Thanks Bob, for remembering The Records and some of our songs (second time around if I cast my mind back to 2006). Since then, the group’s bassist Phil Brown and co-writer and singer John Wicks have sadly died. I am occasionally in touch with Jude Cole who appeared on ‘Crashes’ and toured with us in 1980. Jude covered our song Starry Eyes on his ‘Coup De Main’ collection in 2021. The Records catalogue (three LPs and various 45s on Virgin during 1978-1982) is unfortunately out of print and largely unavailable on streaming services. We had hoped that Universal might reissue The Records material, albeit it to a modest market, or consider licensing the recordings to a third party for a CD-set – maybe in 2024?
Best wishes for the holiday season and beyond, Will Birch at therecords.com

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It’s like the Beatles but better.

bluhammock

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The Records! What a great band. Only a handful of times in my 62 years can I remember exactly where I was when I heard a song. End of August 79, just before returning to Syracuse for sophomore year, in my bedroom at my parents’ house, Starry Eyes came on WBCN….and I was like “ oh my god what the hell is THIS???” A few days later I learned they’d be doing a free show on campus. And they were killer. In a set only 65 minutes long, they played most of their great debut album, several tunes from their yet-to-be-recorded sophomore effort (including Hearts in Her Eyes), and covers of Rock and Roll Love Letter and Spirit’s 1984. In the heyday of power pop, the Records epitomized that genre….fun, hard rocking, tuneful….just great rock and roll that rattles around in my brain to this day, 44 years later. Thanks for reminding me of a great band and a wonderful time in music and my life.

Mitch Goldman

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Rachel Sweet backed up Graham Parker on his Squeezing out Sparks tour when they played Vancouver’s Commodore Ballroom  in 1979 or so. Before Rachel Sweet, on the same bill was Fingerprintz. Interestingly when Fingerprintz finished their set, they came  back and backed up Rachel Sweet.

On another note a few of us were huge City Boy fans back in the day. They too played the Commodore in the mid to late 70’s. I remember the concert if only because chairs were set up on the Ballroom floor for everyone to sit on. Perhaps the first and only time we sat in chairs at the Commodore which is famous for its ‘bouncing’ floor which encourages everyone to stand and move to the music.

Love your trips down memory lane.

Matthew Asher

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Hey Bob City Boy producer was Mutt Lange …. he also produced an Outlaws record for me that was on Arista Records
Great record had vocals similar to the early Def Leppard
As Mutt was doing Outlaws, Def Leppard, AC/DC and City Boy all in the matter of maybe 4 years.

Charlie Brusco

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Great column. I must have sold off 2000 of my LPs trying to shed possessions and the detritus. There are many LPs, I will never give up, like the obscure stuff Nick Drake, Bruce Cockburn, and Richard Thompson and all the British folkies, Bert Jansch, John Renbourn, Pentangle, etc….The Records LP grabbed me the first time I heard it and it is a keeper. If I recall correctly my copy of Starry Eyes actually came with a 45 too. If it did I can’t find it. But yeah what a great song. (It reminds me of that later Searchers song when they were making a comeback. I know, “you must remember this…” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VK6v0PBDSy0

Chip Lovitt

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I stumbled on this inside story from Will Birch about The Records US tour for the second album while doing a deep after your entertaining post. Thought you might enjoy it.

https://willbirch.com/2020/07/15/40-years-ago-today-the-records-1980/

Ralph Covert

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Rachel Sweet, Horslips, city Boy, and Strawbs in one blog!?  My radio career was not a waste!  Thanks for the quick trip down a dark alley next to Memory Lane.

Bob Walton

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Dude! Wish I could have been in on that conversation! Absolutely lurve The Records and Rachel Sweet, saw them both at the El Mocambo in Toronto when their first albums came out. Saw City Boy opening for Be Bop Deluxe. Had the Stone The Crows 1st album, Like Andy, I was onto Genesis from the get and yes, Foxtrot is brilliant. Didn’t see that tour but caught the Selling England By The Pound tour at Massey Hall and they played Supper’s Ready from Foxtrot and it absolutely blew my mind. Strawbs and Wakeman – check and check. Horslips!?! The Man Who Sold America is still a personal fave. I think we lived parallel lives…

Mike Campbell
Programming Director

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Dyan Diamond did play the Whiskey. I was there. We were booking her for a show in San Diego. Kim Fowley was there too (of course). I think it was the only time I was backstage at the Whiskey. I believe she lives in So Cal and is no longer in the biz. That’s about as much as I’ve been able to figure out. I still have some fond memories of being in a hotel bathroom with her, my friend and Greg Kihn with Greg’s manager pounding on the door trying to get us out of there.

The Strawbs were a great band for their time.

