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If this were a record, it would be the album of the year.

I’m not talking about a worthless Grammy, I’m talking about the one everybody would be talking about, would be wowed by, something that would push the envelope and herald the dawning of a new age.

Kind of like “Nevermind.”

But even after that we had “Jagged Little Pill.” Twenty five years later, Alanis Morissette is safe, but when you first heard “You Oughta Know” it was dangerous, talking about giving head in a theatre? This twenty one year old was not only intelligent and incisive, she was provocative and confident and unwilling to observe perceived boundaries. Push the boundaries today and you fear being canceled, misunderstood. Hell, all breakthrough artists are misunderstood at first. I’m talking about ones who have an impact, change the culture, don’t just sell tonnage.

Have you listened to this Julien Baker album?

For those not paying attention, it’s the holy grail of 2021. And then you push play and you immediately scratch your head…THIS? Now it becomes more palatable as it plays on, but not so much that you want to listen to it. In the old days, albums like this were promoted properly. As fringe, possibly approaching the center. When you promote them as mainstream you do the public a disservice. You just turn people off to new music. We’re looking for one listen wonders, like “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and the aforementioned “You Oughta Know,” that you have to listen to again and again, that become phenomena.

And speaking of phenomena… Morgan Wallen just notched his eighth week at number one. They keep releasing new product, but people still want Wallen. And if you divorce yourself from his faux pas/misstep/bad behavior and actually listen to “Dangerous” you’ll know why. And why do critics always excoriate that which is mainstream? Just because people like it doesn’t mean it is bad. But if critics like what everybody else does how can they feel superior, then they’re no different from the hoi polloi!

And it was a review that got me to reserve Chang-Rae Lee’s “My Year Abroad,” not that I could remember what it was about when Libby told me I could skip the line and have seven instead of the usual twenty one days to read it.

I was hooked right away.

Reading “My Year Abroad” I did not think of this crazy world of ours one bit. Not Biden, Trump, Covid… It took me away, and not only was that a relief, it made me want to go deeper. Actually, the plot did, it was so WILD!

Now the writing is kind of dense. As in if you like to breeze through a book and catch all the meanings and references, “My Year Abroad” will not satisfy you. Sometimes you have to reread a paragraph to know what is going on. Other times you just plow forward hoping for the best. But one thing’s for sure, you want to keep reading!

Do you say no or yes?

The truth is the rewards are in saying yes. But so are the dangers. Go off course and you can have exciting experiences, even make a big buck, but you could also O.D. or be killed by gangsters. Unfortunately I usually say no. But the winners say yes. Tiller says yes, he doesn’t check himself, he’s all-in.

But Tiller is positively average. He doesn’t go to the best college, he’s not the best looking. He doesn’t live in the best part of town. Nor is he a self-hating upper middle class person, afraid of evidencing any wealth, nor is he a holier-than-thou poor person, thinking they’re better than the rest of us just because they’re broke. Which is why the upper middle class is constantly self-denigrating, because if they flaunt their possessions or their lifestyle they’re going to be excoriated, especially online.

Not that anybody is paying attention to Tiller.

So the book opens with him meeting Val in the Hong Kong airport and then making a life with her and her eight year old boy. Yup, one chance encounter and his whole life changes.

Just like his meeting with Pong.

And really, all that’s just the set-up. And I don’t want to tell you any more because the twists and turns are what make “My Year Abroad” great. And the story is enough, but the wisdom sprinkled throughout bonds you to the book, because of the insight. Today either you’re playing to the masses or afraid of the masses. You’re either one of the group or letting your freak flag fly. But what if you’re so inconsequential, no one cares about you? That’s Tiller. And his insights are our insights. Those of us who don’t count, who don’t matter, but wonder what is truly going on.

“the 2-iron-thin ladies, who might eat just two jumbo shrimp out of five”

Makes you crazy! You’re at some restaurant, the shrimp cocktail is exorbitantly priced, and these ladies leave most to be thrown away. You want to rush by their table and steal them. They believe they’re superior, because they’re controlled. But get these same women home alone with a cheesecake or some other dessert and you’ll see different behavior. Wait, is that sexist? Have we come so far that the truth is off limits? Can we only think about this stuff and not write it down? As for a 2 iron, if you’ve ever played golf, it’s the hardest iron to hit, except for the 1, which is extremely rare. The head is small and vertical and…thin.

