It’s not the 1960s anymore. You remember, the era when music drove the culture and impacted young ‘uns philosophies. Musicians were wise gurus. Sure, they were getting wealthy, but concert tickets were three, four and five dollars. Albums were under five bucks and royalty rates were low. There were no tech billionaires, never mind finance bros. In other words, musicians graduated from the middle class to the upper class and they brought their middle class values with them, there was no one-tenth of one percent to sell out to, and in that era, and throughout the seventies and into the eighties, corporations were the enemy, you didn’t do commercials, you both wanted and needed to keep yourself pure, to align you with your audience. Your career was everything. There were no side hustles. No branding of identity to sell perfume and clothing and other dreck. You were what you sang, and your public believed you.

Furthermore, you could reach everybody. That was the power of Top Forty radio. Which transferred over to FM radio in the late sixties and seventies. Everybody was clued-in, there was a dividing line, between youngster and oldster, and although not everybody was hip, they wanted to be, they may have waited years to grow out their hair, years to get into album rock, but they didn’t pooh-pooh the scene, they were oblivious until they were enlightened.

Today the landscape has been complete shattered, Balkanized, even though the industry and the oldsters still believe we are operating under the old paradigm.

The “stars” don’t reach enough people to have influence. Every act is positively cottage industry today. However, believing there’s still one fan to make, they bland out their image so as not to offend anyone, so they can sell them products down the line. Then there are the cartoons, talking about a fantasy life that exists for almost no one, gangsters and dope deals and other stuff straight out of the movies. These tracks are the equivalent of high concept, blockbuster movies, with superheroes and special effects, they bear no resemblance to life here on planet earth, it’s all fun.

And the fun is had by the hoi polloi. The public oftentimes has more power, more of a voice than the stars. Everybody can participate in social media for free, and there’s always someone with traction. Then again, it’s like a glorified high school election, someone is a star and then the next year’s class comes in and the old stars are forgotten.

So, you can’t reach everybody. The key is to go backwards, into your niche, to explore and ultimately reveal your identity and feelings. This has always been the essence of blockbuster music, but interestingly, once again, the regular folk are showing the way. The way you make it on social media is to have an identity, to have edges that can hook people, it’s interesting that pop acts shave those off, ultimately leaving them without influence.

And the audience no longer looks to musicians for messages. Of course, there are the bottom-feeders, but they’re no different from Kellogg or Post advertising cereal on television so kids will force their parents to buy it. There’s no thinking involved. And as soon as someone can think, they want to be an entrepreneur. Business has replaced music as the goal, unless you’re from the lower class, have received a substandard education, or are a minority with few opportunities, then music is an option. And the focus is money. Making a living is more important than getting your message out. Music used to be the domain of the middle class, that’s no longer the case, as the middle class slowly evaporates.

So oldsters, boomers, are still waiting for that twenty first century protest song. But that would require acts to create it and fans to listen to it. Today’s young acts did not grow up with a history of protest songs. Now they aspire to be Mariah Carey, who broke thirty years ago. Or a rapper. And in a world where Whitney Houston is inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, how can the institution and the music purveyed be said to have any meaning? Not only was Houston not rock, she was singing fluff. And there’s a place for fluff, but that is not what the Beatles sold, which broke this industry wide open.

So, today’s young ‘uns don’t have the bones to create the protest song. And whatever they create has a limited audience. Ariana Grande has a new album. Have you even heard it, are you even aware of it? The biggest acts in the business are sideshows, with a self-hyping industry little different from the Democratic Party and its media partners, who think they know what’s going on when they patently do not.

Music has power, but you’ve got to use it.

