No one wanted to see Jimmy Page play old Zeppelin numbers with Black Crowes, who in the hell is going to want to see him play these same dusty numbers with either a wannabe or an 80’s hack?

Give it up.

But Jimmy’s itchy.

But he lost credibility doing that Leona Lewis Olympics thing.  And the P. Diddy remake of "Kashmir" before that.  I mean if you want to play sessions, if you want to be a gun for hire, like Jeff Beck, be my guest (although don’t tinker with your cars, and play more than Beck!)  As for new material…  You couldn’t do it with Paul Rodgers.  You seem to need Robert.  But that didn’t work without John Paul Jones…

Robert is now my hero, for not doing this reunion gig.  Can you believe it?  Someone in the twenty first century who believes music is more important than money!  He’d rather break ground with Alison Krauss than scream about his lemon to dead people who overpaid for their tickets so they can say they were there, no matter how bad it was.

Jason Bonham’s just a pawn in their game.  Lucky to be able to pound the skins for anyone.

John Paul Jones is a genius.  The missing link that Page and Plant left out in their reunion, to their detriment.  It’s his keyboard textures that were the special sauce, the extra ingredient that made Zeppelin more than a run of the mill hard rock band.

Not to denigrate Page and Plant.  They reigned supreme.  Back when everybody was paying attention and concert promoters were individuals and ticket prices were affordable, when music did change the world, despite the critics saying the band sucked.

I feel sorry for Jimmy that he can’t find his niche.  But revisiting the past is like going to the prom at age thirty.  It can never be the same, no matter how great the memories are.

This is a ridiculous story, hyped by a dying press that has nothing else significant to flog.  Looking for the bigger and better, I’m surprised we’re not hearing about a special dome being built in Vegas to house this inane version of Zeppelin and Paul McCartney and the Moody Blues night after night, for people who need to be entertained while they’re losing their paycheck.

Give me something that matters.  The fact that the press can’t settle on something new that’s valid, that Live Nation and AEG need to make their numbers, that the labels are as artistically bankrupt as this new Zeppelin concoction, does not change reality.  Zeppelin walked the earth at a different time.  When dinosaurs ruled.  They’re extinct, don’t try to bring them back.

I woke up needing to hear a record.

Actually, this need evidenced itself the multiple times I woke up last night.

Prior to going to bed, I listened to Jack Mannequin’s new album, "The Glass Passenger", on my iPod as I read the newspapers.  Distracted, the music as background, the album started to reveal itself.

I’d given the new album a few spins prior to the gig, but it hadn’t penetrated me.  And yesterday, I was playing "Into The Airwaves", "The Mixed Tape" and "Holiday For Real" over and over again and then I needed to listen to something new.  That’s when I dialed up "The Glass Passenger".

Gig hangover.  I didn’t want to play any music on the way home from the gig.  When I was growing up, I’d enter the house in the dark, fire up my mother’s stereo and listen to the vinyl album of the act I’d just seen on headphones.  I didn’t want the experience to die, I reveled in it.

In the seventies, I’d never read without a record playing in the background.  That’s how I learned the album cuts.  Like "Old Mister Time" on 10cc’s "Bloody Tourists".  You’re deep into your reading material, the music emanating from the other side of the room, and then one track envelops you. You look up, stare at the wall, catch every lick.

Today I use an iPod.  I don’t have to cross the room to play the track again.  I can just hit repeat.  Which I kept doing last night, needing to hear "Annie Use Your Telescope" again and again.

It started feeling like October

It is October.  The hottest on record in SoCal according to my buddy.  Summer hangs on a long time in L.A., but by now I’ve usually turned on the heat.  But despite Accuweather predicting a decline in temperatures, this has not happened.  It’s hot summer days, although cooler nights.  The kind of weather east coasters move here for, the kind of weather Angelenos burn out on.  Like Barbra Streisand in that movie, we’re looking for some RAIN!

But it’s dark out, I’m reading by the lamp, and this aural landscape is playing in my ears.  It’s majestic.  It’s not a beat-driven opus made to sell products, to ring a cash register.  It’s a track someone had to cut, to tell his story.

In the nineties we moved to a hit-driven world.  That’s all the A&R guys wanted.  Even the rock stations had tight playlists.  They didn’t want any tune-outs.  But what built this business was the album cut.  The problem is not iTunes, but the purveyors.  Looking for instant riches, they jammed the track, surrounded it with crap and then whored it and its performer out to such a degree that we could be burned out on an act in a year. Whereas acts used to develop, unfold on the scene.  We were less interested in their sales history than their musical explorations.  Where were they going, what did they have to say?  What happened in their lives that made them not only become musicians, but led them to make this music.

Yesteryear’s music wasn’t made for everybody.  Check the sales figures for confirmation.  Even the Beatles didn’t sell ten million copies of an album in the States.  Your music was for your scene, your scene supported you.  So I don’t expect everybody to like "Annie Use Your Telescope".

But I do.

And that’s all that counts.

You listen to this music in your house and go to the gig to hear it replicated, to have an ultimate experience.

