1. Have children. The rest of life is b.s., all the achievement and the wealth. At the core, we’re just animals, looking for love and inspiration. No one will be remembered.

2. The older you get, the wiser you are, but with baby boomers trying to emulate the young, ageism is rampant in America. If only oldsters would own their wisdom. But then they’d have to own the lines in their faces and their lumpy bodies.

3. Obesity kills. You can ignore Gwyneth Paltrow and Jennifer Aniston, the skinny-minnies, the fat police, the people who want you to make you feel bad so they can feel better. But the health consequences of excess weight are undeniable. Blame computers, blame the government, blame food producers, but we need a national campaign to get everybody up and moving, for their own benefit.

4. Exercise makes you feel better. Don’t go run a mile if you’ve been on the couch, work your way up and find something you enjoy, otherwise you’ll never continue it. But exercise gives you both an endorphin rush and perspective, it’s a great respite from your regular life.

5. Travel gives you perspective. Sure, it can also be enjoyable, but one problem we have in the U.S. is few have been anywhere else. You may rail against the Canadian health system, but all my buddies up there are lovin’ it.

6. Don’t be afraid to complain. It’s the upbeat nitwits that bother me most. Woody Allen famously said life is about the horrible and the miserable, we’re all trying to get along, if you keep telling me your life is great and you’ve got no problems, I’m gonna tune out.

7. College isn’t about what you learn in class, but what you learn outside of it.

8. Great teachers are few and far between.

9. Pursue your interests. As soon as somebody says you’re spending too much time on something, you’re on the right track.

10. People love story. That’s the essence of novels and TV and movies. That’s why reality TV shows have scriptwriters.

11. It’s more fun to see a movie in a theatre, but it’s an untenable proposition because everybody there thinks they’re entitled to talk and text.

12. There’s more insight and truth in the lyrics of Joni Mitchell than there is on the best of TV channels, even HBO.

13. If you need a new car to feel good about yourself, you need a psychiatrist more.

14. Phony rules in America. Everybody’s trying to put up a front to please someone else. But behind closed doors this is never true. Politics, business…ehh. If only they ran more like the home.

15. People can’t keep secrets. Tell one person, you’ve told them all.

16. Satisfaction is unexpected. In other words, it’s when you’re driving down the highway or walking down the avenue that you’ll suddenly realize you love your life.

17. If you want to feel good, help another person. Solving someone’s computer problem gives me more satisfaction than just about anything.

18. Everybody says they want shorter, but what they really want is something that rivets them, they’ve got endless time for great.

19. People don’t know they’re being judged by the spelling mistakes.

20. Change is hard, but always worthwhile. In other words, the cliche that after being fired or dumped you’re gonna end up in a better place is true. But what they don’t tell you is how long it’s gonna take to get to the other side.

21. People need to put you down to feel good about themselves, it’s a demonstration of insecurity and weakness.

22. Don’t be afraid to say you don’t know something or need help. This draws others to you.

23. The high of success is very brief, it fades and then…what are you gonna do next?

24. When you’re young, you want to be a child star on television. When you’re old, you’d never let your kids be on TV.

25. A tan is cool when you’re young, bogus when you’re old. That’s the first sign of aging, the toll the sun has taken on the skin, if only young people knew this.

26. When you’re in college you think you know everything. The older you get, the less you think you know, even though you know tons more than the youth.

27. Persistence and perseverance are the key to life. If you give up when it gets hard, you will accomplish little, you’ll get nowhere.

28. Relationships are hard. Anybody who tells you they’re easy is lying or has a bad one.

29. If a couple tells you they never argue, they’re headed for divorce. It just means one person is not speaking their truth, and when they do…

30. The older you get, the less susceptible you are to hype. One time only events…seem to happen all the time.

I want you to watch this clip, wherein Nile Rodgers says his music had to be instantly accessible, it had to make the dancers move their bodies INSTANTLY!

That’s one of the many things I hate about complainers today, that I need to give them more time. Let me ask you, are they making any more? Is there a bank I can go to? Because I’m challenged, there’s just not enough hours in the day to do everything I want. Maybe I need thirty, maybe I need thirty-six, maybe then I can pack in all the newspapers, the websites, the novels, the physical activity.

But NO! (Said like John Belushi…) You don’t want to hear what I have to say, you don’t want to think about me at all, you just want to pile drive me into submission, with your endless e-mails and tweets telling me to take an hour out of my day, if at all possible an hour every day for a week, to let your album sink into my brain.

Huh?

Are you NUTS?

Nile was a nobody. He’d go to clubs and wonder…what it would take to get noticed.

