warning to those already in the lane that you need to merge and it’s so late at night they’re somnambulant. It’s a harrowing experience.

But it gets worse. Just last week they opened the new northbound Sunset on-ramp. Fantastic. Except they haven’t yet taken down the barriers, you swing around the corner and are injected into traffic blind… Yup, you can’t see through the concrete and the oncoming traffic can’t see you.

But Wednesday night was the worst.

Somehow they decided they needed to squeeze five lanes down to two at the top of Mulholland, where they had to completely rebuild two bridges to accommodate the two new lanes. Yes, that’s like tearing down your whole house to build a new bathroom, but that’s the way this inept reconstruction project was conceived.

Only one problem… I can’t see that my lane is going to end. There’s no sign. I’m just cruising along and I notice up ahead that…the cones seem to be encroaching upon my lane.

So I put on my blinker. I downshift, I look for my entrance point.

WHICH DOESN’T EXIST!

Big rigs, vans, everybody with their brights on is zooming down the one of two remaining lanes I’ve got to merge into.

This is finally it. What I’ve been dreading. Death. After years of reconstruction, my luck has run out.

What do I do? Run through the orange cones and wreck the undercarriage of my automobile and then figure out how to cross back through to merge again? Yup, the three lanes to my right are completely empty, god knows why they had to close them, but the orange cones are so tight there’s no way I can go from the wrong side to the good further down the road.

And I’m running all this through my brain, its calculations faster and better than a computer, and I’m completely flummoxed…if I force myself into the left lane will these drivers wake up, going 70 instead of the construction speed limit of 55, and move into the one remaining lane on the left? But there people are doing 80, oblivious to what’s going on, what if there’s no room?

And if I put on the brakes, how long before someone plows into my rear end?

So I’ve got the revs high, the pedal to the metal, and miraculously I squeeze in. I really can’t tell you how I did it. Reminds me of missing that rock in Val d’Isere, out of control on the ice, with nowhere to stop. My brain shut down, my body took over, I don’t know how I survived. Same deal Wednesday night.

And now I’m confronted with a big question. Do I ever take the freeway again?

I don’t want to be one of those people who stay on side streets, who take Beverly Glen or Roscomare, but I’m feeling my number is up.

And last night I decide, like a circus performer, I must take the freeway, to get over the fright. I make it on at Sunset and I move into lane number 2 to avoid a problem but it seems like I’m at the Nurburgring, because in lane number 1 everybody’s positively flying, oblivious to the changed conditions.

And the radio is blasting, I cannot take my hands off the wheel, it’s the soundtrack to my demise, it’s keeping me going, and just when I get in the clear, I hear it, the unmistakable, previously resistible, but now indelibly great intro to “La Grange.”

Sometimes it’s just about the sound, sometimes your brain just shuts down, thinking stops, and what pours out of the speakers into your ears keeps you alive.

“La Grange”

PHOTOS

Used to cost something and were shot sparingly and viewed in the future. Today, photos literally cost nothing and are oftentimes shot and discarded. I was stopped at a light in Brentwood yesterday and my eye wandered to see Dustin Hoffman cross Barrington. My first thought was to reach for my phone. In the old days, I would have been formulating the story in my head to tell in the future. Today, the picture tells the story (thank you Rod Stewart!)

MUSIC

Was something you listened to, now it’s something you use. You add it to YouTube clips, you integrate it with your projects, it’s all done very easily but copyright law has still not caught up with today’s uses, nor has the music industry.

CREATION

Used to be expensive and we felt anybody who’d made a record deserved attention. Now anyone can record, even on their iPad, and we need a reason to pay attention.

PHONE

Long distance was expensive, today you can video conference across the globe for nothing.

AUTOS

We used to want something that impressed others with its swooping lines and horsepower, now our vehicle is a badge of our eco-consciousness. You may buy a Porsche, but you’re gonna be judged negatively by the very people you’re trying to impress. If your car is not a hybrid or an electric, you won’t become a pariah like a smoker, but you’ll be close.

NEWS

We trusted the few sources we had. Now no one trusts TV news, other than the images displayed. What anybody says is seen as no different from wrestling. Now news is plentiful and the odds of being out of the loop are infinitesimal. Then again, we’re all on news overload so except for a few stories, like the Boston bombing, we tune out so much, figuring our friends will clue us in on what’s important.

COLLEGE

Was once seen as an eden for few that expanded your brain. Now it’s an overpriced haven for everyone to get a job.

SUMMER CAMP

Was where you had color war and made lifelong friends. Now it’s where you develop skills and build your college resume.

STEREO

Once upon a time you could only play your music at home, it wasn’t until the seventies that you could take it in your car. Today you expect all your music to be available everywhere you go.

