Spotify: Doobie Brothers Primer playlist: https://spoti.fi/3fLWWIA

Qobuz: Doobie Brothers Primer playlist: https://bit.ly/3CaLa1G

(I include the Spotify playlist because the company has a free tier, and has the largest market share. I include the Qobuz playlist because Qobuz has the best audio quality and every track on the playlist other than “World Gone Crazy” is in hi-res. You can try Qobuz for free, and see. The difference between hi-res and CD quality is palpable, anybody could tell. However, the listening experience is greatly enhanced by an external DAC, i.e. “digital to analog converter.” Once again, I spotlight the DragonFly Cobalt. That is a $329 product and worth every penny: https://amzn.to/3ygooUX However, you could also use the THX Onyx, which is much less costly and almost equally good, presently 11% off at $178.90, and whose purchase includes three months of Qobuz: https://amzn.to/3RwhcuF The Onyx goes all the way to 192 kHz, whereas the Cobalt only goes to 96 kHz. The creator of the Cobalt intentionally limited the device to 96 kHz because 192 kHz uses more power, which matters on a portable device. Also, the Onyx gets pretty warm, and has a cable, which the Cobalt does not (however the two are very small devices). But both provide an astounding listening experience. If your speakers are mediocre, use headphones. Both of these devices can be used with a desktop computer or an iPhone or iPad. You need the $29 Apple Lightning to USB Camera Adapter https://amzn.to/3SXclUq to connect to your iPhone, and unless your iPad is a recent one with a USB-C connector, you’ll need an Apple Camera adapter to connect to it also.)

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So you WERE there?!

I was about halfway through the first chorus of “Another Park” when I wondered (having read before how much you dig that tune).….”I wonder if Lefsetz is here?”

Glad you enjoyed it

Ed Toth

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I say this as a person who is often and high and I might be right now: I think if the Doobie Brothers (my first concert) had less doobie-ish name, they’d be regularly included on the list of the top few rock bands. The range, the re-invention, amazing.

Dave Pell

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Thanks for the great article on the Doobies.  You summed up exactly how I’ve always felt about them.

I came onboard about the same time you did, around the third LP. They were and are one of the best bands ever, and they don’t get their due and probably never will, especially Pat Simmons (who is to the Doobies what Christine is to Fleetwood Mac when it comes to recognition).  I hope the great results they’re getting from their tour helps them know just how awesome they are.

Mike Blakesley

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I have to agree with you that the Doobies 50th Concert was quite enjoyable! I was able to see them at The Chicago Theatre a couple of weeks ago. My first Doobies concert dates back to College 73″ in Des Moines, IA where I saw the Doobies coupled with Fleetwood Mac. Those were the days when you had 2- 3 acts of the time bundled!

Yes, The Doobs conjured up songs that were not necessarily hits, but die hard fans recognize and enjoy like myself. Yes, fan got the pallet of Hits to sing along to.

Tom, Pat and John McFee’s vocals and guitar playing were as fresh as 1972. How many bands this age can claim that? Michael McDonald’s playing was excellent and struggled to hit those high notes but overall really good. Will the Doobies sustain another 50? Probably not, but it takes our sons and daughter to enjoy and carry on 70″ Rock.

Thanks for you great review!

Marc R/Chicago

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Hello Bob.  For the longest time I had the sleeve with the roach from the Doobies album on my wall in a frame.  I put it back on the album recently.  I always thought it was beautiful.  I would work to emulate that artifact but could never keep any of them for long.   I can still remember the dealer singing falsetto when I told him I was on my way to hear the boys do their thing.  Whoa, listen to the music!!!! Peace, rwhake.

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Awesome review Bob!

They were my mainstay music in the early 70s. As a guitar player, there was no mystery in learning to play their songs.

It was indeed a glorious time with my Ric 12-string amplified through my modified 251 Leslie.

Will Eggleston

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I love the Doobies. Only thing I didn’t agree with Funkadelic about, hell yeah I need some Doobie in my funk!!!

