Since we discussed Charlie Watts last week, the topic this week will finally be:

Your favorite long song – six minutes or longer…

Tune in today, August 31st, to Volume 106, 7 PM East, 4 PM West.

Phone #: 844-6-VOLUME, 844-686-5863

Twitter: @lefsetz or @siriusxmvolume/#lefsetzlive

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The oldsters and the wannabes are convinced that Spotify is ripping them off, when the facts say completely the opposite. But nothing can convince them otherwise.

The most insightful article this week was in the “New York Times”:

“Britons, Unfazed by High Covid Rates, Weigh Their ‘Price of Freedom’ – Britain is reporting more than 30,000 new coronavirus cases a day, but the public seems to have moved on. Experts say this could be a glimpse into the future for other countries.”: https://nyti.ms/2WHPape

Bottom line? They’re packing them in at concerts and sports events with impunity, no one seems to be troubled, despite rising covid rates. I can’t get this story out of my mind, believing it’s a harbinger for the rest of the world, certainly the United States.

Then again, can the newspaper be trusted?

For weeks we’ve been inundated with stories about the fall of Afghanistan, it’s considered to be the most important thing in America. And everybody is beating up on Biden. You’d think it’s a disaster for him.

However:

“What Voters in a California Swing District Say About Afghanistan – In a battleground district, even some Trump voters said they were hesitant to hold President Biden accountable for the casualties and chaos in the U.S. pullout from Afghanistan.”: https://nyti.ms/3BnD43G

Seems like the news media is out of touch with the public, the same way it was out of touch with the groundswell for Trump in 2016. Meanwhile, most reporters are concerned about the Beltway, they don’t interact with any regular people, so they’ve got no idea what they’re thinking. As for news… We now live in the internet era, where things come and go so fast it’s like they didn’t even happen. So people concerned about Afghanistan now that we’ve pulled out completely? Unless they want a political battle cry, like the anti-Spotify crowd above, they’ll forget about it, the same way the public ignores the cries of the artists and pays up for streaming services and is in heaven.

“Sitting in a park in Paris France

Reading the news and it sure looks bad

They won’t give peace a chance

That was just a dream some of us had”

“California”

Joni Mitchell

These lines have been going through my head for the last month, the news is all bad. I have felt powerless and doing my best to detach, since nothing I say will change anybody’s mind. But I wake up this morning and hop on my phone and see this story:

“G.O.P. Governors Fight Mandates as the Party’s Covid Politics Harden – As several Republican-controlled states confront their worst outbreaks yet, their leaders — following the base — have doubled down on resisting vaccine and mask requirements.”: https://nyti.ms/38vs0VP

You must read this story.

In Florida, covid is worse than ever before: https://nyti.ms/38vxuQq but Ron DeSantis refuses to enact any mask mandates, as a matter of fact he’s making sure local businesses cannot do this even though this is the opposite of traditional Republican doctrine wherein decisions are made at a local level.

And Kristi Noem, governor of South Dakota, went to Sturgis to greet the half a million in attendance and covid numbers SPIKED! And if you’re Trump, or a Republican governor, and you go against the orthodoxy, if you applaud vaccination, support masking, you are booed and excoriated. The mob has taken over the asylum and the wards are too scared to go against them.

But the United States is the greatest country in the world, the undisputed leader!

Well, I’m not sure the rest of the world sees us that way:

“E.U. Set to Propose Travel Restrictions on U.S. Visitors – Three officials from the bloc said that starting Monday, the European Council would advise its member states to ban nonessential travel from the United States.”: https://nyti.ms/3sZ3p5m

It’s a result of low vaccination rates. How come the rest of the world can see what American cannot?

As for ignoring the coronavirus and just soldiering on, the music business is down for that, the only person in opposition is Neil Young:

“Concerts and Covid”: https://bit.ly/3kCUaEg

But it took two days for Young’s words on his website to get any traction. Yes, even legendary Neil has trouble getting the public’s attention. He’s too scared to play Farm Aid, he calls out AEG and Live Nation, but…in a corporatized world the execs are insulated anyway, they’re not showing up at the shows. America was opened on July 4th weekend and it appears nothing can close it, nothing!