Bruce Greenberg

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Always enjoy your writing. This one included some artists I’ve loved along the way. The Records were one of the greatest power pop artists of all time. Their song Up All Night remains one of the most beautiful songs ever, a new wave Beach Boys song perhaps!? And your mention of Badger made me smile, their first album was magnificent, sort of like Yes around THE YES ALBUM (maybe a bit harder and w a touch of the blues) of course due to ex-YES keys man Tony Kaye, and Badger lead singer David Foster co-writing two early YES songs w Anderson. If you’re a YES fan haven’t heard the band FLASH, their first album is great, featuring Peter Banks ex-YES guitar player, it sounds like a great lost YES album : ) And of course Genesis whether Foxtrot, Selling England by the Pound or the Lamb, singlehandedly, w Gabriel, they set a blueprint for just how ambitious and awe inspiring progressive rock can be. One last thought on YES, if you’ve never listened to TO BE OVER from Relayer or their much unfairly maligned amazing Tales album, its some of the most, beautiful, brilliant, and timeless music ever created…

Jimmy Steal

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Yeah, it’s a quintessential power pop song. I was friendly with John Wicks, one of the song’s writers, toward the end of his life. He was an affable guy.

emiltonmyers

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“Hearts” is on so many of my playlists. The Records’  Live version shows they can/could sing and play their butts off for reall (and with fewer than 8,000 plays on Spotify—a crime!)

Mat Orefice

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Bob!!!  Great to see you write about the Records.  As a junior at the University of Wisconsin in 1981, a friend gave me a recorded cassette of the first two Records albums.  I played it incessantly.  I searched the record stores in Madison and could never find the actual albums.  In the late 1990’s, still unable to find the albums in Denver, I bought a CD burner and I transferred these cassettes to a CD.  I still have it and it still gets played.  They were a GREAT band and deserve much more attention than they ever got!!!

ShineOn!

MartyHecker

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Stiff records indeed. Best t-shirt ever: “If It Ain’t Stiff, It Ain’t Worth A F*ck”

Played Rachel Sweet’s “B-A-B-Y” a lot on WLIR. I think she was 16 when that album came out?

Bob Waugh

Annapolis

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Great article! I have that Searchers album and that song is one of my wife’s favorites!!

Steve Whitfield

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We always referred to obscure bands or records as of “kiss of death” records. We’d buy one of their records and you’d never hear of them again. I had The Strawbs, City Boy and Horslips, and saw Maggie Bell open for somebody at The Spectrum in Philly maybe the mid to late 70″s.
Keep up the good work.
Gary Jackson

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The Records had an EP that was enclosed with their first US album, that showcased their varied influences. I was totally unfamiliar with the original versions of “1984” by Spirit and “Abracadabra (Have You Seen Her) by Blue Ash, but The Records introduced me to them.

Also, I saw the Searchers in their skinny tie period at My Father’s Place nightclub on Long Island to drum up support for “Hearts In Her Eyes”. They performed letter perfect versions of all their mid 60s hits and I was not disappointed.

Stuart Taubel

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Down that same Brit rock rabbit hole you could find records by the band Bronco, with one of the better Brit raspy-voiced singers, Jess Roden (who distinguished himself on the Paul Kossoff track, “Molten Gold,” in a duet with Paul Rodgers) and guitarist Robbie Blunt, who made lovely Strat sounds on the Robert Plant 80’s track, “Big Log.”

Robert Miranda

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Dave Cousins and the Strawbs, What a lovely group. Had the chance to see them one time at Winterland in SF.

And how about Lindisfarne and Stackridge and Glencoe and the Sutherland Brothers and Wishbone Ash?

Pretty sure they meet the definition of being obscure,

Best,
Michael Wright

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Can of worms ….. down the rabbit hole

Lindisfarne – Fog On The Tyne

David Ackles – American Gothic

Bram Tchaikovsky – Strange Man, Changed Man

Doug Pomerantz

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The Strawbs (post-Wakeman) were pretty big in Montreal, where I went to university. Their song “Hero and Heroine” was played constantly on the local rock FM station. I have three or four of their albums, as I suspect do many people of my vintage who were music fans in Montreal in those days.

City Boy! I have the first album and used to listen to it all the time before punk came along and changed my taste. In fact, I just listened to most of it again a few months ago. It’s a bit on the precious side, but is certainly very well put together. And who was the producer who gave it that sheen? The young Mutt Lange. First time I ever saw his name on a record, I think.

Rachel Sweet was beloved by the punk crowd, partly thanks to getting lumped in with the other Ohio bands who sounded nothing like her, like Devo and Pere Ubu, but also because her records were good: nice throwbacks to the early 60s girl group sound.

As for “Hearts in Her Eyes”, I loved both versions. The Records, of course, also had a much loved semi-hit with “Starry Eyes”.

I’m not sure what it says that I have so many of the total obscurities you discussed.

Tycho Manson

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Did you say Horslips? That is not a sentence I have uttered or even considered, well, ever — until now when I read your latest missive.

Since you are one of the few people I know of on this side of the Atlantic who is aware of this long-overlooked Celtic-meets-rock band, you may be tickled to learn that this year saw the release of a 35-CD (!!!) Horslips box set, the wryly tilted “More Than You Can Chew.” More, indeed!

https://www.celticnote.com/merch/horslipsboxset

Good call on Maggie Bell, her second and final solo album for Swan Song, 1975’s “Suicide Sal,” still sounds terrific and features two guitar cameos by Jimmy Page, plus one of the most rocking Beatles’ cover versions ever and her excellent redntion of two latter-day songs by Free.

