“Covid Deaths Surge Across a Weary America as a Once-Hopeful Summer Ends – Cases are starting to fall in some hard-hit Southern states, but nearly half of Americans are not fully vaccinated, allowing the Delta variant to persist.”: https://nyti.ms/3tgbiU2

So this is how it ends, utter chaos.

The same people bitching about the exit from Afghanistan are the same ones refusing to get the vaccine. Never mind that most people are lacking expertise in both areas. Then again, we all agree we’re glad to be out of Afghanistan, enough with endless wars, and we want Covid-19 to be gone, to return to normal life, but that doesn’t seem to be in the offing for eons.

So here’s how it is folks, news is just fodder for discussion. Legitimate news outlets with boots on the ground have had their credibility eviscerated by the right, where it’s all opinion all the time, where what you feel is more important than what is truth. So…

That’s right, the “liberal” newspapers are the ones gathering the news, with boots on the ground, “The New York Times” and “The Washington Post.” Yes, “The Wall Street Journal” can cover business, but it now does that poorly as it tries to be a more general newspaper serving the right, the articles are brief and you’re better off reading the business coverage in the “Times.” As for your local rag, it should go out of business. Why in the hell should I read national news in a local paper, when the true authorities are just a click away. In order to survive newspapers other than the Big Three above have to go hyper-local, but instead we can’t stop hearing journalists bitch like the musicians who decried the internet, wanting to preserve the dominance of the CD when the public had moved on. If you’re trying to gather the news, why are you so damn sentimental and glued to the past? Meanwhile, hedge funds own most of the local newspapers and are cutting staff to maintain margins and in a matter of years they’ll throw the outfits away, or sell their names, like “Newsweek,” which is a nearly worthless rag despite having the moniker of the old “Washington Post” weekly newsmagazine.

And most people don’t subscribe to a newspaper anyway. They get their news online. Where it is tailored by algorithms for them, so they only see what already supports their vision and then they go into the echo chambers of social media where the platforms’ sole desire is to keep you tuned in. That’s what they tell advertisers, how much time people spend on their sites. It’s kind of be like heroin dealers talking about the people they’ve addicted and kept using, social media won’t kill you, but it will deaden your mind. And why are people so uneducated, lacking the power of analysis anyway? We’re so busy fighting culture wars that kids can’t even get a reasonable education anymore, their parents are afraid of anti-religious screeds and critical race theory and…why not pull your kids out of school completely…actually, that’s what so many right wing religious people are doing, home-schooling, the worst effort ever, it separates your kids from the mainstream from the advent, you learn a lot more in school than what is contained in books, the socialization is key. Not only do you have to learn how to get along, you need to be exposed to people of different creeds, who don’t look like you, who are not from the same economic class, who have different opinions. Ain’t that America, where people hate those they’ve never even encountered! The Jews are wrecking America! But they know no Jews. Or they’re afraid of people of color when they know none of them either. But these minorities are subjected to hate and scapegoating from the uninformed, on cable television, and from their peers on social media and it’s more fulfilling to direct your attention to yourself than anybody else. That’s one of the main laughable if it wasn’t so serious characteristics of Trump’s legal team, trying to spread the fiction that he won the election and hand a victory to him. They all stonewalled, none of them showed any chinks in their armor, it was a full court press, they were automatons, utterly ridiculous unless you were a diehard believer in what they were purveying. Getting to the truth is a messy proposition, and if you’re not willing to be wrong, you can never really be right.

So the Delta variant is raging and now Mu has been found in America. Not that most people know about this latest variant, because they don’t follow the news, too often they think Covid is a hoax and that they’re inherently immune. As for all those blowhards who’ve said this and recently died, it makes no difference, because everybody in America thinks the rules don’t apply to them until ultimately they do, like criminals they think if they haven’t been caught yet they’re going to get away with it. But then they get arrested. But even an arrest is better than death.

But now the medical establishment has been discredited. Yes, we are arguing about science, because a nitwit from nowhere knows more than someone who has a decade worth of training, never mind experience thereafter. Why does everybody think they know everything. Would you set somebody’s broken leg? Then why do you think you’re an expert on infectious diseases?