As for mask/vaccine requirements, read the review of “Hamilton” in yesterday’s “Los Angeles Times”: https://lat.ms/3mPtwdK

“But when I asked the ticket check-in person if he wanted to see my proof of vaccination, he declined the privilege.”

“It wasn’t until I went inside the theater that I began to spot the scofflaws. The first was a guy with his mask hanging from his chin like a wayward bandage. He appeared to be hitting on a female acquaintance who, by the way she slipped away from him, didn’t seem all that impressed by his undraped nose.

Directly across the aisle from me, an arrogant-looking fellow in his 60s sat unmasked for nearly the entire show. ‘Hamilton’ is long, nearly three hours. That’s a lot of time for not a single usher to confront the smugness of a guy who assumed that rules don’t apply to him.”

So we can talk about vaccine restrictions, but they seem to leak like sieves, and everybody thinks they’re immune.

As for facts?

“No, the Taliban did not seize $83 billion of U.S. weapons”: https://wapo.st/3zxcFju

But don’t let your emotions get in the way of an internet meme that aligns with your position, that feels right.

Which brings us back to Spotify.

So, all the oldster and younger musicians testified in front of the U.K. government about Spotify and other streaming services. And what was the government’s conclusion? IT WAS THE LABELS’ FAULT!

Everybody who studied the sphere knew this was true. It’s kind of like blaming Ticketmaster for fees. When you should really blame the acts. The only profit is in the fees, because the acts take all the rest, this is a way to create a pool of money the acts can’t commission. Furthermore, Ticketmaster doesn’t keep all the fees… They’ve got to pay the venue, the promoter, sometimes even the act itself. But you’ve got to have someone to blame, so Ticketmaster is the enemy, nothing will convince you otherwise! And when an all-in ticket is proffered you don’t buy it, you click on the link with the lowest price and end up paying the same amount with fees at the end. So who is really the enemy here?

As for Spotify… It keeps approximately 30% of revenues, from which it must pay all expenses and hopefully extract a profit.

As for the remaining monies…

One can argue strongly that publishers should get more, but since the major record labels also own big publishers they won’t budge. But in any event, the remaining 70% is paid to rights holders, i.e. labels and publishers. Now if you’re your own label and publisher the truth is you can make beaucoup bucks on Spotify, ASSUMING ANYBODY IS LISTENING!

Let me ask you… Do you really think your fifty year old music should be as popular as today’s top ten or fifty? Was Sinatra in the top ten in the seventies and eighties? Of course not, even though he was cleaning up on the road. Even more important, in the days of physical retail, there were limits, a store couldn’t have everything, so unless you were hot, the store might only stock your greatest hits album, maybe one or two other LPs if you were a superstar, and if you were a less impactful act…YOUR RECORDS WEREN’T IN THE STORE WHATSOEVER! So what we’ve got here is a bunch of old acts who believe they’re entitled to partake at the gravy train ad infinitum. Which is like saying the ratings of “Leave It to Beaver, “”The Real McCoys” and “My Mother the Car” should be cleaning up today!

As for the endless stories about income:

1. What was the use? On demand pays a different rate from radio. And online pays for the record as well as the song, unlike traditional, over the air radio.

2. What was the split? How much of the song did you own? Did you own the publishing?

3. Raw numbers. Spotify can’t pay more per stream, absolutely impossible, it would instantly bankrupt the company. It’s already paying out 70% of income, as stated above!

4. So you’ve got millions of streams. Be thankful anybody is listening at all! Because in the pre-internet era your albums wouldn’t be in the store and your music wouldn’t be able to be heard unless someone bought it, which in many cases they would not be able to! As for radio…good luck, maybe on an oldies station. And millions don’t mean much anymore, in the overall scheme. There are tracks, one single track, with over a billion streams!

5. The canard that if streaming payments don’t go up there will be no music. We heard this twenty years ago, in the heyday of Napster, and what was the end result? TOO MUCH NEW MUSIC! And if you believe anybody who wants to should be able to earn a living in music…think back to the pre-internet era when if you didn’t have a label you couldn’t even get your records distributed!