We live in a nation of winners.  Zac Efron, Paris Hilton, fabulous people whose lives work.  But then we see Paris crying on her way to jail and child stars getting hooked on drugs, sometimes o.d.’ing, even committing suicide.  We don’t live in a nation of winners, but a nation of people.  All imperfect.  HD reveals Cameron Diaz has a bad complexion.  Plastic surgery can perfect your body, but you appear strange, everybody can tell, because perfection doesn’t exist in the wild.  Music used to speak to this truth, to the person who felt like a square peg in a round hole.  Music reached out and told you you were okay, that it was okay to dream, to lick your wounds, that tough times were de rigueur and with this music playing you could get through.

"Annie Use Your Telescope" is not a one listen smash.  Not something that can sell razors or zit cream.  But play this alone, long after dark, and you’ll feel the power of music.  Washing over you, bathing you, wiping away all the detritus of everyday life and giving you hope.

Go to: Jack Mannequin MySpace It’s the second track.

I was so much older than the rest of the crowd that it was like I didn’t even exist.  Andrew McMahon’s parents were in the audience, he pointed them out deep into the show.  I was stunned to see they were contemporaries.  And there was this old man walking around who might have been his grandpa, but other than them I was DECADES older than everybody in the audience.  No one wanted to talk to me, no one gave me a second look, I was completely invisible.

This was not the hipsters.  They might read PerezHilton, but they’re not featured on the site, there’s no scribbling on their photos.  Today’s kids have got their pulse on everything, the breadth of their knowledge far exceeds that of their parents.  But what they dedicate their time to truly moves them, or they move on.

Hit songs are for a laugh, or a bump on the dance floor.  The antics of the drama queens and the has-beens are just that.  Train-wrecks to be observed and then discarded.  The mainstream media is ramping up the publicity, imploring this generation to pay attention, to stay focused.  And when these young people don’t, they’re accused of having a short attention span.  But they just have incredible shit detectors, they don’t want to spend time with anything but what truly affects them, that penetrates them.

I didn’t see a plethora of tattoos, no teeter-totter high heels.  Sure, a few guys had emo-haircuts, but on stage only the bass player had his hair cut in a bizarre way.  The rest of the band was positively normal.  The drummer had a Don Henley afro.  The guitarist looked like he was pulled from math class.  And Andrew McMahon looked like he’d told his art or theatre teacher he had a conflicting appointment, and had gotten out on a pass.

This whole generation has been ignored by the media.  Purveying its dieted-down stars and lame shoot-em-up/explosion movies.  But the electronics manufacturers have tapped right in.  Everybody had a cell phone.  I saw people tapping away on their Sidekicks.  And others holding up their mobiles transporting the music from this sold-out show to their buddies, to their answering machines.  I even saw someone recording the show on a hand-held device.  And everybody up front had a digital camera.  When the oldsters are trying to keep their public at bay, refusing to be photographed from the wrong angle, recorded if not in full voice, Jack’s Mannequin waved the audience in.  Andrew wanted everybody to come on down, for the ritual.  Of singing along at the top of your lungs to your favorite songs.  Of being transported from this world with too many bills and little future to one where the flame burns brightly.

The girl behind me had a complexion not built for HDTV.  But as she sang along with every word what struck me most was her halitosis.  She’d probably never had a date.  But tonight, her life was better than a night out at a movie with someone who would instantly forget her.  Jack’s Mannequin cared about her.

Sure, there was an obese girl behind me, but there were plenty of fresh-scrubbed kids who were far from losers.  And although there might have been a few more girls than boys, males were out in full force, they were the most vociferous singers in my neighborhood.

They didn’t track me down to go to this show.  I wanted to go, I needed to go.  It’s so rare you hear new music that you like, that you want to hear again.  It’s not often you want to play the whole album.  But that’s how I felt about Jack Mannequin’s "Everything In Transit".

The lawyer told me Andrew had gotten leukemia.  That he’d been in Something Corporate.  But I could detect the enthusiasm, the belief in this attorney’s missive to me.  He wanted to give this music a good shot.  And I’m glad he did.  Because I love "Into The Airwaves".

From an empty room on the first floor
As the cars pass by the liquor store
I deconstruct my thoughts at this piano

That’s what Andrew did.  He sat at the lip of the Troubadour’s tiny stage and banged the keys like he truly meant it.  He even stood atop the piano, not in a fuck you Billy Joel way, but in an expression of sheer exuberance.  He’d written songs in his basement at sixteen, he was now thankful to be able to play rock music for a living.  HE SAID SO!

From the corner by the studio
The gold-soaked afternoon comes slow
I deconstruct my thoughts and I am walking by
On Third Street, the freak show thrives
Santa Monica’s alive, but
Something’s not so right inside
Living with the news

These are not lyrics written by committee.  So bland they can work in countries where English is not just the second language, but oftentimes the third or fourth, or completely unknown.  This is directly from Andrew’s heart to you, you feel like he’s speaking to you.  Yes, he’s cut all his records in that studio in Santa Monica, by the Third Street Promenade.  It’s where he goes to be inspired, it’s where he concocts these numbers that mean so much to you.