So America ain’t closing down again, no way, it’s not going to happen. It’s only the Democrats who desire said action, as for the Republicans, they’ve already opened the country, there’s freedom in Florida and Texas, the freedom to die, not that that’s part of the promotion. But it should be. Keep telling these yahoos they’ve got the freedom to die and very well might and maybe they’d wake up and get vaccinated. As for the long term side effects of said vaccination… Forget what you read online, that you learned second hand, do you personally know someone who has been harmed by the vaccine, experiencing deleterious consequences beyond the side effects that might last a week? God, these same people wouldn’t dive into a swimming pool, they’re too afraid. Then again, so many are exhibiting inane behavior that is far riskier than a vaccine.

Like congregating in groups.

A good friend of mine got Covid-19 at the Dodger game. He’s vaccinated, he’ll survive, but what about the other 50,000 in attendance every night? Not that anybody’s tracking the numbers, and unless you go to the hospital the government is unaware of most people who get infected. And the fact is most people have not already been infected, otherwise the infection rate wouldn’t be in six digits every day.

But eventually everybody will get Covid. That’s the plan. Yup, infect everybody and then we’ll have herd immunity, at least until the next virus comes along. And while we’re at it, let’s stop vaccines for measles and shingles and everything else. Let your body fight it. So you can tell everybody you don’t need to be inoculated, unless you die of course, and then your voice is not heard anyway. Then again, think of how many people still smoke. Somehow they think they’re going to beat the odds. And some do, but most don’t. But the younger generation has realized smoking is bad and now the only people left puffing cigarettes are the addicted boomers and the uneducated poor, with little respect for their own lives, but it took decades to come this far. We don’t have decades to get people vaccinated against Covid-19.

And then there’s this:

“Oracle Park Concession Workers Threaten to Strike After Many Test COVID-19 Positive – If workers vote to strike on Saturday, they could possibly walk off the job just before the Giants game against the Dodgers that evening”: https://bit.ly/3DPX1SX

Work at the ballpark and get infected, because Covid restrictions are a joke, they say you need to be vaccinated or show a test but they don’t check, this is the same fiction they employ in the concert business, saying they’re doing the right thing when the truth is they’re not doing much of anything and when confronted they point the finger at somebody else.

As for the concession workers above, they worked over the weekend, but 96.7% voted to authorize a strike.

UNIONS SUCK!

Well, without a union these workers would have no chance to stand up to bosses with spreadsheets who are only worried about the bottom line. Like the workers in Amazon warehouses, or the meatpackers who were getting infected constantly because they were forced to work, because you’ve got to feed your family. As for unemployment and other government benefits, many people still don’t want to take lousy jobs that pay little and force you to work hard and be abused. Who wants to work at a fast food joint? People have found better ways to make a living, but the Fortune 500 still believe Americans are captive, needing to work their low rent jobs or starve. Or still starve, working at Walmart while they apply for government assistance.

So we were told to just wait, when Delta accelerated, when the vaccine was approved, the naysayers would get the jab. Well, this was said by people who didn’t know the naysayers. It’s not like the fifties and sixties anymore, the different classes no longer interact. If you’ve got any money you don’t even send your kid to public school, but private. You don’t vacation in the same spots, you don’t even fly on the same planes, so why do you think you know what is going on in the brains of others? As for the underclass thinking they know what the elite do…knowledge has now been branded as negative, better to be ignorant, didn’t Trump say he loved his uneducated voters?

And the truth is it’s a war. You’re either pro or anti-vaccine. It’s a religion. And Covid-19 is just the latest shot. These same people have been anti-vaccine for years, crediting so many illnesses to the shots that they don’t cause. And if these same people get ill, they’re the first ones who run to the hospital, unless they’re self-medicating with Ivermectin, which poisons them and clogs up hospitals. I mean you can’t even trust the science that Ivermectin won’t cure Covid? When you can get monoclonal antibodies? What planet are these people from?

The same one I live on. Where truth is out the window and there’s a chorus of right wing anti-vaxxers little different from fans at a sporting event. Never mind that they can’t spell, it’s all about being on the team, and they can’t be wrong, they can’t look in the mirror and not believe they’re God’s golden child, who will be watched over and saved.

It’s been everybody for themselves for years in America. But now it’s even worse. Because now it’s not just about money or privilege but life or death. If Democrats started lauding smoke alarms you’ve got to know Republicans would stop installing them. And if their house burned down and burned up the neighborhood, well…houses usually don’t catch fire, but when they do…

Which is why in California car insurance is mandatory. Because you might cause an accident and how will the injured party be made whole? Never mind their automobile, but their health? Covid vaccines are the same thing, yet worse. But if you say everybody has to get a Covid vaccine somehow you’re a Nazi, if only these people lived in Nazi Germany. Then again, they’d be the same ones pledging fealty to Hitler, being afraid to go against groupthink, saying nothing as Jews and other minorities were shipped off to camps. And when it’s over they all say it wasn’t their fault, they didn’t pull the trigger, they didn’t know what was really happening, just like with Covid when they get it.

