To live outside the law you must be honest.

Bob Dylan

I just wasted an hour watching Bill Maher tell Democrats to take corporate money.

He doesn’t get it.

Bernie Sanders is a bigger rock star than anybody making music today. Why? BECAUSE HE SAYS NO!

Being a rock star is all about credibility, which is why there are no financial rock stars, and very few tech rock stars. Rock stars don’t do market research, they hew to their own tuning fork, they don’t do what is expedient but what is right. And all this draws an audience to them.

Did you read that Justin Bieber had to scale down some of his dates? Yup, switch them from stadiums to arenas. Pop acts? Live by the hit, die by the hit. And nitwit Justin who has been in the spotlight for most of his life doesn’t even know right from wrong, he tried to game the system and got busted for it, further depreciating his credibility while releasing stiff music to boot. Come on, that single? One listen told me it wasn’t gonna go. You don’t need a Berklee degree to know which way the song blows.

But there are acts that haven’t had a hit in eons who can go clean at every gig.

Take a look at the Eagles. Hipsters like to rag on them. But the fans keep paying exorbitant prices to see them. Why? Well, first and foremost the songs, second Don Henley is really that guy. He stands by his choices. Stands up to the man. And this makes people believe in the music. Your identity is intertwined with your music, compromise either and you’re toast.

People like to say it’s different today. It sure is, no one’s got a backbone, no one is willing to hang it out there. They won’t take a stand because it might potentially alienate a fan. But if you appeal to everybody, you’re Donny Osmond. He tried to regroup but it was too late, he was branded.

So today you go on a TV singing show, even though no one has made it from “The Voice” in America ever, and TV has less credibility in music than it ever has. Used to be being on Letterman was a breakthrough, now late night TV has such anemic ratings you’re better off staying home, better off investing in social media. Just say no to TV.

And just say no to multiple songwriters. It isn’t about the hit. You can make it without hits at all. It’s about what’s coming straight from your heart. The audience wants to believe it’s coming directly from you, that you’re that person.

Sure, you can have a few hits and still play the lounge in Vegas when you’re in your seventies, but that’s commerce, not art.

People can tell the difference.

Everybody’s a sausage-maker today. Analyzing the landscape, molding their product for consumption, even though breakthroughs always come from rugged individuals on the outside. Like Steve Jobs. There hasn’t been a techie like him since, except maybe Elon Musk, who unfortunately overpromises and underdelivers. Meanwhile, the press and the short-sellers couldn’t stop ragging on Tesla, and then the stock price went through the roof! In other words, the media and the street were out of touch with the public, the investors. Kinda like Ford calling their new SUV a Mustang. What next, a moped called a Camaro?

It’s so hard to make it today that everybody wants to sell out, not realizing that everything builds slowly, most people are not interested in you, and if you hang in there long enough, and are good enough, you can make hay out of your career. Come on, all those people coming to the show to buy CDs and vinyl when they don’t have the equipment to play them on?

But purity is history in America today, even though it’s purity we are looking for.

We want Mr. Smith, and we want him to go to Washington, even though they don’t make movies like that anymore.

You’ve got to have the goods.

Bernie Sanders spends a lifetime in politics, Mike Bloomberg, a billionaire, comes along and expects to buy votes with saturation advertising. But it turns out it only worked in American Samoa! You see people are just not that dumb.

That’s what everybody keeps saying about the public, that people are dumb.

But they’ve got the same streaming channels, the same smartphones, the same internet as the rest of the country, why should they be so ignorant?

I’m not talking about being in their own silo. You’re in your own silo too. In a world where everybody knows more than they ever did, one individual knows less of the total world than he or she ever did. But the old swinging dicks, the reporters, the TV talking heads, talk down to us, like they know, WHEN THEY DON’T!

Art is instinct.

If a person is winning at the corporation, they’re probably not an artist. The aforementioned Steve Jobs couldn’t work for anybody, he brought on Sculley and immediately got blown out. Artists are leaders, not followers.

And artists have doubts, but they continue to forge ahead.

All of today’s metrics are wrong. The number of followers… Hell, we’re not running for school office here, we’re wondering about influence, and it turns out most of these influencers don’t have any, they’re just cottage industries that always go broke when the perpetrator finds out they’re working 24/7 and are burned out. And are they missed? An artist is missed if they don’t produce. Can you say Tool? Their absence made their fans grow fonder.

All we keep hearing about is selling. That’s what music advice has turned into. How to market yourself, use social media, get on playlists, with everybody going the same way don’t you think it’d be those who walk the road less taken who would stand out?

There’s not enough money in music to always say yes. Leave some money on the table. But in a world where the insider business person has a longer career than the act, these lifers just tell the acts to sell out and they do, to their detriment.

Maybe you just want some fame and some cash, some notoriety, the ability to cut the line.

