We’re in the midst of a cultural shift.

A few years back, I became addicted to a Discovery Channel show about climbing Mt. Everest.  Discovery is channel 3 on my Time Warner system.  In fact, Discovery’s got great placement on all viewing systems.  Still, I could not find a single soul who’d seen the show until I talked about it on the radio and someone called in.

This was frustrating.  The danger, the personalities.  Mt. Everest is not an abstract concept.  Was I the only one who could relate?

No.  But maybe I was the only one who knew about it.  Or had time to see it.

We’ve been living in a Tower of Babel society.  Sure, we all speak English, but that’s just about our only common bond.  Hell, we don’t even utilize the same news sources.  The right watches Fox News, the left MSNBC.  Even online…  The right’s got Drudge, the left’s got the Huffington Post.  And when it comes to popular culture, it’s worse.  "The Hurt Locker" won Best Picture and almost no one had seen it.  But still, the Oscar ratings went up.  They’re the best they’ve been in five years.  Not because of ten nominated pictures, not because of youngster presenters, not because of the quality of the show, everyone agreed it was subpar, but because suddenly, everybody wanted to feel included, a member of the tribe.

This is vitally important.  This is a 180 from where we’ve been going the last decade.  Suddenly, the ratings for all these awards shows have gone up.  Does this mean everyone tuned into the Grammys was a Taylor Swift fan?  Did everybody watch the Olympics because they favored Lindsey Vonn?  No, everybody watched because they wanted to be a member of the group.

Call it Long Tail backlash.  After diving incredibly deep into our own niches, we’re now resurfacing.  We want a community feel.

And it’s funny how politicians and culture-perpetrators just don’t get it.

The story isn’t that we’ve got the Tea Party on the right and the disillusioned Netroots on the left, but that everybody wants a better economy and we want someone to lead us to it.  In other words, ignore the hysteria at the fringes and play to the middle, it’s VAST!

Just like in popular culture.  Hip-hop/beats appeal to a minority of the population.  Let’s not judge this sound, let’s just say that many people dislike it.  And if you want to appeal to many, you’ve got to purvey something different.

Radio, after the Telecommunications Act of 1996, is all about niches.  But we’re niched out.  We want one station we can all believe in, a few acts we all like.

Let’s be clear.  Not everybody watched the Oscars or the Olympics.  The key isn’t to appeal to everybody, but MOST people.  And never forget that the fringes are the most vocal.  If you pay attention to them, you’re screwed.

Maybe it’s time for more stadium concerts.  Maybe that’s why U2’s trek is so successful.  Sure, the music appeals, but it’s a TRIBAL RITE!  You can talk about the show in advance and with your buddies thereafter.  And those who weren’t included feel left out and will attend next time.

In other words, we may be on the brink of an explosion of mass culture.  We might be ready for the next Beatles.  Something that isn’t calculated like "American Idol" that blows up overnight because of the ease of spreading the story online.

Think of this as Kardashians with talent.  We all know who these nitwits are, but there’s no real reason to pay attention.  What if there were?  Hell, we’re paying attention to Snooki and Tiger because it gives us something to talk about, to connect with, both online and at the water cooler.

It appears to be human nature.  We want to belong.

That’s the story of the future.  Not how we can rip off our concert customers, but how we can make them feel like members of a club.  That grows and grows.  Not how can we create something just like everything else, but something outside the niches that appeals to all.  That was Lou Pearlman’s genius.  To create boy bands that could perform material that was catchy and appealed to all.  Sure, the explosion was aided by MTV and CDs sold because it was pre-Napster, but isn’t it funny that the idea came from the outside, not the usual suspects, and that the underpinnings, looks, harmonies, singable material, were so basic!

People go to see "Avatar" to belong, to be a member of the group, to get a chip so they can express their opinion.  This is VERY important!  Now’s the time for mass, not niche.  Now’s the time to create something of quality, that is not dumbed down, that the public can rally around.  Niches will never die.  But the public hungers for mass appeal.  Whether it be TV shows, music or anything which they can dissect and have an opinion about.

It’s not about the winter.  It’s not about Twitter.  It’s not about texting.  It’s about a hunger for commonality.  Pay attention.

Do what you do, don’t bring me down

I was driving down the San Diego Freeway, sun in my face, the interior of my car still cold from sitting outside overnight, listening to Deep Tracks.

They played that Manassas track "Right Now"…  This is the quintessential Stills, not the debut which got all the hoopla.  Buy this double album.