As for Kanye West setting himself on fire, creating a presidential sideshow, it turns out it was a media story and that was it. No one wanted to vote for Kanye, no one took his run seriously other than the press and maybe Kanye himself. Train-wrecks sell ads. And if there’s an ad to be sold, the media is complicit. To the point where non-stories are amplified and real stories go unaddressed. Everything’s about money. And when that’s the case, there’s no soul. Steve Jobs famously said Apple computers were tools. It was up to the user to create something. But for two decades, the public worshipped the creations of the techies, until the game of musical chairs ended, with a handful of technical companies ruling, and software became the game. You’d think the focus would be on software in the music business, i.e. the music itself. But the biggest story in music today is the size of streaming payments, when the truth is if you’re popular, you’re making a ton of money, assuming you don’t have a bad deal with your label/distributor. As for everybody else? Not enough people are listening, sorry. They’re like the nincompoops agitating for manufacturing to come back to America. That is never going to happen. It’s just too expensive. And it’s the customer who won’t bear the freight, the customer that rejects the overpriced local product. I mean who wants to pay a thousand bucks for a mediocre flat screen TV?

But in a world of winners and losers, the major players, i.e. the three major labels, are circling the wagons, putting out less and less material, all of which can potentially be huge right out of the gate. They’re in the moonshot business, whereas this business was always built on singles and doubles, you didn’t hit the grand slam right out of the box. Then again, the home run rules in baseball, it’s all or nothing, and the managers are ruled by data to the point the soul has been eviscerated from the game. But there are rules in baseball, not in art, the sky is the limit in art, but there’s an inherent ceiling, no one in the infrastructure wants disruption, they just want things to continue the way they have been as they spew false figures to make themselves feel good that have no real effect, like trumpeting Springsteen has had a top five album in the last six decades. It’s like watching sports, where the announcers are constantly coming up with irrelevant statistics. Never mind in this case manipulated. Who cares about the social impact of Springsteen’s new album, we’ve quantified it! Isn’t this the opposite of what Springsteen stood for?

As for Springsteen and the rest of the acts taking political sides… Why should anybody listen to them? Where is their gravitas? Springsteen may be a hero to his fans, but he hasn’t had a ubiquitous hit since the eighties, before many voters were even born.

So, the oldsters have no impact upon the political mind-set of their constituencies.

And the youngsters were never selling what Springsteen did, never mind Barry McGuire or Neil Young. There’s no history for this. And why should a youngster believe the words of a musician, adopt their views?

So musicians can have no political impact. None. There’s no framework for it.

Furthermore, the audience may not be receptive to their views. They’re getting their messages elsewhere, the musician has to compete with the gamer, those who rule online, who evidence their personalities. So, you got promoted by the machine, you sang a bland song, you did corporate deals…why exactly should I listen to you again? The artists have sacrificed their cultural power.

As for those complaining they’re doing it right, yet with no traction, I respond that they are not doing it right, because either their music is not good enough, not enough people want to listen to it, or they don’t realize music is a hard game today, where you’re lucky to have an audience at all, and if you do, you superserve it and grow it from the bottom up as opposed to the top down. If you’re complaining about your reach, you’ve missed the plot. The game is to motivate your listeners, instinctively, so they spread the word. And if you try to motivate them falsely, by imploring them to stream on Spotify, and complaining about the game, that you’re not number one on the chart because of a manipulation, you’ve lost the plot. Growth needs to be organic, or you’re done. The faster your ascension, the quicker your descension.

To change this we must start completely over, with a blank slate. The industry operates on the eighties MTV paradigm, one of monoculture. The monoculture is gone, history. As for being truth-seeking and honest, those are anathema today, because you might not get rich and people have no respect for truth and honesty.

Only they do.

Movements start small. Now that we can reach everybody, creators wants to reach everybody at once. That’s a fool’s errand. To disrupt, you start small, with an incredible product that you refine over time. And users/listeners, are more important than cash. You get the audience and then you monetize. Quibi should have realized this from the start, but they didn’t, they were slaves to their business plan, there is no business plan in art, it all depends on hits. And hits are made by the public, not the machine.

So, music has squandered its political influence. And it’s not as easy as going back to the past, because our nation has fractured politically, there’s not a ready-made national audience for an outsider performer, irrelevant of their politics. Until this business flips, and focuses on the music as opposed to the penumbra, the chart statistics, the grosses, all the metrics that have nothing to do with the art, never mind the entrepreneurial ventures, music will continue to be a sideshow of little influence, as it was before the Beatles. Sure, there were stars, there were hits, there was fandom, but it did not impact the soul of our country, it did not move the political views of listeners, never mind the government.