That’s cool, but you are not an artist.

They hate Bernie Sanders because he didn’t play it their way. If you’re a student of the game, if you read all the media and watch all the TV, you’ll find it’s a full court press to eliminate Bernie.

I don’t care whether he wins or not (actually I do, but that’s not the point), but the truth is by staking out positions that are not focus-grouped, and sticking with them, he’s raised more money than any other Democratic candidate…now that’s support!

And who does he have to answer to? HIS FANS!

And what do the fans want? FOR HIM TO KEEP ON DOING WHAT HE’S DOING!

Actually, you see it on Patreon. It’s all niche. You haven’t heard of most of the acts and never will, but they’re concerned with being themselves and speaking to their audiences without any middleman.

Well, that’s not completely true, they’re all selling stuff to stay alive, Patreon’s a bastion of merch, but they are happy serving their base, and I’m cool with that, just as long as they don’t complain they’re not bigger.

Not everyone deserves to be bigger, not everybody is a rock star, not everybody is an artist.

An artist captures lightning and distills truth for the rest of us.

That’s what we’re all looking for, truth and insight.

And pop music has never delivered this, whether it be in the forties or today. Usually art is too dangerous, too different for the pop chart. But sometimes the noise is so loud the art invades the bastion. Like in the late sixties, when Cream invaded AM, Janis Joplin and others too.

But what happened after that?

AM died. Because all the action was on FM. AM was for losers. Ignore the charts from that era, singles meant little, albums meant everything.

And now the establishment keeps going on about albums. An artist would forge a different direction, but all the supposed “artists” just want a return to the past.

Picasso and Braque went totally abstract with cubism.

But Picasso kept changing and Braque kept repeating himself and it’s Picasso who is the legend.

Kinda like David Bowie. We don’t have artists like this today, who are willing to go in completely new directions, not caring about the audience’s expectations.

Artists don’t give people what they want, but what they need.

And there are very few artists out there.

And some of the best have been killed by the crowd. Let’s start with Lenny Bruce.

It takes courage to go the other way.

In this completely sold out culture we now inhabit, where facts are fungible and everybody is selling you something, it’s truth we want.

We’re waiting…

How many anti-Trump voters are there?

Turns out this primary season was not about the candidates, but Trump. And after the marginal candidates dropped out, after Biden exceeded expectations in South Carolina, the mainstream media spread fear and most Democratic primary voters lined up behind Biden.

This has got nothing to do with what Biden stands for, it’s just that the word has been spread that he’s the best person to beat Trump. That’s what all that “electability” conversation was about over the past year.

In other words, ultimately it hasn’t mattered what anybody has said, the DNC and the mainstream media want to play it safe.

It’s not only the “Times,” but MSNBC too. The channel has moved to the right under Andy Lack, Mr. Rootkit, and all over the web people are agitated about its bias against Bernie Sanders. Which was even referenced today in the “Times” article about Bernie finally going on the channel:

Bernie Sanders Had a Problem With MSNBC. Then Came Super Tuesday.

But it all doesn’t matter. Hell, it doesn’t even matter if Bernie or Biden is ultimately the candidate, because the media and the pollsters don’t have a handle on the mood of the country.

All you read about are the Trump supporters, his approval rating.

But not only were the polls wrong in 2016, but on Super Tuesday too.

In other words, the 24 hour news channels are too deep into it. The minutiae don’t matter, turns out most people hate Trump, and he’s gonna lose in a landslide.

Huh?

The left has let the right define the debate for decades now. Which is how we ended up with Bumbling Biden. You see after 2016 the left is so scared of the right that it’s afraid to take a risk, it’s afraid to fail, there’s no big thinking allowed, the media and the corporations and the wealthy are spreading this fiction that Trump is an indomitable force, when really he’s a doofus most people abhor. Furthermore, they don’t understand that their failure to stand for anything other than a return to the status quo will bite them in the ass in the future. But for now, any Democrat can win.

Come on, Biden is seen as history, a man who can raise no money, who was disgraced in New Hampshire, but suddenly he cleaned up on Super Tuesday? The man didn’t change, the spin did. The media and the DNC rolled up the African-Americans and other people of color and stated that they’ll only come out for Biden, and if you’re scared of Trump, vote for him.

None of the polls predicted this.

And now in the news it’s a fait accompli that Biden is the candidate.

And yes, Biden will be terrible in the debates, Ukraine will haunt him, his right wing compromises will surface, but it all doesn’t matter, because people hate Trump just that much.

Oh, don’t go deep on me, don’t make it about Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania, never mind Florida, people hate Trump EVERYWHERE! And they can’t wait to vote against him. Which is why Biden did so well on Tuesday with very little money. The Democrats circled the wagons and said THIS IS OUR GUY!

And now they’re dealing with Sanders like he’s passe, but they still don’t get it, this election is about Trump, plain and simple.

