Next month Taylor Swift will be twenty.  She’s already had her heart broken, but she’s not quite aware how complicated and confusing life truly is, how you can seemingly be on top of the world and commit suicide, like Freddie Prinze, how you can be almost broke, but be beamingly happy.

But Taylor does know the thrill of falling in love.

It’s not like the movies, it’s certainly not like TV.

But it’s just like listening to a Joni Mitchell song.

And that’s probably why I quoted "A Case Of You" to Taylor.  To show her how someone can get it so right.

I remember that time you told me you said
‘Love is touching souls’
Surely you touched mine
‘Cause part of you pours out of me
In these lines from time to time

And part of Joni is pouring out of me as I write this, listening to her sing "A Case Of You" thirty nine years ago, before it was even commercially released, at the Greenpeace concert in Vancouver.

How do you explain to someone how it was.  When these acts were at the peak of their powers.  When you tuned in the radio to hear their new works, when you went to the show to marinate in their vibe.  It might only be Joni and her dulcimer.  No auto-tune, no backup tapes, certainly no dancing, just the music.

I saw James Taylor twice that spring.  And hearing his performances on this album is like sitting in the audience at the Capitol Theatre in Port Chester, New York, before "Fire and Rain" became an anthem, before he hit the cover of "Time", when the house was maybe a quarter full.

James sat on a stool.  Just he and his guitar.  And played these songs.

And to listen to my absolute favorite, "Something In The Way She Moves", done fast, the way it was on the Apple album, before he recut it for the Warner Brothers "Greatest Hits" album, puts a smile on my face.

And James does my other favorite from the Apple debut, "Carolina In My Mind".

But what is truly staggering is his renditions of "Riding On A Railroad" and "You Can Close Your Eyes", months before they appeared on "Mud Slide Slim".

THAT’S why my story of the train trip was entitled "Riding On A Railroad", because of James’ tune!

But even better is "You Can Close Your Eyes".

It’s positively mind-blowing.  As if the 1970 James Taylor just knocked on my front door and asked if he could sit on my couch and play.

This is perfection.  Not because he misses no notes, not because of his picking, but because of the emotion.  This is the zeitgeist, as good as it gets.  A troubadour singing his songs one night on the road, same as it’s ever been for centuries.

Still, listening to Joni sing shocks me into submission.

My old man, he’s a singer in the park

Joni’s sitting at the piano, playing the intro of this song from "Blue", but when she starts to sing you can really see her old man, walking in the park.  And then she sings those lines I’ve quoted for the entirety of my adult life:

We don’t need no piece of paper
From the city hall
Keeping us tied and true

It may be hard if you didn’t live through the sixties, if you didn’t see them slide into the seventies.  Possessions were secondary, we thought we were truly building a better society, based on honesty.  Before Reagan was elected President, legitimized greed and all the boomers said HELL YEAH!

Joni does "For Free""

I slept last night in a good hotel
I went shopping today for jewels

Joni sings "The Fairmont Hotel" on the authorized live album, "Miles Of Aisles", but this take is far superior.  I wondered why you couldn’t stream this album anywhere and I thought of the lines "I play if you have the money, Or if you’re a friend to me."

We’ll do anything if you know us.  Otherwise, you’ve got to pay.

Joni doesn’t need the exposure, the promotional value.  Just buy the damn tracks or leave her alone.  You either need the music or you don’t.

And if you don’t think you need Joni Mitchell, I feel sorry for you.  You’re probably a soulless fuck who thinks he who dies with the most toys wins.  Of, if you’re heartbroken or depressed, you won’t admit it.

And Joni sings the classic "Circle Game".  And "Woodstock".

But the apotheosis is "A Case Of You".

Just before our love got lost you said
‘I am as constant as a northern star’
And I said ‘Constantly in the darkness
Where’s that at?
If you want me I’ll be in the bar’

Just Joni and her dulcimer, laid across her lap, striking it like a woman who’s known life’s pleasure and its pains.

It’s almost like you’re hearing the story from a friend.  A complete expose of her relationship, the complete tale.

We’re not expecting her to make fun of her beloved’s proclamation.  But that’s what makes Joni Mitchell so great.  She’s not playing by the rules, she’s just being true to herself.

