Netflix trailer: https://tinyurl.com/24ch5693

This is INSANE!

You may not care about bicycle racing, but you’ll be riveted by this series.

Netflix has established a formula. It started with “Drive to Survive,” its series on Formula 1. The first season the big kahunas don’t want to participate, so you get the viewpoint from the underdogs, who get a lot of screen time. And then the series comes out, blows the sport up, and everybody wants in. Will “Tour de France: Unchained” blow up bicycle racing?

Well, it’s already huge in Europe.

This was shot last year, 2022. And you see the riders and management wearing masks, even outdoors. It’s like they’re not privy to the insanity of the anti-vax, anti-mask movement in the U.S. Just before this was shot, I was entering a hotel wearing my mask, an upscale hotel, and a self-satisfied patron exited through the front door and insulted me, one for whom the vaccine didn’t work. And unlike too many, I know numerous people who died from covid, and numerous people who’ve never completely recovered, their taste has not come back, for years.

Yes, Europe. You watch this show and you want to go.

So I’ve about given up on Formula 1. Because it’s about the car, not the driver. I wish everybody would drive the same damn machine, then it would be interesting. But Red Bull’s sled is head and shoulders above the rest. They could win every race of the year. How interesting is that?

But bike racing is like basketball. As in equipment is secondary. In basketball all you’ve got is your sneakers, in bike racing your bike, but in truth most of them are similar. It all comes down to the riders, and the team. Yes, the Tour de France is a team sport.

I feel like I went to a college people don’t understand. One wherein sports were secondary. At this elite level there are no athletic scholarships. Then again, the coaches lean on the admissions people for a couple of recruits. And they lay out the dough for anybody who can’t afford the ticket price. Sometimes this is athletes. But it’s all Division III. Which is kind of like comparing AA to the Major League. Not that there are not good athletes in Division III, but if you’re planning to go pro, it’s not the place to be.

Unless you ski.

Middlebury is Division I in skiing.

Now if you’ve followed this, and I doubt you have, certain large universities have doubled-down on their programs, like CU and UVM, so it’s hard for the smaller, no scholarship schools to compete. But then there’s the dirty little secret, if the skier is really that good they’re on the national team, they don’t ski for the college. And alpine skiing gets all the glory, you know, where they go downhill, funny how most Americans are now aware of Mikaela Shiffrin, deservedly, but they couldn’t name a single nordic skiers. As in cross-country and jumping.

Cross-country is brutal.

And cross-country is connected with bike racing. And when I went to college the best cross-country ski racers went to Europe for the summer, to compete in bike races. And these superstar athletes said one thing… You can’t win, because the Europeans are all doped-up.

That was the seventies.

Say it ain’t so Joe. Lance Armstrong had many convinced he didn’t dope. But he did.

Would you want to do this to your body?

Well, if you’re educated, if this is a sport as opposed to a living, no. But these Europeans… They’re groomed from a young age, this is all they’ve got. Hermann Maier was a bricklayer before he won those World Cups. Talk about desire to succeed.

So are today’s bike racers clean?

They say so, but I’m not laying down any guarantees.

And if you’re familiar with doping… It’s not what you think it is, it’s not a pill that energizes you during the race. Rather it’s drugs that allow you to recover faster, so you can train ever harder. And when you watch these guys ride… If you did the same, you’d need a week to recover. If not more. But these guys get back on the bike the very next day.

Now I always followed the Tour de France from arm’s length. I read the daily standings in the newspaper, I knew how the sport worked, but “Tour de France: Unchained” is a whole ‘nother level.

First and foremost because of the danger!

I had no idea they crashed this much. You’d see pictures in the news, figured some riders had bad luck, but not the winners. It appears that everybody crashes. And the way the sport works, unless you’re injured beyond repair, which is a definite possibility, you pick your bike back up and you still might be in contention.

Or not.

And the peloton… A word that’s been popularized by an exercise bicycle… Fans know it’s the group of riders, but until you watch this series you have no idea of the closeness and intensity. It’s like a giant swarm of bees flying down the highway. One false move…and you’ve got a crash.

And the crashes can be so serious!