Then "Dig A Pony".  "Let It Be" will never be a throwaway for me because of "I’ve Got A Feeling", but I can’t imagine being a deejay and selecting "Dig A Pony" to play on the radio.  I thought of switching the channel.  But I ended up zoning out and enjoying it.

You know how driving is.  You’re going along at 70, checked out, almost asleep.  But somehow, your synapses fire and get you to brake, swerve, in case something untoward occurs.  Ah, the human body, what a machine.  Not built by Toyota, but GM.  Works great when you buy it, it’s just as you get older it starts falling apart.  The mind says yes, but the limbs say no.

But I’m still functioning.  Old age has not yet caught up with me.  And I hear something…  It’s an intro.  A couple of strums of an electric guitar, a whistle and a few drumbeats.  I’m drawn in, like they’re giving away a million dollars in the dashboard.  But this is better than money, this is quite clearly "All I Want To Be (Is By Your Side)".

We played these records so much we know every nuance.  We can name them BEFORE the tune begins.  But then Mike Kellie hits the drums and Peter Frampton begins to wail.

Yes, I looked it up.  I’ve still got my original 1972 vinyl album.  I bought it because I was so impressed with Peter at the Fillmore East, on Humble Pie’s farewell tour (at least with Peter).  I saw it in a bin in London.  But didn’t buy it until I got back to the U.S. that fall.  And I seemed to be the only one.  Oh, other people bought "Wind Of Change", but I didn’t know them.  There was no Facebook, no social networking.  We didn’t find other fans of the band until we went to the gig.

At first my favorite was the opener, "Fig Tree Bay", slow and enticing.

I didn’t understand the cover of "Jumping Jack Flash".  It seemed superfluous, especially since Frampton had no problem writing his own material.

But it was the second side opus that entranced me, that made me a fan.

Yes, "All I Want To Be (Is By Your Side)" opens side two.  The second side opener was never the single.  Unless an album contained two.  It was always a statement.  Of where the artist was coming from.  The first side opener was for the label, the manager, the second side opener was for the artist.

"All I Want To Be (Is By Your Side)" is six minutes and twenty five seconds long.  But it plays like 3:30.  It starts with the verses, then drifts into instrumental territory and builds and builds.  Kind of like "Layla", if the second half of that Clapton classic wasn’t blissed out.  Yes, both halves of "All I Want To Be (Is By Your Side)" definitely hung together, were of a piece.  As if you went to dinner with someone and found yourself drifting in a boat down a river thereafter.  There might not be tangerine trees and marmalade skies, but the feeling of euphoria was the same.

And I’m listening to "All I Want To Be (Is By Your Side)" in the car just now and I hear something, that I’ve never noticed before. The way the guitar notes have this funny way of sticking together, they’re not separate, they’re fluid, not drops, but an endless pour with staccato elements.  The track is almost forty years old, yet brand new.

And then it starts accelerating towards the end.  That ride on the river is going to end.  We’re going to tie up the boat.  Please no, NO!  But Frampton and his buddies are not done, for the final thirty seconds they flourish, like your love winking at you before she walks up the dock and evaporates.

There was an incident in the checkout line.  A woman wearing one of those convention badges was in a snit.  She accused the tattooed clerk of being "cavalier".  I wondered if she employed this description to show her superiority.  After all, it wasn’t his fault. At least that’s what he ultimately told me, five minutes later, after the manager had been called and had shepherded the customer away.  You see someone had forgotten to put down the stick.  He charged her for the next customer’s items, a man in such a stupor that he didn’t protest.  It just required a refund.  But that wasn’t enough for this woman.  She wanted to complain.

It had been a long day.

Yes it has.

And the only moment of bliss was in traffic when I heard Friend & Lover’s "Reach Out Of The Darkness" on XM.  What a great record.  And thereafter came the Beatles’ "She’s A Woman".  Never a favorite, the vocal was so over the top that if something this good was released today, eardrums would explode.  Why does everything today have to be beat-infused?  I thought canned drums were exhausted in the eighties.  I guess not.

Oh, I did hear one more great track.  Thompson Twins’ "Hold Me Now".  Can’t that guy come back?  Don’t tell me it was about my youth, I was already over thirty when the band broke.  Remember the album opener, "Doctor Doctor"?  I loved that album.

But I’m writing about none of the foregoing tracks.  I’m writing about Ry Cooder’s "Tamp ‘Em Up Solid".