Oh I am a lonely painter
I live in a box of paints
I’m frightened by the devil
And I’m drawn to those ones that ain’t afraid

I envy the self-confident winners, never shaken by self-doubt, leading us wherever they decide we should go.  I’m riddled with insecurities, and I’m looking for someone to understand me, to be nice to me, to take me by the hand and help me, lead me along.

But even though Joni’s talking shit, she’s also professing infatuation, extreme love:

Oh I could drink a case of you darling
Still I’d be on my feet
Oh I would still be on my feet

What a metaphor!  Especially now that I know Canadians.  Who buy their case at the "Beer Store" and try to keep the demons at bay during the long cold winter.

It’s coming on Christmas
They’re cutting down trees
They’re putting up reindeer
And singing songs of joy and peace
Oh I wish I had a river I could skate away on

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving.  The beginning of the joyous season that runs through Christmas and ends with the ringing of the bell bringing in the New Year.

It’s hell.  Especially if you’re alone.

And even if you’re in a relationship, the time off from work, the family interactions are enough to push you over the edge.

Anxiety runs rampant and everybody tells you you should be happy.  Ain’t that the modern condition.

I’m just here to tell you that you’re not alone, that you’ve got a companion, this "Amchitka" live album.  Comprised of takes from not only Joni and James, but Phil Ochs too.

And these renditions are better than any authorized live album, better than seeing the artists in concert today (unfortunately, in the case of Phil, that’s impossible).

You see these recordings were made before they were self-conscious, when they were brimming with creativity, before they were worn down by not only the business, but the world.

To listen to Joni Mitchell sing "A Case Of You" is to understand why classic rock is truly classic.

We’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden.  And going back to the greats is a good place to start.  When it was about songs, not corporate tie-ins.  When your relationship with your audience trumped all other associations.

Listening to Joni tonight brings tears to my eyes.

I just wanted you to know.

The Amchitka Concert

If older folk still buy music and younger people steal it, why did John Mayer sell almost twice as many albums the first week out as Bon Jovi?

Yes, according to hitsdailydouble.com, John Mayer sold 301,204 copies of his new album, "Battle Studies", this week.  Whereas last week, Bon Jovi moved 165,871 copies of "The Circle".

Ready for some truly horrifying news?  This week "The Circle" fell all the way to number 19, selling 50,153 copies, a whopping drop of 70%.  Whew!

What’s the difference between John and Jon?

One is living in 2009 and the other is living in the last century.

Jon Bon Jovi was positively old media, tying in with NBC.

John Mayer was new media, appearing in concert on Fuse and tweeting up a storm.

It doesn’t matter the total reach, it matters who actually watches and what the perception is.

Fuse would be canceled, the entire channel, if its programming was on NBC.  To say the ratings are anemic would be charitable.  But Fuse airs music, unlike MTV.  And most people watching the shows featuring Bon Jovi on NBC don’t give a shit about the man’s music.  In other words, Jon’s shoving it down the wrong people’s throats.

Jon Bon Jovi has a fawning documentary on Showtime.

John Mayer is all over Twitter.

Did you watch any of the Bon Jovi doc?  Shot like it was footage for "America’s Next Top Model", everyone looked beautiful and spouted humble platitudes, like we were still living in the eighties and rock stars were established on MTV and made a fucking fortune.  Whereas the truth is everybody’s scrambling, giving concert tickets away in some instances.  Bon Jovi reflecting is like Lloyd Blankfein saying Goldman Sachs is doing "God’s work".  Huh?

Laughable.

If you Google "Bon Jovi Twitter", the first result is: http://m.twitter.com/backstagejbj a page that doesn’t exist.  The second result is http://twitter.com/bonjovimerch

Wow, someone in JBJ’s camp doesn’t understand Twitter.  It’s not for selling, its for CONNECTING!

Meanwhile, the Bon Jovi merch page has 1,540 followers.

Google "John Mayer Twitter" and you get the following page: http://twitter.com/jOhnCmAYer

John Mayer has 2,657,425 Twitter followers.  Furthermore, he’s following 72 people, so you get an idea of what he’s into.

Bon Jovi’s old school, playing behind a wall, just like Doug Morris and Jimmy Iovine, rarely coming out to play and only in circumstances they can control.

John Mayer is new school.  Putting it all out there unfiltered, getting into arguments with Perez Hilton, never backing down, not afraid to look like a tool.