As for some of my favorite obscure albums from the ’70s, I’ll cite three: “Eggs Over Easy” by the American trio of the same name that moved to London and kick-started the pub-rock movement; “Glencoe” by Glencoe (great songs, great band; no hint of commercial sucess); and “Plainsong” by the Ian Matthews-led Plainsong, whose vocal harmonies CSNY surely would have admired. (Years later, Glenn Frey publicly acknowledged that Matthews’ arrangement of Steve Young’s “Seven Bridges Road,” from one of Matthews; solo albums, heavily influenced the Eagles’ version of the same song).

Cheers,

George Varga

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Obscure records… that could be the theme of my life!  Loving obscure records.  I would buy them at full retail and then see them in the cutout bins for 49 cents a year later.  It was so disheartening.  Horslips was certainly one of those.  The Man Who Built America on DJM!!!  What a GREAT album.  So many great melodies and potential hit singles.

Rachel Sweet too… Her version of Del Shannon’s “I Go To Pieces” is the best I’ve ever heard, superior to the hit version by Peter and Gordon.  I even remember the catalog number of the single because it meant that much to me.  Stiff – BUY 44 (it was the first “import” single I ever bought!)  The b-side was the equally great “Who Does Lisa Like”.  The Records backed her.  Not only on a track or two but also on the Be Stiff tour (despite the fact that they were on Virgin).  The debut album by The Records had a HUGE impact on me.  I listened to it daily for a long time…the American version.  I later bought the import which had a different running order and the original version of “Starry Eyes” but I preferred the American version with the tracks segueing into one another seamlessly.  I was still young when that record came out (I turned 12 in 1978), so I was too young to see them live back then, but when lead singer John Wicks was living in the DC area and putting together a new “Records” band, I had a chance to meet him and we quickly became close friends.  Over the weekend I was organizing boxes of cassettes from my past (thousands of them) and I came across all of his demo tapes from the mid 1990s and several live recordings that I made at various venues at the time.  He had a great band, the old songs sounded ridiculously good, and his new songs stood up besides them.  I do miss him.  He was a great guy and a huge talent.

Strawbs – also a favorite of mine…I have every album on original vinyl and remastered CD (except for the ones only on CD!).  Some of their records are better than others and they have gone through many different flavors throughout the years but they’ve always maintained their Strawbishness.  From folk to folk-prog to prog to hard rock to pop, etc.  The album with Wakeman that still floors me is From the Witchwood.  Wakeman plays every keyboard you can imagine on it and it all sounds wonderful and not pompous at all.  Some of the late 70s stuff sounds almost Badfinger-ish…check out “I Only Want My Love to Grow in You”.  That cut could have made it onto the Ham and Gibbons-less Airwaves record.  I think Dave Cousins’ voice may have been too trad-English-folk for many people though….

What about Fotomaker?  Charlie?  Pearl Harbour and the Explosions?  The Cryers?  Of course I could go on and on… But yeah, let’s hear it for the great obscure records from yesteryear!

Dave DiSanzo

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Jude Cole! Start the car 1992. One of my major favorites I still play all the time. Go check out the guys that played on the record. The guys from Toto, Tommy Shaw, Jack Blades, Tim Pierce, Lee Sklar, Lenny Castro & more. Incredible record!

Tom Hedtke

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Thanks for reminding me of Jude Cole. Baby it’s Tonight is such a great pop song. Early 90’s. Bad timing. Melody in grunge era. Don’t like the video but the song elevates. Yes poppy but that’s OK.

Derek Morris

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Jude didn’t give up.  He is doing some incredible work these days.  And yes, he’s brilliant.

Kim Bullard

Football is now the game everybody’s watching and nobody’s playing — Think any-given-Sunday gladiators, or, if you’re a Boomer: Rollerball –  while soccer is the game everybody’s playing and nobody’s watching.

The son of a highly regarded high school football coach, I played the sport though middle and high school.  Truth be told, when my high school days were over, I was relieved to let go of the drudgery of that annual football obligation and turn my attention in college to my true love: lacrosse.  (Full Disclosure: I also presided over the decision to drop football at the private high school where I have worked — and also attended and played football for — for 45+ years.)

Although I obviously “get” the rationale for footbaIl’s decline, I also truly hope that the obsession, rational though it is, with the concussion issue will leave some room for some discussion about how we can retain the truly valuable lessons that football — as in, football alone — teaches. Three examples follow.

1. Beyond the obvious mano mano “I’m-going-to-run-into-you-and-you’re-going-to-run-into-me” primal courage thing — I know, completely out of fashion these days — no other sport demands as much humility due to its team-first ethos.  Second, no other sport demands as much trust due to the “do your job” mindset that every serious football player must understand and accept.  (e.g., Even if you have the best quarterback on the planet, he must sit and watch hopefully and supportively while his teammates defend the goal line.  No other team sport demands such specific demarcation of shared responsibilities.)  Third, no other sport taxes the brain to such a high extent. It’s chess with people. (On the one hand, throughout my playing days, I rarely missed a blocking or defensive assignment.  On the other, I must also confess that I never fully understood the complicated schemes behind our plays or defensive objectives.)  Suffice it to say that the completely off-the-mark “dumb jock” stereotype had to have been coined by someone who never played the game.