“You’d think the town would be bedbuggy with its hard-driving, self-overscheduled students, but they almost exclusively stay on their idyllic campus because there’s no time left for them to do anything else.”

He’s talking about a college in New Jersey, but that was my experience at Middlebury. If you went to the bar in town on a Sunday or Monday night…crickets. Those nights were for STUDYING! As if some book could substitute for life experience.

“Lots of overcharming, overarticulate children.”

You’ve met them! Their parents are well to do boomers. The kids have been enriched since birth. They don’t have jobs during high school, they go save the world, or study in England. And you can talk to them just like adults!

“Or protein-loaded broccoli for all those steadily starving vegans.”

You need protein to survive, never mind so many other nutrients. But these holier-than-thou vegans think they do not!

“Val wasn’t poking at her phone or listening to music or sipping a takeout coffee, which at this point are pretty much the compulsory modes for any Frist World human being.”

Come on, hang out in an airport lounge. Anywhere between stops in life, if there’s a free moment, people are staring into their phones.

“the moms who aren’t yet single-parenting”

Get it? They’re on the way to divorce. They’re gonna do it alone.

“Be greedy in your appreciations.”

Soak up life, be proud of it. We’re constantly told to keep ourselves in check. To be seen, not heard. Not to be loud. But the rewards of life come from being all-in and aware of what’s going on.

“I wanted to say something suitably salty, to connect and not have to connect in the way men do…”

They never outgrow this, boys continue to be boys, snapping towels, making scatological jokes. And you grow up and if you’re one of them, you have no idea there’s any other way. But if you’re not one of them, if you’re a loner, not popular, the kind of kid others make fun of, you feel completely different. You want to reveal your feelings, to the bros this is anathema. To play in their world you must not be serious, you must be looking for the laugh in every endeavor, you must twist every encounter into a sexual reference…

“though part of me was unsettled by all the male bonding, being raised and educated in a well-to-do progressive enclave and demographic that championed egalitarian ideals like inclusion and justice.”

These people can’t wait to go to college. And if you move up the educational food chain, there is no bro-ness at the top. There are popular and unpopular, but other than the jocks, intellect is key, along with analysis. Then again, when some of these boys graduate they adopt the language of the bros to survive in the business world.

“I noticed how to the man Spideyface and his guys were exceedingly polite and solicitous, with none of the rudeness or crass behavior you might expect from semi-gangsters but are more likely to get from the finance and corporate types, who are the real gangsters in this world.”

People have now realized this. We’re waiting for the screw to turn, for the world to flip, for these self-righteous pricks to get their comeuppance.

“breathe her in like she was a freshly baked Toll House cookie.”

You get the picture? Appeal to you? YES!

“because when a real song arises between you there’s not just a connection but in fact a sudden breach in the world, an opening that lets you touch a mystery.”

If only all those people waxing rhapsodic about Julien Baker could coin the above, nail the experience.

“the kind who can’t do anything or go anywhere without a full round of social media due diligence.”

You’ve got to see what your peers think. God forbid you take a risk on a new place.

“She was very frugal but smart about it, unlike her husband, who cut corners no matter what.”

This is how you become rich. You don’t downsize across the board. You see what can be cut and what cannot. You don’t want to cut that which will grow, but the money spent on appearances and good times? You can drop that right away. 

“I believe this happens to a lot of men my age. One is quite settled in every regard, but you look around your circles and wonder if you’ve made any truly close friends.”

Without women, most men would be home alone, every night. Or be on the couch with a guy talking women and sports and no true feelings. The truth is women have girlfriends, best friends. As they get older, most men do not.

“The thing about crazy folk is that either they’re truly crazy or they know something nobody knows, or can even detect.”

This is SO true. But you don’t know it unless you spend a lot of time around a crazy person. In so many ways they’re inadequate, they can’t function in society, but somehow they can see right through you, detect the flaw in a situation, it’s eerie, almost supernatural. Either you know this or you’ve never experienced it and probably never will. Freaky.

“I assumed that he’d ply me with the data-heavy information download that marks an autodidact…”

People feel inadequate, substandard, less than because they didn’t get a college degree. So they read and educate themselves and they’re constantly talking about what they’re consuming, whereas those who’ve actually graduated never talk about their college courses. That’s in the past.

Now the truth is all of these insights are secondary to the enjoyment of “My Year Abroad.” It’s really about the plot. The roller coaster. Only this roller coaster is out in the desert and you’re riding it at night in the pitch black and nobody knows you’re doing so and nobody cares either.