After leaving Whole Foods, I couldn’t find the right song, I was pushing the buttons, and then Bill Fitzhugh took over on Deep Tracks.  He runs a show where it’s all about the segues, he makes the songs fit together.  He talked about growing up in Jackson, Mississippi, about Paul Simon recording at Malaco there, and said he was going to play a track from "Rhymin’ Simon", but not the one made in his hometown, and ultimately Ry Cooder’s cover of the traditional "Tamp ‘Em Up Solid".

Shit, I always thought it was an original.

Then again, "Paradise and Lunch" was the album I bought just after graduating from college.  I played it enough to know it, and then busted out of town, traveled west to start my new life.

But I never forgot "Jesus on the Mainline"…CALL HIM UP!

And "Married Man’s A Fool".

And the exquisite "Tattler", which you probably know from Linda Ronstadt’s subsequent take, which is an original, cowritten by Washington Phillips and producer Russ Titelman.

But the opener is "Tamp ‘Em Up Solid".

Actually, I saw Ry shortly thereafter.  At this brand new performance center in Jackson Hole.  Right on the ski resort’s property.  On a cold night ultimately spent in my tent in Yellowstone Park.  It was a disappointing show, Ry punched the clock, just another gig on the endless road.  And I’d stayed in town just to see him.

You see I was a fan.  Bought "Into The Purple Valley" because of a great review.  Not knowing what it was gonna sound like.  Like nothing else in the store, like nothing else I’d ever heard before.  I ultimately went back and bought the debut.  And every album thereafter for more than a decade.  Including "Paradise and Lunch", which is one of his absolute best.

So I’m cruising on the 405.  Listening to this Jesse Winchester song about a rhumba.  And then I hear that bass intro, and that slide guitar that sounds like a train coming down the track…

Tamp ’em up solid, so they won’t come down
Tamp ’em up solid, buddy, so they won’t come down

And suddenly a smile came to my face.  I parked at my destination, but couldn’t turn the radio off.

The radio…

Bill was playing the oldies. He’s lost in the classic rock era.  And there’s a lot more there than the hits you hear on terrestrial radio. Like Ry Cooder.  You see you didn’t need to have a hit to make it back then.

Baby, when you marry your railroad man
Every day’ll be payday, dollar bill in your hand

I’m not exactly sure what "Tamp ‘Em Up Solid" is about.  Lyrically, that is.  But I know what it’s about emotionally.  Survival.  Life. With a smile on your face.

Not everybody’s gonna be famous.  Not everybody’s gonna be a doctor or a lawyer.  But life unfolds nonetheless.  You get married, maybe divorced, but still the train keeps rollin’ down the track.

In my iTunes library I’ve got a live version of "Tamp ‘Em Up Solid".  Which is every bit as magical as the studio version.  Maybe even better.

As good as Ry was the night I saw him at the Country Club in Reseda, when John Hiatt opened up.

Some people are musicians.  Some people are stars.  Sometimes they’re both.  But if you’re solely the latter, famous for nothing, we may know your name, but we consider you part of the endless parade.  Whereas a great musician is like a virus, he infects you, gets inside, leaves a residue, akin to antibodies, that makes you a fan forever more.

Radio, a dedicated deejay and a talented musician.  An alchemy that had us addicted.

Tamp ’em up solid.

To listen to "Tamp ‘Em Up Solid", just Google the title.  Ry Cooder’s take will immediately come up in the results.  Click on the triangle and play it!

From: Joe Weinstein    
Subject: Re: The Millennium Trilogy

ha! i was just about to curse you for torturing me.  i read plays w fire a couple weeks ago while in southern thailand.  just yesterday i ran into a couple women from estonia who are staying at the same hotel as i in sri lanka.  one of them is reading plays with fire and then she mentioned there is a third book.  of course, i said yes but it’s not available yet.  she said it was available in estonia.  i was so frustrated and then further frustrated when i saw your email.  however, i just logged onto amazon (from my near dial up speed connection in unawatuna) and punched in the third book which is listed on amazon.  clicked continue and it said it was not available for customers in the united states.  but, just below that there was a notification asking if i had moved recently.  i clicked on it and changed my address to estonia.  it worked, i just downloaded hornets’ nest to my computer and will transfer to kindle tonight.

so instead of being jealous and blasting you, i am thanking you!  you inspired me to log onto amazon and i ended up being able to get the book as desired; thanks!  totally excited to dive into the third book.  headed to northern india on wednesday and psyched to have such a fun book to read.

peace bob

joe