So, here’s to hoping that before we kick football completely to the curb, we will give at least some thought to ways that we can preserve some of its invaluable lessons.

Malcolm Gauld

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My sons will never play football, given the incidents of CTE. We won’t even let them play soccer as they see it there, too (though not to the same extent).

And, nope, I will not support Musk. My preferred electric is a Rivian.

Travis Wilson

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100%. I stopped watching a few years ago when I realized I was too wrapped up my fantasy football team and not enough in the game itself. I also find the player/ownership structure borders on the time of the plantation, at both the college and pro level. I’ve taken to watching a game or so a week lately on my pvr with the sound off and my finger on the jump ahead 30 seconds button. I can usually get through a game in about 45 minutes and yes, I do feel badly for the players so I’m not sure how much I will continue to watch. Thanks for this article, it certainly gives me plenty to consider.

Best regards,

Michael Craig

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I’m not so sure tackle football is going anywhere anytime soon. Progressive states might ban it for kids and implement stricter rules for high school. The NCAA and the NFL will figure out a way to attract young men to play…The same way the military recruits young men to serve by promising a “future”. According to this article, they’re already recruiting the same demographic.

There’s just too much money involved. NCAA’s NIL is at its infancy stage. And the NFL will increase rookie contracts and health benefits to do whatever it takes to attract the players. Tackle football’s Talking Heads will point out that men’s rugby has a higher rate of concussion and women’s hockey is not that far behind men’s tackle football. And then they’ll come up with more PSA’s to show how well they are mitigating CTE. As long as they can keep making progress, people will tune in.

Duff Rice

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Football is an American Sport, uniquely able to keep poorer, more desperate people of the world at bay.

Boxing has few Americans prominent in the sport, foreign desire, desperation and a means to escape something worse than even the poor in the US pushed Americans out.

Baseball is increasing multiculturalism from some of the poorest parts of the hemisphere.

Football has no poorer competition than poor Americans in poor states looking for a way out. It will fall, but will take a while.

Sean Tighe

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Are you against kids and older playing soccer?  Lots of concern about that too.

Good luck on convincing parents from preventing their kids from playing either.

Richard Rosenberg

(Note: That was the point of the article, parents who are not letting their kids play tackle football. Also, because of CTE, I’m down with banning heading in soccer.)

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Soccer, the largest sport on the globe, suffers from the same CTE issues…both men’s and woman’s. It’s an another unaddressed elephant in the room.

Appreciate you.

Tom Gribbin

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The termination of football, boxing, cage fighting and gas powered cars may have expiration dates, but not in our lifetimes nor our kids.

And there are opportunities to grow football outside the US.  Remember when basketball was dominated by US players?  The last 5 years league’s MVP award went to foreign born players, as was this year’s number one overall draft pick.  The best baseball player today, perhaps ever, is from Japan.

And as for the world’s favorite sport, soccer, it is also prone to CTE.

And the same parents wanting to protect their kids from participating in contact sports are also likely the most willing to line them up for dangerous medical treatments, so there’s that.

Ed Kelly

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I’ve been worried about the demise of football ever since I read an article predicting the end of the NFL by the year 2000 all the way back in a 1976 Phila Daily News piece.

So I started reading per your suggestion. But I stopped when an expert suggested who you voted for president could lead to your son getting brain damage.

The reverse may mean that the other half children may become overweight couch potatoes after their sex change operations.

Sorry turned me off.

Keep up the good work.

Bob Drumm

(Note: That was the exact point of the article, that conservatives let their kids play tackle football more than liberals.)

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There is nothing that can be done to a helmet to change the physics of what happens inside the skulls of players in a collision.   And as they keep getting faster and heavier, there are worse hits coming in the future than we’ve ever seen.  Tragedy waiting to happen.

Michael Alex

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I’m just a guy in (football-crazed) Texas. The Almighty Football doesn’t show many signs of slowing down here. That said, the folks in my social circle are by and large relieved when their sons hang up their cleats. Most before HS and after only two seasons of contact (all flag here before 6th grade).  As a spectator, even eliminating CTE from the equation (which you can’t), I am less and less able to watch with all the horrific injuries on a game by game basis. Training, nutrition, and body construction have increased the force (speed x mass) of the hits beyond what the human body can withstand. At this point it’s a blood sport.  I’m not good with people getting maimed and/or dying for my entertainment.

Tim Wood

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Glad you’re calling attention to this.

Like yourself, I no longer watch football, and Super Bowl is less “watching” than passively letting the tsunami of content wash over.

Sean Murphy

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Re:  “the changing face of America’s favorite sport”

There’s a big assumption in your take on the eventual end of tackle football, and it’s that sports fans won’t have the stomach to watch people enact sanctioned violence against each other for our entertainment.