So, to change we’ve got to run in the other direction. Away from the modern construct. We’ve got to focus on the art, the message, sans the hype that is dismissed by most of our nation today. To compete with Trump you must be his opposite, you can’t win playing his game.

And you must know the landscape, both inner and outer. You must draw people to you as a result of the magic you create. And to a great degree magic has gone out the window in the internet world where mystery is history and everybody is fighting for attention.

Yes, not only has the music business changed, but the music itself. And the audience. To expect the game to play out as it did in the past is a joke. You’ve got to first make music believable before you expect people to believe its message. But art is more powerful than business, every day. Art is more powerful than money. But you must use the tools, you must adhere to your inner tuning fork, one devoid of conventional trappings. The business has abdicated that viewpoint, it is far from the garden. There is no new Joni Mitchell. As far as getting back to where we once belonged, JoJo no longer has to leave Arizona to score some California grass. Times have changed, but the business is stuck in the past, to its detriment. It has lost its place in the political firmament.

We went to bed and we did not know who won the presidency.

I was in second grade. What I remember most is that although we started school in September 1960, by January it was 1961, and you could flip the numbers over and it would still be 1961, and they said it wouldn’t happen again for…so many years it was clear I wouldn’t be alive when it did. A minor item, but when you’re seven, these little markers are a big deal. But then you get old and you realize nothing is a big deal, you’ll live and you’ll die and then ultimately you’ll be forgotten. You think you want to leave your mark, and then you get old enough to realize it’s a fool’s errand.

Now Fairfield Woods was both an elementary and junior high school, at least when I went there. And the buildings were separated, connected by a hall in which the principal’s office was located, someplace you never wanted to go.

Kindergarten is a blur, other than the fact it was 1958. Did I really go to school in the fifties?

As for first grade, it was taught by Mrs. Godfrey. These first grade teachers are saints. To put up with kids who are not yet formulated, who are not yet obedience trained. Then again, it’s different today, with all the pre-school, with kids being able to read before they even go to school, but back in the fifties, this was a rarity.

And, they passed out books. That was another very cool thing about first grade, you got your own books. And in a matter of just a few school days, you were reading. And then you got the “Weekly Reader.” I don’t know if kids get that anymore. Then again, those were exciting times, with space launches and scientific discoveries, we thought we were thoroughly modern, the internet was not even foreseeable.

So now it was 1960. And there was a new second grade teacher, Miss Kamph. She was young. And we could relate to her better, she was less of a mother figure. This was back in the days where single women taught for a few years and then got married and disappeared. These were also the days you didn’t get a male teacher until at least fifth grade. Then again, we were unenlightened, but we didn’t think we were.

But Ms. Kamph’s room was in the junior high wing. UPSTAIRS!

Now Fairfield Woods junior high was run like a military operation. You had to walk around in circles in the hallway. In one direction. Even if your next destination was just a few feet to the left, you had to walk all the way around the building to the right to get there, and believe me, you didn’t want to get busted. That was one of the breakthroughs of going to high school, it was a free-for-all in the halls. And ultimately girls could wear pants and boys could wear jeans, but that was just before I graduated. Oh, the wars we fought back then, remember when skirts couldn’t be above the knee? Probably not.

The junior high kids moved classrooms every period. Whereas we in the second grade were in Ms. Kamph’s room almost all the time. But when we left, if it was between junior high periods, the halls would be full and we’d get pushed around like bowling pins, but we didn’t care, we enjoyed it, we were hanging with the big kids, remember when junior high students were sophisticated? Oh yeah, back then there was no “middle school.” And junior high was just two years. But…

I was trying to remember if we had lockers. But now I realize we did not, those were for the junior high students. We hung our jackets in the room. And this was when the men started being separated from the boys. As in the smart from the less intelligent, or motivated. Remember SRA? Once again, probably not. It stood for “Stanford Research…” was it “Associates,” I don’t remember. But it came in a big box. which you opened and got cards, with questions you answered, and then checked your answers on these other little cards and then filled in a graph with your results. You felt good if you didn’t get any wrong. Yes, even at this young age they were undercutting our creativity, our originality, making us conform. We believed if we got good grades and obeyed, everything would work out. Ain’t that a laugh.