So the teams have names that are hard to understand and remember. This is a sport of sponsorship. And big money. And the people involved only want to win.

You don’t usually get this peek into professional sports. The coaches, the managers, they don’t really care about you. You’re a cog in their machine. And if you fail or get hurt they excise you and don’t think twice. They say you’re a family member until you aren’t. These managers are singularly focused on winning…

This ain’t amateur sports. You might as well be a computer. But you’re flesh and blood, and that comes with all kinds of complications the team brass wish were not present.

So, in order to win the race, at the end, after all the stages…

You must play for the team. You must sacrifice so one single rider can make it to the top.

Homey don’t play that in the U.S., where at the professional level in sports, it’s about individual glory. You might be able to win a stage, but you’ve got to hold back and help your team. It kills you on the inside. But you’re not well-rounded enough to win the overall race, so this is your role.

And there’s even rope-a-dope.

And the riding itself… It’s long and hard. You’ve got to see these guys race over the cobblestones, never mind in the rain. As for the climbs… Man, these guys are riding straight up the Alps. You can’t even fathom it. And everybody says it’s a brutal sport of survival, it’s not about fun so much as pushing your body beyond its limits. Believe me, you’ll watch and you won’t believe you could do it.

And unlike football players, or even the gym-rat baseball players of today, these riders are whippet-thin. They’re not bulked-up, the extra weight is a detriment. It’s all about those muscles baby.

Incredible.

In truth, the Formula 1 drivers are athletes. But they’re not in the league of the bike racers. Maybe ultra-marathon runners come close, but they don’t race every day for weeks.

And if you’re a fan you can get up close and personal. The routes are long, pick your spot, you can see everything.

But even weirder, there’s no cop holding you back. A rider is climbing the mountain and people are surrounding him on the road.

Meanwhile, the team manager is riding in a car behind, imploring you via your earpiece, ready to deliver a new bike if yours breaks.

And it’s these little moments that are incomprehensible to Americans, because we’re so rules-based. Pushing the rider to get momentum after a crash? That’s legal. You can hand them goodies, gel-paks and water and ice. And sometimes they even hold on to the sill of the car.

In most sports it’s all about the start. Frequently the contest is won or lost at the very beginning. But not in bike-racing, there’s a mass of riders and if you’re in the middle or back you’re not doomed. As a matter of fact, everybody rides together in the peloton until…they don’t.

Of course there are time-trials too, where you ride alone against the clock. But even in those you’re going so damn fast that you might crash.

It’s a weird country we’re living in in America. Education is anathema. How much money you’ve got determines your standing in all verticals. You’re seen as more intelligent, more insightful the more money you’ve got.

But it’s the European Union that’s fighting the big corporations. Call it socialism, call it whatever you want, but there’s a better safety net and a more advanced competition ethos. Not that it’s perfect over there, but it’s far from the backwater you’re told. Hell, it used to be a desire of all college students to go to Europe, whether it be for a semester abroad or to ride the rails in the summer. Now it’s all USA! USA! Nationalism on parade. Too often blind nationalism. Head stuck in the ground, refusing to learn from others. You don’t have to be them, but that doesn’t mean you can’t learn from them.

And we popped the extra five bucks for 4k, and it’s worth it. Subtle, but worth it. And you can burn through all the episodes, they weren’t dripped out week by week, unlike “Happy Valley,” where I can’t remember what happened from one week to another. And in truth, we’re only halfway through, but I’ll still get some bozo telling me what happens in the end. I’ve already forgotten last year’s winner, because it’s more about the contest than the winner in sports these days.

It’s so basic, so human, it’s a microcosm of society.

Utterly fascinating.

Riveting.

And you’ll be yelling and screaming like it’s live.

And even though it all happened a year ago, that’s what makes the show so great, like a great book or movie it’s timeless. The lessons remain the same.

This show is leagues beyond the sports programming on every other network. Makes you wish Netflix aired them all. It doesn’t, but when it does, it gooses the enterprise. And bike-racing is worth watching. The problem with ski racing is it’s one at a time. But when they’re all out there on the road together, in the peloton, WHEW!

P.S. Yes, a lot of it is in French, you need to read subtitles. But didn’t you know that’s hip? That the younger generation watches everything with the subtitles on?