First he had to establish a relationship with the deejay.

Then he had to feed him something so infectious that not only would the deejay not lift the needle, but the dancers would throw their arms up in exultation.

Ergo, “Le Freak.” And “Good Times.” And Chic’s initial hit, “Dance, Dance, Dance (Yowsah, Yowsah, Yowsah.)”

Do we rate Chic any lower because of the instant infectiousness of their tracks?

NO!

Listening doesn’t have to be difficult. Sure, there are exceptions to every rule, stuff you don’t get the first time through. But now, with so many options, people don’t endure that which is not pleasing, they move on, so if you think repetition is your friend, you’ve got none.

Or let’s look at “Let’s Dance.” Far from one of my favorite Bowie cuts, I will say you get it immediately.

Everybody wants more of our time, and we don’t want to give it to them!

I will not talk on the phone, absolutely not. Because you want to waste so much of my time. Making like we’re friends for twenty minutes before you ask for the favor I don’t want to give you.

But it’s not only me, it’s kids. Phone calls? Are you kidding me? Send a text! It’s cleaner, it’s faster, there’s no wasted time.

The basics never change. You’ve got to practice, be original and wait for your moment, when you have to deliver. And if you think that’s a TV slot…well, there was Susan Boyle who delivered once and became an international star overnight, but isn’t it interesting that the only thing we know about her is that performance, I challenge you to name one of her tunes… She’s a novelty, not an artist!

And isn’t it fascinating that we’ve got Justin Bieber backlash. His career is toast and R. Kelly keeps sailing along, despite his legal problems, because people believe he’s an artist. If you think the Biebs is an artist, you’re a fingerpainter.

“We were an R&B band that had figured out this jazzy-type of formula to present music that deejays could listen to one time, and play it, and that the people would hear it, one time, and respond.

And that’s how we crafted our records. You play it first time, you got ’em.”

Daft Punk | Random Access Memories | The Collaborators: Nile Rodgers

It’s incredibly easy.

But it’s incredibly hard.

You don’t need any money, you don’t need any of the trappings, from looks to Facebook friends to an uncle in the business, you’ve just got to have that one indelible cut, that makes us need to hear it more. Whether it be Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” Alanis Morissette’s “You Oughta Know” Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy” or the Beatles’ “I Want To Hold Your Hand.”

It works in every genre of music. You’re enraptured by the sound of Jay-Z’s “Can I Get A…” and then the girls come in and your head starts to spin and you ask that classic question…HOW DID THEY COME UP WITH THIS!

From Frank Zappa to today, that’s the mark of a great artist, someone who leads us into the unknown who we can’t help but follow.

Yes, I’ve got all kinds of time for new and great.

But that’s not what’s on a TV game show.

That’s not what’s being played in your basement, loved by your parents and friends.

Rather it’s something transcendent, as Pete Townshend sang, one note, pure and easy.

He hates dogs.

I’ve become a podcast aficionado. But I only listen to three, the exquisite “Here’s The Thing,” with Alec Baldwin, the otherworldly “Radiolab” and Marc Maron’s “WTF.”

Maron produces the most.

But he’s my least favorite.

Because he’s run out of guests.

What I mean by that is the Internet is about niches. And Maron’s is comedy. When Maron interviews comedians, it’s truly priceless, he extracts insight from someone in the same wheelhouse, it’s like listening in on a conversation between experts. Although he’s a music fan, you wince when Maron interviews musicians, because he just doesn’t know enough. That’s our backyard, we know when the albums were released, who worked at the label, this is our life, but it’s not Maron’s, so when he fumbles release dates and catalog histories and career peaks…you stop listening.

Unless the guest is so good, they can carry it by themselves.

Like Marshall Crenshaw. To hear Crenshaw tell his tale is to be riveted by a laconic speaker who hasn’t had a hit in eons but hasn’t stopped thinking. Crenshaw tells the story of how his father took him to see Hendrix, how he got from there to here. That’s what we’re always interested in…the journey. We know them because of the destination, stardom, or fame, but despite the rocket ship of TV, most people follow a circuitous route to our consciousness. The choices, the opportunities. Kind of like Tommy Chong… To hear him tell his tale on Maron’s podcast is to have your jaw drop. How he played music, wrote a Motown hit and then turned his family’s strip club into a comedy haven. Huh? This is the opposite of the twenty first ethos, wherein everybody’s got a defined path to riches, in the sixties people fumbled, found themselves, that’s why it was the heyday of art, the chances that were taken.

That’s why David Sedaris is so good, because he cares not a whit what you think and he’s willing to embrace his own personality.