I don’t see any evidence for that position. NFL football is breaking viewership records and is 4-5x more popular than the NBA, the next most popular sport (check out the ratings when they face off head-to-head if you don’t believe me).

And here’s what a nationally representative survey of American sports fans found (2023 Kantar Sports MONITOR, April, among 5,000 self-identified sports fans ages 12+;):

Which describes your preference better?

22% agree:  I tend to avoid watching sports in which athletes are at risk of injury

78% agree:  I do not mind watching sports in which athletes are in risk of injury

80% of sports fans agree, “Concussions and brain injuries are an inescapable part of playing professional football”

45% agree, “Rule changes to protect players from head injuries/concussions make the game less exciting”

I don’t know why anyone would bet against the American public’s appetite for violence — especially when they can rationalize it away with, “They knew the risks they were getting into — and are paid handsomely for it.”

Ryan McConnell

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I’m glad you think tackle football will come to an end.

I don’t watch football because of the injury risk. But I love the game, and I always say if the NFL (or the NCAA) were a flag football league, I’d be its biggest supporter. The strategy and athleticism involved in football are wonderful, but it’s NOT worth the long-term consequences.

My primary sport is baseball, mainly because the concussion risk is much lower. Yes, players get hurt all the time, but unless it’s a freak accident, major brain trauma isn’t generally a concern. I also love that sometimes the injury is a hangnail and, to quote George Carlin, when it rains, we don’t go out to play!

Cheers,

Amy Mantis

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Great post. And spot on.

A few additional points:

The availability of insurance is a driver of this issue. https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2019/02/06/insurance-costs-youth-sports-football-prohibit-playing-coach-poverty-column/2772939002/ I wonder how many high school programs can afford the policy premiums to cover the sport. I wonder how many schools are fielding teams without any insurance. The insurance companies know the truth: the game is dangerous. And they won’t insure it without getting big money, if they will insure it at all.

Do not look to our national media platforms to educate the public on this issue. CBS, Fox, NBC, ABC, ESPN and Amazon Prime are all making too much money to bite the hand that feeds them. An occasional story, yes. (Thank you, 60 Minutes.)  A public health campaign warning of the risks of the game, never. The networks will cry dry tears and take the billions in advertising money.

Paul V. Nunes
Rochester, NY

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I’ve been saying it for years: modern helmets and pads ruined the game. Football is all about mass and gravity now – as opposed to speed, strength, and agility.

Take away the helmets and pads, and the players will be smaller, faster, and more creative – and players will stop using their heads as a weapon.

I won’t go back to American football until the helmets and pads are gone. Until then I am very much enjoying MLS as my favorite sports distraction.

Best regards,

Michael Hardy

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Gotta love the WaPo commentator: an associate professor of sociology from Skidmore.

Sounds more like the Babylon Bee!

Participation trophies all around here!

LOL

jimed

(Note: And there you have it, if it’s uttered by an elite college professor it must be wrong.)

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Hey Bob.

I gave up on NFL ages ago too. Only thing left that pisses me off about football  is that it pushes back the start of CBS’s 60 minutes on Sunday night on the East coast.

First world problems…

Rob Braide

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I won’t, I didn’t, never watch violence as entertainment. Violent people start out stupid and get more so.

But then I’m not a dog person either.

Lou Judson

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I’m a liberal – I get it – but I love football.

Beth Black

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Ten years ago, a research study of athletes training for the Olympics asked them “If you could use something that would guarantee you a Gold medal in the Olympics but it would kill you in 5 years, would you use it?” Almost 50% said yes.

The combination of glory and money is a powerful seducer.

John Parikhal

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I love the NYT but I think they are in the ivory tower on this one. My son attends the priciest private school in our city and football is booming there and the other private schools. Sure some parents hold their kids out but the kids of a whole lot of upper middle class and above families many of whom are democrats or independents are playing. Just the observations of one guy “on the ground.”

That said we didn’t let our older son play until middle school (a long way from when I started when I was 6) and he lost that 1st year to Covid so he just played his 3rd year and loves it. My younger son is 9 and is playing flag which the local youth tackle league started offering. The flag league fills up with waiting lists every season. They license NFL team names and jerseys.

Craig Davis

(Note: Anecdotal evidence, interesting, but irrelevant to the study/facts in the article.)

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Unfortunately, the gambling industry and the remnants of network TV have too much invested in pro football.  Colleges make too much money in it, let alone the NFL owners cabal.

The working man has too much invested in his Sundays.  And the poor black kids need a vehicle out of the hood.  And the QB lottery is worth playing for the select few because the money is blindingly huge.

My problem is that the athletes today are far less educated than the generation I grew up with – guys that actually were Student/Athletes – and as a result, with the stakes so high,  play calling is by committee so the heroics that could truly inspire us are now scripted by the statisticians and the coordinators.  And stupidity is rampant.  And there’s a ridiculously high percentage of players with felony problems.  I remember when Fran Tarkenton was on the Giants and intentionally ran plays into the baseball infield hashmarks in Yankee Stadium so he could scratch out the next play in the dirt.  He was a role model.