Kenneth Williams

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Bob, saw them in Chicago and your comments  nailed it.  Such a great show and with Johnston and McDonald it was the best of both worlds.  The walkers lined up in the lobby looked like we were boarding a flight to Florida!

Thanks,

Neal Berz

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I recall the time I saw them hanging out in a trailer in Uniontown PA in the 1970’s when we trekked there from Pittsburgh  to buy some blonde hash. Skunk was sitting on the floor in the living room – there was like one chair – and all these hot babes sitting there hanging on every word he said. He was telling them about some prof that made him go to the back of the room ’cause his feet stunk so bad.

My buddies older brother and the guy that lived in the trailer left us there to go score (they never did), leaving me and my friend standing there like Beavis and Butthead.

So from around the partition wall for the kitchen I see this guy with long brown hair motion for us to come into the kitchen.  Him and Tiran were smoking a bowl of some killer black hash.  Gave me and my friend a hit and both of us almost passed out.  They laughed.  So we go back in to the living room all stoned out and continued listening to Skunk talk to these women sitting on the floor.

I had no idea who you they were.  Not a clue. Then about a year later I recall seeing pic’s in Circus Magazine or something.  I freaked.  I called my friend.  “Dude – was that the Doobie Brothers?”  “Yep…”   I recently talked to him again after all these years – thinking maybe I dreamt it.

“Nope, that really happened. We smoked a doobie with the Doobies…”

wam

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Another Park & South City Midnight Lady are my two favorites of theirs

bfletcher28

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Spot on as usual, Bob.  “Whoa oh ohhhhhhhh, listen to the music…all the time”.

Blaine Leeds

Nashville

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Great band.

Harold Love

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I love that band and thankful that I got to promote them back in the day. Hopefully they make it back to to Australia next year…if they do I will be there front & centre!

Tom Johnston is THE Man & Another park, another Sunday is THE Song

Don Elford

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Caught them at Shoreline last week and jumped out of my skin to hear “South City Midnight Lady” live, followed by “Clear as the Driven Snow,” my personal #2 and #1 favorites respectively, with “Another Park, Another Sunday” following close behind at #3.

Scott Kauffman

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It’s likely you didn’t see anyone you know at the gig because — despite the temporary “anomaly” of Michael McDonald’s brilliant tenure in the band and the more upscale-sounding, female-appeal hits it delivered — the Doobie Brothers as a going concern (with Johnston and Simmons at its center) were initially, and remain, a band “owned,” and still supported, by the working class rock fan: tradespersons, service sector personnel, hourly wage earners, bikers (literally bikers). Growing up in the Bronx, we loved the Doobies, while the kids we knew from “downtown” (our generic term for the entirety of Manhattan), whose parents all seemed to be professionals, hated them. Probably not many to the manor born “coastal elites” in the hall last night.

 

Sure sounds like they missed some great music, though.

 

Best,

 

Rick Alexander

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Great write up Bob.  I saw them exactly a year ago at the forum and thought they were terrific.

Kyle J. Ferraro

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I’ve got a great personal story. I had opened my first club Tulagi in Boulder and when agent Fred Bohlander sent me their second album Toulouse Street (their first album didn’t do much) I heard Listen To the Music which was coming out as the first single and I smelled a big hit and took a chance and booked them for 10 shows in 5  nights.($500 a night plus percentage) By the time the date came around Listen to Music was top 5  single and if my memory is correct they ended up on the cover of The Rolling Stone the week they played for me. I was such a rookie I wouldn’t take Fred’s call right before the dates because I thought he would cancel it because they got so big and wouldn’t want to play a small club with a low guarantee. But they never cancelled and I think they made $10,000 in percentage (turning away a ton of fans for all  the sold out shows) and the band told me it was the biggest payday in their career (up till then). Have remained best friends with Fred and band since then. Realized what type of class guy Fred and his partner Dan Weiner were. They both became 2 of my best and oldest friends. (FYI they were at IFA agency then)

 

Chuck Morris – Chairman Emeritus

AEG PRESENTS

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Thanks Bob, the You Tube review is much appreciated!

Tom Johnston

1

It wasn’t nostalgia, we’re too old for that.