“Why Do All These 20-Somethings Have Closed Captions Turned On? – As automatic captioning on TikTok and creative audio descriptions on Netflix go mainstream, so does accessibility”: https://tinyurl.com/4e8t4r5k

“Biden spotlights Live Nation, Ticketmaster pledge for transparent pricing – Event ticketing companies will move to “all-in” pricing after mounting pressure.”: https://tinyurl.com/3endmw3u

THEY’RE NOT JUNK FEES!

And Live Nation doesn’t give a sh*t.

This is what it costs to put on a show. It’d be like buying a house and then finding out you had to pay for utilities and upkeep. Would you feel ripped-off? NO, THAT’S WHAT IT COSTS TO OWN A HOUSE!

And there are taxes too.

Which is why some people rent. No headaches. Sure, there are poor people who can barely pay the monthly fee for their lodging, but these same people are not going to concerts either, let’s forget them, just like the political parties do. If you ain’t got money, we don’t care. Especially if you don’t vote.

And then there are rich people who rent because they’d rather not tie up their capital or use it to greater effect elsewhere. The value of real property doesn’t always go up. Read the Friday “Wall Street Journal” “Mansion” section… Oftentimes these celebrities buy property and take a loss on the sale. As for those inflated asking prices, they rarely get them. This is not like buying a Chevy, this is like buying a Stutz Bearcat. A unique item, of which there are very few. What’s it worth to you to own it? And how bad do I want to sell it? This is a true negotiation.

Then again, everything is negotiable. The rich people know this, the poor do not. Even at the department store, make an offer.

Here are some tips:

“How to Negotiate Better and Get What You Want (Without Looking Like a Jerk) – The trick is to change your framework and the language you use”: https://tinyurl.com/xhd9uafs

That’s from the “Wall Street Journal.” You have to spend money to make money, if you think news is free, you’re uninformed. You start out with your peers, but to rise in business you have to know the landscape, you have to know the facts, that’s what puts you ahead of everyone else.

My favorite story on this concerns my concert promoter friend. He wanted a new Cayenne Turbo. They’d just changed the model, new ones were in the neighborhood of 175k. The Porsche dealer was advertising a lightly used one for $125,000.

My friend offered 99k.

The salesman went NUTS! And when he finally calmed down, the concert promoter told him he negotiated for a living, that the salesman should make a counteroffer.

Bottom line, the promoter got the car for 109k.

Believe me, the dealer wouldn’t have let the car go at that price unless it wanted to. Unless it made a profit or needed to get it off the lot. How do you get a fair deal?

When an agent floats a price for a gig, you don’t accept it, you work with it. Then again, superstars can dictate.

And these same superstars are the ones everybody wants to see, and they dictate concert prices, 100%!!!!!!!

Ticketmaster doesn’t set the prices, this isn’t their function whatsoever. Live Nation, the promoter, works with the act to establish ticket prices, but the act has final say. Then again, if the numbers don’t work, Live Nation or any other promoter can back out.

But the money the act gets leaves no net. The acts take all the money. How do the promoter and the building get paid?

Ergo the fees.

You pay tax on what you buy. No one sells at cost unless their inventory is distressed or they’re going out of business. When you say you want to buy a ticket based on what the act is paid, you’re asking to buy at cost. So nobody other than the act can make money. Would there be any promoters if this happened? Of course not!

So now we’ve got Biden trying to get rid of junk fees. Can hotels survive without charging you a resort fee? I’m not sure. If not, they should bake it into the total price. Concert promoters, venues and ticketing companies are not nickel and diming you, it’s just that the act wants to come out smelling like a rose, wants to say they have nothing to do with these fees, that they’re a rip-off and they don’t approve.

Talk about two-faced.

As most of these acts are. The promoter keeps them in business. Most make little from record sales. And the promoter not only risks all the money, the upside is small. But let’s blame them and the ticketing company for high prices.

In other words, of course Live Nation is for all-in ticket prices. IT’S THE ACTS THAT DON’T WANT IT!

As for being confronted with fees at the end of the ticket-buying procedure… Bottom line, go or don’t. This isn’t widgets, every show is unique, either you want to go or you don’t, either it’s worth the price with fees included, or it’s not.

