“Drake accuses Universal Music Group and Spotify of unfairly promoting Kendrick Lamar’s ‘Not Like Us'”: https://t.ly/wi2pY

“Drake Files Second Action Against UMG, Alleging Defamation Over Kendrick Lamar’s ‘False’ Song”: https://t.ly/32_oO

Who knows what the truth is.

But one thing is for sure, the credibility of Universal and Spotify is in question. In a world where Ticketmaster is more hated than the cable industry. If you’re big in the world today, you’re automatically guilty. This is the ethos of the individuals oppressed online. If you’re defending the corporation, if you’re taking the side of the man, you’re excoriated.

Whatever the truth is here, this is the result of consolidation. Drake and Kendrick Lamar are both Universal artists. Is there an inherent conflict? I’m not saying it’s illegal, it’s not, but I am saying going forward it will be an issue…does the label have my back, or someone else’s?

And let’s be clear, Drake’s image has taken an irreversible hit.

As for a discount deal with Spotify… That seems totally plausible. This is what labels did with physical retail to move product. So did Universal accept a lesser payment for “Not Like Us”? There’s a long history of Spotify paying less in return for promotion. 

Let the games begin.

We have innumerable artists saying that Spotify doesn’t pay enough, while the big kahunas are accepting less for dominance?

As for employing bots… I truly doubt that Spotify, et al, agreed to this. This is a smoking gun, and there’s no upside. But Universal doing anything it can to drive traffic? Once again, that’s the history of music promotion.

So whatever happens here, Universal loses. As has Drake. He will never recover from this rap battle. Did Universal have his back? It certainly didn’t look like it. If they weren’t parts of the same conglomerate would another label have fought for Drake harder against Kendrick? One would think so.

And then there’s the dirty little secret that a whole bunch of people just don’t care about this rap battle. In a world where country music is ascendant, where you don’t have to listen to anything you don’t want to, how many people have actually paid attention to the music from last spring that is at the center of this conflagration?

This is a lesson from the election. Perception may be very different from reality. The entire music business was and is focused on this rap battle. But in reality is it a tempest in a teapot? And let’s be clear…in a world where there’s war in the Middle East and in Ukraine, where grocery prices are sky high, do we really care about a pissing match between two rich rappers?

Fans are as diehard as ever. But how wide is that fandom?

And today people are skeptical of celebrities. In truth, many social media influencers have a wider reach than hit musicians. Which is something mainstream media and the industry at large refuse to acknowledge, they’d rather bury their heads in the sand and believe it’s the same as it ever was.

The election proved that big time media was out of touch. Trump bad, Kamala good. Then why did Trump win in the end? Never have big artists reached fewer people. But the industry has not adjusted for this. Instead of major labels trying to gain market share by signing ever more acts in ever more genres, they’re signing very few acts in very few genres and trying for moonshots. But a moonshot in the MTV era was very different from today. Back then you were literally known around the world. Today you can be a Spotify Top Ten artist and most of the public cannot name a single song of yours.

In an era of transparency, the music business continues to be opaque. As for Spotify…it actually publishes the streams, available to everybody, right in the desktop app. But since Spotify is the biggest streamer with the most listeners it must be guilty.

What Drake wants is sunlight, whatever the truth might be. But historically the industry has done everything to avoid this, settling all lawsuits, avoiding precedent.

But it used to be that acts were afraid of labels. But with so much money in touring, this is no longer the case. Lawsuits are more prevalent.

Questlove said in the wake of the  Kendrick/Drake rap battle that “Hip-hop is truly dead.”

But it might just be the beginning of transparency.

She died.

Who’s that?

Alice from “Alice’s Restaurant”!

Oh, they had an Alice’s Restaurant in my hometown. Didn’t they even have one on the Malibu Pier? Always homey inside, with barnboard and healthy food…

NO!

That was all in the wake of the song, the movie and…

The sixties are over, but once upon a time there was a counterculture.

“Alice’s Restaurant” came out in the fall of 1967. If you were living in San Francisco or New York, you heard the entirety of the eighteen minute song on the radio. If you lived in the hinterlands…I don’t know, I didn’t live in the hinterlands.

When did the sixties begin?

Earlier than you think. Everybody focuses on the late sixties, Humphrey, Woodstock, but the wheel turned much before that.

But you had to be paying attention to know.