Sedaris was not my cup of tea. But then Felice took me to hear him read at UCLA and…you become riveted, because despite the words being static, Sedaris gives a performance, it’s very intimate and touching, I’ve now become a reader of his pieces in “The New Yorker.”

But I didn’t truly become a fan until I heard him on Maron’s “WTF” last night.

Everybody else is trying to sell.

Sedaris is interested in lifting the rock, seeing what’s underneath.

He started with Maron himself, telling him the cover of his book was all wrong, that it featured a pic of Marc, which gave the impression that it was not a real book, just a celebrity tell-all.

Whew!

Listen to the marketers and they’ll tell you everything is just grist for the mill, fodder to be sold. Whatever it takes, baby. Whore yourself out, the audience doesn’t care. It’s a scramble to stay alive, to make money, and you do what you have to.

Only in order for the whole thing to work, it has to resonate with the audience. And when you play to Citi instead of me, I find it hard to bond.

Then again, if you play to yourself, it’s best.

You can’t say you hate dogs, you’re gonna get hate mail, you’re gonna get booing and hissing, and as a result you bury your truth, you become who others want you to be.

That’s a so-called “artist” today.

Not that Sedaris can’t reject his own kind… He hates the knee-jerk liberals who won’t let him tell his story, who insist everything be politically correct, i.e. their exact left wing view. And don’t get me started on the right wing, they’re the worst, they’re working the refs 24/7, believing if they chide you for every liberal remark, you’ll stop making them, and, unfortunately, this tends to work. As a result, everybody’s afraid to color outside the lines, to not be liked. You have to be the person everybody wants you to be, as opposed to yourself.

That’s why I now love Sedaris, he’s only interested in being himself.

He’s narcissistic, he wants to win in his own way, he articulates everything we feel but are afraid to verbalize.

He doesn’t like mics in the audience during the Q&A, because he hates the people they elicit. Oh, you know these jerks, who want the attention, who ramble on telling their personal stories and put you down, who frequently don’t even have a question. No, that’s Sedaris’s mic, and you can’t have it!

And he’s pissed at the bookstore owner who ended the reading. That’s HIS right, he decides when it’s over. Furthermore, he tells an employee that he hated the store owner’s action and is gleeful when the store goes out of business. These are the things we all feel but are afraid to say, for fear we’re going to pay a price down the line.

The idiot business books tell you how to conform.

But artists don’t believe in conforming, they channel the truth. Getting along is for drones, not artists.

I’m drawn closer to Sedaris because he has a PERSONALITY!

Few of the new artists have one. At least not one they evidence. They’ve been told they can’t offend radio, the press, everybody in the media chain. But what sells Sedaris is his readers, not the intermediaries. His fans can’t stop talking about him.

And we live in a different era from the one Crenshaw had his “success” in. Warner didn’t like his second album, he told him they had to put it out anyway, and he was forever tarred. Furthermore, when a local distribution guy got a track on the radio, the promo guy in Burbank wouldn’t work it, it was all politics. And who knows, the WB people might have a contrary opinion, but the point is today the slate has been wiped clean, you can go direct to the audience, if you’ve got the balls.

Or do you want to keep working for the man?

That’s how Maron made it, by doing it for himself.

And the reason this interview with Sedaris is so damn good is because Marc knows the territory. Of being on the road, of working your way up via performance, his anecdotes add flavor.

But Sedaris’s tales are still the best…

Why did he give up smoking? To stay in the best hotels! Yup, at this point his hotels are all comped, he’d rather stay at the Four Seasons than some dive on the outskirts of town that still allows people to take a puff.

Sedaris is a barrel of quirks and opinions, and when you listen to him you desire nothing so much as to hang out, because he’s entertaining, because he’s honest, because he’s real…just like you.

David Sedaris

Marshall Crenshaw

Cheech and Chong

The International

I don’t know how this thing works, BUT BOY DOES IT SOUND GOOD!

Remember 1976…

Scratch that, you probably weren’t even alive back then. But not only was it the bicentennial year, the preoccupation of young males was the stereo shop. Saturday afternoons, nights alone with your magazines, you’d contemplate all the stereo gear you were gonna buy, TO GET CLOSER TO THE MUSIC!

Oh, I know, you’re a hipster, you’ve got those giant headphones, you want to show everybody…that the music you listen to sounds TERRIBLE!

Yup, if Jimmy Iovine were truly interested in sound, not only money, he’d introduce a line of headphone amplifiers, to show people what they’re TRULY missing!