As for enticing you with a low price up front… Seems that the main complaint the public has isn’t the fees so much as getting a ticket at all!

So, if the fees are baked in, the public no longer gives the price a second thought. They’re not concerned with how much it cost for the bumper on the car, or the mirror, or the oil in the engine… Auto manufacturers don’t break these out, because without them there is no car. If you analogize this to the music business, the car dealer would be in sympathy with the end customer. Complaining about the manufacturer, how they’re charging too much, that the dealer has no responsibility for the bumper or the oil or the windows. But the manufacturer would say that without these elements, once again, there is no car!

Without the fees, there is no show. It’s just that simple.

And if they’re baked-in, which Live Nation has said it is willing to do for years, the public stops thinking about them. When I go to the gas station they don’t tell me how much the additives in the fuel cost, there’s one price per gallon. And it’s been high for the premium I need in California, but do I bitch? No, except for a moment there when I was stunned gas was over $7 a gallon last year, I just fill up the tank and move on. And I did buy gas at $7. Because I want to drive! No one is forcing me to.

So the loser in this eradication of “junk fees” in ticket prices is…

THE ACTS!

This is good for the promoter, the venue, the ticketing company and the concertgoer.

But the dirty little secret is despite all their complaining about the fees, the acts aren’t making a dollar less. They’re just crybabies employing subterfuge.

As for those out there complaining that ticket prices are too high… Then don’t go! Should everything in the store be available to everybody? Should first class cost as much as coach? Is everybody entitled to a Rolex?

You get to make a choice.

This is capitalism.

And the irony is government has nothing to do with ticket prices. Biden really accomplished nothing today. He just forced the acts to go along with what the promoters have been willing to provide.

The price remains the same.

Even if the song doesn’t.

Much ado about nothing.

What can you say about Bebe? She first came to notice as the girlfriend of Todd Rundgren. She had a daughter, Liv, with Steven Tyler. Listen and you’ll hear stories about not only those two, but Ric Ocasek, Elvis Costello, Mick Jagger, Albert Grossman, Bob Dylan, Jack Nicholson… Bebe is anything but arm candy. She is vocal and full of life and the boys loved, and still love, to hang with her. And she’s still making music as an artist herself! It’s been quite a life, and this is her story.

https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9ff4fb19-54d4-41ae-ae7a-8a6f8d3dafa8/episodes/d829de09-19fd-448c-81a3-64687c8984fa/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-bebe-buell

https://www.stitcher.com/show/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast/episode/bebe-buell-304472072

Spotify playlist: https://tinyurl.com/yr8h28sn

I wonder if this is available in hi-res?

Last night I was on CNNi talking about that new Beatles song, you know the one with John Lennon, made with AI. I love Paul McCartney, but this was a publicity stunt, isn’t it interesting that he announced this when he was hyping a new book and exhibition of his photographs. It’s hard to get attention for anything these days, even if you’re a Beatle, so this was a way to gain eyeballs. As for the track… “Free as a Bird” and “Real Love” weren’t that good, George Harrison refused to work on “Now and Then,” and it was far from finished to begin with, just a Lennon cassette. As far as the technology employed by Peter Jackson to make that Hulu documentary… We knew about it, and that was eighteen months ago. But got to give McCartney credit for pushing the envelope of AI. You’ve got to look at the possibilities, not the detriments. The drum machine, sampling…were the enemy until they were de rigueur, and in some cases superseded. Remember when every album featured syndrums?

Not to impress you that I was on television. But just to point out that after you do your hit, you’re wired, it takes hours to calm down. This kind of work is different from what most people do. The light goes on, you come alive, you’re talking off the top of your head, depending on your entire life and its history, cogitating while you’re talking, and then it’s over.

So what was I gonna do?

At first I wanted to write. But that would be a big mistake. I was on at 10:50 PM west coast time. If I wrote, I’d be lucky if I fell asleep by daylight.

And I wasn’t calm enough, slowed-down enough, to read a book.

And I knew if I fired up TikTok, that would be the evening.