It’s the honesty that grabs you.  That’s why people are following John Mayer, that’s why they care about him.  Furthermore, in an era where album sales represent only a fraction of your fan base, you want to get attention where you can.  Not by batting people over the head, telling them they must endure you, but being so provocative, so interesting that they want to tune in.

Nobody plays the new media game better than Mr. Mayer.

He makes a deal with BlackBerry and it looks cool.  Kind of like a rapper, ripping off the man, because you know he uses a BlackBerry anyway!  Whereas U2 makes a deal with BlackBerry and you see dollar signs, you see promotion, you see a deal.  If you endorse a product you truly use is it a sell-out?

The classic rock acts would probably say yes, you don’t want to tarnish your image.

But Mr. Mayer is at the bleeding edge of a new paradigm, where the rules are being made up as we go.  He’s so overexposed that he’s establishing a new way of doing it, you almost feel like he’s a guy at your high school, that you know him.  Does anybody really know Jon Bon Jovi?  Who never has a bad word to say about anyone?

Old school: You’re afraid of pissing anybody off, you’re Justin Timberlake at the Super Bowl, apologizing.

New school: Dixie Chicks.  Fuck with me and I’ll give you the middle finger.

In other words, it’s been a long strange trip, but we’re suddenly back in the sixties.  It’s about artistry, it’s about music, it’s about honesty. You don’t triangulate, construct a phony identity for public consumption.  You’re better off being your real self.  Hell, the Internet will tease out your flaws anyway, why not admit them?

Jon Bon Jovi utters irrelevant platitudes and John Mayer sings "Who says I can’t get stoned?"

Politicians have to lie about doing dope.  But artists are supposed to speak the truth, and the public has to deal with it.  Which is why we love our artists more than any political figure.

Who says I can’t get stoned
Call up a girl that I used to know
Fake love for an hour or so
Who says I can’t get stoned?

A weird variation on drunk-dialing.  Maybe her number is still in your cell.  Maybe you’ve got to IM her, maybe you’ve got to pull up her Facebook page.  But you’re sitting at home, thinking about what used to be.  Can you act on it?

That’s a question confronting everyone online.  Do you make contact or let the sleeping dogs of the past lie?

Bon Jovi, Mimi, all the stars of the MTV era are still living in it, oblivious to the fact that the nineties were ten years ago, and that in Internet time, a decade is equivalent to a century.  It’s not a three year cycle, you’re on a day to day regimen.

"Any tweet that takes more than 90 seconds to write is not a tweet worth sending."

John Mayer

Yes, we used to make records in an afternoon and get them on the radio in a week.  Now, TV and movies are more topical than music.  Let it out, go knee-jerk, don’t massage, don’t focus on the marketing plan, focus on the music.

And stay in touch with your audience CONSTANTLY!

"Who Says"

Hi Bob,

I’m the owner of gotthetix.com – according to Taylor Swift we broke into her official website. Taylor is a great girl and accomplished performer – I have nothing but respect for her. But I shall kindly disagree with her statement. Probably would go as far as to call it a complete bullshit…

We are based in Connecticut:

137 Bolton Road
Vernon, CT 06066 USA

gotthetix.com is a legitimate reseller of tickets – concerts, sports and theatre, not just Taylor Swift, of course. $5 million worth of tickets sold this year so far. Yes, some tickets are pretty expensive, exorbitant prices as in Taylor’s case, but that’s simply because there’s a huge demand for her tickets. We just provide the platform for resellers to list their tickets and charge a fee on every transaction – that’s how we survive. As for hacking into Taylor Swift’s website – I have no idea how to do that. We drive traffic through google advertising, no hacking involved.

Anyways, I simply wanted to clear my name. Just because it’s Taylor Swift, doesn’t mean she can go ahead and accuse anybody of hacking her website. Any proof of that really? She must have seen our pay-per-click ad in google – we do bid on comcasttix name – and decided that we broke into her site. One would expect a 19 year old to be a little more internet-savvy.

Best Regards,

Vasyl Pshyk

___________________________________________

Bob,

I am a ticket broker in the NY area.  Taylor isn’t lying, she was hacked.  The same thing happened this summer on livenation.com during the DMB onsale and the Phish onsale right on livenation.com.

As a broker I brought this to the attention of the primary ticketer (Live Nation) myself.

You would click on a buy tickets button and it would redirect to coasttocoasttickets.com.

If you want to confirm the Live Nation hack and they are willing to admit anything, Nathan Hubbard, President of ticketing should be able to give you more info.