It started with civil rights. I remember our rabbi taking the bus down south to protest. This was when it was less of a herd mentality and a personal desire, a personal need, you had to stand up, you thought the issue was black and white, you needed to make a statement, and you thought it made a difference.

And somewhere along the line people became aware of the Vietnam War. First there were advisors, then we were in a full scale conflagration. Which most people thought we would win easily, after all, weren’t we the United States?

And while we were just living a life, hippiedom began in San Francisco. And after the Beatles wiped the radio deck clear of everybody but the Beach Boys and the Four Seasons, and the Mamas & the Papas and Jefferson Airplane and so many came in their wake… It was clear, something was happening here.

“For What It’s Worth came out in ’66, after the Sunset Strip riots. No, the title was not in the song. But this was at the advent of acts having power. And in truth, the labels were starting to blink, they wondered if they truly knew what was going on. They all hired house hippies to steer them.

So by ’67…

Well, ’67 was the Summer of Love. But those outside the metropolis, those not hip, and you could tell by the clothes and the hair, still weren’t clued in, but eventually they got on the same page. There was just too much excitement. There was a vibe, an underpinning. Every young person was a Democrat back then, you could point out the Republicans, they were so rare. The youth were aligned. But then came Kent State and you could no longer tell someone’s values by the length of their hair and Nixon resigned and Reagan legitimized greed and everybody sold out to the almighty dollar and we truly haven’t had the spirit here since 1969.

But back then…

There was an alternative. And it was just a matter of when you got hipped. And in the suburbs, in Fairfield, Connecticut, fifty miles from New York City, we got hipped early.

My mother was a culture vulture.

But so was Mrs. Hurley, our sophomore English teacher.

I was thinking about her just today. Someone was talking about the antisemitic protests in Montreal. Which made me think of being in that city in the fall of ’67, for Expo ’67. And coming home on Sunday, my parents detoured to drop me Off-Broadway, where my class was attending a performance of “MacBird.”

Back when Off-Broadway was a thing. Broadway was for musicals, big tent productions. Off-Broadway was where all the experimental, cutting edge productions were. Testing limits.

Yes, a field trip on a Sunday. We didn’t need no stinking time off from school to attend a cultural event.

And we went to see Janis Ian at Philharmonic Hall on a Friday night, before it was Avery Fisher Hall, before it was David Geffen Hall. We had to hear “Society’s Child.”

And on the bulletin board in Mrs. Hurley’s classroom was thumbtacked…

An article about Arlo Guthrie and “Alice’s Restaurant” from “Time” magazine.

The straight news was becoming hip to the alternative, to the youthquake. And when you made it there your acolytes felt good for you, you’d triumphed, and as a result we had too.

So what was “Alice’s Restaurant” all about?

The draft.

All those Trumpers… I’d like to hear your take on things if you were subjected to getting your ass shot off overseas.

I mean we grew up in the wake of World War II. We knew you had to fight for your right…to live under a democracy, if not to party.

But did we really want to be in the line of fire?

And then the first guy from my high school died.

It was a real thing. Regular people, they got drafted and…

Can I tell you the military was the enemy, as were the cops? Everything’s flipped today. Back then we were suspicious of organizations, it was about the lone individual.

Like Arlo Guthrie.

Woody Guthrie’s son.

Not that everybody knew who Woody Guthrie was. This land was your land, from the redwood forests… We’d been singing those words since first grade, we had no idea someone actually wrote them, we figured they’d been passed down through the ages.

And of course Bob Dylan was influenced by Woody Guthrie. But at this point, most people only listened to Top Forty, they didn’t go any deeper. They hadn’t heard “Purple Haze,” which also came out in ’67.

So this guy with the funny name had this long song…

Oh, we were into length. That was testing limits. There were long versions and short versions, like with “Light My Fire.” Did you know the long version, were you even aware it existed?

So Arlo Guthrie takes a whole side of an album to tell this meandering story about being drafted but evading service because he was a litterbug. The Group W Bench….that was in regular conversation, just like W.C. Fields.

So it was Thanksgiving and the dump was closed and Arlo and his buddy put the trash in a ravine and…

Suddenly, Alice and her restaurant were famous.

But then there was the movie, and everybody truly knew who she was. And it was most people’s first exposure to Joni Mitchell, who sang “Songs to Aging Children Come” on a hillside in the snow.