Welcome to real life.

Social media is a ruse, it’s just a way to fight our loneliness. Our constant companions are our brains, our minds, and we’re in them all the time. And everybody keeps telling us we’re missing out on the show. And then we feel even worse, as outsiders.

This book is the story of one little life. And the truth is every life has twists and turns worth telling. But most of them go unheard. Which means when you read this book about an ordinary guy who sometimes enters the extraordinary realm…you pay attention, you can resonate, you share a common bond.

Now I had no idea who Chang-Rae Lee was, but after finishing the book I decided to do some research. There was a review in the “New Yorker,” which gave away a ton of the plot and put the book in the context of Lee’s other work and then poked holes in the novel, pointing out its flaws, its inadequacies.

Have you ever hung with a household name beauty? They’re imperfect, they’re flawed, all human beings are. So, books are not evaluated by these wankers for the reading experience, instead they’re held to some standard no one can meet that is agreed upon by the New York cognoscenti, who never really reveal what the rules are. They’re like rock critics. But since books sell a fraction of the number of records, and take longer to consume, albeit not being repeatable, these royals get away with it. The same way the bosses at the ever consolidating publishers get away with their insane pricing model. Yes, the hardcover edition of this book is only ninety nine cents more expensive than the Kindle version. Even though there’s no printing, shipping or returns with digital assets. The music business is in a frenzy over NFTs and the book business is smugly doing its best to keep its marginal business stuck in the pre-internet era. To the point where aforesaid wankers can’t even acknowledge genius when they see it.

Was every track on “Jagged Little Pill” or “Nevermind” an A+? No, but that doesn’t matter. These acts were hewing to their own standard, not anybody else’s, that’s what made them so fresh.

“My Year Abroad” is fresh.

Here’s the deal. You can read the sample chapter free, that’s what Amazon provides. You can even check it out on your smartphone, and everybody’s got one of those. So I don’t want to hear from those idiots who said they bought the book and disliked it. You don’t have to do that anymore. And truthfully, few of my own readers have even gotten this far. But those who have are looking for a nugget, something special, something to make their little lives complete.

And that’s “My Year Abroad.”

People HATE this movie!

It’s got a confounding score on RottenTomatoes. It has 80% on the Tomatometer, the average of critics’ reviews, in this case 192, and a 37% audience score, with in excess of 1000 ratings. That’s enough data to be definitive.

Sometimes foreign shows have a lack of data. So you don’t know whether to trust RottenTomatoes. And oftentimes, the lowbrow public can’t handle a foreign show, so the critics’ ratings might be high and the hoi polloi’s low. But for a mainstream movie?

And that’s exactly what “I Care a Lot” is. A Hollywood production, made for opening weekend and hopefully longer. Almost high concept, and not purely authentic. A slice of life, but no one’s life who you know. It’s a caper, it’s an adventure, it’s a ride.

But now we no longer have to go to the cinema to see it!

Yes, I never would have paid to see “I Care a Lot,” because unless it’s truly legendary, I no longer trek to the theatre, it’s a bad experience, in toto. The movie plays at a specific time, always inconvenient, you’ve got to get there, you’ve got to endure the trailers…and the audience.

As for films needing to be seen on the big screen…

A couple of months back we got one of those LG OLED TVs. I thought it was completely unnecessary, we’ve got a top of the line Samsung from way back in 2007, LCD, which they no longer make anymore, I was wowed by the picture until…

We set the up LG.

It cost $2600. Felice blanched. I thought it was ridiculous.

But then I read an article that said if you just wait, the sets go down in price as the year progresses. There are new sets introduced in January at CES and…

The price went down to $2100. Still too much. But then just after Halloween Felice got the itch, she needed to get it. Me? I have trouble pulling the lever on almost any purchase, and as I said above, I thought it was completely unnecessary, I could not imagine a television better than the old trusty Samsung. We have a later Samsung model, an LED, top of the line, and the picture is nowhere close to the original 2007 one.

So I went online to buy the TV, and just that day the price declined to $1800! So then the question became who to buy it from. I believe in Amazon. But Felice was all uptight about removal, a service Amazon does not provide. Turns out Best Buy delivery is free, and if you pay just a bit more, they’ll detach and remove. But if you want the new one installed, you had to wait in excess of a month. So we bought it from Best Buy and I booked an installer from Thumbtack I’d used before. I swear by Thumbtack. Costs are cheaper and the people are so afraid of getting a bad rating they over-deliver.