If you want to talk to the head of ticket network (The ultimate owner of gotthhetix and coasttocoasttickets as well as 100’s (if not thousands) of look a like and redirect sites), they are based in Vernon, CT and the President of that company is Don Vacaro, publisher of ticketnews, owner of ticket network and the organizer of "The Ticket Summit" which will be holding its next convention at the Waldorf in NYC this January.

You should stop in if you can.

If you republish by any chance.  Please leave my name and company name off as I am just a pretty small regional broker.

___________________________________________

From: Bob Lefsetz
To: Vasyl Pshyk

I received an e-mail prior to receiving yours that stated that gotthetix.com and coasttocoasttickets.com are both owned by Ticket Network, also located in Vernon, CT.

This person also states he confirmed with Live Nation that on sales with Dave Matthews and Phish on livenation.com had redirects to coasttocoasttickets.com

Are these allegations true?

___________________________________________

From: Vasyl Pshyk
To: Bob Lefsetz

I’m a partner with TicketNetwork – I own gotthetix but the inventory is from ticketnetwork. Basically I am an affiliate. Can’t say anything about coast to coast – you’d have to contact them.

In order to redirect onsales one has to gain control of the website that’s initiating onsales – literally hack into livenation.com or comcasttix or ticketmaster. First of all that’s practically impossible. Second, every website keeps track of what’s happening there – so called logs, so it should be easy to prove that someone messed with the site. If livenation has these logs indicating someone broke into it – they should take action. Otherwise it’s just words. Same with Taylor Swift and her claim.

Best,
Vasyl

I did a domain name search of coasttocoasttickets.com.

The address was in  Austin, Texas.

I e-mailed the contact listed and asked whether Coast To Coast was owned by Ticket Network.  I have yet to receive a response.

I e-mailed Nathan Hubbard at Live Nation to find out if the allegation that DMB and Phish onsales at livenation.com had been hacked and buyers had been redirected to coasttocoasttickets.com was true.  I have yet to receive a response.

I did a domain name search on gotthetix.com.  The registrant was DomainsByProxy, located in Scottsdale, Arizona.

I did a domain name search on TicketNetwork.com.  The address was on 137 Bolton Road, in Vernon, CT.

So what exactly is going on here?

I point you to a "New York Times" article entitled: "Pssst! Want a Ticket? Hey, I’m Legit. Really"  Published on August 28, 2009, it appears to have had no traction whatsoever amongst the ticket buying public.  In other words, the public would rather just hate on Ticketmaster and Live Nation.  Or, perhaps, the public knows the only way to get a good seat is to use a broker.  Since so many of the good seats never go on sale to the general public anyway.  The reason?  A plethora of holdbacks, a plethora of pre-sales.  And the brokers..?

How many tickets do the brokers get? And how do they get them?
Don Vaccaro stated at the end of the "New York Times" article:

"’I know that you’ve all heard stories,’ he recalled saying, ‘about box-office managers getting cash payoffs, primary ticket outlets selling their tickets directly to brokers, managers selling their tickets to brokers. And I just want to dispel those rumors right now by confirming that they’re all true.’"

So what is the truth here?  With regard to ticket buyers being redirected to a scalper site when trying to purchase tickets for Taylor Swift’s Philadelphia shows at the Wachovia Center?

First and foremost, those tickets were never sold by Ticketmaster.  Comcast sells the tickets for the Wachovia Center.

And yes, when one clicked on those shows on Taylor Swift’s Website prior to my publication of the e-mail in Thursday November 19th’s "Mailbag", one was directed to a scalper site.  Was it gotthetix.com?  Unfortunately, I did not save a screen shot.  Maybe Ms. Swift’s Web team did.

As for the allegations above that this type of event occurred previously, with DMB and Phish, with a hack and a redirection to a scalper site…  I have no independent verification of that fact, all I have is the above e-mail.  And how trustworthy is someone who misspells Mr. Vaccaro’s name?

Then again, how trustworthy is Vasyl Pshyk when he states that he’s just a Ticket Network affiliate?

Well, if one reads the "New York Times" article, one can see that all the broker sites are linked, that other brokers are affiliated with Ticket Network.  Just check the tickets available for Ms. Swift at the Wachovia Center.  They’re exactly the same on ticketnetwork.com, coasttocoasttickets.com and gotthetix.com.