So the first thing I remember about second grade, other than Miss Kamph herself, was the hurricane. It was the fall, school was open, we all went, and then it was closed, they sent us home. And this was back in the era where you walked to school, your parents neither dropped you off or picked you up. I lived about a ten minute walk away. So I put on my jacket and endured the weather on my walk home. My sisters were at Fairfield Woods too, but we did not congregate, we all went home independently. Where we looked out the window and waited for the end of the world, but there was just wind and rain. Furthermore, they sent us home too late to watch cartoons, so it was kind of a botched day.

But then came the election.

I was for Kennedy, because my parents were for Kennedy, they were big Democrats. I never had to do the switch in college, realize my parents had their political heads up their rear ends and switch sides from their party, the Republicans, to the Democrats. And oh yeah, when I went to college everybody was a Democrat. The Vietnam War was still going on. the Establishment was the enemy. You could literally name the Republicans on campus. To this day I still cannot understand how someone can be a Republican. Then again, this was in the era of Rockefeller Republicans. Those don’t exist anymore.

So, I watched the black and white TV with my mom. The results. I never went to bed early, maybe because my mother never did herself. And she slept in until ten every day. But there did come a point when I was sent upstairs, probably 8:30 or 9. Oh, that’s another thing, we used to rank on those who had to go to bed early, who could watch Claude Kirchner but then had to call it quits, who couldn’t even watch network television, which started at 7:30 back then.

So I went to bed convinced Kennedy had won. I was sure of it, I remember my mother telling me so. And needless to say, my mother wasn’t awake when we left for school, she never served us breakfast, but occasionally my father bought us doughnuts. And I’m hanging outside the classroom, at 8:30 in the morning, the junior high kids started at 8, they were already in class. And remember when you lined up outside and waited for the teacher to unlock the door? I do. And, of course we’re talking about the election. And one of my classmates says Nixon won. And I’m arguing with him.

So I ask Miss Kamph. She seems to come down on the side of Nixon. And now I’m totally confused. My mother was hip, she was with it, she couldn’t have it wrong, no way. But as the day ensued, the word spread, that Kennedy had won, I don’t know how we ultimately found out, someone in the administration must have listened to the radio and conveyed the information.

But I was too young to be concerned about shenanigans in Chicago. Or to even know that Kennedy’s dad was a bootlegger. Or maybe he wasn’t. They’re still arguing about it. And since it’s in the past, we’ll never learn the truth.

But JFK was a revelation. He was old, but he was young. Remember when your parents used to call people in their late thirties and forties “young,” we always used to argue with them, now we know they’re right.

And Kennedy represented the youth, a break with the status quo, he was a new man for a new decade and it was gonna be all roses and champagne until…

The Cuban Missile Crisis.

I remember that. The pictures on the front page of the “New York Times.” The missiles on the decks of Russian ships, covered up, but everybody knew what they were.

And by second grade I don’t think we did air raid drills anymore, for nuclear wars, where you got under your desk, but we were totally aware that a bomb could end life as we knew it. Although I do remember being confused as to the difference between an “A”-bomb and an “H”-bomb, I looked it up on the internet a few years back, I forgot what I learned.

So I was scared life was gonna end. But my mother said if they dropped the bomb we’d all die and not to worry about it. But Kennedy turned around the ships and then…

Well, there were the rocket launches. The space race was a big deal.

And Jackie was on TV giving tours of the White House on Sunday nights, how she redecorated it.

But what was truly memorable was Inauguration Day, obviously January 20th. It was a snow day, so we were all home. Otherwise I wouldn’t have seen it, there were no TVs in classrooms at that point. And for some reason my mother was watching it upstairs on the little black and white in her bedroom, and I sat on the bed and watched too, as I stared out the window at the cold and the snow. And I remember Robert Frost speaking, although he looked so old, and almost like Nikita Khrushchev, and all the adults could not get over Kennedy not wearing a hat. And soon thereafter, no one did. My father stopped, whereas before that he and all his compatriots did.