The “Alice’s Restaurant” movie was dark. Anything but a superhero fantasy. Then again, life was alternately light and dark. We were testing limits while MLK and RFK were being assassinated, while there were riots in the street. You listened to a record to know which way the wind blew.

So Arlo became a cultural staple.

And he “came back” in the Woodstock movie when he flew in from London from over the Pole. And he made some great music thereafter, but then there was corporate rock and disco and MTV and he wasn’t quite a footnote, but he was far from mainstream.

As for Alice Brock?

The restaurant closed not long after the song came out. She got a divorce. She had a cameo in the movie…

And then she disappeared.

But we never forgot her. You can’t forget these iconic moments of the sixties.

And I went with my buddy Keith to see Arlo at Fordham University. He started picking the notes to “Alice’s Restaurant” and a whoop of recognition came over the hall. But he said there were three versions of the song, and we didn’t know which one he was going to play.

He played one about Johnson being paranoid. Yes, LBJ was anathema. Little did we know we’d get Nixon, little did we know we’d get Trump. We actually had it pretty good in retrospect, but we wanted more. Not for ourselves, but for society.

Now dumping your trash in an unauthorized place… All these years later that seems a taboo. I never understood a dump being closed, but when we rented a ski house in East Jamaica, Vermont in that same year of ’67, that was the case… No dumping on Sunday. So my father would look for a dumpster.

Now you’re even afraid of putting your trash in a dumpster, because who knows, there might be a camera.

That’s what I don’t understand about the poor and uneducated and their physical crimes. There are cameras everywhere, don’t you watch streaming television?

But in the wake of the environmental movement, which really didn’t gain traction until 1970, with the first Earth Day, on April 22nd, my birthday, the first day I got high, we went to see the Woodstock movie…

The rules changed.

Now if someone throws garbage out the window you get pissed.

Then again, that philosophy is waning. And they told us to recycle and almost all we put in the blue bucket goes into a landfill overseas.

But some people are saying to drill, baby, drill.

And it’s confounding if you were around back then. It seemed like we were always going forward. But that hasn’t been the case for years. And techies are our idols, not musicians. Hell, Steve Jobs revered musicians. But today’s musicians are not the best and the brightest and they’re looking to sell out to the techies, when in reality music is all about telling truth to power, that’s what Arlo Guthrie did.

But at this late date, all you can say is…

“I don’t want a pickle

Just want to ride on my motorcycle”

(That was on side two.)

I’m sick and f*cking tired of the Democrats trying to put a positive spin on the election of Donald Trump. Saying he didn’t win by a majority, didn’t win by that much, pointing to minor victories in Congress and the states… The Democrats got their ass SPANKED! And this spin is just further evidence how out of touch the DNC, elected officials and left wing commentators are. If you can’t admit your faults, if you can’t analyze your loss, how in the hell are you going to adjust for changing conditions and succeed the next time around?

Yes, when it comes down to the issues, most people are aligned with the left. They want abortion rights. They want the protection of the rights of minorities. But those weren’t the foremost issues in the election.

Have you ever been broke? I have, and when that’s the case money is all you can think about, 24/7. Anyone who romanticizes the life of a starving artist has never been one. You can’t even create, you’re so freaked out. And my worst times were when the economy was considered to be raging. But not for me!

So the stock market is up. You can point to the increase in jobs, how America is doing better harnessing inflation than the rest of the world. And that does nothing for me when I go to the market and I see the high prices. And when I mention this, you don’t acknowledge my pain, you just tell me I’m wrong and to get over it. That’s a winning strategy?

As for the border… It’s a problem, we can argue how big a problem it is, but one thing is for sure, Biden was not aggressive in handling it.

And why should we trust these people at all, they’re the same ones who told us Old Joe had all his marbles and could sail through a presidency as leader of the free world into his middle eighties. God, my inbox is full of nitwits telling me they had some aunt or uncle who lived to a hundred with all their marbles. And yeah, my father died at 70. And by time she was in her middle eighties, my mother was repeating herself. Talk about a refusal to acknowledge science. The left cherry-picks and is in many ways as bad as the right. And it’s the educated left that has contempt for doctors and Big Pharma. Get ill and they’ll tell you to employ homeopathic remedies first.

Yes, leaving out personalities, looking at the issues, the Democrats should have easily won the election. But Harris couldn’t even bring out as many people to vote for her as they did for Old Joe. And it wasn’t even Covid times anymore. People were just not excited, they were disillusioned. But if you dared to say a single negative thing about Harris you were a sexist hater.