So, maybe Mr. Pshyk is just an affiliate.

Then again, the physical address he provides above is identical to that for TicketNetwork.  Are they both operating out of the same headquarters but completely disconnected?  And, in his first e-mail, Mr. Pshyk states: "We just provide the platform for resellers to list their tickets and charge a fee on every transaction – that’s how we survive."  That would tend to indicate that Mr. Pshyk actually works for Ticket Network…

But, there’s no hard evidence that Mr. Pshyk hacked into Taylor Swift’s Web page.  And, until someone comes forth with that evidence, one must agree with him that he’s innocent.  That’s the law, innocent until proven guilty.  Then again, we’re not in a court of law, we’re in the arena of public opinion.  And the public appears to be ignorant.  People are just hating on Ticketmaster.
Then again, how innocent are Ticketmaster and Irving Azoff?  There was that article in the "Wall Street Journal" delineating how Mr. Azoff had tried to do a deal with the scalpers, an initiative that was entitled "Project Showtime":

Big Ticket Seller Tried Deal With Scalpers

Once again, this revelation got little traction in the straight press (maybe because the initial article was behind a pay wall).

Many people know a lot, and they’re not talking.  Why is that?

The artists are not accounting for all tickets at their shows, stating when they were offered, who they were offered to and what price they were sold at.

Ticketmaster is stating that its hands are tied by the acts.

The brokers just say they’re providing a service.  And their customers don’t mind paying high prices to sit close.

In other words, these people like things the way they are.  Sure, they’re fighting amongst themselves for a bigger piece of the pie.  But they don’t want the general public to know what’s truly going on whatsoever.

A legislative solution?

Did you follow the Louis Messina shenanigans?  Where on television he accused Ticketmaster of scalping tickets

Promoter Suggests Ticketmaster Secretly Scalps Tickets

and then after the piece aired he claimed that this was the pre-Azoff Ticketmaster and that Irving’s cleaning up the business?

TMG/AEG Live President Messina Clarifies Ticketmaster Stance

Mr. Messina said this is the last time he’s ever going on the record about ticketing.  That doesn’t bode well for an ultimate solution.

As for the TV station twisting Mr. Messina’s words, quoting him out of context…  When I sat down with the interviewer, we talked for an hour, I had no idea the focus was on Keith Urban and Taylor Swift.  I very carefully walked the line of truth, but I was quoted out of context too.

But the TV station wanted its ratings.  What, with the CMAs in town and then Bruce Springsteen.

So, everybody seems to have his own agenda.

And it’s only the insiders who truly know what’s going on.

And, as stated above, they’re not talking.  They’re certainly not speaking the truth.

Pssst! Want a Ticket? Hey, I’m Legit. Really.

I want to turn you on to a great track.

I got an e-mail.  About Sirius XM.  The listener wanted the company to understand, we didn’t want to tear the service down, we wanted it to be BETTER!  We wanted to go back to those XM days when we couldn’t leave the car, when we had to sit in the dark and not only finish hearing what was pouring out of the stereo, but what came next.

I had one of those experiences Saturday night.

What Mel Karmazin doesn’t understand is music sells satellite radio.  There’s nothing that can compete on the terrestrial bands, nothing without commercials.  Instead, the company takes full page ads trumpeting their talk stations.  Huh?  Like someone is going to wake up today and become a Howard Stern fan?  Hell, most of his audience didn’t even migrate to Sirius.  As for Oprah and Martha Stewart…did I miss something, do they have reps for being great radio broadcasters, are they even on their stations?

No, the linchpin is music.  Theatre of the mind.  Creating stations that are not just compilations of the top forty tracks in the genres, but listening posts, bars, clubs where fans want to hang out.

That’s the rage online.  The club.  And clubs in real life are all about the vibe, talk to a creator, they finesse the smallest details, the physical space has got to be exactly right.  So, how can Sirius XM fuck up the number one mindspace so bad?

I don’t know.

But some of the old XM stations remain.  Like the Loft.

Just before midnight, I was cruising Wilshire towards the freeway and I heard this lyric:

Heaven knows I’m a pain
Heaven knows I’m an animal
A criminal
I’m gonna fuck it up once again
I’m gonna kill another friendship
Gonna knock it down
Knock it down
‘Cause I’m such an asshole

With the death of the mainstream, it’s not about blanding out your material to appeal to an ever-decreasing mass, but being yourself, letting your warts and creativity shine through, so the audience can hook onto you like velcro.