And you need a license to drive, but we can’t have vaccine passports because… Exactly why? The truth is they already know who you are, where you live, what you eat, what you buy. That’s right, unless you haven’t surfed the web ever, and don’t use a smartphone, you’ve coughed up so much data that the social media outfits and the corporations know exactly who you are anyway. And you keep saying the government is bad and private industry is the way to go but the truth is you’re sacrificing much more to private industry than you are to the government.

And if you go to India or even college, you’ve got to have shots. But so many of these idiots have never been anywhere, never mind so many have gotten vaccines before. Why stop at Covid? It’s got nothing to do with it being new, which it is not, mRNA has been around for years, it’s got nothing to do with approval, it’s got to do with the fiction that shots invade your freedom. But I don’t see you refusing to bow to the TSA at the airport, you’re coughing up your freedom on a regular basis, but truth is no longer a defense.

So America is open for business. It’s a game of Russian Roulette. Go out and play and see if you get infected and die. No one is looking out for you, as a matter of fact, just the opposite. If you wear a mask to protect yourself in many communities you’ll be excoriated, despite it being a personal choice, a “freedom.” How come “freedom” only goes in one direction? We don’t get to tell you how to live, but you get to tell us all the time. Just try getting an abortion in Texas, never mind the whole south. And not only is the public pro-choice, but so are many of the Republican elected officials, they just say they’re pro-life so they won’t piss off part of their constituency, which in truth has nowhere else to go, who’ll vote for them anyway.

So forget it. You can talk about vaccines and mandates all day long but it’s never going to happen. Biden could mandate vaccines, and people would bitch to high heaven just like they did when he got us out of Afghanistan, but ultimately they’d be happy and forget about it. But Biden doesn’t have the balls, we’ve got no leadership. And the tail is wagging the dog anyway, how can there be more Democrats yet Republicans rule the country? The Supreme Court is Republican and Biden can’t get his agenda through because his own party members are afraid of blowback. The right doesn’t care about blowback, I’d say it’s their secret weapon, but it’s right out front, everybody can see it!

And we all know Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham are evil blowhards spewing false information, but you can complain all day and nothing will change, they’re just leading their lemmings over the cliff, you can bet your house that those two have been vaccinated, no way they’re taking the risk. YOU should take the risk, YOU should protect your freedom, but not THEM!

Nothing anybody can do can shut down the right wing juggernaut. Biden defeats Trump handily and not only do so many Republicans still believe Trump won, they’re still counting votes and bitching about Benghazi. I’m surprised they’re not complaining about Walter Mondale.

It’s frustrating if you have a brain.

It’s frustrating if you got the vaccine. These wankers can infect you and not only can you get sick, you can die. The odds are low, but who wants the risk? Never mind the potential long term side effects of infection.

It’s all about THEIR safety. They want to carry guns to shoot robbers… You’d think they live in the wild west when the truth is crime has crumbled, sure, it ticked up a bit during the Covid era, but no one is stealing your kids, you’re pretty damn safe, but they keep saying cities are hellholes…so why is everybody moving to them? We’re supposed to respect the rural counties, losing residents, when they’ve got no respect for those in the growing metropolises whatsoever. It’s like they want everybody to be Gomer Pyle and live in Mayberry R.F.D. Meanwhile, as for that mail delivery…magazines come so late it’s not even worth subscribing, meanwhile DeJoy still has his position, despite self-dealing and the change of the Board of Governors in the Democrats’ favor. They’ve got the power, but they’re still letting DeJoy wreak havoc. This would never happen in private business, then again, all these people in the government are getting rich on our backs, like faux principled Joe Manchin. He made millions from energy companies, even though coal, fossil fuels, are fading…and this isn’t an opinion, just look at the statistics.

But you won’t. Because you believe you’re right. And you only read news that supports your opinion. These whackos constantly send me links supporting their inanity, and it’s always from sites I’ve never heard of that if you just Google them they turn out to be conservative, oftentimes religious outfits. Anybody can publish online, that doesn’t make what you’re saying right.