6. Never mind that Spotify, et al, lay the groundwork, via availability, to monetize elsewhere. Ticket prices have outpaced inflation by a multiple. And there are other avenues than live. And you can record at home and distribute essentially for free…

7. As for dominance… Nothing else is dominant, why should your music be?

But it just doesn’t feel right. You were making all this money before Spotify…

Well, the internet cut recorded music revenues in half, it’s only streaming that has allowed income to come back.

As for ownership… Let me ask you, buy any DVDs lately? Everything is on demand, music was actually a leader, to its benefit! But no, let’s try to jet back to the past. While you’re at it, why don’t you use your Mac Plus and a Motorola StarTAC?

But nothing I write here, NOTHING, will sway any musician’s opinion. Because the truth doesn’t matter. They’ve got their agenda. They believe someone is out to get them, they refuse to see any advantage to the new model and they’re dug in, not even listening to facts or reason.

So why should it be different in any other sphere?

Fauci is Spotify to the right. And vaccines make you grow a third head, which is magnetized, and your body transmits data via a chip to the government so you’d better not get one!

It’s bigger than vaccines. It’s bigger than politics. Team sports have influenced our entire society. Everybody’s got their tribe and if you go against it…

Hell, if I was only interested in the money I’d jump on board. Yes, Spotify is the devil! State the unpopular truth and not only are you hated upon, you’re excommunicated.

But all of America is now about leverage. Building your tribe and pushing its agenda, irrelevant of its veracity or benefit. The only difference is institutions don’t have the power they once did. They still don’t realize the power of the people, their ability to organize online, oftentimes around inaccurate information.

So what they’re doing in China is cracking down. On social media stars. On gaming. And the truth is, there are many Americans who would sign up for that, especially on the left, where everybody with an elite degree can’t stop bitching about the downsides of technology, despite being dependent upon their smartphone. They refuse to see any advantage to the new systems, and therefore just put themselves into a backwater. Just like the oldster musicians, who bitched about internet distribution while youngsters gave music away for free and embraced streaming. The youngsters are not bitching, at least those who are not wannabes. Only the marginal newbies have the time to complain, the rest are busy working to get ahead.

There is a way through this morass. But we’d need leadership based on what’s right as opposed to what’s wrong, not letting the tail, the uneducated, sway their opinions and directions, willing to do the unpopular. And a willingness to stay the course, evolution keeps happening. It used to be about computer hardware, now it’s all about software. There used to be a new app every week, now there’s nothing new on the horizon. It shakes itself out if you’re willing to stay in the game. Sitting on the sidelines bitching that it’s not the way it used to be, letting the ignorant have power, is the path to destruction. And that seems to be the path we are on.

“Rolling Stone: Life and Death of Brian Jones”: https://bit.ly/3sZEcYo

This guy must have never worn a condom. He fathered six kids out of wedlock and he died at 27!

Then again, Brian Jones was famous for being amoral, mean and manipulative. And when you mix these characteristics in with someone who cannot say no to any drug and who is incorrigible…you can understand why Mick and Keith took over the band and ultimately kicked Brian out.

Now if you’re under forty and you die and they do a documentary on you there’s gonna be tons of footage. Your parents have been shooting video from the moment you were born, and you’re posting pics to social media, but this was the sixties, cameras meant film, which was expensive and needed development, and most of what happened in that era has fallen through the cracks. So, the truth is there’s very little footage of Brian Jones in this movie. It’s really just an oral biography, but in movie as opposed to book form. Should you watch it? Yes.

If you don’t have a documentary on you you were never a factor in the music business. It’s astounding. And most are amateurish and barely watchable, for fans only. I watched the Bill Wyman doc because it got great reviews. Did I need to watch a movie on Brian Jones that I wasn’t even sure I’d heard of? Well, compared to the other music documentary offerings…I decided to give it a few minutes, especially since the blurb said the filmmakers were experienced and looking for the truth, although I took that with a grain of salt, but it costs nothing to dive in, in this case on Amazon Prime.