Jonathan Gross

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Great piece. Just wanted to note that the C.T.E. issue extends beyond American football, notably with the sport that most of the world classifies as “football”:

https://apnews.com/article/soccer-heading-brain-injuries-db83f3b292ee255326b6efdf01d8f9e8

And it doesn’t end there:

Young Amateur Athletes at Risk of CTE, BU Study Finds

Darrin Keene

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People don’t want to be told what to do by government, Bob.

J.E.

(Nowhere in the article is this referenced. This is knee-jerk conservatism.)

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i really appreciate when you write about things like this, and share articles. i always click the links when you share something.

soccer has a growing cte problem as well.  kids heading a ball that is as hard as a rock can cause issues.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37403989/#:~:text=Rule%20changes%20in%20heading%20duels,in%20(retired)%20soccer%20players.

https://www.cbc.ca/sports/soccer/soccer-cte-safety-1.6845197

and of course hockey has had this issue for as long as football…except in hockey, due to the league commissioner being a lawyer, they are in a state of denial.

https://www.npr.org/2023/04/19/1170802375/nhl-hockey-cte-brain-disease

https://www.cbc.ca/sports/hockey/nhl/henri-richard-cte-1.6876247

both of my kids take tae kwon do, and are on the way to a black belt.  yet they have never sparred or had any contact to their heads.  this was my choice and one that was wholly endorsed by the club they attend.  i think the more parents find out about cte and brain injuries, the more they will not allow their kids to play these sports.  i read that ny times article when it came out and it broke my heart.

thanks again.

keep up the great work.

happy holidays,

derek sumisu

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Football is a gladiator sport, someone always dies, albeit not immediately.  Common sense makes it hard to ignore.  Have you ever been knocked out?  Once was enough for me.

The problem is the sport is weaponized, helmets provide the illusion of safety but it is also a constant point of contact.  It’s happeing with soccer players who are heading balls constantly and with force.

Solution, take the helmets and pads all away.  You are less likely to head butt someone without one.  What does this look like as a sport then??  Exactly like Aussie Rules Football.  The coolest game of all.  No protective gear just a knee/elbow brace or two.  Hardly any significant injuries; passing, catching, running and kicking all at the same time.  Exciting and aLOT safer than USFootball.

Tesla, hands down best technology platform, but a friend gave me a spin in his new Porsche EV, the middles sized one and it was mindblowing the handling does rings around the Tesla, but second tier tech.  Your choice.

John Brodey

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I recently leased a Genesis GV60, and I’d recommend it to anyone—with a few caveats—who is in the market for a full EV. I drove the competing Teslas, Hyundais, Fords, Cadillacs, and Kias, and didn’t like any of them nearly as well as the Genesis. I wouldn’t have bought a Tesla at this point under any circumstances—my symbolic if meaningless vote against Elon Musk in the economic marketplace.

The GV60 is beautiful. It is fast. It is comfortable. As you know, Genesis uses an 800 volt charging architecture, making it more advanced than Tesla, at least in terms of charging times where it is twice as fast, if you can find a 350kW charger. It is stuffed full of the driver-assist kinds of technology that will yield safer-than-human self-driving cars somewhere down the road. The tech is such that the learning curve is steep, and the factory-provided manual is useless. (Why don’t foreign companies hire fluent English speakers to translate their manuals?). But user forums, and YouTube come to the rescue.

The major downside is of course the charging network. The nascent and unreliable Electrify America charging network, owned by Volkswagen North America, has forced Hyundai and other non-Tesla manufacturers, to give buyers three free years of charging at their trough. Sadly, as the WSJ points out, finding operational chargers is a hit and miss proposition. One assumes the fault-haunted network will improve in 2024. In 2025, I expect the charging networks to agree to the Tesla standard, whereupon the range/charging anxiety will dissipate.

In the meantime, Genesis could do more. There are three trim levels. The lowest delivers the best range at 300+ miles. That’s because it sits on 19” wheels and has only a single motor, meaning the car is rear-wheel drive. It’s silly not to offer a top-trim version of the RWD long-range crossover. The top two trim levels currently employ two motors and 21” wheels, killing about a third of the lower model’s range by going AWD.

I mention the trim level disparity in range because when you reviewed the GV60, they of course provided you with the top trim version, and this is a long-winded way of saying the range issue is resolvable by anyone will to spend less on the car. The charging issue, not so much.

Jon Sinton

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Hi Bob. I’m the lead writer of the Washington Post project on youth football participation that you wrote about in today’s newsletter. I also wrote two of the four geographical dispatches (Abilene, Tex. and Dayton, Ohio) that make up the rest of the project and that explore various aspects of the participation trendlines. (Two brilliant colleagues wrote the ones from Starkville, Miss. and Sacramento.)

Just wanted to say thanks for the shout-out. As it happens, I’m also a subscriber of your newsletter and a musician/songwriter who typically reads you to get insight into the music biz, perhaps the only industry more confounding than journalism.