Now maybe some newbies came to this show because they were intrigued by the presence of Michael McDonald, but probably most of this audience had already seen the Doobie Brothers, more than once.

You see nostalgia is when you look back and remember the good times. You know, you go to the show and bask in the aura of what once was. But after you do that a few times, it comes down to the music, just the music. Does it resonate with you? Does it make you feel good? Does it make you smile?

The opening number, after a bit of Michael McDonald improvisation was “Nobody,” the opening song on the very first Doobies album, a stiff, I didn’t hear it until it came through the speakers as part of the boxed set. This occasionally happens, you hear an unknown hit, kinda like “Love Shines” from the Fleetwood Mac boxed set, which disappeared, but now the song is part of a new compilation. The focus is on Stevie Nicks, and as a result Christine McVie’s smooth excellence is too often overlooked. I love “Love Shines,” listen to it here: https://spoti.fi/3V3ar6z

But even though Fleetwood Mac started recording long before the Doobie Brothers, the Doobies had commercial success first. But not on the first album, “Nobody” had the ultimately instantly recognizable sound, but it was too early, radio wasn’t on board, that happened with the second LP, 1972’s “Toulouse Street,” and “Listen to the Music.”

And when Tom Johnston stepped up to the mic and started singing “Nobody” a jolt of adrenaline went through my body, I was one with the music, I said to myself, THIS IS FANTASTIC!

You see this is the only place you can get this sound. The chunka-chunka guitar and Tom’s voice. It’s classic, and too often the Doobies are pooh-poohed, because they had hits when those were secondary, when bands were hip with backstories and featured on FM as opposed to AM, if they got any radio play whatsoever. That’s what happens when you’re a cut above, you’re embraced, as Fleetwood Mac with Stevie and Lindsey ultimately were in ’75.

But this was ’72.

2

Albums rarely jump out of the gate, at least back then. There’d be a hit on the radio, but most people didn’t buy the LP based on that, because albums were expensive, and you didn’t want to get a dud. But “Toulouse Street” had a second cut, a cover of “Jesus is Just Alright,” which first came to fans’ attention on the Byrds album “The Ballad of Easy Rider,” which was for dorm and living rooms only, it didn’t break through on the radio, even though the magnificence of Clarence White’s playing was ultimately recognized.

But the Byrds’ take on “Jesus Is Just Alright” was a bridge between what once was and what now was becoming. You could hear the classic Byrds’ sound, whereas the Doobies’ take was different, it rocked harder, with searing electric guitar, the label pushed the track and radio played it, but I didn’t buy the album. The hits came too soon, and I didn’t know anybody who owned the album, so I never heard it.

And then came “The Captain and Me” eight months later and “Long Train Runnin'” was ubiquitous, you couldn’t avoid it, AM, FM, it was everywhere. Followed up by the superior “China Grove” and now the Doobies were the hottest act out there, and they were everywhere. You see by 1973, the establishment had woken up to the power of music, there was “In Concert” Friday night, you saw bands, albeit not as much as you did during the MTV era.

And the Doobie Brothers got put in the meat and potatoes category, I mean hit after hit, who else does this? And it’s not like there was a dark past, it was just straight ahead rock.

But the single “Another Park, Another Sunday,” from 1974’s highly anticipated “What Were Once Vices Are Now Habits,” stiffed, and just when it looked like the momentum had evaporated, “Black Water” became a left field smash and people all over America were singing along in their cars. You couldn’t help yourself, “Black Water” sounded like nothing else on the radio, and that’s what we’re drawn to most.

And that’s where I came along. That’s when I became a fan.

You see I might not have purchased the mainstream product, but the mainstream did. I spent a month in Mammoth, California in a condo with six other freestyle skiers and Jimmy Kay’s 8-tracks, which he’d made himself. He had “Toulouse Street,” “The Captain and Me” and “What Were Once Vices Are Now Habits,” although the songs’ order was rearranged, and hearing them every day I got infected, and ultimately that fall purchased them myself. And the song that got under my skin was “Natural Thing,” the opening cut from “The Captain and Me,” with the sounds of Malcolm Cecil and Robert Margouleff, who created those magical sounds on Stevie Wonder’s albums.