So the first thing you notice is Brian Jones lived a long time ago and the people who’ve survived are OLD! And they live up to the English rep, they have bad teeth. And then you’re watching the story unfold and you realize that these guys were all in their twenties. Look back from beyond that and it’s flabbergasting, they were babies, at an age when a breakup can devastate you, Anita Pallenberg leaves Brian for Keith and Brian can’t recover, and Keith was hanging with Brian and Anita because he was devastated that he’d been dumped. And you think being a rock star you always call the shots, never!

So Brian figures he’s gonna give it one more shot. He wrote film for this movie that Anita is starring in that’s opening in Cannes so he flies down with his buddy to steal her back, and she’s all lovey-dovey, but she’s not returning, so they fly in a babe from the U.K. to make Anita jealous, and this new woman, Suki, is about as good-looking, but she doesn’t have Anita’s personality, a limit tester who drags people into trouble and feels she’s invulnerable, making great conversation along the way. People are people, as Depeche Mode sang, and if you can’t understand why John Lennon was with Yoko Ono, you’ve never hung with a six foot tall cover girl with nothing to say.

Brian doesn’t suffer fools. He wants the stimulation of conversation. He wants to talk about blues records. So he’s mostly silent until he feels the resonance and then… He was the Stone hanging with John Lennon. He met Bob Dylan and then called him every day, he was so thrilled to CONNECT!

How do you make friends in this world? You know when you have that resonance, and the older you get the harder it is to find. And the truth is music and celebrity culture are not known for their intellectual rigor, so if you’re looking for that…

So Brian is born into an upper middle class family. He’s learning to play the piano, the clarinet, but then he discovers jazz, and his parents can no longer keep him on track, he’s all in. So they pack a suitcase, put it on the front stoop and lock the door, Brian is now on his own.

And he mooches and is broke but he follows the music.

But contrary to so many of the stars of that era, Brian knew how to play, so he was the focus. He started bands. The Stones were his band. Talk to Andrew, he’ll tell you. Brian was the spokesman, he was the one who negotiated. But then Brian took a secret five pound commission on gigs and the rest of the group never forgave him. But then it got worse, he lost control because he didn’t write, a friend testifies he was categorically unable.

So not only is there little footage, there’s absolutely no Stones music, they couldn’t pay for it, never mind whether it would be licensed to them. But it’s not really necessary, because this is a character study, of someone who’s been left to the past. And yes, his friends defend him, but just when it starts to slip into hagiography they talk about what a pain in the ass Brian was, a girlfriend says he was “a shit”…

So the film paints the Stones as dangerous, and the government out to get them. Which is hard to believe in today’s hip-hop world where porn is a cottage industry that you run out of your home. The Stones were blues purists, but then the Beatles blew it all up and you needed your own songs and…

The flourishes Brian added made so many tracks hits, like the marimba in “Under My Thumb”… Sans the marimba, it’s not a hit. And the sitar in “Paint It, Black.” And then when he’s fading, intransigent and barely showing up, he lays down the slide in “No Expectations,” which makes that track too. That was Brian’s calling card in the beginning, he could play slide.

But for every positive aspect, there’s a negative one. He would push people to the edge just for the hell of it. He would disconnect.

And the truth is Brian Jones has faded into the rearview mirror. He who writes history owns it. And all that happened over fifty years ago, all we’ve got is these geezers who testify, and so many, like Anita Pallenberg, are already gone. So now Mick and Keith are lions, and Brian Jones is a footnote. Proving, if you’re a budding musician…WRITE YOUR OWN SONGS!

Then again, musicians used to worry about publishing rights, now they don’t really care because it’s all about building your brand and cashing in elsewhere, where the real money is, so if you’ve got eighteen writers on a song, who cares? And they’re used to the labels not paying, so they believe they’ll get screwed on the publishing anyway. And who knows how long they’re going to live?

But everything today is an extension of what was developed in the sixties…EVERYTHING! Which is why if you were around back then, so much of it seems boring today. Concert promoters were like app developers, and just about as honest, didn’t Sean Parker steal the names from one app for another that went bust anyway? You cut corners in rock, as you did in tech, but not anymore…LIVE NATION IS A PUBLIC COMPANY!