Anyway, happy holidays and all that jazz. And thanks again for the kind words about our project.

Dave Sheinin

“THE CHANGING FACE OF AMERICA’S FAVORITE SPORT – How race, politics, culture and money are shaping which kids abandon tackle football — and which keep risking its toll.”

Free link: https://wapo.st/3GQhcmx

(You must at least scan this article, look at the charts, you must.)

Do you feel guilty when you watch football?

I certainly do, which is why I don’t watch anymore. At all. Except for the Super Bowl, a national holiday.

The CTE, i.e. brain injury, story has been gaining traction for decades now. And this fall the story has been about how you don’t have to play in the pros to be affected.

“They Started Playing Football as Young as 6 – They Died in Their Teens and Twenties With C.T.E.”

Free link: https://tinyurl.com/59v2wpmm

My goal is not to guilt you. My goal here is awareness.

Football has now been divided along political and racial lines. If you’re a conservative, you might ask what the hell I’m talking about. If you’re Black, you might say the economic opportunities are too attractive. If you’re liberal and white you might watch, but you don’t want your kids playing tackle football.

We believe things are forever. And then social mores change and they are not. Will people be watching tackle football on TV in 2100? Not unless it’s robots. But the question becomes when the NFL will falter and die before that, because the public just can’t stomach the injuries these men sustain while entertaining us.

Pretty ugly if you think about it. The ignorant and disadvantaged are putting their lives at risk, literally, so we can watch. At what point do viewers say NO MAS!

They keep on trying to make tackle football safer, but it hasn’t worked, not in any significant way. The NFL is pushing flag football, but I don’t see tens of thousands showing up to watch that.

The disconnect is becoming too great. It has become harder and harder to rationalize playing football, it’s only a matter of time before it becomes harder and harder to rationalize watching football.

Too many abhor the future, lobby against it. The story of the last month or so is the slowdown in the acquisition of electric cars. This is true. And if you don’t own a Tesla good luck charging on the road. Joanna Stern did an excellent story on this.

“How Bad Are Public EV Chargers? I Visited Over 120 to Find Out.  – Los Angeles County has more public electric-vehicle fast chargers than any other in the country. WSJ’s Joanna Stern hit up 30 charging locations in a Rivian R1T and ran into problems at 40% of them. Here’s what’s being done to fix the charging mess.”

https://tinyurl.com/smzn8cpk

Bottom line, drive a Tesla. (Then again do you want to support Elon Musk? There’s a good chance not.) Furthermore, every other manufacturer is behind Tesla when it comes to software, which is the essence of electric cars. The competitor might have a shiny exterior, but it’s MS-DOS in a Windows world. Saturday Dan Neil said the new Lotus is the first car he’s driven that’s on a par with Tesla when it comes to software.

And in truth seemingly every car manufacturer is switching to the Tesla charging system, which is plentiful and easy to use.

But the bottom line here is despite the bad news, electric cars are here to stay, they’re the future, they’re going to dominate, it’s just a matter of when.

And tackle football is time-stamped, it’s just a matter of when it dies.

https://tinyurl.com/ye3snprh

Conception is everything in art.

And art was very important. Until greed triumphed in the eighties and money became everything. Those with money thought they could buy art, that owning objects would get them closer to the source, gain the zeitgeist contained in the works, but this is a flawed vision, even though prices for artworks go up and up.

And we have the same thing in music. It’s been quantified. It’s all about the dollars. But art was never about the dollars, it was about conception. And after conception comes execution, but sans conception you might have a record, an album, a movie, but you don’t have art.

Art overwhelms us. Because it’s a great leap forward. Prior to experiencing it we cannot envision it, it’s outside our realm of not only experience, but thought. Then, there it is.

They call this pushing the envelope. And isn’t it funny that the astronauts got all the attention and adulation, but really it was Chuck Yeager who made the great breakthrough. And Yeager’s efforts in breaking the sound barrier were hiding in plain sight until another artist, Tom Wolfe, told his story in the book “The Right Stuff” and made Yeager legendary.

Wolfe wanted nothing to do with the movies of his books. He took the check and went to the theatre to see the finished product. Because books are different from films. At best, the director can take the source material and create something new and different, but this is rare, what we mostly get is paint-by-numbers execution, fodder for the masses, they know the story, but not the nuances.

So Brit Marling was far off my radar screen when I started to watch “A Murder at the End of the World.” But I was immediately drawn in, and then wanted to know more about her. That’s the case with great artists, you want  to know everything about them, so you can try and understand how they came up with their work.

And it’s very rare that artists break through with their initial work, because at first people can’t understand it. It takes a while for it to penetrate. So I didn’t know that Brit Marling had a creative backstory, that before “A Murder at the End of the World” she and her partner Zal Batmanglij had done “The OA.”

It was hiding in plain sight, like those records in the bins that were there but you didn’t buy for years. But these two had fans, and they were the ones who hipped me to “The OA.” Which is jaw-droppingly fascinating. Slow, but riveting. While I was watching it all I could think was HOW DID THEY COME UP WITH THIS?