And I’m glad we booked the installation, the mounting was easy, but the key was the installer tuned the set, since he installs these on a regular basis, he’s got the settings down. Which is good, because the thing came with no manual. As for all the built-in features, the apps, Alexa… I’ve learned they’re unnecessary. Because as the TV ages the apps on it are not updated, because streaming services write for new devices. Best to get a Roku. Which updates itself automatically. Which is better than the TV itself, which usually features an unbelievably slow chip.

So the guy set up the TV and my jaw dropped. I had no idea that a picture could be this good. I come from the school where unless the TV is broken, you continue to use it, the one in my office is a Panasonic from 2009. But it turns out I am wrong, the upgrade is worth it.

And if we were going to spend this much money, I had to be sure, was this set the best available? Everybody says so. Yes, the LG CX series. They just updated it, but the upgrades are superfluous. You want a 65″ set. A 75″ is a huge step up in price, basically a grand. As for anything smaller? Believe me, you want the 65″.

And sure, it’s 4k, but almost nothing is in that format. But the DETAIL! I could see the hairs on Rosamund Pike’s face.

Rosamund Pike. I never got it. She didn’t fit the image I had in my mind in “Gone Girl.” But here she is utterly amazing. Award-worthy. Which is one of the reasons I finally decided to watch this movie. I had it in the back of my mind, but since she won the Golden Globe… I know the Globes are ersatz and I hate to admit it swayed me but I was a bit reluctant to watch because everybody I knew who saw it HATED IT, just like on RottenTomatoes!

And Felice wanted me to turn it off after seven minutes. She saw where it was going and she didn’t want to go any further down this road.

But I was digging it.

Because of the production values. Because it was a MOVIE!

I prefer streaming series, there’s more character development. Also, all movies made for television are substandard, they’re made on a budget to fill a programming slot. They’re commerce, not art. They’re almost an insult, a time-suck.

But not “I Care a Lot.”

The money was spent. I felt just like I would at the theatre, only I was at home, starting at 8:25 PM. Do you know any movie that starts at 8:25 in a theatre? I’d been planning to fire it up at 8:05, but then my older sister called. And she said she hated it too. But I wanted to dive in anyway.

So it starts off with this rap about winners and losers. That is, what does it take to win?

That seems to be why the critics liked the film, for the social commentary.

As for the public? They had problems with the ending. I did not. Actually, I could pretty much see where it was going very early on. I was satisfied with the conclusion…

But really, it’s about the ride. Rosamund Pike is just so BAD!

Maybe you know some winners. Some billionaires. Some CEOs.

They did not get there by accident, don’t listen to a word they say, it’s all b.s., if they really told you what it took to make it to the top you’d be horrified! My father reinforced this to me again and again, he said SCHNOOKS GET SHAT ON! It’s a rough world out there, and if you’re not fighting to get ahead…

I can’t do that.

First, you’ve got to be good with people, you have to know how to smile and manipulate them. Business friends, that’s just what they are. It’s mutual masturbation to hopefully get where you want to go. If there was no money involved, no career advancement, you probably would never hang out with these people.

And then there are the winners.

First and foremost, you must play to win. You cannot be conciliatory, you’ve got to go for the jugular. But true winners know not to be aggressive and in your face all all the time. Most are charming, cunning, you think you’re set and then they knife you in the back.

Oh, don’t tell me I’m jaded and inaccurate. It’s like Jack Nicholson in that old movie, YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH!

And the twist starts with Dean, the lawyer. Leverage. Intimidation. Do you get scared, or do you want to stand up to the man? And the man doesn’t have to raise his voice, he can get his message across quite quietly.

As for women? Pike nails this again and again. How men have tried to intimidate her and have threatened her ad infinitum, but when push comes to shove…

Yes, there’s a feminist angle here too. And a lesbian relationship. So for those that say Hollywood is out of touch, behind the times, not in “I Care a Lot,” maybe not on Netflix.

So, at first you’re dazzled by the production values, the cinematography. And just when you think you’ve got the plot nailed, it switches. And then becomes a cat and mouse game. And towards the end it gets kind of ridiculous. Which is why on an absolute scale this movie is just a solid B. But in a sea of mediocrity, a solid B is worth your while. As for grade inflation? Those at the top know grades are irrelevant. They don’t care about degrees or pedigrees, that’s how the inadequate puff up. It’s what you deliver, what you’ve got. You don’t have to shine it up, either it radiates on its own or it does not, either it’s worth something or it is not.