So you’ve got to be into it for the music and the lifestyle, and these guys were primarily in it for the music, they’d sit around and listen to records all day. Life was slower, you weren’t interacting with everybody you know on a handheld device all day long. There were long stretches where nothing was going on, where you went deeper into yourself and your surroundings, ergo the music renaissance. Albums were not for listening together, but listening alone, they kept you company!

Unfortunately, the last fifteen minutes or so are an investigation into Brian’s death. And I hate to say it, but who cares? Dead is dead. No one has ever brought anybody back, and I’m doubtful about Jesus, but if you believe he did they killed him anyway. It’s kinda like the coronavirus. Other than blame, what would we achieve if we find out it was leaked from a lab? It’s not like China is gonna give a mea culpa. That’s one thing being a lawyer teaches you, being right oftentimes doesn’t pay.

So it was a long, long time ago. Almost all of the images are in black and white. You get the feeling of dark, damp England back then. The world these musicians wanted to escape from.

And I don’t want you to think that Brian Jones was a saint who was solely responsible for the band’s success, because that’s patently untrue, but he was a guy who was infatuated with the music, who lived to play the music, who was always exploring before the drugs got the better of him.

So it appears Brian was killed by his just-fired contractor. But the contractor is dead and…

The funny thing is the records remain. There may not be images, but we’ve got the records. Pull up “Paint It, Black” or “Under My Thumb” or “No Expectations.” They’re magic. I only had to hear “Under My Thumb” once to get it, and I can tell you where I heard it, in Howard Johnson’s on Mount Washington…”Aftermath” was literally the only album that was there.

And Howard Johnson’s was just a hut halfway up the mountain, it shared nothing with the orange-roofed enterprise that sold fried clams and ice cream. And I’d love to have video of the week we spent there, when our tent blew over, just below where the highest wind speed in history was recorded, but it’s all in my brain, it’s just memories.

But memories have feelings.

Watch “Rolling Stone: Life and Death of Brian Jones,” that’s one thing it will evoke, feelings. You’ll feel the passage of time. You’ll marvel that you weren’t as hip or experimental. And even though it’s not on the soundtrack, the music will play in your head, it’s there forever!

Spotify playlist: https://spoti.fi/3jmOoHf

I was listening to the Top 100 of the 1964 “Billboard” chart on shuffle.

And I heard “Baby, I Need Your Loving.”

Now the truth is 1964 was absolutely dripping with hits. Go back and you’ll be astounded. To the point where you were not starving for great new music, it was constantly being heaped upon your table. And not only was 1964 the year the Beatles broke in America, it was the year Motown truly crossed over to white Top 40 outlets. It started with the Supremes, with three number ones that year, “Where Did Our Love Go,” “Baby Love” and “Come See About Me.” I always associated “Where Did Our Love Go” with the Shangri-Las’ “Remember (Walkin’ in the Sand),” they were hits at the same time. I thought they both hearkened back to the pre-Beatle era, I thought neither act would last. The Supremes certainly did, the Shangri-Las not so much. Today the Shangri-Las focus is all on “Leader of the Pack” and “Give Him a Great Big Kiss,” but “Remember (Walkin’ In The Sand)” was always my favorite, still is. Ditto on “Where Did Our Love Go,” it’s always had a special place in my heart, but during the nineties I started to cotton to “Come See About Me” which I now prefer, but when I hear “Where Did Our Love Go” I think of the summer of ’64 whereas “Come See About Me” is not rooted in time. And there’s always power in being the progenitor.

But through the door the Supremes opened came an outpouring of Motown acts. And I’d be lying if I told you I loved all that music in that era, it took away radio time from the Beatles and the British Invasion, it seemed to be looking back as opposed to forward, I needed years to go by to gain perspective. And over the years the greatness of Levi Stubbs has been extolled, and I always love hearing “Reach Out I’ll Be There” with him testing the upper limit of his range. And the track is so dramatic, urgent, it’s like it all matters SO MUCH! Nearly as good is “Standing in the Shadows of Love.” The rest of the hits I know by heart, “I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch),” “It’s the Same Old Song,” “Shake Me, Wake Me (When It’s Over)” and the positively exquisite “Bernadette”! But I never think of “Baby I Need Your Loving” and never listen to it, but in context, with its brethren from 1964, it reached me in a new way. “Baby I Need Your Loving” swings, it’s smooth in a way the latter hits were not, less urgent, more subtle, but equally meaningful.