But I’m still an asshole
I just push
I just push that girl away

Wow.  Honesty.

I’d love to have you hear this Julian Coryell track, but I can’t find anywhere to stream it online.

But then this song ended.  And what came next didn’t quite float my boat.  So I started pushing buttons.  That’s the theoretical magic of satellite radio, you can jump around and find a plethora of interesting stuff.  But what was playing on the other stations lacked the magic of "Asshole", and once on the 405, I eventually found myself back on the Loft.  Where I heard a track so good, I couldn’t believe I hadn’t heard it before.

That’s the power of radio.  What it used to be and could be once again.  The FILTER!  We want someone else to do the job, of combing through the crap, to find the gems.  We want people we can trust to do this job for us.

But we don’t trust anyone on the terrestrial band.  And the bloggers are so inside, laden with so much attitude, so many biases, that it’s hard to find someone online you can trust.  But I’m still checking in at the Loft, to see what I can find.

And I found a gem Saturday night.

The car is the ultimate listening room.  Just you alone, doing a job, but with enough brain space to concentrate on tunes.  You hear the right one, it energizes you, allows you to speed to your destination without frustration, it’s like you’ve got a passenger, riding shotgun.

"Rise Above It" is not new.  It came out in 2003.  But it’s new to ME!

Sure, I know that Afro Celt Sound System song with Peter Gabriel, "When You’re Falling", it’s great.  But I’d never heard "Rise Above It".

I came in in the middle, about five minutes in, when the fiddle starts to wail.  It’s like I opened up a door in the darkness and found a party, without a barker outside imploring me to come in, no one was selling, there were just people inside having the time of their lives!

In an era where too much music is an assault, where divas try to score on a scale, proving their range but shrieking us away, I just wanted to get closer to "Rise Above It", I didn’t want it to end, I couldn’t get out of the car until it was done.

There are actually two tracks, if you’re playing at home on Spotify, it’s easy.  "Rise" and "Rise Above It".  The former is the intro, just like those tracks bleed together and build to "Spiritual High (State Of Independence)" on Moodswings’ "Moodfood".

Yes, "Rise" is a three minute intro to "Rise Above It", an awakening.  It’s like you’re being tapped on the shoulder, it’s time to get out of bed.

And at the beginning of "Rise Above It", you’re walking around the house, into the kitchen, grinding up some coffee.

Then, the day begins.  You’re sitting at the table, ingesting your caffeine, reading the paper, you’re conscious, you’re awake.  And Mundy starts to sing.

Mundy sounds like Bono.  Can’t say the lyrics are extremely memorable, but I’d rather hear "Rise Above It" in a stadium than anything off U2’s new album.  Because "Rise Above It" makes you move, you just can’t help yourself!  And that’s the essence of stadium music.  You can’t really see, but you can feel!  And when the music gets inside you, when done right, you become inhabited, you can’t help moving, no matter how challenged you might usually be on the dance floor.

And the song is building.  Kind of like Kraftwerk’s "Autobahn", which has just been released in a remastered box, the magic is mindblowing.

But back to "Rise Above It".  They’re taking their time.  They don’t need to get to the chorus.  Hell, it takes three and a half minutes to build to the refrain.

And it’s after that that the song truly takes off.  When the fiddle comes in, when you’re at altitude, you’re soaring!

But don’t unbuckle your seat belt.  Because this is the Concorde.  Hell, you thought that plane was decommissioned, just like there was no good new music.  But hang in there, we’re going STRATOSPHERIC!

Yup, just beyond five minutes, they throw the lever and we’re in hyperspace!  An unknown land that feels so GOOD!

We need people to connect the dots.  We need places casual listeners, fans who like music but don’t want to dedicate hours a day searching online, can find great tunes.

Satellite radio could be the solution.

Maybe Sirius XM fails, but we’re going to go somewhere to find out what’s good.  A site.  With a trusted source.  A human being.  Who takes us on an aural journey.  No computer, no logarithm can tell me if I like AC/DC and Joni Mitchell that I’ll love "Rise Above It".  But I love ALL THREE!

To hear "Rise Above It", google "afro celt sound system rise above it".  Click the Lala button.

If you want to hear "Rise", which precedes "Rise Above It" on the album, google: "afro celt sound system rise".  Click the Lala button.