So, I decided to listen to music. And ultimately read my book at the same time. I used to do this all the time in the seventies, but rarely these days, it’s too distracting. But if I play songs I know by heart, it’s really not.

But I had to listen via headphones, I couldn’t blast the tunes and wake up Felice.

So, I wanted to hear “Ready for Love/After Lights” from the Mott the Hoople album “All the Young Dudes.”

That album came out in 1972. The height of Bowie-mania. Well, actually it got even more intense, and in truth the masses hadn’t caught on yet in America, but I’d bought “Ziggy” and seen the tour and I was up on all things British. And I’d paid attention to Mott the Hoople, had even seen them on their first American tour at the Fillmore. But what got me to buy my first Mott album was the title track, a David Bowie composition. You know how you hear something once and have to own it, so you can hear it again and again? Well, maybe if you’re young you don’t, you just go online and click, it’s instant. Whereas in the old days… Some songs you could wait to come back on the radio, but “All the Young Dudes” was not spun constantly, you had to buy it to hear it.

And it got to the point where I’d prefer playing the second side instead of the first, with the hit. And “One of the Boys”… The dialing of that phone…love that song.

And then “Ready for Love/After Lights.”

It was unique in that it was sung by Mick Ralphs, in a thin voice. It radiated meaning, a privacy that was not evidenced on the radio but you could get in album tracks. And when “After Lights” played I was surprised, that I was the same as I ever was. It’s not about fighting that feeling, but recapturing it. The years go by and you start to think that era’s passed. And then you’re suddenly surprised that it’s not.

Used to be different, we didn’t used to be so involved, so connected, you could be lonesome, and alone. And you were forced to go out and integrate. Remember talking on the phone? I used to do that, to connect. I rarely do that anymore. And I’m down with that. I hear from and am connected to more people than I’ve ever been in my life. And I like that. That’s the advantage of the internet. I hear from people I know every day, from around the world, even when I’m asleep. Yet people still hate the internet, are anti-social media. Sure, there are MAGA people you pooh-pooh, but if you took a deep look at yourself, how tied to the past are you? How much do you want to go back to a rosy era that wasn’t that rosy to begin with?

So some people are members of the group. This is different from having friends. This is about shaving off your edges to be a member of a gang. Maybe not one that terrorizes citizens, but in truth that’s the ethos of public high school. The gangs and everybody else. The number one gang is the athletes and the cheerleaders. And there might be another gang of hipsters. And then there’s everybody else. Sure, there are always unpopular loners who don’t seem to care about their status, but the rest of us yearn to be popular, admit it. Instead, we fly off the radar.

And we satisfy ourselves.

Today you go online and find your cohorts. I wish we had this back then. Instead, I often felt like a party of one, especially when I was going to college in Vermont in not only the pre-internet era, but the pre-VCR era, the pre-cable era. I’d put on a record and it would set me free, I would bond with it, not only did I feel relaxed and satiated, I dreamed that there was a better life out there, where I would be understood and accepted, and it was all related to the music.

That’s true. But not everybody in music is on the same page. They all might have even played in bands, but there are business people, and the rest of us. You’d sit in your burg in the seventies, devouring rock magazines and…you’d get to L.A. and find out the bigwigs knew less than you. But they knew a lot more about business, and that’s what sustained them. You were more like that kid in the Kinks’ “A Rock ‘n’ Roll Fantasy”: 

“There’s a guy in my block, he lives for rock

He plays records day and night

And when he feels down he puts some rock ‘n’ roll on

And it makes him feel all right”

And this works for a while, until you need dough to go to the show. You’re forced to go straight, your dreams are squeezed out of you. Except for a very few who follow their dream, and get to the destination.

And I can’t believe how good “After Life” sounds. I play it twice.

And then I go to Qobuz, to see if it’s available in hi-res. And the funny thing is the Atlantic albums are, but the Columbia albums are not. It’s usually the reverse, Columbia has upgraded more albums than anybody, at least that’s the way it seems.

So then I decide to play the Bad Company version of “Ready for Love.”

And it’s different, not ethereal, at least not in the same way. But Paul Rodgers’s vocal adds something, it’s satisfying to listen to a pro at work.

And then I want to hear “Live for the Music.”