And I’m sitting on the couch late at night grooving on the Four Tops. Luxuriating in not only the music, but my detachment from the news. It’s just me, I’m having a private experience, I’m loving it! I’m not scrolling on my phone, only searching to do Four Tops research, did you know that Levi Stubbs not only refused to put his name in the act’s moniker, he refused to go solo, he stayed with the act, he was so loyal. Unlike not only so many Motown acts, but Phillippé Wynne of Thom Bell’s Philadelphia soul factory. Phillippé Wynne was just a member of the Spinners, then went solo to little acclaim and then died on stage at 43, but there’s a huge cult of insiders who testify as to his greatness, check out this performance of “Rubberband Man” on “The Midnight Special”: https://bit.ly/3kzdMcc You can’t believe this is totally live, you think about how much money the label spent, you’re wowed by the synchronized dancing, but what is most impressive, what is positively amazing, is Phillippé Wynne’s voice, his voice seems to transcend humanity, that tone, that delivery, singing but almost sounding like shouting, you just want MORE!

And I check out all the streaming services, I oftentimes listen to two or three at once. I was listening to the Four Tops on Amazon, and researching on Apple and Spotify. And then I saw this playlist, made just for me on Apple Music, entitled “New Music Mix.” Spotify was first, I didn’t even know Apple had this product, but Spotify’s personalized new release playlist is laden with reissues, it doesn’t deliver on the premise, which is new music. And I was excited about new music when I saw the first track was “Lifting You” by Jungle. I’m really into their work, was about to write about them. The second cut was from Jackson Browne’s new album “Downhill From Everywhere” which has gotten tons of press but is barely more than listenable. The playing is fantastic, Jackson’s voice? Not so much. But the third track was by…THE DOOBIE BROTHERS?

I hadn’t heard they had new music, Tom Johnston had told me he was eager to go into the studio, but I didn’t know there was finished product. So I clicked and I was stunned…IT SOUNDED LIKE THE DOOBIE BROTHERS! And I’d be lying if I listened and thought “Don’t Ya Mess With Me” sounded like a hit single, then again there’s no station that plays this music anymore. Certainly not Top 40. Not even Adult Alternative, the Doobies are not hip enough. And Active Rock is too hard. This music lives in a vacuum. But then nearly two-thirds of the way through the guitar started to WAIL! And after a repetition of the chorus, that lead axe went back on its roller coaster ride, dancing all over the fundamentals of the band, and this is certainly a band, unlike today’s lauded compositions created solo in the bedroom. And then when the track suddenly faded out, I had to hear it again, and then again, AND AGAIN! Usually I can’t get through even thirty seconds of the new work of ancient bands.

And it turns out “Don’t Ya Mess With Me” is one of four tracks released on August 6th from the album “Liberté,” coming out on October 1st.

So I cautiously decided to play the other three released cuts. And the truth was none were as good as “Don’t Ya Mess With Me,” especially the two non-Johnston tracks, the man with the signature sound of the Doobies. But I liked “Don’t Ya Mess With Me” so much that the next afternoon I decided to listen it on the big rig, and then played the three other cuts again. And after a couple of plays through I had to admit the opener, “Oh Mexico,” was actually superior to “Don’t Ya Mess With Me,” I guess I was turned off by the title and subject matter, seemed redundant to me, but the picking, the vocal, the sound… It sounded like the band was having fun. Knowing how good they were and smiling while delivering what they knew their fans would appreciate.

And make no mistake, this new Doobies music is only for fans. Don’t even bother if you don’t like the Doobies, it’s not for you. As for hating on this uber-successful act of the seventies, don’t waste your time, that was forty years ago, they, and you, are in the rearview mirror, but it appears the Doobies want to go out in a blaze as opposed to fading away.

It’s a cliché, make an album of new music and play any of it live and the audience starts talking and goes to the loo, no matter how much they love you, no matter how big a fan they are.