3

Now the following spring I got the world’s worst case of mononucleosis but was wary of leaving my BMW in Salt Lake City, so I went to Odyssey Records on Main Street and bought six prerecorded cassettes, something I’d never done before, because you can make better ones at home, and took off for the east coast.

One of those albums was the Doobie Brothers’ “Takin’ It to the Streets.” It was confounding. Was this even the same band? The cassette came with almost no information, and there was no internet to check. I mean it was good, but it was completely different.

And then this completely different unit had a breakthrough with “Minute by Minute” just when they were about to be written off, and stunningly, they were now the biggest band in America. With a new lead singer, Michael McDonald. Who after one more album with the Doobies, left, the whole band broke up, because everybody wanted a song on the LP “One Step Closer,” and it suffered in quality as a result, but there was one absolute smash in sound and lyrics, “Real Love.”

Michael McDonald followed this up with his solo hit, “I Keep Forgettin’,” but the hits didn’t continue to flow, the original Tom Johnston unit reformed and made two albums on Capitol and then it was the nineties, and everybody was an oldie. The world had superseded them. But unlike so much of what surrounded them in the seventies, their music sustained, it got airplay. And the Doobies worked and Michael McDonald worked and then came the idea to merge the two for one big 50th anniversary tour. Ergo, last night.

4

What can I tell you about the YouTube Theater? Having been built so recently, a lot of the flaws of yore have been eliminated. There’s a separate VIP entrance, a separate VIP lounge, albeit much smaller than the Forum Club, and excellent sight lines and sound. But it’s industrial. No carpet. It looks like you could hose the whole thing down after a show. And in truth the best halls are kinda greasy, kinda lived-in, like the Forum, and the YouTube Theater is brand new, and last night it held an old audience.

You hear it all the time, from “heritage” acts. Yup, there’s a whole new generation at their shows. Well, they weren’t in attendance last night. I saw three kids about twelve, but the rest of the assembled multitude was old. Like me. They’d lived through the heyday of the Doobies in the seventies, they remembered it like yesterday, and now with all the years gone by they were worse for wear. The woman behind me wore skintight pants and had plumped up lips, but everybody else seemed to be comfortable in their skin, they owned who they were. And they didn’t dude themselves up for the gig, which many boomers do. No, these were the same clothes they’d worn that afternoon. Jeans. 501s more than designer duds. And they sat. Tom Johnston kept on imploring the audience to stand, and a number of people in the pit did, but when you’re in your sixties and seventies your knees are creaky, you’d rather sit and let your mind drift.

And on some level it was cognitive dissonance. Just when you were marinating in the Tom Johnston/Pat Simmons sound, there’d be a Michael McDonald number. So you got the blending of a rock show with more MOR, more cerebral tunes. It was the same band, but…

Michael McDonald exhibits no charisma, he doesn’t want the spotlight, he played the keyboards throughout, and he got the most initial applause, you know when the audience recognizes the intro to the song, which made me think of the era, the late seventies, when disco was peaking and the music industry was about to collapse of its own weight. McDonald’s songs were great, but they are not rock like the earlier Doobies work.

But there’s that one killer line in “You Belong to Me”:

“You don’t have to prove to me you’re beautiful to strangers”

Wow, what insight!

And the upbeat “Takin’ It to the Streets” was a powerhouse. And I must admit a fondness for “Here to Love You,” which was especially good last night, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say it was the rockers, the traditional, classic sound of the Doobies, that reached me most. Like “Rockin’ Down the Highway.”

“Oh, ROCKIN’ DOWN THE HIGHWAY”

This was the hedonistic seventies. The sixties were done, we were focusing on fun, and we had it, sans documentation, the records inspired us and the rest is only in our minds, those nights of being falling down drunk, out in the country, rollin’ down the highway with the windows down, back when that was still a thing.