So you can watch “I Care a Lot” as a conventional movie, and be pissed it doesn’t work out the way you want it too.

Or you can watch it as social commentary. And it does this quite well, without constantly banging you over the head.

Or, you can just strap yourself in and go on the ride. A ride without the corners cut off, like so much in today’s world, afraid of offending somebody they smooth off the edges and make it safe and ultimately unwatchable. But the truth is Rosamund Pike has got an edge inside so sharp it can cut through almost anything. But she covers it with a smile, with platitudes, and she gets her way. You know how this is, you sit around with your friends complaining about the person from your group who made it and left you behind. They’re now jive. They’re different. No, they were always this way, they just wanted it more than you, THEY NEEDED IT!

Rosamund Pike needs it. Money is everything to her. And for most people it is. Of course, intellectuals will watch the movie and ask WHAT DOES ROSAMUND PLAN TO DO WITH ALL THAT MONEY? You know people want to win the lottery, but then what? You can only buy so many houses and cars, there are twenty four hours in a day, how are you going to fill them? Drinking and drugging and…that gets old really quickly. No, you want to work, for the camaraderie, for the social interaction. Then again, who do you want to play with? Those at the top never play the lottery, they know the odds are against them, it’s a rigged game. No, they create the game, or bend the rules of the one they’re involved in. They need better odds. And the triumph is almost as rewarding as the cash. As for the cash? The successful want it for power more than for what it can buy. And respect from their peers. Who know they’re someone to pay attention to, because they know what it takes to make it that far, to get that rich.

So, about two-thirds of the way through this flick I couldn’t wait to recommend it. But when it drove to its conclusion, I was wavering. Now?

I don’t need to hear that you watched it and didn’t like it. Like I said above, MOST PEOPLE ARE WITH YOU!

But if you used to live to go to the movies, for the experience, to be led along by a sleek production, that’s what “I Care a Lot” delivers. If you saw it on the big screen you’d enjoy it, or hate it, just as much, you’d never say it was a TV movie, you’d never say it was cheap.

So it’s almost nostalgia, for those who remember movies in the days before they were all fantasies, with special effects and superheroes.

But in this case, it’s just a click away, on the flat screen, for you to watch.

“I Care a Lot” is not empty calories. It may not be wagyu, but it’s definitely not Burger King. It’s more akin to filet mignon. It delivers.

Maybe you’ll like it. I CERTAINLY DID!

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Responding to what Sasha Brown said, Bob, he’s right on about life on the road and the toll it takes, and the dedication it requires. Sometime in the mid-70s I came to realize that the artist was simply a money pump for the labels, the managers, the agents. I was travelling with, as I recall, five other musicians in my backup band, a sound engineer, a road manager and a truckload of gear.

His tale of driving back and forth across the country resonated. We were flying, not driving, but they had us playing — on consecutive nights — Boston, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco and Washington, DC. In that order. I was paid a LOT of money that week, but it all went out the windows to everybody else.

I wasn’t only a member of a band, I HAD a band. They got paid first, I got paid if there was any money left. I came to realize that on the first night of the week I was working for the Manager; on the second I was working for the Agent; the third paid the Band; the fourth went to the Hotels; the fifth to the Airlines. And IF there was a sixth night, I might get to keep a bit. I was making music, but my REAL job was to pump money out of the pockets of the public and into the bank accounts of the Industry.

I’ve been making music for something like 58 years now, and I still love it, can’t wait to get back on the road (though I’ll certainly keep up Rockport Sundays, my Patreon subscription series) — but I’m no longer beholden to record companies and managers, and am doing much better financially than when I was. All that glitter is expensive!

Tom Rush

Rockport Sundays: https://www.patreon.com/TomRush

Bob,

Just wanted to reply to your missive about Neal Francis. What spurred me to write is how gracious his manager Brendan O’Connell’s reply was to you in response to your comment “Someone’s got a deep pocket.” I’d ask you to take a step back and reflect about how dismissive of hard work and sacrifice this  comment is. I played guitar with Sister Sparrow & The Dirty Birds – toured the US for 9 years, drove over 500,000 miles in a van, we did it all – Austin City Limits, Bonnaroo, Brooklyn Bowl – you name it, we probably played there, whether it was in front of 9 people in a dive in Indianapolis or in front of 15,000 people opening for Grace Potter in Buffalo.