“Some people say I’m no good

Laying in my bed all day

But when the nighttime comes I’m ready to rock

And roll my troubles away”

That’s me. Kind of like Yogi Bear. You know, he may sleep ’til noon, but before it’s dark, he’ll have every picnic basket that’s in Jellystone Park.

“I love the nightlife, I’ve got to boogie”

But not necessarily on the disco floor.

You see I’m a contrary. I may have seen “Saturday Night Fever” the night it came out, and who couldn’t love “Stayin’ Alive,” but I never bought a leisure suit, I never learned the dance steps… However, if rawly inspired I could jump up and move, it just had to be the right track.

But my main point here is I love the nighttime. When everybody goes to bed, when the world is mine, when there’s no incoming, no commitments, and I can let my mind drift.

So I’m listening to Bad Company, I had to let the album slip into “Simple Man,” it’s one of my anthems…

“Freedom is the only thing means a damn to me”

I’m not simple, but I love the freedom so often denied me. I’m not talking about the right wing freedom, I’m not even talking about political freedom, I’m talking about raw freedom. If I’m myself…people don’t like it. I speed too fast into the lift line, even if there’s no one around. I’ve been stopped for that. I’m too into things, I’m told to mellow out. Please, let me be me! But I can’t, but during the nighttime…

I can.

And Rodgers is so damn good, that I decide to listen to Free.

But the damn Free albums have not been converted to hi-res, they’re only available in CD quality. But I decide to listen to “Molten Gold: The Anthology” anyway. The only Free album I ever bought was “Fire and Water,” to own “All Right Now.” But when this double CD package came in the mail back in 1993…I got hooked.

Not that I planned to. I wanted to hear “I’ll Be Creepin’,” which I remember from the free A&M sampler album “Friends”…and then I just let it play.

So I’m listening on Qobuz, where everything sounds better, reading my book, and it’s with the second cut, “The Hunter,” that the music starts to resonate.

And then two later it comes to “I’ll Be Creepin’.”

“I’ll hold you in my arms

Like nobody else”

I mean “I’ll Be Creepin'” is good, it struts, but then it slows and quiets down and Paul Rodgers sings the above lyrics over Paul Kossoff’s stone in the water plunks and it’s transcendent.

And I get stuck on “I’ll Be Creepin’,” and wonder if there’s a live version.

And then I find that Three Dog Night covered it!

And then I’m wondering whether I knew this and forgot this or…

But I pull up “I’ll Be Creeping” by Three Dog Night and I’m impressed, if for no other reason than the group knew it. And I’m going through Three Dog Night’s discography track by track, re-evaluating my notion of the band, and then I go back to “Molten Gold.”

After “I’ll Be Creepin'” comes “Songs of Yesterday”…

And that’s when I realize, there’s very little on these tracks. It’s not like today, in no way were these cuts sweetened. They’re basic, any combo could sound like this, but they don’t. And then I start to wonder, will the kids of today, tomorrow, discover these tracks the same way the people who made ’em discovered the Delta blues artists?

I mean these Free songs are so pure. And therefore they’re honest. Not unpolished, not unformed, but little more than four guys in a room, focusing on the basics, but with one of the best guitarists and best singers of all time. One died, the other gained more fame elsewhere, then again Paul Rodgers says Paul Kossoff was the best guitarist he’s ever worked with, and Chris Blackwell testified about Free to me.

And two songs later it’s “Broad Daylight.”

And I know all these tracks, having played the anthology so many times, but somehow “Broad Daylight” is now resonating. I’m getting into the verses, and before this it’s the chorus that opens the track that’s gotten to me. I have to stop reading my book, I have to look up the lyrics. And I find there’s not much more there than what I caught while focusing on something else.

And then two tracks later came “All Right Now.”

I pulled up the app to skip it, knowing I wanted to get to bed by two, and there was no way I could complete the “Anthology” by then, and I knew “All Right Now” by heart. But then I reconsidered, let it play.

And having broken from my book, I’m listening, I’m focused. And Qobuz sounds so good, even at CD quality, that it’s like Paul Kossoff is playing his Les Paul mere feet away.