I’d say it’s complete gridlock, but the truth is so many are moving, out in society, living it up. Would these same people go for a hike in the snow in their underwear? Why do they respect the weather and not Covid? Oh, they don’t really respect the weather either, do you expect people to care about climate change if they don’t care about infecting you with the virus? But if they have the slightest loss you know they’re looking to the government to make them whole, and Biden doesn’t play favorites, unlike Trump, who was tight with the money for states that didn’t vote for him.

And I’ll sum up by saying there are flaws on the left. Yes, some of the educated left are anti-vax. But the left is nowhere near as bad as the right. All these outfits with their false equivalencies, don’t they know the right has already rejected them? Why are you worried about what they have to say?

But everybody wants to be popular, they don’t want to offend anybody.

Unless you’re an elected official on the right. Then you get to obstruct justice not because it’s right, but because you have the power. McCarthy? Don’t cough up your 1/6 info to Congress. Why? Well, McCarthy’s team might look bad. And if you say no, it’s gonna be hard to get it from you and…

This is America.

I don’t know how you ignore it and go on with your regular life. Politics are your identity, your tribe, it’s the biggest sporting contest in the nation. It’s a fight to the death. And there are no rules. And not really any referees either. So if you’re looking for wise people to make judgments and call out bad behavior, you’re dreaming. Just decide if you want to risk Covid by walking out your front door. And it is a risk, higher than being killed in a car accident, by a huge multiple. But it doesn’t feel that way… Just like it feels like you might be killed in an airplane accident, but the odds are much higher on the highway. And if people can’t accept that, why should they accept that the Covid vaccine will save not only them but their brethren, the country, will even boost the economy. They can’t.

Spotify playlist: https://spoti.fi/3DPg6oa

Long after midnight nothing felt right. I was reading a book that didn’t resonate, no streaming TV show seemed appealing and it was too early to go to bed, I could foresee lying there staring at the ceiling so I got my headphones and plugged them into my iPad and started surfing the web and I don’t remember what song I chose but on Spotify the music doesn’t stop it keeps going in a similar vein, and I was digging it, skipping occasionally, and then I heard “Big Man on Paper.”

“Then I drive into town and go to the Hudson Valley Mall

And look at the youth in their Whitesnake T-shirts

They’re wearing a poor man’s version of the haircut

Man they might as well be from another universe”

There’s more truth in these lines than there is in the entire oeuvre of Whitesnake, but Whitesnake was all over MTV and Graham Parker was not.

By 1989 it was almost over. From the promising new thing to a better label to little public acceptance and Parker’s major label career, from Mercury to Arista to Elektra to RCA was finally over, with little to show commercially, despite working with some of the biggest hitmakers from the era, from Mutt Lange to Jimmy Iovine to David Kershenbaum, he was relegated to becoming a footnote, living in independentland back when that was not a badge of honor.

It all started with “Howlin’ Wind,” which sounds like the best bar band locked into a groove, which is essentially what it was, Parker fronting the Rumour, made up of refugees from the pub rock scene. Produced by the man of the moment, Mr. New Wave, Nick Lowe, “Howlin’ Wind” swung, just drop the needle on “White Honey” and you’ll get it, you’ll be entranced. And “White Honey” is not the only cut, check out “Lady Doctor.” 

So Parker gets thrown in with the Stiff crowd, but he’s not really like Elvis Costello, Parker was more retro than future, pure rock and roll, albeit with more anger. Not that anybody in America paid attention to “Howlin’ Wind,” it was on Mercury, which was akin to having no label at all, they released an album and then…usually nothing happened.

But then came “Heat Treatment” in that same year of ’76 and Nick Lowe was cashiered for Mutt Lange who was seen as the inferior producer at the time, still wet behind the ears after years in South Africa. And unlike with “Howlin’ Wind” there was a ton of press in the U.S., mostly because the critics believed in it, back when critics were still a thing. And I bought it.

Now at this late date, many consider “Howlin’ Wind” to be the better album, and I might agree, but there are a few tracks on “Heat Treatment” that are so good they’re undeniable, in two cases TRANSCENDENT!