The other classic track from "Everything In Transit" is "The Mixed Tape".

Where are you now?
As I’m swimming through the stereo
I’m writing you a symphony of sound
Where are you now?
As I rearrange the songs again
This mix could burn a hole in anyone
But it was you I was thinking of
It was you I was thinking of
It was you I was thinking of

Heartbreak isn’t about buying a new pair of shoes and sleeping with someone else.  It’s about waking up with them still on your mind, just like when you went to bed.  It’s wanting to close the curtain, shutting out the light.

This was the highlight of the evening, the song that put the crowd into a frenzy.

I don’t know what Andrew McMahon’s dream is.  Whether he’s into the same world domination as the hard rock bands.  If so, I’d hate to tell him such a concept is history.  That it’s most important to garner an audience, by being honest, by respecting your fans, treating them right, making your music solely for them.  If this is Andrew’s goal, he’s achieved it.  His fans don’t need him in the newspaper, don’t need him on the cover of "Rolling Stone", they just need his music on their iPods, so they can dial it up when they feel alone and need company, when they have a personal victory and want to share it with someone, when they want to believe their life will work out.

"The Mixed Tape" starts with a soft guitar riff and then Andrew McMahon starts singing quietly.  But then the track EXPLODES!  And it runs at a about a hundred miles an hour almost throughout, as if Andrew is trying to squeeze all the bad feelings, all the anger out of his brain through the playing.  But at the end of the song, all the other instruments fall out, it’s just Andrew playing the piano riff, again and again, and then he slows the number down and sings:

Where are you now?
Where are you now?

Where do they go after you’ve broken up?  They should be dead, they can’t be continuing their lives.  They can’t be talking to anybody else, they can’t be laughing, they can’t be going forward.  Because you’re stuck.  And the only thing that says exactly how you feel is music.  The lyrics jump out of the stereo, from your earbuds, the singer knows you, exactly how you feel.  If only you could send her this song, maybe she’d understand, maybe she’d come back, maybe everything would be all right.

And this is my mixed tape for her
It’s like I wrote every note
With my own fingers

That’s the power of music.  And last night at the Troubadour the music was quite powerful, enough to sustain a life, keep a person going.  It wasn’t for you, but for those in attendance, it was…everything.

Utterly hysterical.

Wanting to finish the damn Series, which has abysmal ratings, being fought between a secondary market team and one so far from the mainstream that it can’t even sell out its home games, Major League Baseball elected to play the game tonight, even though the forecast was…let’s just say less than ideal.

Who cares?  The Rays’ bats were cold.  Philadelphia was leading.  One final game and Fox can go back to its regular programming, stop losing money on this fiasco and book some real revenue.

And it was all fine and dandy until the Phillies were ahead in the bottom of the fifth.  Those who grew up playing Little League, who are still flummoxed by soccer, know that it’s now an official game.  Yup, the baseball season, after 162 regular season games, and three rounds of playoffs, is going to limp to a finish.  Deservedly so for a sport that isn’t interested in the young, but only the oldsters, who are willing to overpay to attend and stay up way past their bedtime, until the wee hours of the morning, to see who wins these games played in near-winter weather.  (Isn’t this how the music business got in trouble?  Only caring about the oldsters who would overpay for CDs, not the youngsters who wanted files?)

But the weasels at MLB couldn’t let this happen.  They’d be laughingstocks.  So rather than call the game, and the Series, they continued to play on.

You know how you love to watch football in the snow?  That’s what it was like, watching baseball being played in the rain.  Shit, it was in the thirties, maybe it was just ABOUT to snow!  The players were slipping and a sliding, like some weasels on the run (how well do you know Dylan’s output, do you catch the "One More Weekend" reference?)

Anyway, despite being ahead, despite playing so well, the ball glanced off the Phillies’ shortstop’s glove for a hit.  Not a hit if it’s dry, but Fall Classic rules are different, just like those idiotic ones established to cope with St. Petersburg’s "unhittable" dome.

The Rays end up scoring, and THEN the baseball fat cats halt the game.   Because now that it’s tied, the game isn’t over, it will have to be finished tomorrow.  Or whenever the skies clear, which could be APRIL!

If the Rays come back from their 3-1 deficit and end up winning the Series, I hope the Phillies protest.  Ask for a complete do-over.  But what did Dick Benjamin say in "Goodbye Columbus"?  NO DO-OVERS?

How are we supposed to take our institutions seriously?

Chris Rock said his father told him the only way to beat a white man was to knock him out.  That even if Barack Obama gets the most votes, they’re gonna deny him victory, telling him votes no longer count in elections.  When it’s all about money, when morality and doing the right thing are out the window, is it any surprise we’ve got a meltdown on Wall Street?

Having given up on baseball long ago, when George Steinbrenner used his money to stack the deck, I’m laughing from the sidelines, just like George Carlin did.  He said being born was getting a ticket to the freak show, to set up a chair and enjoy the movie.  If only George were here now, to riff on this insanity.  How the legendary "pastoral" game has been hijacked by the same interests, the same mentality, that stole a Presidential election.