Then again, old acts making new music oftentimes are too cerebral about it. Forget those putting out product for ink, to sell tickets, that’s all calculation with forgettable product. I’m talking about acts trying to match their classic work. They get self-conscious. Feel they must test limits to prove they’re not dated and even worse the power struggle often gets in the way. Yes, everybody in the act wants a song or two on the record, irrelevant of their quality, they want the attention, they want to get paid, even though there’s so little cash in these projects, you can net more in one night of live performance.

But some acts are so self-conscious or defeated or both that they don’t even bother recording new music. They know the eras have changed. It’s all too depressing, they’d rather just go on the road, play their hits, collect the money and pay their bills. Sad, but most of these acts are in their seventies, or close to it. And then there are those who made so much on recordings back when who bitch about streaming payouts when the truth is few are actually listening and you’re lucky people can hear your new music at all, if we were still in a physical world there’d be room for nothing more than your greatest hits in the record store.

So the Doobie Brothers started out as a bar band. The lineup changed. Michael McDonald became the lead singer and there was a second round of hits, as a matter of fact Johnston and McDonald are on tour together with the band this fall. Then again, at this point the band is only Johnston, Patrick Simmons and Clover refugee John McFee, brought aboard to play the parts others couldn’t and shine and he’s the secret sauce here, his picking goes straight to your heart, makes your body twist, just like this music did back in the seventies, and that’s a good thing.

But my point here is the Doobies started out in the bars, where you honed your chops, something no one does today, there aren’t even places to play, if there’s music at all it’s provided by a deejay. One can argue this entire paradigm is on life support, along with rock music itself. Turns out rock is too expensive to make and support, four or five people have to be fed and housed and hopefully paid. And it takes money to record this stuff and… Today rock is anything but mellow, today it’s in-your-face and hard edged, but if you close your eyes and let your mind drift you can see yourself nodding your head in the low-ceilinged bar listening to this new music, getting up and dancing, having a good time. Now the only way to have even a facsimile of this experience is to go to the overpriced gig, and at those prices you believe you DESERVE to hear each and every hit, you want to know every track by heart.

But the funny thing is if the Doobies played “Don’t Ya Mess With Me” and “Oh Mexico” live nobody would go to the bathroom, they’d be grooving just like they were to the hits, because these two cuts hit the sweet spot of the band, they may not be innovative, but they’re not repetitive, they contain the essence of the Doobies’ magic.

But they won’t be on “The Midnight Special,” never mind “In Concert.” So many members of this audience listen to podcasts and the news, they’re not driving down the highway in their Dodge Dart with the windows down banging their arm on the side of the car in unison to the beat. In other words, everything’s moved on but the music itself. Everybody’s gotten older, but there’s this shared sound from way back when that meant so much that the bands purveying it are still on the road playing to thousands. You can’t get this hit anywhere else. Kids aren’t looking for this sound, the Led Zeppelin renaissance is in the rearview mirror, the classic rock acts are fading away, at least in listening power, check the Spotify numbers, then again the oldsters are not spinning these nuggets ad infinitum on streaming services, if they’re even subscribing, Spotify is for youngsters, who wants beats more than melody, who see music as participatory, as background to not only videos, but partying. The music is evanescent, it’s just temporary grease enabling you to have a good time, then it’s discarded.

Not classic rock.

And I predict a renaissance at some point in the future, could be twenty years from now, maybe fifty, the music is just too good, like that of the bluesmeisters who inspired it, the tunes are hiding in plain sight, even more accessible, and when music becomes more about the essence than the trappings people will seek it out.

Are they gonna seek out the Doobie Brothers?

Well, I wouldn’t put them at the top of the list. But if younger generations find themselves still driving, still going into the hinterlands with no internet access they’ll discover how much this music resonates, how it rides shotgun and inspires.

And “Don’t Ya Mess With Me” and “Oh Mexico” continue the tradition. They’re in the pocket. And that’s where all the great music resides, right?

YouTube-“Don’t Ya Mess With Me”: https://bit.ly/3mOyiIN

YouTube-“Oh Mexico”: https://bit.ly/3sYceMT