“Hotel Chambermaid” is great, but it’s really about the two second side burners, “Something You’re Goin’ Thru” and “Fool’s Gold,” but I left out “Pourin’ It All Out,” which listening now I realize I love too, but…

“Something You’re Goin’ Thru” was white reggae back when reggae was just truly breaking in America, it was Bob Marley & the Wailers’ live album that finally closed the U.S. on the sound. Meanwhile, reggae was flourishing in the U.K. and there were all kinds of white acts employing the sound, that’s how the Police actually broke through. Anyway, “Something You’re Goin’ Thru” is quintessential white reggae, back when AOR radio programmers were still scratching their heads over the sound, the Wailers’ live album was sold via word of mouth, not radio.

And then there was “Fool’s Gold.” An anthem embellished with Lange’s production, it was big, it would have blasted out of radio speakers and been adopted if…Mercury had a crack team and lowered the hammer, but that certainly didn’t happen.

So then Parker goes back to Nick Lowe on 1977’s “Stick to Me” and…it’s a step backward, the material is not as good and the production is more intimate as opposed to bombastic, in-your-face as it was with Lange and no one is happy, critics, radio or fans, and nothing happens, so to get out of his contract Parker drops a live album, “The Parkerilla,” that no one is clamoring for. At the time live albums were a cleanup move, repackaging the hits in a new incarnation to rake cash from fans or…there was one outlier, “Frampton Comes Alive,” but “The Parkerilla’ could have never fit that paradigm, it wasn’t even close, it sounded like a throwaway, even though Mutt Lange produced it and it sounded bigger.

But now Parker was a thing. A darling of the press. In the last heyday of the power of the rock press, MTV came along in 1981 and undercut “Rolling Stone” and the rest of its competitors either went out of business or became fanzines, even if they had glossy covers. And in 1979 Parker releases an F-You track entitled “Mercury Poisoning,” and gets airplay! But there’s no album to sell. And on the B-side of “Mercury Poisoning” there was a cover, why waste an original, and this remake of the Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back” got airplay too, at this point it could be the most played track in Parker’s canon.

So now Parker’s all set up, in the chute, ready to come out with his first album on Arista…which despite starting with Patti Smith has morphed into a Top Forty factory, it was a bad fit from the get-go, never mind the fact that Clive Davis is not in it for the long haul, if a track isn’t reacting he moves on and despite garnering glowing reviews the truth is “Squeezing Out Sparks” wasn’t as good as “Howlin’ Wind” or “Heat Treatment,” just compare the opening tracks, “Discovering Japan” was never going to close anybody who wasn’t closed already…as for the rest of the album…you had to be an invested critic to like it.

Okay, the stars weren’t aligned, we’ll hook Parker up with Iovine and they’ll deliver, only they didn’t. The sound on “The Up Escalator” might have been more polished, more akin to what was on the radio, but that was not the essence of Parker, that was not his selling point, it was his growling vocals and his viewpoint! And the truth is if you were a fan you were wincing, Parker no longer seemed to be able to compose great material, there were no indelible tracks.

And then there were more albums that got promotion but almost no radio airplay that were hard to spread the word on because if you weren’t already a fan these new records would not close you. And now it was ten years later, Parker was no longer the new new thing, he was dated, on his way out.

So Parker releases “Human Soul” in 1989 and no one cares, no one is talking about him anymore, he’s out of time, but he redelivers, assuming anybody cares, which they don’t, especially on the second side, with the “medley,” from “Daddy’s a Postman” into “Green Monkeys” is pure brilliance, Parker no longer seems to care, he’s no longer controlled, he’s singing full-throatedly knowing it’s no longer about success but the music, he’s back to basics, the name producers are gone, he’s working with Brinsley Schwarz of the Rumour, it’s a last hurrah, not that “Human Soul” is perfect, but it does contain “Big Man on Paper.”

“I look at a newscast being broadcast and

Try to connect with the events in front of my eyes

But I can’t see any further than the bills on the table

Or my kid’s first Halloween disguise ooh”

Parker is now living in the U.S., having married an American, which is why he’s at the Hudson Valley Mall, he’s still got it, knowing the specific is what puts songs over the top, the more personal you make it the more people can relate.

And at this point if you came of age in the seventies you can no longer recognize America, it’s been remade in the name of the almighty dollar, greed is seen as good, income inequality is growing, it’s about winners and losers and even though musicians had always perceived themselves previously as winners, the truth is under the new financial paradigm they were not, a banker could make much more, and make it every year, something a musician could not.

And Parker had a kid, he was domestic, he was in the same situation as his fans, and like those of them who’d pursued the arts, who hadn’t sold out and gotten on the financial gravy train, he was concerned with his bills.