Every single “big ticket item” that we did as a band – buying a Sprinter van, a $50,000 spend making a record – we took loans out and paid them back from working our asses off, tirelessly. There were no handouts, no giant record label advances, no one flying us in private jets. Our first Sprinter van broke down and the repair ate up all the money the band had made on our first 10 week tour back when we were playing for peanuts. We had twice as many people in our band (9) as most other bands, so the financials never worked in our favor. It was a stupid, impractical, foolish idea to think we could make a go of it. We all knew it, and many people tried to warn us off, but we did it anyway. Despite all the band arguments, the number of times we had to drive across the country (NYC to LA to DC in 1 particularly hellish week) on no sleep — these were some of the best memories of my life. The Heard (the band Neal was in before striking out under his own name) opened for us at a now defunct venue in Brooklyn where 12 people showed up in our early days. Those were humbling shows, and there were many of them. You’re demonstrating your life’s work and hopes and all your hopes and dreams and the fact that no one cares is right in your face! The camaraderie shared among bands in our scene that came up together, like The Revivalists, Turkuaz, and the Nth Power, has led to deep, long-lasting friendships and continued collaborations that will last my whole life. We only see each other a few times a year – particularly during Jazz Fest in New Orleans – but our bonds are unbreakable. The shared experience we had – the emotional roller coaster that you ride when you go from headlining festival stages in front of thousands and feeling the magical energy exchange between band and audience to the very next night playing a dive where the band outnumbers the audience – are unlike any other. I can write run-on sentences all day about it – but that shared experience between the musicians imparts an unspoken understanding that goes beyond my ability to spin yarn and ramble on.

I have great respect for your opinion and your perspective on the music industry. Your letters have been an invaluable resource to me as I was wearing other hats in the band, whether it was tour manager, accountant, public relations rep, social media manager, business strategist, or a roadie (often all in the same day). It was exhausting and my efforts often felt unappreciated or unrewarded, particularly when I looked at my empty bank account after a decade of working to help build our band from our first gig in our trombone player’s basement in Brooklyn to my last show with the band 9 years later when we sold out Irving Plaza. I know what the quality of life can be for people like Neal Francis – times where its the highest of highs, and often – the lowest of lows. But I can’t stand idly by while anyone – even someone with your stature – makes an offhand, dismissive comment that seeks to reduce all the actual blood, sweat, and tears that goes into making a record sound good. I can’t overstate how hurtful it is that anyone could have an impression that records sound good because of the assumption that it means that somewhere, someone has deep pockets and made it happen with one John Hancock.

I’ve been living this life for some time now, and I have seen that happen for one or two albums in our scene. The rest, like Neal’s manager wrote above, comes from maxed out credit cards, Kickstarters, playing 200 shows a year, and driving the distance to the moon and back twice (and yes, our band did that, like many others have). I know the work that goes into making good art, and it’s incredibly hurtful for all that effort to be dismissed by you as easily as you did. And this from someone who shows up in the world as a champion of the music industry and of good music and good artists! Major ouch, man.

If minimum wage from the 1970s kept up with inflation, it would be at over $30/hr today. Yet the movement for economic progress has us *fighting* for $15/hour. Rising tides would raise all boats if people could truly see how the rich and powerful have pit We The People against each other. Politicians and (those who place stories in) the Media successfully paint Bernie Sanders to be a “revolutionary leftist”, while in other countries everything he advocates for has long been standard practice. America is not ok, and as the people who are always paid last in the world, artists right now are suffering greatly. As venues have been slowly opening back up, every performing musician has been on the receiving end of the “well, our alcohol still costs the same, and we have to pay our bartenders the same, and now we have extra cleaning costs and only 25% capacity, so we can only pay the band half of what we used to (underpay) them.”

The phrase “just do it for love or for yourself” that gets batted about when talking about artists is a bullshit trope spoken by lazy pseudo-intellectuals. When the pandemic hit and we went into quarantine, how did we all spend our time? By watching Netflix (TV shows are an artistic creation) and listening to music for hours and weeks and days on end to pass the time… Those things, those artistic creations birthed of hard work – bring a smile to our face, set the mood for a romantic night in, or foster a dance party in our living rooms with roommates. These captivating creations transport us to a better place and distract us from the sobering, depressing, terrifying state of the world outside our door. That feeling that music imparts to us – that magic? It has VALUE. It enriches our lives. Babies are conceived to the sounds of records. And yet artists continue to get fucked over by the industry and disgustingly exploited by Big Tech. 