But the Democratic wankers in Congress, at the DNC, are so caught up in history and polls that they can’t see it. Don’t they understand they’ve got Trump on the run? That Mueller and impeachment and Barr are all set-up for the big fall? The mishandling of the coronavirus wouldn’t be such a big deal for Trump if it didn’t come after the foregoing and Puerto Rico and now you’ve got that Republican judge bringing down Barr? I’ve got to say it one more time… How do you lose a Presidency? Very slowly, then all at once.

That’s today’s world. Things either happen slow or fast. Try breaking your record, good luck, it took Lizzo two years on the same damn album for anybody to notice. But Biden wins in South Carolina and the whole primary season changes. You can’t measure these events, you can’t even predict them, they’re about emotions, feelings in a world of facts. If you want to know what is going on in this world, pull back, the insiders live for the action and suddenly it’s not about the action, and it’s not about the details, it’s about one thing and one thing only…TRUMP!

Oh, you’ll get some advisors saying that’s a bad tack, to go after the man. But when Bozo is wearing no clothes and bouncing off the walls why would you ignore him when everybody notices him?

You’ve got the right wing nutjobs who voted for Trump. The evangelicals who are twisting the Bible, the gun nuts. But you also had people sick and tired of the system. They wanted to put a stick in the spokes. They wanted change.

And Trump did not deliver it.

All we keep hearing about is the economy. The average person doesn’t worry about the economy, but they’re damn worried about losing their job because of the coronavirus.

You’ve got to give the DNC and the media credit for one thing, after South Carolina they got organized. I’m not saying they were right, if they were they’d stop denigrating Sanders’s policies which in truth people want. But they scared the public and made it about Trump, to their credit.

Between the environment and China and Iran Trump is sinking his own ship. All the media does is write about those who agree with him, but most people DON’T!

And if the media had taken Trump seriously back in 2016, there’s no way he would have won, too many voters became complacent, Hillary was gonna win, there was no reason to vote.

I wish there was someone internet-savvy who could run for President, someone who knows how the younger generation really thinks, and how it acts. It wasn’t Buttigieg…the guy who endorsed Sanders in the past and then excoriated him when it became expedient, someone who couldn’t even run his own small town. No, this calls for someone familiar with YouTube, and social networks, someone who really understands how to build consensus amongst a populace that tunes out day to day affairs.

Youngsters have no respect for the game, none. They think D.C. is a joke. And they don’t need a Mueller report to teach them about hacking and privacy and the power of bad actors. Come on, Nigerians are trying to scam them EVERY DAMN DAY!

You’re your own policeman. If you don’t practice good computer hygiene, your computer will soon be overrun with viruses and become unusable. As a matter of fact, I personally know a couple of boomers experiencing this. They’ve given up on their laptops, it’s all phone all the time.

And everybody knows the tech world is run on the iPhone. But that’s not the story we read online, it’s all about finances. But when all the movers and thinkers are on one platform…

If you use an Android and know how to configure it, customize it to your preferences, more power to you, I see no problem in you using this device. But this is a vocal minority, most Android users buy these devices because they’re cheap, or think that a smartphone is really just a phone, quite a dumb one at that. Which is why despite having only a sliver of the market, the iPhone generates all the revenue, in sales, the App Store.

Yes, we find these truths to be self-evident. And there are a zillion truths, which the political industrial system is ignoring as it continues to adhere to business as usual, employing the same damn theories they did in the sixties and seventies, as if tomorrow Bob Seger is gonna rule the charts via vinyl!

No way!

Trump changed the paradigm, he went directly to his base, via Twitter. How brilliant is that! Biden probably thinks Instagram is a way to get candy delivered the same day you order it. In other words, Trump knows more about today than anybody at the DNC and those in punditworld. Trump understands everything is instant, and what is said today is forgotten tomorrow, and that if you don’t cross over the edge now and again no one will ever pay attention to you!

Screw a return to normalcy. You can’t wear jeans to school and your skirt has to cover your knee and your hair must not go over your ears??? God, things change, and you’ve got to change with them!

People don’t care if Bernie went to Russia, if he praises some good things dictators have done. That stuff doesn’t stick anymore! The media is all about canceling people whereas the public forgives, it’s all grist for the mill.

Like the cancellation of Woody Allen’s book. This looks insane to the hoi polloi. The guy is an octogenarian who was vindicated in a court of law but Michael Milken gets a pardon?

I don’t like that Woody married the adopted child of Mia Farrow, but we’re talking about child molestation here, and if we can’t trust a court of law…

It’s just like the Republicans. They’ve made the law irrelevant.

On many levels the Democrats are just as bad. The people fighting these issues ignore the rank and file, who are worried about putting food on their plate and sexual harassment at work. Sure, it’s great that they got rid of the news anchors, but how about my boss?