But I must say Pat Simmons’s “Clear as the Driven Snow” was a highlight. That’s an album cut off of “The Captain and Me” that you know when you buy the album and play it, otherwise you’d be out of the loop. the acoustic guitar, the mellowness, that ultimately leads to an electric journey, this is the kind of music that sets your mind free.

And the band had the balls to play a few songs from their new album, which I knew, but most people seemed not to, and then…

Tom told us they were going to play a song they normally don’t, they were resurrecting that stiff song from “What Were Once Vices Are Now Habits,” “Another Park, Another Sunday.”

5

“I’m sittin’ in my room, I’m starin’ out my window

And I wonder where you’ve gone”

These are the songs we like most, the introspective ones, that engender stories of our own life.

“City streets and lonely highways I travel down

My car is empty and the radio just seems to bring me down”

I’ve been there. You’ve been there. You can’t stay home any longer, back in the pre-internet era, where everything good that happened happened outside the house. You need a change of scenery, you need to cut free.

“I’m just tryin’ to find me

A pretty smile that I can get into

It’s true, I’m lost without you”

Well, in today’s #MeToo era, finding another pretty smile to get into seems a bit macho, but the key here is he’s lost without her. All guys are. They say they kicked her to the curb, but inside they’re dying.

“Another park, another Sunday

Why is it life turns out that way

Just when you think you got a good thing

It seems to slip away”

Live long enough and you start to prepare for this. You can make plans, but that does not mean they’re going to happen. When everything’s going great, you know to anticipate the bringdown.

“Another park, another Sunday

It’s dark and empty thanks to you

I got to get myself together

But it’s hard to do”

Sunday is the loneliest day. When you’re heartbroken you can’t wait for the work week to start back up again, to see people, to distract yourself from these feelings. And you try to get yourself out of the hole….but only time helps, if it helps at all.

And word is “Another Park, Another Sunday” tanked because of the supposed put-down of radio, which was a misreading of the song, but in truth “Another Park, Another Sunday” is too good for the radio. The mellifluous sound, the indelible chorus, the meaningful lyrics… It’s now my favorite Doobie Brothers song. I play it all the time. And to see it performed live…

WHAT ELSE CAN YOU ASK FOR?

I wasn’t thinking about the seventies and that Mammoth condo, I was thinking about this year, the past few months, being out of sorts and pulling up “Another Park, Another Sunday” on my phone to root myself, to make myself feel good.

6

“Black Water” was a tour-de-force, but it’s the finale that truly sums it up.

“What the people need is a way to make ’em smile”

And that’s what the Doobie Brothers do, all you’ve got to do is listen to the music.

That’s what we did back then, listen to the music. And it was foreground, not background. And if you were big, you were gigantic, much bigger than any of today’s hit acts. The Weeknd only reaches a small fraction of the populace compared to the Doobies back then. The entire nation was driven by the youth, who by the seventies were gaining power, and it was music that powered them forward.

“Whoa, oh, listen to the music”

All the time.

7

I didn’t see a single person I knew. I haven’t had that experience in years. Which was a bit weird, was this show off the radar? Then again, as I said up top, the Doobies were never cool, they were providing for the audience, not the insiders and critics.

And the key to a show is to gauge whether your mind wanders, whether you’re checking your phone.

People weren’t checking last night. And they didn’t even leave early! Which is de rigueur in Los Angeles.

And by time the classic anthem was being played everybody in the hall was on their feet, thrusting their arms in the air, singing along, just like me.

And when that happens everything else falls away, it’s a pure moment, a peak moment, what life is all about.

Do I think the Doobie Brothers’ music will be heard fifty years hence?

I wouldn’t bet on it.

Maybe this music dies with us. But that’s all right, because we won’t be here either.

Our parents went to concerts, but not like we do. We learned in our youth and we are maintaining the mission. Music is in our DNA, we know these songs by heart, to go to the show to hear them performed live is better than a new car, better than almost anything other than sex.

The gig ended at 10:20. Early enough for the oldsters to get home and go to bed, staying up past midnight is long in their past. The train pulled into the station at eight PM and then departed two hours and twenty minutes later. The experience was dropped, and then the rock and roll circus moved on to another town, to satisfy thousands more people you know like best friends, because you share this history, it’s a point of connection, you’ve got something to talk about even though you’ve never met.