“I look at a magazine designed for the successful woman

And look for one designed for the unsuccessful man

But I can’t see it anywhere on the newsstands

Maybe next week, maybe next week

So I hit the arcade and then get back in the car

And drive drive drive down that empty highway again

Surrounded by food you don’t worry about starvation

Only temptation and keeping sane”

Parker’s got self-knowledge, something rare amongst musicians, even today, everybody’s on the way up when oftentimes this is untrue and if they’re not rich it’s got to be someone else’s fault, they can’t handle that the world changed or maybe in truth they’re really not that good.

So not having a nine to five job Parker’s driving around, lost. Living the musician lifestyle is great when things are going good, but when they’re not…everybody else is at work, they’ve got a job, they’re moving up the ladder while you’ve got many more questions than answers.

So the truth is Graham Parker is a big man on paper, but a nobody in truth. He’s famous, but broke. People know his name, but that doesn’t feed his family. And to wake up and realize this at forty is not easy, it’s too late to turn around and…

Could it have been different?

Absolutely. Parker could have been signed to Warner or CBS from the get-go, both could spread the word, push the button, get his early records on the radio, but when Parker was delivering he had no machine. Then again, by time Parker launches radio is tightening up, AOR didn’t play Elvis Costello either, but Costello got the benefit of KROQ airplay, and then there was that appearance on SNL and…Costello was selling something different, it was clear he was rebelling against what had come before, his was a new thing whereas in truth Parker was just another rocker, he was just not out there enough, he was angry, but he didn’t need the entire establishment overthrown.

So now it’s 2021. Parker is seventy. He puts out records independently now and again, he goes on the road and plays to the diehards, and when he finally has enough or is no longer healthy enough to do it, he can give up and retire, live on Social Security, just like all those angry young men who loved his music and thought the world was their oyster and had the rug pulled out from under them, not going for the buck when the going was good. You can still squeeze out a spark, but it definitely won’t cause a fire, and there are no do-overs in life, and the truth is you can give it your all and still fail, which is hard for the boomers who thought they’d always win. You can talk a good game, but the truth is you may have your house and your car but it’s all show, you’re just a big man on paper. 

“The Horses and the Hounds”: https://spoti.fi/3yT0756

1

“Cashin’ in on a thirty year crush

You can’t be young and do that

You can’t be young and do that”

James McMurtry was once the young buck making his statement supported by Columbia Records. Back when getting a record deal was everything, when the stars were still big and the record industry was still a thing, before it all blew up into a million pieces where it’s every act for itself and only a very few get major label money and even if they break have a fraction of the impact of those from the days of yore.

McMurtry made two LPs with the Mellencamp camp. And especially the first was magical, but McMurtry does not have a radio friendly voice, and neither does Bob Dylan, but at the turn of the decade, from the eighties to the nineties, it was all about your look and your voice and if you possessed neither, as in you weren’t beautiful with a pleasing voice, not only did you get little MTV/VH1 airplay, but little radio play either, in an era where Top Forty on FM playing the video hits eclipsed a dying AOR which was challenged by R.E.M. and ultimately Nirvana which they were late to if they played them at all and after languishing in a backwater they either flipped format or went classic rock.

In other words, there was no place to hear James McMurtry. In an era very unlike today, when it was truly all about the hit and without one good luck whereas today if you’re not in the Spotify Top 50 hits are not really a thing although you do need a track to catch people’s ears as you build your career brick by brick into an edifice that will support you as long as you stay on the road and harness the power of your fans. This is the new paradigm and if you don’t make Spotify Top 50 music you must hew to it.

Then leaving the Indiana crew for South Carolina McMurtry made an album with Don Dixon (where’s he been lately?), which had a softer but equally intriguing sound and then after its release in 1995 James was promptly dropped from Columbia and thrown into the land of the independents, where a label might give you money to make a record, and then deals a small amount of promotion and takes the lion’s share of the income if there is any. And at this point acts of this vintage put their albums out themselves, they have to pay to make them they might as well get all the revenue if there is any and so many of the old label people lost their jobs and have hung out their shingle and can be hired to get the word out for you. But don’t expect to make a big impact, once again the most important thing is to know who your fan base is, be able to reach all of them in e-mail, and then deliver blistering live shows and hope the word spreads.

So James McMurty has lived through this entire epoch, into today when many of his contemporaries do house concerts, when most don’t even bother to put out new music, they just can’t get a jones to do it to little acclaim.