I’m happy that you found Neal’s music – he’s terrific and will only get better with time because, like all of us, the love he has for what he does is boundless and infinite. He’ll be making music til his last breath as long as he can keep his house in order and not let either the trappings – or depressing nature of much of what this life brings – sway him from his path. The road to making good records means missing weddings, missing funerals, means missing your friends from home and your family all year long. There’s a lot of hurt involved, and if we’re lucky, we as artists can alchemize both the hurt and the love and joy that this life brings into the magic of a good song. So, if you’re truly a music fan, please don’t cut down artists by bypassing all the sacrifices we make in order to do what it is we love. We’re not asking for handouts, we just want to feel valued and feel the energy exchange both ways. Because otherwise, without the equitable exchange, the world would go silent. And is that a world that any of us would want to live in?

I didn’t think so.

In Oneness and Love,

Sasha Brown

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As an avid show goer of more than 200 per year, I am convinced that the Neal Francis’s of the world are the industry’s backbone far before the big dogs are. Saw Neal twice a couple years back and ready for more. It’s authentic. The end

Kyle Smith

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Tell Neal we love what he’s doing (and his label) out here in record store land.
Galen

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Well hot damn, you found Neal Francis! He’s fantastic. We pushed his album hard at Grimey’s in Nashville and had Neal in for an in-store performance very early on and he blew me away. We sold a lot of records too. I think if Neal were able to be out there touring, playing Coachella, whatever, more people would be getting into him but you’re certainly helping with this coverage today so thanks for that, Bob.

I get a real JJ Cale vibe off of “Changes Pts. 1 & 2” and the New Orleans influence on other tracks is undeniable. I hadn’t listened so closely for the Leon Russell vibes but tonight when I pull the record off my shelf and play it again that will be something to listen for.

Doyle Davis

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Hi bob,  thanks for this.   I’m surprised more people aren’t talking about the drummer!  – what a tasty display of groove and chops!

chadwick stokes

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Absolutely love it… Spacebomb meets Sly.
Dreaming of dancing to this at a festival some day…
Cheers,
Andy Fordyce

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Thanks Bob.  I dig it. New Orleans meets Frankie Miller.    A pleasant surprise

Alan Childs

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Hey Bob, late to the party but checked it out… HIGHLY respect him and the band going for an organic, groove based sound but…

The influences are so strong it feels like they are trying a little too hard and while the song is serviceable it doesn’t groove deep enough to remotely compare to the 70’s music it is based on.

The bass is killin’ but the drum sound, while obviously intentional (flat, probably no bottom heads, etc), going for that 70’s funk sound, just isn’t working – too literally retro. Exacerbated by the drummer being a bit stiff – relax and find your own sound, man.

No doubt he can play them keys but you are right the vocals are a weak link. He clearly wants it badly so with a good vocal coach could probably bring them up enough.

They would likely be a fun live show but for recorded music why wouldn’t I listen to Dr. John, the Meters or Leon??

No disrespect but to me it’s good but not great.

DG

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Hi bob,  thanks for this.   I’m surprised more people aren’t talking about the drummer!  – what a tasty display of groove and chops!

chadwick stokes

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I got dj service on “Changes Pts. 1 & 2” from PlayMPE in 2019 and was hooked. Did same deep dive on him. Always great to see you shine a light on the genuine, Bob. Neal earns all the props he and his band can get.

Cameron Dilley

www.WMNF.org Tampa

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horns just as this song hits the four-minute mark and the horns really set in. This is the part of the song worth waiting for. It’s like everything that came before was foreplay, and this is the part you are here for.

Too bad you didn’t like the Low Cut Connie. Don’t know which song, but I love them. Adam Weiner is a great showman. Hope you can get into more of him.

Mike Stein in Cleveland

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Bob, tell Neal Francis and his band to get to Australia, when all this is over. Get to Laneway Festival. Get on Triple J national radio. Get in touch with Ken West.

Maybe just source some local gear to save on air cargo. We would absolutely love the shit out of his grooves. We know the real deal when we see it.

Agree with you about the vocals on Changes. But that can always improve. All else fails, more REVERB.