INTERNET

You used to lament the downtime, you knew your provider’s telephone number by heart. Now, when the Internet goes down it’s akin to a blackout, a very rare event. Then again, why is it blackouts are more prevalent in the twenty first century than they were in the twentieth?

RICH PEOPLE

Hid and did their work behind closed doors. Today everybody who’s rich wants acknowledgement from the poor, it’s like they want to rub it into everybody else’s face how much better they are.

GOVERNMENT

Was a functioning body making life better for all of us. Has now been labeled a do-nothing enterprise and those elected on this premise are doing their best to live up to this description. Why run for office if your main goal is to stop legislation?

ABORTION

Easily had, all over our country. Now, unless you live in a northern metropolis, you’ve got to have money to get an abortion at the clinic not so close to you.

REPUBLICANS

Wanted to live free and die. Now they want to get in your business and tell you how to live.

APPLE

Going out of business then the triumph of the century and then a running out of gas has-been. Illustrating that perception is only key in art.

COMPUTERS

Used to crash and you used to know how they worked. Now your tablet never crashes.

LIGHT BULBS

Became political. Who knew that most of the energy dissipated as heat? If we can switch everybody to efficient LED bulbs, with fluorescents nearly passe, what other problems can we as a nation, with legislation, tackle and solve? In other words, when was the last time you heard someone bitch that they’ve lost their freedom because they can’t buy an incandescent?

ONLINE ADS

Went from nonexistent to de rigueur. Even nytimes.com has ads covering the entire site. The next business is charging people to make the ads disappear, YouTube would be more profitable that way.

YOUTUBE

Went from loss leader to profitable. That’s the value of deep pockets, they can think beyond today. And isn’t it interesting that the deep pockets in music can only think about yesterday, with execs needing fat paychecks and artists still clamoring to sell overpriced albums nobody wants.

EVANESCENCE

Nothing lasts anymore. Certainly not movies or music. TV has a longer lifespan because it’s built for the modern paradigm, needing to be in the consumer’s face week after week. Amazing that musicians don’t take heed.

MARKETING

Used to be the narrative to sell the product. Now marketing is the product.

HEADPHONES

Used to be rare and expensive, but are now cheap and plentiful, people own multiple pairs. First the product is democratized, then quality improves. So don’t bitch about today, think about tomorrow. Everyone will be able to hear your music in good quality, it’s just that you’ve got to give them a reason to listen to it.

KICKSTARTER

Was a way for the underdog to get financing, with the illusion of a profile. Now it’s where the already successful go to get way too much money, and as a result they’re killing crowdfunding. That’s the way of America, anything worth doing is overdone, and killed. If you don’t keep it small, you kill it. Kind of like EDM, will Live Nation and SFX kill it? They’re gonna try!

Yes, you all know “All Right Now,” hopefully the extended version, with the guitar solo, and I bought that album, “Fire and Water,” but I didn’t love it. Yet, over the years, after the band broke up and got back together and Paul Rodgers moved on to Bad Company and Paul Kossoff OD’ed on an airplane…I’d hear track after track and would be positively stunned how great they were, I listened to “Molten Gold: The Anthology” incessantly upon its release in 1993, back when you didn’t have to play what everybody else did to feel a member of the club, I reveled in being in my own private universe, peeking in on what once was, decades before, when the Stones and so many mid-sixties bands had built upon American R&B and then moved on and…Free was still influenced by those sounds, were creating basic music that sounded so good.

Yes, as time went by, to this day, people kept adding more and more. To the point where you expect to find the kitchen sink, buried somewhere in the track if you’re willing to dig deep enough. But so many Free tracks were basic, they were like being in a club, hearing the band live, you listen to their BBC tapes, also on Spotify, and they don’t suffer, unlike the live work of so many bands to this day.

But let’s start off with my introduction to Free, the one track I knew from the A&M sampler compilation “Friends,” “I’ll Be Creepin'”.

I’LL BE CREEPIN’

Oh, it’s all good, the groove, the guitar, the bass, the vocal. But for a track to be indelible it must have a magical element. And in “I’ll Be Creepin'” it’s the break, at the one minute mark…

I’ll hold you in my arms
Like nobody else
When I know we’re apart
I won’t take no less

They’re not looking for this sound on the TV competition shows, but right here you hear the magic that made Paul Rodgers one of the paramount vocalists of the rock era. He could belt, but he could also croon… It’s almost like he’s singing it to you on the couch. Whew!

THE STEALER

When the history of rock and roll is written…Paul Kossoff will be left out.

I won’t say he’s in the league of Jeff Beck, he may not be as fluid as Eric Clapton, not as good a writer as Jimmy Page, but the sounds he wrung from his instrument… Today, everybody’s technique and rarely unique. The intro sound is the essence of rock and roll, the guitar that makes your body bend and draws you to the speaker. There have been so many covers of this track, none quite as good as the original, but like Kossoff himself, most people still don’t know it. SPREAD THE WORD!