Now most people know “All Right Now” from the radio. And believe me, it jumped out of the speaker in the dash in the late summer of 1970, but few bought the album, got any closer.

And that’s what we wanted to do, get closer. We bought better and better stereo systems, headphones, whereas today people have ten dollar computer speakers and tiny earbuds. Remember all those complaints about the sound of MP3s? Now better than CD quality is available on streaming and most people don’t seem to care.

And I’m waiting for the guitar break in the middle, that was excised from the single, it always seemed weak, but now the sound was full-bodied, it made sense.

And Simon Kirke is a master on the drums.

And the piano comes in.

And the bass.

And I can hear everything. Like I said above, there’s very little on these Free records to begin with. And when Paul Rodgers is not singing, Paul Kossoff is shining. But now that I’m listening at such high quality, wow. This isn’t just guitar-picking, this is something more. The sound…there’s more than just the note.

And even when Paul comes back in, man, that Les Paul is chunking as Simon Kirke is holding a steady beat and…

It’s positively mesmerizing, astounding. I’m discovering new things on a record I’ve heard a zillion times. And the funny thing, how do I explain this… You hear things that are not there when you listen via a crappy system, but last night I learned that there are times when Kossoff stops playing, but the sustain carries on and marries with the holes to make you hear something that’s not even there. I mean there’s an effect.

And there’s a minute-long outro, and ultimately Kossoff is playing a completely different groove, it’s subtle, yet obvious if you’re listening closely.

And now I’ve got to research the history of “All Right Now,” even though I’ve done so before. There are so many things I look up again and again, touching the stone, hoping for new insight.

And then I’m reminded of how the track was written quickly, the band needed a closer for their live show. Funny how the greats are made. Today you put a zillion writers together and polish the turd, whereas most of the absolutely great songs, the elevens, were written on inspiration, on desire. There was no concentration, they just came. Acts wish they came more.

And I’m positively stunned. And after listening to the second half of “All Right Now” twice I decide to see if there’s some single, maybe something from a compilation, that’s been released in hi-res.

That proves to be untrue.

But there are numerous live takes.

And “All Right Now” is a unique track, so much of this stuff cannot be replicated live, it’s a studio sound. But Paul Rodgers is unlike the fakes, he can really sing like that, and it turns out Paul Kossoff can get that sound. I’m listening to the take from “Free Live!,” and damn if the essence isn’t there.

And I’m scanning through the track listing on Qobuz and there are more live takes, there’s even one from the Isle of Wight!

That was legendary. Back in 1970. Jimi Hendrix’s last gig, at least that’s how I remember it, I could check but why lose the flow, even though if I’m wrong my inbox will be inundated with those who know better… But music is not a competition, and those taking the time to correct me are usually the self-satisfied far from the center, this is all they’ve got.

And I’m asking myself how good this could be. I mean there wasn’t a soundtrack album back then, not one I can remember, or maybe it was a three disc set and it didn’t seem worth it, Isle of Wight was something you read about, not something you heard or saw. But this is great too.

And then I pull up the version Paul Rodgers sings with Queen. And I’m hesitant, this is Brian May, not Paul Kossoff. But man, May gets the same sound, but the track is just a bit louder, more in-your-face, having been recorded in the modern era.

And Brian even performs the solo excised from the single. And the audience is singing along…

“All right now

Baby, it’s all right now”

And when that’s done, I pull up this Paul Rodgers solo take from his 2018 album “Free Spirit.”

And it was around this time that I saw Bad Company live. A band I never saw during its heyday, even though I bought all the albums and was a huge fan. And it’s one of the best shows I’ve seen this century. There were no airs, after all the show was at the L.A. County Fair. But man, the music!

And on this “Free Spirit” version… Paul Rodgers has not lost a step, he’s still got the pipes, and…

The audience is singing along.

“All right now

Baby, it’s all right now”

And now I’m watching the clock. How much more can I listen before going to bed. But I don’t want the sound to end, I don’t want the feeling to end. I eventually shut it down. But I’m thrilled that I’m the same as I ever was. Still the same person, rooted in the sound, the guy in the Kinks song, doesn’t matter who is President, how much cash I’ve got, whether the cut is new or old, because I’m alive and elated. What more can you ask for?