And the truth is if you’re not a fan of McMurtry you’re probably not going to cotton to “The Horses and the Hounds,” because all of the trappings have been excised, you’ve got James and his songs and some noisy guitars and an occasional organ and backup vocal and that’s it, it’s the opposite of the Columbia albums, it’s like McMurtry is wearing blinders, just going forward, irrelevant of what anybody thinks, irrelevant of whether anybody’s paying attention.

And I must admit the first time through I did not get “The Horses and the Hounds,” but then the above lines from “Canola Fields” stuck with me. A thirty year crush? No one in the Spotify Top 50 can sing about that, they’re not old enough. You have to have some miles on you. From your high school days to the shenanigans of college to playing the field to getting married and divorced and then thinking back to the way it used to be. I can’t tell you the number of guys I know fantasizing about thirty year crushes, even though if they make contact it never works, but the fantasy keeps them going.

“There’s not much movin’ on the romance radar

Not that I’m cravin’ it all that much

But I still need to feel every once in a while

The warmth of a smile and a touch”

2

“We’re nearly twenty years older

It’s not like what we thought it’d be

We never talked this over

You can’t lay it all on me”

Back when we used to buy albums one by one, when you laid down too much cash to feed your addiction, you played the LPs until they revealed themselves, until a track stuck out, and “What’s the Matter” is the track on “The Horses and the Hounds.”

I was lying on the couch listening on headphones as I surfed the net on my iPad, I certainly wasn’t paying attention to the lyrics, but the changes felt so good, like driving alone in your car with the top down and your hair blowing in the wind knowing your life is far from perfect but this one moment is bliss.

“Blood pressure’s up, I gotta take pills

If the food don’t kill me, the alcohol will

I know it ain’t healthy but this is what I do

Same thing I was doing back before I met you”

They marry you and then they want you to change, even though you never said you would. Suddenly you’re the enemy when you used to be God.

Not that it’s easy being home with the kids when your significant other is gallivanting on the road, having the time of their life, at least you think so.

So if you want to check out “The Horses and the Hounds” start with “What’s the Matter,” it’s the most palatable, the track that is most easily understood, musically anyway.

But if you go deeper, you should check out the track that comes before, “Ft. Walton Wake-Up Call.”

“She woke up mad, she’s trying to pick a fight

Got a phone to my ear ’cause I’m trying to book a flight

And she’s crazy as a goddamned loon

And the airline’s drowning in the belly of the beast

And they’re all bogged down from the weather in the east

And we’re not going anywhere soon”

It’s a story, you can see it in your mind’s eye. But is it politically correct? Well we expect our acts to tell their story in the lyrics but McMurtry is not the protagonist in all these songs, and the truth is people are flawed, or at least they’re not worried 24/7 about how they come across.

But the chorus is the piece-de-resistance: 

“I keep losing my glasses

I keep losing my glasses

I keep losing my glasses

I keep losing my glasses”

He can’t see his phone, he can’t see the menu, he’s over forty, over fifty, and he needs those damn reading specs, or bifocals. You won’t find this refrain in anything in the Spotify Top 50, and that’s the magic of “The Horses and the Hounds,” it’s written from an adult perspective, and this is extremely rare, almost nonexistent, the last time I encountered it was on Emitt Rhodes’s final album, “Rainbow Ends,” where he was finally old enough to own his faults, to tell his truth, just like taking those blood pressure pills in “What’s the Matter.”

In a country where youth is exalted, McMurtry is singing for the rest of us, who are not on the verge of death but are definitely over the hill in the eyes of the media, it’s almost like we don’t exist, the classic acts dye their hair and get plastic surgery to resemble who they once were while you look out into the audience and see a lot of gray hair, if you see any hair at all. As for appearance…it can never truly cover up biology, what’s going on inside.

So just like the generation it’s made for, the spotlight is not shining on James McMurtry’s “The Horses and the Hounds,” there’s no way it’ll be ubiquitous, so you can either compromise in a futile effort or own your identity and play back your insights to people who will get them, create that fan base you hope will keep you alive.

You’re not a star, you’re a musician. Channeling truth is your goal. Sure, the music must be palatable, but no one is interested in the ditties of the Gen-X’ers and baby boomers. Yet it seems too big a risk to own the miles on your body and mind, but the truth is in low moments that thirty year crush is what’s keeping you alive, isn’t it great to have art that reflects your inner feelings, where you are today? YES!