Plug in the International and your jaw will drop… That’s how lousy MP3s sound, even your CDs, because with an International and a pair of decent headphones you’re so close to the music it’s like you’re on stage.

The International… What exactly is it?

It’s a headphone amp, with a built-in DAC, i.e. digital to analog converter.

And you don’t need a fancy home stereo, works just fine with your computer, it bypasses all the substandard insides and just pumps quality into your ears, assuming your source is that good.

But it comes with almost no documentation. It assumes you’re a tweak, that you haunt the boards and know exactly what you’re buying. And it’s not impossible to figure out, but… DOES USB POWER IT OR JUST DELIVER THE SOUND?

Yup, I plugged the thing into my Mac Pro (I mention that, because it’s got the USB jacks right up front, convenient, that’s one of the reasons I bought it) and when I turn it on, it immediately bypasses the system settings, it selects itself, and then…music starts to flow.

Well, that’s not what happened today. Today I could get no juice.

And after being flummoxed, completely nonplussed, figuring the thing was fried, having driven the big Sennheiser 800s with it last night, I decided to plug it in via the 12 volt adapter, AND THE LIGHT CAME ON!

And it worked for a minute in my computer thereafter, really, just a minute, and then the sound popped back to the speakers.

So I just plugged the juice back in and…

THE SOUND COMING INTO MY EARS IS TRULY WONDROUS! If you were here right now and you put the headphones on you’d be smiling like you were eating watermelon and eating ice cream and having sex all at the same time!

So I listened to some MP3s, and then I broke out some CDs…

Like Bonnie Raitt’s “Luck Of The Draw,” her best, engineered by my bud Ed Cherney. It was all wood, there was nothing slick and shiny about it, the sound was positively warm, it sounded HUMAN!

Who do we want to blame…radio, artists, mastering engineers? Even if you pay for the disc, it usually sounds like crap. I know, I tried many. But then there are the exceptions…

But truly, your MP3s will sound better than ever before, you won’t believe that what is entering your ears is MUSIC!

You remember music, that thing made by people with real instruments that reflects what they feel inside, not that processed junk that makes your ears bleed?

Oh, I’m not saying it’s got to be acoustic to sound good, but I will say digital has done a disservice to acoustic music, real music, it just doesn’t sound good…

As for all you vinyl jerks (e-mail me, tell me, I’ve still got all my vinyl, more than you’ll ever own), you want to hear something great as opposed to trying to look hip, purchase one of these little boxes, the size of a pack of cigarettes, then EVERYTHING you own will sound good, not just the overpriced vinyl you buy at the disappearing record store.

1. The International does come with a small card with rudimentary instructions, but I’ve still got so many questions, not only re power (did it come with the battery half charged and I ran it down or…), but what devices you can use it with, how much gain to employ (it’s adjustable) and… Why does everything have to come without instructions these days, I know most people don’t read them, but I do, because not only do I want to do it right, I want to eke every ounce of performance out of everything I buy. Hell, I read the “Missing Manual” for every new iteration of Mac OS X, to learn tips and tricks I guarantee you’re clueless about… Did you put the little mail icon at the top of the Safari window, so you can click it and e-mail any page to anybody? There!

2. I’m listening to Keith Urban’s “Who Wouldn’t Wanna Be Me.” It’s hard to describe, but I’ll try. I can hear the guitarist picking the notes, It’s almost like my eyes and ears are two inches away. And the banjo, it sounds like it’s two feet away, it sounds positively like MUSIC!

3. Wanna know one of the best sounding albums of all time? Elton John’s American debut, you know, the one with the black cover, that preceded “Tumbleweed Connection.” It sounds like it was cut in a cathedral… Just listen to “The King Must Die” or “Sixty Years On” in any iteration, MP3 original CD or remastered take. It’s a religious experience!

4. Do you know “Blue Of Your Backdrop” by Honk, from the soundtrack to the greatest surfing movie ever made, “Five Summer Stories”? Well, listening to it via the International it’s like you’re at Waimea or Pipeline or down on the shore at Huntington, it truly takes you away, you’re truly there.

5. This thing is not cheap, it’s $599. But that’s one third the price of a starter stereo of any quality in the seventies. As for headphones…the better the better, but truly you only need something in the two hundred dollar plus range to blow your mind.

I could listen to this thing all night… Hell, that’s what I did yesterday!

Leave them all to the trappings they choose
Values on what one may win or lose
I can’t discern between the two
But with no God above
Guess we all start with the things we love

And I love music.

And you do too.

And in this crazy world where gays can marry but it’s difficult for the underprivileged to vote, what’s there to do but put on a record, turn it up and drift away…