I can talk about other elections. Like in ’72, when I turned on the TV and it was already over, even though it was barely after 7 on the east coast.

And there was the exuberance of ’92, with Clinton’s initial victory.

And there was the defeat of Kerry, we were dumbfounded.

But back in 1960, things were different. Kennedy represented the future, he represented hope. The American Dream was still alive. There was no income inequality (even though there was a good deal of poverty, although in high school we raised money to eradicate it, it was one of Johnson’s big crusades), we were all in it together. Everybody I knew was middle class, although some had Cadillacs and some had Pontiacs, or Fords. But few had old cars, you see the cars didn’t last that long, a new one every two or three years was de rigueur. But they all looked different, in many cases futuristic. And we thought we were jetting into a better world.

I’m numb.

How could the polls get it so wrong?

The only silver lining is 2018. If you remember, it was bleak for Democrats on election night, but over the ensuing days the results changed in many races and the outcome was ultimately much more positive.

It was not supposed to go down this way. The traditional Democrats gamed the system, installed Biden, and they even convinced us everything was copacetic, but come on, there was a giant enthusiasm gap. Old Joe was phenomenal yesterday, even better than Obama, but it was too late, it was always too late, it’s still too late.

Once again, Democrats were optimistic. They felt they had this one. They ignored the prognostications of those crying “authoritarianism” like Sarah Kendzior and Umair Haque. Those two didn’t even get mainstream traction, even though they were the canaries in the coal mine. Their opinions were too outside.

But now we are here.

I’m not going to predict or even envision what happens if Trump ultimately wins, however…

Everything they told us was wrong. Lindsey Graham was on the bubble, he was losing in the dollar race, yet he walked to victory.

And Florida, and Texas, turned out they were not in play. All those upstart Democrats, who were going to eviscerate the status quo? They fell by the wayside.

And even Lauren Boebert is gonna win.

Here’s the truth folks. The red hate the blue. Too many bluish people don’t truly know red people. I’m not talking about the person in your neighborhood, I’m not talking about your circle of friends, I’m talking about those in the Deep South, those in the rural areas, the hinterlands. It’s not just a difference of opinion, it’s worse than the Hatfields and McCoys. I was on the phone with a legendary country musician. I asked him about politics…he didn’t want to go there. But when he danced around it, talking about the elites…it was scary.

But the 2018 comeback was all local. Whereas we live in a country made up of states. Can a Californian convince a Texan to go blue? Hell no, Texas and its enablers have been denigrating the Golden State for years, talking about taxes and hindrances to business. But isn’t Silicon Valley in California? It’s just like Trump denigrating New York, you’d expect lawlessness in Manhattan. As a matter of fact, that’s how many red staters see the blue states. Socialist where the upstarts are coddled as opposed to put down, and nothing puts you down like a gun.

So, why did they vote Trump, in addition to their hatred of the Democrats?

FREEDOM! They don’t want people to tell them what to do. Don’t talk to me about voting against their own interests, don’t talk to me about abortion rights, what they’re interested in is being able to be whoever they want to be with no infringement. The right owns “freedom” just like it owns “taxes.”

It’s a dirty word. The government wastes your hard-earned money. And just like the Democrats let the right define Hillary, they’ve let the right define taxes. Never mind it being your civic duty, we do have roads we drive on, so many services that taxes pay for. And, as far as that canard that the poor don’t pay any taxes, they pay them all day long, because they spend their wages, and go to the grocery store, buy anything, even on Amazon, and there are taxes.

Meanwhile Trump lies and even Jack Nicklaus believes it. He says that his Covid was cured by hydroxychloroquine and that hospitals get paid more for Covid deaths, look it up: https://fxn.ws/3oOjwQC

Trump controls the news cycle. So what he says has impact. As for facts, as for truth, they went out the window years ago. It’s every person for themselves in America, and therefore lying, cheating and stealing is cool, unless you get caught, even in some cases if you get caught, like Roger Stone.

So it didn’t seem like Election Day. They were so busy telling us to wait days for results that we didn’t expect any. And then I looked at my phone in the late afternoon and they were already calling states. HOW CAN THIS BE?