I mean if you really want to protest Woody Allen’s book, print it and implore people not to buy it. But Hachette is blown sideways by insiders, afraid to offend anyone, meanwhile Trump doesn’t care what anybody thinks and offends people every damn day!

So if these one issue voters can compromise for Biden, how many other people can overlook his faux pas just to get rid of the Orange Menace? MANY!

Make it about Trump. Don’t allow the right to quote polls and talk about the economy, they’re switching the subject.

The real subject in the United States today is how you can’t make it here, which is what Bernie and Elizabeth have spoken about.

But the elites couldn’t cotton to this.

Okay, so let’s play their game, let’s make it very simple, it doesn’t matter who the Democrats nominate because he’s gonna win, because most people want to get rid of Trump!

If you turned off the camera and stopped pontificating and listened you’d know this.

But insiders are always the last to know, they’re too busy protecting their fiefdoms.

Trump is history… BELIEVE IT!

That’s right, Mr. “Honey, I’m Good.” You’ve got to listen to this if you’re a recording artist, even if you have no idea who Andy Grammer is. We dig down deep into what it’s like to be an artist in today’s niche-focused world. Grammer is a deep-thinker, and he’s also a participant, someone who writes a hundred songs to get two good ones. Andy busked on the Third Street Promenade for years before his breakthrough. Listen to find out how he made it.

iheart

apple

spotify

stitcher

Caramel Macchiato Flavor

Why does everything taste better with coffee?

I was at the Burton U.S. Open and in the village, there’s always a sponsor village at sporting events catering to the younger generation, there was a Clif Bar booth.

I cannot resist free food.

I also cannot throw out food. Yes, I grew up in the era wherein children were starving in Europe, our parents really said that, and to put more on your plate than you could eat was a crime.

But my father was into gourmet foods, and he loved to fress, whenever there was a buffet, at a bar mitzvah, a wedding, he couldn’t resist.

I guess I’m my father’s son.

And I rarely get too full. And there’s no such thing as too rich. I only stop eating when my brain says so, not when my stomach sends me a message.

So my father found real estate for Friendly Ice Cream. Back when Friendly was seen as a breakthrough, do you remember the Big Beef and the Awful Awful? (Awful big and awful good, but because of a trademark dispute they had to rename it the Fribble.) And every time my father went to a location he brought home half-gallons. That was the size back then, you never bought pints, that arrived with the super-premium ice cream of the seventies, Haagen Dazs, then Ben & Jerry’s.

There was always ice cream in the freezer. Chocolate Marshmallow was my favorite, yum. And there was Toasted Almond Fudge…

And Mocha Almond Chip.

There’s that coffee.

I am not a coffee drinker. I want no artificial stimulants ever. I want no buzz, no illegal drugs, I have a hard enough time keeping myself on the straight and narrow, and I want to have all of my faculties 24/7.

As for the Starbucks phenomenon… I’m not sure if it’s really about the coffee. It’s kind of like a Rolex, owning it/using the product labels you, it signifies that you’re too good for the old Maxwell House.

But when I finally went into one, after being overwhelmed by the descriptive lingo, wondering how anybody managed to order, I found out what they’re really selling are milkshakes, with coffee, calorie-laden drinks that you can rationalize because you got them at Starbucks and they’ve got a hint of coffee and you need your buzz.

And it’s the coffee that gives it its bite.

That’s what coffee provides, a zing you can’t get anywhere else.

Like that McConnell’s ice cream with the coffee grounds mixed in. A winner!

So, at this Clif Bar booth they’re handing out samples, which they’ve baked in a toaster oven.

Now I don’t ever foresee toasting my energy bars, but I’m game.

It tasted DELICIOUS!

Now my nutritionist is anti-Clif Bar, because they’re full of carbohydrates and contain little protein, they’re almost like cakes. So I never buy them. Oh, I eat one now and again when I get one for free, and they’ve got their Builder’s edition which tastes nowhere near as good but speaks to the balance…

That’s my energy bar of choice, the Balance Bar. But it seems to have lost the war, you’ve got to be number one or you’re no one, and now they’re hard to find and they’ve reduced flavors. So, for a while there I ordered them in bulk on the internet, but then I realized I was devouring them like candy bars and I went cold turkey, except for when I go skiing, when I really might need a boost.

But that’s another thing my nutritionist told me, it’s not real protein, the bars are not real food.

But they had a whole table of these Caramel Macchiato bars and roaming women giving them away for free, actively pushing them on people because the event was just about to conclude, so I took two.

And tried not to eat them.

But yesterday I broke down, I was starved, and when I broke the foil and took a bite it was so satisfying, far beyond any other Clif Bar, and that’s when I realized…IT’S THE COFFEE!

I just ate the second, I’m not gonna buy any, I’m part of the resistance. But will I break down now and again?

Maybe.