Sam Harris did a good podcast on this. It wasn’t that America was not ready to elect a woman, they weren’t ready to elect THIS woman, and to beware, if we don’t get it right Candace Owens could be president in the future.

But those on the left may not even be aware of Owens. Because if it’s not in their anointed media, it doesn’t exist. But how can you win if you do not know the enemy?

People hate the Democrats. I’M A DEMOCRAT and I hate the Democrats. If Chuck Schumer is your point person… God, you might as well concede before the war begins. He doesn’t know how to amp it up, never demonstrates any passion, this is the guy you want to lead the charge?

Give Gavin Newsom credit, he read the tea leaves, he just went to red counties and said he got the message, and will adjust his leadership accordingly. I don’t hear Harris giving any mea culpas. Nor anybody who worked with her. No, it’s not Harris’s fault she lost. That’s orthodoxy on the left. And that’s positively INSANE! I don’t like Trump having access to the nuclear button, but I can’t say I was confident that Harris had the chops. Sure, she’s smart. But I didn’t see a wealth of experience and competence running world affairs, even national affairs. At least Josh Shapiro and Gretchen Whitmer run states, mini national governments.

So Harris was perfect! And therefore the Trump voters must be guilty. Stupid. Ignorant. Can’t they see the truth? Maybe it’s the Democrats who can’t see the truth! For a party that considers itself to be a big tent, it’s amazing that most people are not let inside. Man, god forbid you mess up someone’s pronouns. Sure, people are entitled to dignity, but is this the main issue in our country?

OF COURSE NOT!

Wipe out the DNC, get new blood. When a team has a bad year they don’t go into the next with the exact same people. They fire the manager/coach. Bring in some ringers. Maybe even hire a new GM with a different philosophy.

But so far in the Democratic party it’s been hosannas. It’s like nursery school, no one is at fault, no one is to blame, everyone keeps their job.

Did you see Donna Brazile on Bill Maher last night? Listening to her you’d think the Democrats triumphed on Election Day. Don’t they get it, spin doctors don’t resonate anymore. Yeah, you’re on the team, you’re dyed-in-the-wool, you’re not to be believed.

Just like the celebrities out for Harris. We don’t hear the Democrats saying this was a misfire, only independents and the right. Celebrity has changed in America. Jake Paul means more than half of the performers trotted out at Harris events. But he’s not in the “Times” so he doesn’t count. Because don’t you know, social media is the devil!

But social media is where people get their information. Don’t decry it, don’t you get your info at school or work, it’s the same damn thing, and also sometimes wildly inaccurate.

And if Trump could lie constantly and win…

Why is that?

Well, people are voting on emotions. And when it comes to emotions and perceptions facts oftentimes don’t matter. People want someone who excites them… Hell, the rock stars of the sixties and seventies built their careers on lying, with publicity stunts, and the music industry is all about proffering false “facts.” The show that’s sold out is not. The album that had a certain level of success did not. But the rules should be different in politics?

And an outside agitator, Elon Musk, swayed all those voters?

God forbid you show some testosterone on the left. It’s all namby pamby, you don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings. God, the Democrats are a sexless party. We’re all screwing all the time, but it’s taboo on the left because the guy isn’t doing it right, not asking the right permission. Sure, there are bad actors, and they should be held to account, but not every male in America. Men are the enemy? Where is that a winning strategy?

This election illustrated that conventional wisdom was b.s. The public isn’t concerned with DEI. I’ve got to tell you, it’s always white people who reach out and tell me something I’m saying is racist or sexist, doing the work of parties who don’t feel offended.

You’re offended right now! Don’t you see you’re helping the enemy Bob? No, I’m just speaking the truth, and you can’t handle it.

We don’t have a person/candidate on the left who is 3-D like either Trump or Musk, no one to get behind and believe in. We’ve got some soft intellectuals, but nobody willing to yell and blow the doors off the enemy! And one thing about Trump and Musk, they mix it up constantly. And when you do this sometimes you get it wrong. But the left is in constant referee mode, looking for faux pas, when what happened yesterday isn’t even remembered today.

The Democrats LOST! Period. By how much is not even relevant. Think about all those people who voted for Trump, you need a good chunk of them to be on your side to win in the future. How are you going to do that, by continuing to demonize them, telling them they’re wrong?