Maybe Kanye never should have put it out.

If you haven’t been paying attention, Kanye West kept tweaking his album, and he held multiple listening parties in preparation for the final release. As a matter of fact, he’s still arguing with Universal over the final release.

Anyway, the listening parties in Atlanta and Chicago were boffo at the b.o. Millions.

And then the album came out.

The instant reviews were positive, but by the next day not so much.

If you go to Metacritic, where they list and then average all the reviews, “Donda” has a 53 out of 100 from the critics and a 6.3 out of 10 from the public.

These are not good numbers.

Then again, if you check the U.S. Spotify Top 50, Kanye is all over it. It’s literally half of the chart, 25 out of 50. Internationally not so much, where “Donda” has only 11 of the 50 spots. Proving that it’s a great big world out there, and in the myopic USA we oftentimes don’t see what is happening overseas. But the bottom line is this is amazing penetration. Not seen since the release of Morgan Wallen’s “Dangerous,” which has a 72 out of 100 critics score on Metacritic, and a 6.4 out of 10 from the public. Then again, country music fans don’t tend to post on Metacritic, in the eight months since the release of “Dangerous” only 8 people have reviewed it, whereas 2,333 users have already reviewed “Donda” in less than a week.

So, looking at recent history, there’s mania after initial release, but Kanye’s new albums fall out of the Spotify Top 50 quite quickly. Make no mistake, Kanye’s going to make bank from “Donda,” at least for a while, but looking at recent history, it won’t sustain.

But interestingly, Kanye is not bothering to play today’s insider game that renders the “Billboard” Top Ten inaccurate and ultimately worthless, where #1 is manipulated by selling high-priced vinyl and other packages. Kanye is actually selling a Stem Player on his website, but this doesn’t count on the chart. In other words, Kanye knows the truth, he’s bigger than the chart. If you’re playing the chart game you’ve already lost, you’re not as big as you think you are, you’re actually working against yourself, you’re marginalizing yourself, you may be appealing to the media but the music business is driven first and foremost by fans, from the bottom up, as opposed to yesteryear when majors anointed albums, manipulated all important radio and determined stars from the top down.

Kanye has got a huge fan base.

But just imagine if he’d never released “Donda” publicly, to streaming services, at all. Then we’d have true mania, you’d have to go to the show to hear it. And Kanye is constantly changing it, so every night is different!

To play a record costs much less than putting on a complete show/stage performance. But people were paying beaucoup bucks to be inside the stadium, it was an event, they did not want to be left out, one could brag they’d gone. This is radically different from the prominent paradigm today, where acts rehearse, get the show down, align it with triggers for production as well as music and it’s the same in each and every burg. Most shows are just an advertisement for the underlying record(s), whereas with Kanye it’s all about him and once again, he’s creating an event.

This is how it used to be, primarily before production and the feeling that one must replicate one’s MTV video on stage. Shows lived and breathed, set lists were not always identical, each gig was special.

The jam bands have continued this tradition. People go to multiple shows, they’re completists, they don’t want to miss a thing. Which is another reason why the Dead & Company tour is so huge. Better to get this coverage in the “New York Times” Style section than be number one in some lame article reproducing the chart:

“When the Parking Lot Is Its Own Strange Trip – Outside Dead & Company shows, a tradition started by the Grateful Dead lives on, vivid uniforms and all.”: https://nyti.ms/38JiHBG

There’s no new recorded music at all. Everything’s an oldie, but no performance is identical. There’s a culture, a scene, which is what the photos in the above article represent. By going you become a member of a club. And believe me, those who went to Kanye’s listening party felt the same way. Never mind all the Phish fans.

All the money is on the road anyway.

So Kanye plays his record and…

Videos and audio recordings don’t come close to replicating the sound, never mind finding it impossible to capture the vibe of the event. And if professional “tapers” get involved, you generate a huge cadre of traders, needing to hear last night’s show, needing to hear everything!

Kanye can’t go on the road and do listening parties anymore, the album is out. Now he has to tour with a complete show. But if he never released the album to the public…

All this bitching about recorded music revenues is missing the point. The script has been flipped, the truly valuable acts, the ones that sustain and make all the money…the recordings are ancillary, they’re just the kindling. In most cases these acts don’t even need new music to tour! And the music is primary, absolutely. This is completely different from videos with product placement, endorsements…it’s all about the music.

And the event.

Kanye took a risk.

Maybe someone else will too.