The Doobie Brothers don’t get enough respect. Because they’re not edgy, they’re not controversial, they’re delivering right down the middle, but it feels so right.

And it did last night.

The goals have changed, and you need to change accordingly.

Used to be Johnny Carson was a god. Forget that he’s already been forgotten, at best a distant memory in the minds of boomers and Gen-X’ers, but David Letterman is fading too. Don’t expect Netflix to continue to lay out the big bucks for his services, that paradigm is dead. The streaming outlets made gargantuan deals to draw attention, to give them status, they no longer need it, the companies are mature, they now live or die based on original hits. “Stranger Things” means much more to Netflix than David Letterman, just like “Ted Lasso” means much more to Apple TV+ than Oprah Winfrey, whom the Cupertino service just parted ways with.

Used to be hosting a late night TV show was the dream. Didn’t work so well for Conan O’Brien. He’s trying to reinvent himself as a podcaster, but in truth he’s been hobbled by late night TV, his talents could have been better employed elsewhere, he would have been better off pushing the envelope all by his lonesome than under the constriction of sitting behind a late night desk.

As for Jay Leno… He was on Bill Maher’s new podcast, where Bill frequently doesn’t let the guest speak, and Jay said he was at a friend’s house and this buddy told his fourteen year old son that Jay used to host “The Tonight Show” before Jimmy Fallon and the kid didn’t believe it.

So, if you’re a late night host, you get to be the face of the network. But that network is bleeding viewers. The only thing that’s no longer on demand is sports, and natural disasters. Otherwise, you watch it when you want to, and usually you don’t.

Then there’s the power of TikTok. It’s killing Facebook. Prognosticators are saying the social media giant is going to circle the drain. You can’t find one person who believes in their metaverse play other than Mark Zuckerberg, who didn’t come up with the idea for Facebook anyway, originality is not his forte. He just buys or competes. But now Instagram is cratering. There’s not enough there there, you keep seeing the same stuff over and over again. All the creators have gone to TikTok.

The appeal of TikTok is humanity. We are social people. We always want to know what other people are up to, we dream of interacting with them. And TikTok is far different from Instagram, what came before. Not being static, it’s hard to fake. It’s the most real social medium. And it’s the new haven of comedy.

For a while there it was Twitter, before everyone realized most people are not even on Twitter, they can’t comprehend it, how to use it, the service has a stink upon it, even though it’s vital for those addicted to the news, which is just about everybody these days.

Comedy didn’t work on Instagram, it moves, unlike the pictures of celebrities and other boasters.

But on TikTok… Like comedy, and the algorithm will serve up more. While Facebook was focusing on serving advertisers, TikTok was focused on users, delivering what they wanted. And they do! Sure, there’s a China problem, which needs to be addressed, but as a user, TikTok is the heartbeat of America, even though everyone is watching something different.

This is the problem that the mainstream continues to fail to acknowledge. We no longer live in a monoculture. Mass is a fantasy. Everything is niche. You can get the story everywhere online and still people are unaware of it. Come on, admit it, shows played in your hometown that you were unaware of, that you might have gone to, this never happened before.

So the old verticals, the old desires, just don’t mean that much anymore.

Sitcoms. Forget that they don’t make many. “Seinfeld” made every standup salivate for a show. But even if you get a show now, almost no one will see it. And today it’s not about casual fans, but dedicated fans. Casual fans may have the money, but they don’t have the time. There’s so much stuff I’m interested in, but there’s a limited amount I’ll do a deep dive on, that I’ll pay for.

So you don’t want to have a sitcom.

And now Trevor Noah says he doesn’t want a late night television show. It’s hindering his progress. Not only is it limiting his lifestyle, he’d like to travel more, see more, not be tied down with so much work, and he’d also like to explore his standup more. You may do a monologue on TV, but others write those jokes. But if you go on the road, interact with a live audience, you can hone a new act, you can feel more alive.

And it’s not only TV personalities, it’s music ones too.