“The OA” could never be a movie. It wouldn’t be long enough. Series are today’s art form. Movies are passé. Singles in an era of albums. Movies just don’t go deep enough. Movies are one hit wonders, great series are “Sgt. Pepper.”

Yes, “Sgt. Pepper.”

Rule number one of the music business was an album had to have a hit single. “Sgt. Pepper” had none. And it was a concept record. We can argue whether it was the first, but it was the first with attention, and it was a great leap forward, it wowed listeners, who kept on thinking HOW DID THEY COME UP WITH THIS STUFF? Weren’t the Beatles just the Fab Four, hit single makers whose looks appealed to women, a fad? But no, it turned out they were risk-takers, who took the entire world on a journey.

But that was the sixties.

In the sixties you didn’t teach to the test, you expanded minds. College was about broadening your horizons, not getting a job. And therefore seeds were planted in people who ended up creating great art. At the time we didn’t know how much money there was in music, no one had made as much as Led Zeppelin, whose manager broke the rules, demanding 90% of the concert gross.

Yes, an artist needs a midwife. A manager. A team. Which opens doors, smooths the path. Someone who can’t create the art, but recognizes artistry when they see it.

Change, it’s inevitable and what keeps us living. The unexpected. Which is why I hate the MAGA right wanting to return to a fictitious past that wasn’t so good to begin with. And an educated elite which keeps on telling us to get off our devices. The power of a supercomputer right there in our hands, that we can control…talk about a great leap forward. But rather than journey into the unknown, those who “know better” tell us to stop and go back to the way it used to be. Just like musicians tell us to listen to the entire album. But that’s not how it works. The internet disintermediated the album, and therefore you have to think out of the box.

But most people don’t.

Because they’re never taught to think. Some artists seem to spring from nothing. But most were inspired, not only by the work of the past, but teachers along the way. I write this screed as a result of a couple of happy accidents. One was a high school teacher who insisted we write for the first five minutes of class every day, and if we couldn’t think of anything new to say, we had to repeat the last three words over and over. I didn’t even realize the benefit of this. I was liberated from the Iowa Workshop and the rest of the rewriting wankers whose books are read by few. I was inspired by musicians. Whose inspiration oftentimes comes in bolts, in a flash, as if from God, and then they lay the songs down. So many of your absolute favorites were written in minutes, in under half an hour, they were channeled by the artist, who can’t tell you exactly how they do it, just that they recognize it when they experience it.

I only write when I’m inspired. Because otherwise it’s not good. It’s an album track. Maybe interesting, but not a landmark. And you can’t create a landmark, a 10 or 11 every time out, but you keep on trying.

I’m trying to capture lightning in a bottle.

This is not a novel, that’s something different.

Did you read that story in the WSJ about the writer taking the time to watch an entire movie? Yes, it’s hard, with so many distractions, which are oftentimes better than the film you’re viewing. If you want our attention you’d better be damn good, otherwise we’re gone.

I’d like to hear a record like “The OA.” I used to come across them on a regular basis. Like the first Wire album, “Pink Flag.” What exactly was that? Or even U2’s “Achtung Baby,” the first few listens it didn’t make sense at all, then it became better than any other U2 album, even the vaunted “Joshua Tree,” because it was not just a collection of songs, but there were new sounds, it was unlike anything we’d ever heard before.

And there were people like Bowie who specialized in this. Or Dylan. This is why they’re legends, because they’re artists, they’re beholden to themselves, not the audience. Once you’re a prisoner of the audience you’re no longer an artist. The lemmings will love you, but your work will suffer, it will be standard pablum.

The first season of “The OA” is better than the second. I can almost understand why Netflix canceled it. And if you told me to watch a TV show about different dimensions I’d laugh in your face and say no. But I’ve never seen a show like “The OA.” I’m stunned it even got made. That the brass laid out cash for it. But this was the Netflix of yore, building its reputation. The woman who green-lit “House of Cards” is gone, now it’s about commerciality. But art is never about commerciality at first, that comes later, if at all. You make it and make it and you wait for it to resonate. You change, you experiment, you keep on searching for the zeitgeist.

You must have experience, the tools, which is why teenagers so rarely create lasting art. Or, if they do, there’s an aged cowriter who is really responsible. Because you have to have the skills and tools before you can create art.

But to a great degree entertainment today is left to the lower classes, who have got nothing to lose. Those from a good background don’t want to risk failing, so they get graduate degrees and go to work in finance or tech or another great paying gig. Whereas artists always create without a net.

And the deck is stacked against you. The record label wants more of what came before, same deal with the movie studios. But with so much success in the sixties and seventies, with money raining down, record labels signed all kinds of stuff. But not today, opportunity cost is just too high.

Which is why you have to create your own opportunities.

And you don’t have to tell people you’re an artist, your work speaks for itself.

It’s a life, it’s a calling. And most people calling themselves artists are not.

But some are. Like Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij. I’ve never seen anything like “The OA.” Which is not perfect, but its innovation kept me tuned in. I couldn’t take my eyes off it.

Check it out.