And this left wing circle jerk… It’s like a cult, everybody trying to convince themselves things aren’t that bad. BUT THEY ARE!

Things change, constantly. The election just brought to the forefront issues that those truly paying attention were aware of. But to know this…you have to interact with the other side, you have to listen to them. You don’t have to necessarily agree with them, but if you don’t know where they’re at, you’re never going to win, because you need to capture hearts and minds to win.

Everywhere there are articles. The NYT. The Substackers. As if they can’t admit they were wrong. It’d be laughable if there wasn’t so much at stake.

How did the Democrats lose the workers, the blue collar? Why don’t we start there. The left used to own these people. But now that they’re Republicans, the left calls them losers.

And feel that Blacks and Latinos who voted for Trump are traitors, who betrayed their skin color. So I’m my skin color first?

And the left is the party of the pro-Hamas demonstrators on campus? We can argue all day long whether there should be a ceasefire. how the war should be prosecuted, but Hamas is a terrorist organization that does not tolerate gay people and so many more…and we’re supposed to respect these protesting lunatics?

I mean sometimes you just have to speak English.

And sure, Trump didn’t always do this. But he was a cartoon to begin with. And what worked for Trump doesn’t necessarily work for anybody else.

The DNC… It’s like bringing the ’85 Bears out of retirement, telling Ditka to coach. Hell, even Bill Belichick lost his job. Just because you won in the past does not mean you can win in the future. But Old Joe said he wanted to finish the job. Yeah, and let’s bring Jim McMahon, who suffers from brain damage, back to be QB. Even Tom Brady retired. But no, not Old Joe!

So many mistakes were made. And to think it’s about running the same playbook and trying to win an extra vote here or there is a flawed strategy. The Democrats need a rewrite. Not only did Trump win, but both houses of Congress are controlled by Republicans.

This is a shellacking, don’t claim otherwise.

It’s always someone else’s fault.

The world is stacked against you. I was going to win, but…

I was going to get a ticket for ten bucks for the first row, but Ticketmaster…

I was going to pay my bills from music, but Spotify…

And the personal responsibility party, the Republicans, are led by someone who said the 2020 election was rigged, but when he won in 2024 it was not. Like someone snapped their fingers and it all worked out. Even though even up through Election Day itself, Trump and his cronies were pointing to supposed irregularities.

Yesterday was November 22nd. I didn’t see a single report, not one article, that said it was the anniversary of the death of JFK. Then again, that was 61 years ago, and people can’t even remember what happened in baseball two decades ago, never mind three or four. We’re all living in the now. We’re all winners. And the boomers refuse to relinquish control. You cannot turn on the news, cannot read the newspaper without the oldsters laughing about and excoriating the youngsters on social media. Never mind that TikTok is controlling the minds of Americans. Everybody thinks they know and are constantly battling the forces against them. But do these really exist?

I mention JFK because he ushered in an era of optimism, a clearing of the decks of old people, the institution of the young and new.

And when he was cut down and the Vietnam war started to rage… We were against that, but we didn’t lose all hope. No one said we must isolate as a country, that the rest of the world was not our responsibility. We argued over the Domino Theory, but we felt in our bones that we were responsible for a better world, a better country, hell, LBJ instituted a war on poverty.

Now there’s a war on poor people. They’re takers, if they’d just get damn jobs. If they did my taxes would be lower, I’m sick of paying for someone else. I work so damn hard. And all those government flunkies, get ’em off the payroll, because if you do my life will be so much better with all the money I save.

Someone is in your way. Couldn’t possibly be that you didn’t work hard enough, aren’t smart enough, aren’t talented enough.

It’s kind of like letting trans women who used to be guys perform in women’s sports. No one will notice, they’re just the same, no harm, no foul.

Don’t confuse this with bathroom rules. All I’m saying is everybody is bending the rules and believing it’s all right. And the court of ultimate resort, the Supreme Court, that you used to rely on, is not only compromised intellectually, but literally, taking money and in kind compensation from parties…and you’re supposed to live a straight life, have honor, no you want an edge too!

And everybody’s working the refs and breaking the rules. Even in the music business, #1 is a manipulated number. And the industry does not understand that this undermines confidence in the system. If the same damn act that I never listen to is number one for two months straight…can I trust number one at all?