Used to be the goal was to have a hit. There’s nothing wrong with achieving one today, even though it reaches many fewer people, but it’s not the anchor of a career it once was. That’s road work. You cement the relationship on the road. And as far as getting new fans, it’s the old fans who bring them. You just feed the diehards, not only live, but online. They can’t get enough of you. Don’t bother casting a wide net trying to entice newbies, it can’t be done, not at a significant level.

You can have a track in the Spotify Top 50, the Spotify Top 10, and you’ll get hosannas from the label, even a bit of mainstream ink, but that does not mean you can sell any tickets, that you’ll have a continuing stream of income. Because you’ve got no diehard fans! You’ve got to be around longer than that, you need a body of work.

As for being on the road… You can’t do it alone. First, you need a good team, a good manager and agent, and then you have to work with other acts, trade favors. That’s where hip-hop has it right, but now even that genre is fading:

“Hip-Hop Is the Hottest Music of the Streaming Era. Is It Now Cooling Down? – A dearth of new breakout rap stars and innovation in the genre has some music executives concerned about a slowdown”: https://on.wsj.com/3Rtq1p2

It’s so easy to play these days, but harder than ever to win. Not only are you competing with every other act, you’re competing with streaming music, video games AND the history of recorded music. Good luck! If you’re in it to get rich quick, stay out, go into tech.

We’re going through a wrenching transition. And it’s really about the death of the baby boomer paradigms. Who cares what the top ten is in any genre? Music, movies, TV… It’s all about what you want to see, and there are very few people whose recommendations you trust.

Just like Firesign Theatre said, everything you know is wrong. And if you’re not willing to re-evaluate… Being stuck in the past is a recipe for a quick death. It’s fine if you want to silo yourself off, take yourself out of the discussion, but if you want to play, comment intelligently, not only do you have to read the mainstream publications, you’ve got to surf the news all over, informing your own opinions. Be wary of blind spots. And if you’re watching TV news, you’re already behind.

Just like there are people who keep saying that electric cars aren’t the future. In June 2021, Mercedes-Benz said it was going all electric by 2039. Now it’s by 2030: https://on.wsj.com/3rn1TtL And Toyota is being castigated for being behind. Every other traditional manufacturer is on a sprint to electric, not only because of Tesla, but because of the Chinese! Used to be innovation came from the States, but that’s before we decided to go to war with ourselves and stop progress. God, the influx of immigrant technologists? Whose jobs were they taking? Now they’ve gone to Canada, stayed home in India… People in Silicon Valley know all this, but D.C. is behind the game, and the public is grossly misinformed.

So ask yourself if the target you’re shooting for still applies, or whether it’s an anachronism. Talk to people who are true digital natives, the ones born after the internet took hold, like the college students who are now born in the twenty first century. Sure, they might have a vinyl fetish, but not at the cost of a streaming music subscription. And they don’t have TV sets, never mind cable subscriptions.

It’s astounding to observe. For ten or twelve years the boomers loudly protested about the arrival of the future, all the changes it begat. You don’t even hear the oldsters bitching about streaming royalties, which they still don’t understand, anymore. The younger generations have accepted the new paradigms. Oldsters yelling is akin to Grandpa Simpson howling about how it was in his day, and the boomers think they’re so young that they won’t get the hearing aids they need. And if you can’t hear what’s going on, good luck knowing what’s going on.

So Trevor Noah has it right. And no amount of Carpool Karaoke can convince James Corden it’s worth sacrificing his stage and screen career. And it was a fad anyway, heard people talk about it recently?

Laying pipe to stick around… Very few people have the patience and commitment. But it’s what it’s all about today. And you forge your own path. Momentary success is just that. Might be a peak, but in isolation, a monadnock. You’re better off climbing every hill in New England than one 14k mountain in the Rockies. The initial glory may be less, but…

It takes a lot of effort to build a career. Expend it wisely.

Or they do…

Tune in tomorrow, Saturday October 1st, to Faction Talk, channel 103, at 4 PM East, 1 PM West.

Phone #: 844-686-5863

Twitter: @lefsetz