SONGS OF YESTERDAY

This is notable primarily for Andy Fraser’s bass. Not that Kossoff doesn’t add intriguing accents. But once again, like with so many Free tracks, it’s primarily about the feel. It’s like the best band ever is playing in the house next door, no one’s paying attention, but that makes no difference, you realize how positively great they are. By not swinging for the fences, they score all the runs.

OH I WEPT

Ditto. Much quieter than “Songs Of Yesterday,” “Oh I Wept” has got even more intimacy but still feels like you’ve found the Hope Diamond when no one was even looking for it. This is the exact opposite of what people are making these days, but exactly what people are looking for. We’re looking for humanity, a reflection of mood… Come on, ever stayed inside on a rainy day, dreaming about old loves…THIS SOUNDS LIKE THAT!

CATCH A TRAIN

Nobody knows this cut, and it’s positively secondary, but listen to the guitar work and you’ll know you’re in the presence of something special, from the era when it was all about the album cuts.

LITTLE BIT OF LOVE

Even better, but less innovative than “Catch A Train,” if you’re under forty you’ll think this was an FM staple, but it was not. It’s dynamic and it’s in your face without being overbearing. This demonstrates how much better Paul Rodgers is than everybody else, someone different sings this and it’s just not as good. This was a band of virtuosos, let’s not forget drummer Simon Kirke, and together they made a wondrous noise.

MR. BIG

The second side opener of “Fire And Water,” it was just too subtle after purchasing the album based on “All Right Now,” still it’s very good. As is…

FIRE AND WATER

They don’t make album openers like this anymore. Something that starts off quiet and isn’t radio-ready. Then again, I’d argue a remix, a better production, would have made such a difference. The essence is here, but it’s like you’re listening through a tunnel. But once you get into Free, it all makes sense. Furthermore, I’m including multiple live takes in this playlist, they’re everything the studio version is not…powerful, dynamic and triumphant.

EASY ON MY SOUL

This is positively mind-blowing. So similar to Bad Company’s oeuvre, that you won’t be surprised to find that monster band did its own version:

Bad Company – Easy on my soul

Which is plenty good, but the original is even better, because shooting lower, a bit more controlled…it becomes one of those songs like Split Enz’s “Message To My Girl” that means everything to you in spite of the fact that nobody knows it. You just can’t play “Easy On My Soul” loud enough, you want it to drown out everything else in your presence, you want to revel only in it.

ALL RIGHT NOW

You have no idea what it was like to be in the car in September 1970 and hear this emanating from the speaker, back when a hit was truly universal, when everybody with ears heard it. Oh, it’s a great song, but it’s truly about the SOUND! Paul Kossoff belongs in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame just for this. But that’s not how it works. You need a champion. And no one’s championing Free and too many consider Rodgers’s work with Bad Company misogynistic, and those who worry about what others think of their opinions can’t stand up and say how incredible this music is.

BUT I AM!

Rhinofy-Free

Previous Rhinofy playlists

My inbox is blowing up with testimonials. I’m getting more feedback than I do about any record ever. Isn’t it interesting that Jay-Z and Kanye’s productions are push and Uber is pull and the end result is everybody’s talking about Uber and the only ones going on about Jay-Z and Kanye are the talking down from above straight media, who buy into the hype and fan the flames of non-stories, or those most people don’t care about.

What Uber has done is create a great service that people want to testify about. It’s no different from a band, it’s just that Uber is disruptive and solves a problem and therefore people spread the word. We’ve got tons of problems in music too, but the solutions are just not innovative enough. Algorithms can’t fix everything.

Kind of like today’s homepage suggestions on Spotify:

“People who listen to The Doobie Brothers are also listening to Tears For Fears.”

Isn’t this almost like saying some people are bisexual so we’re gonna show you some same sex options just in case? (Actually, that seems much more insightful and helpful than these ridiculous music recommendations!)

And then there’s:

“You listened to Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers. Here’s a song you might like: “Here I Am,” by Steve Earle.”

Isn’t that like taking your longhaired buddy to the country bar?

“You listened to The Doobie Brothers. You might like this song: “Voodoo Child (Slight Return), by Stevie Ray Vaughan And Double Trouble.”

HUH? Isn’t that like saying if you like the Monkees you’ll love Jimi Hendrix?

And:

“Since you listened to Traffic, you might like this new release by Graham Parker…”

One can argue strongly that Graham Parker was a REACTION to Traffic.

And that’s what we’ve got in music. Techies inured to VC’s and money, clueless about our business. Meanwhile, our audience is inured to the great non-music apps the tech industry does come up with.

And I’m stuck in the middle with you.

Here are a few interesting Uber e-mails…

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