Yes, there’s a reason for this cynicism. There are no rules. If you’re rich you get off scot-free. You hire the best lawyers, you don’t go to jail. Hell, Wall Street crashed the economy, no one went to jail, and we had to pay them to keep working! And what were we told by those in government? That we had no choice. Otherwise… Exactly what? I pay for my sins, but the rich and connected do not?

And the Sacklers and opioids… To the point where when there’s a vaccine for Covid, everybody hates Big Pharma. The irony here being that as soon as they get an infection they’re the first to line up for antibiotics.

Yes, people talk out of both sides of their mouths, when it’s advantageous to them.

I didn’t get into the Ivy League school. It couldn’t possibly be my fault. They let in athletes, legacies. And sure, they can cut down those but odds are you’re still not going to get in.

And I didn’t get into an elite college so the truth is there is no value to an education there. Malcolm Gladwell has been spewing this nonsense for years. He can’t be happy that he graduated from the University of Toronto, he’s got to tear everybody else down. And when confronted with facts, Gladwell doubles down, doesn’t admit he’s wrong.

And he’s a national hero.

Bollocks.

And Taylor Swift has built an entire career on revenge. You hurt me, it’s unfair, girl power says I now triumph. Huh? Maybe you were at fault, maybe you were bad in the relationship. But no! You can’t be at fault, that can’t possibly be the case.

Everybody’s got an excuse. Nobody’s happy. They decry the government and then want it to help them.

And then you’ve got guys who are incels, mad that they can’t get laid. As if throughout history there were not guys who could not get laid. And, if you’re having trouble with the opposite sex, maybe you could change, maybe you could improve, learn how to talk to people, but no…the opposite sex is holding you down, out to get you.

And in truth, Fortune 500 companies abuse the system constantly. My favorite being Microsoft insisting that manufacturers install Windows on every machine they make, even if it’s got Linux. And we’re supposed to play by the rules?

And it stinks at the top. Trump not only wants to rule in his own fashion, he wants to punish his enemies. It’d be like the Yankees camping outside the Dodgers’ homes and when the players come out breaking their knees. Hell, you lost. You live to play another day.

So who can we look to inspire us, to lead us, to get us back on the right path?

Certainly not Elon Musk, the complainer in chief. This guy does not stop bitching about what others do, the government, OpenAI, he believes he should be able to function unfettered. As do most of the techies, that’s why they got behind Trump.

And Kim Kardashian? There’s no there there. She’s a hollow vessel of merchandising.

Movie stars? They’ve been revealed to be two-dimensional nitwits by the internet.

Musicians? You benefited from the system, you’re worth hundreds of millions of dollars, we keep hearing about it, but you’re telling me how to live my life?

Duplicity is rampant. The rules are made to be broken. We champion the outlaws. Going to jail is a badge of honor for rappers.

Live the straight life and you’re a chump.

And Biden says he’s not too old and diminished to be president, just like that giant trans swimmer says the playing field is level.

Yes, it’s murky. The Democrats are not always right, nor are the Republicans. But there’s orthodoxy. You’ve got to buy in completely or you’re excommunicated. And it’s hard to maintain your optimism when you know that one false move will make you a pariah.

And it’s not the system that’s got to change, it’s the people.

As Bob Dylan sang:

“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”

Maybe you didn’t get into a good college, but that does not mean you’re a loser. Everybody’s great at something, find that instead of complaining that someone took your dream job that you’re not qualified for anyway.

Then again, Bob Dylan’s made it in the sixties. When musicians were seers, not just cash machines. When we looked to art for truth.

Now we’ve got superhero movies.

It’s a cultural problem.

And nothing is being done about it.

I may be a glass half-empty guy, but I’m not delusional enough to think everybody’s out to get me. I got cut from the team. I didn’t measure up here and there. I didn’t have my parents go intimidate the coach and try to talk him out of it to my advantage. When I got in trouble in school my parents blamed me, not the teacher. I know hard work pays dividends. Oftentimes not immediately. I know I don’t always win, but I don’t always lose either. I know I can’t buy a new Mercedes-Benz for 10k and I know I can’t get a ticket to everything I want to attend. And I’m not looking to the government to save me. But I do want the government to save those who are victims of natural disasters. I know the government wastes some money here and there, but I don’t think you should throw the baby out with the bathwater. I know if no one listens to my music I’m not going to get paid.

But sometimes I think I’m the only one.