But it gets worse, everybody’s got a different take. “The New York Times” is calling states blue that TV is calling red. As for TV, CNN’s coverage is so superior it’s laughable, John King deserves an Emmy for tonight’s performance with the electric maps. The way he keeps drilling down, comparing to four years ago, updating the count, playing out scenarios… On MSNBC we just get spin. As for Fox…a terrible set with no energy.

So what we know now is Trump is not going to concede, no way. He told us so, but now we’ve got to believe it.

One thing’s for damn sure, this election is gonna be close. As for counting all the ballots, verifying signatures on mail-in ballots… Supposedly very few have been rejected already: https://nyti.ms/3jYPF4i but on recount??

Let the games begin, let the arguments begin.

Naysayers were not listened to. Not only Kendzior and Haque, but even Bill Maher. For years he’s been sounding the alarm, saying Trump won’t leave, and the Democrats’ answer? HE’LL HAVE TO! As if possession were not nine-tenths of the law, in this case possession of the White House.

So, it turned out the national media, the elites, were not in touch with the pulse of the people. Sure, Facebook is a bad actor, spreading falsehoods, but that’s another thing the Democrats don’t understand, THERE ARE NO UNDECIDED VOTERS! Nothing Trump says can sway his minions, can push them away from him. Even if only truth was told Trump still would have gotten their vote.

So, four years ago, after Hillary’s defeat, the left and the media did a big self-investigation. Nate Silver did an exhaustive mea culpa, but this time around he said that Biden had a 90% chance of winning. As for those margins? They disappeared into thin air, they never really existed.

Philadelphia has stopped counting mail-in ballots for the night: https://bit.ly/2TNMIsV So we’re not going to get a result tonight, Pennsylvania is truly the Keystone State.

And Trump could win and it will be all over. Or we could argue about it for eons, but the Democrats always concede, for the good of the country. As for riots in the street? I don’t expect them, certainly not soon. The Democrats are not fired-up, they’re not angry, they’re stupefied, and too busy licking their wounds.

Biden could still emerge victorious. There’s a good chance of it.

But we do not live in the country we’ve been told we do, no way. The media is in such a bubble that it can’t see reality. Which is that a whole slew of people are pissed the country didn’t go their way. Talk about international trade, talk about immigration, talk about minorities… And, they need something to believe in, in this case nationalism. Yes, you can rally around the flag, even in Sturgis, and that can be enough to live on as your parents die of the Covid-19 you brought back from South Dakota and you get evicted from your domicile. You’ve still got your freedom, you’ve still got your gun to defend yourself, even though today’s wars are fought on computers, and even if you’re dumb and uneducated, you showed those people who thought they were better than you that ultimately they were not.

Dark days ahead. We’ve turned the corner on Covid-19, we’re on the verge of herd immunity and Scott Atlas knows more than Dr. Fauci!

And the truth is the bluish elite threw over civics decades ago, it was too busy getting rich, elbowing everybody else out, however hard they worked for the money. You just can’t do the right thing every four years, money can’t solve all problems, especially when it comes to hearts and minds.

So now, we’re like Eastern Europe. Azerbaijan and the Armenians are in a death duel. We can’t solve our country’s problems in a day, never mind a year or a decade, they’re baked in!

So, if you’re on the right, if you’re a Trumper, congratulations, you’ve got a better of idea of where this country is at than everybody in the media. And if Biden wins, you won’t take it lying down, you’ll take to the streets.

And the Democrats will be afraid.

Very afraid.

It’s nighttime in America. I’m afraid to go to sleep because I’m afraid to wake up and get the results.

It’s not the America I grew up in. Hasn’t been for decades. Income inequality, the opioid war… Reagan legitimized greed, and both parties drank at the trough. Clinton caved in to the right and cut welfare benefits. And Gore conceded after Roger Stone’s Brooks Brothers revolution and today, a president can even legitimize his followers shooting people and surrounding a Biden bus, scaring those involved to the point that rallies are canceled. After all, there are good people on both sides.

Check that, turns out there are only good people on one side. THEIRS!

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Tune in tomorrow, November 3rd, to Volume 106, 7 PM East, 4 PM West.

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