Dua Lipa/London Grammar

I got stuck in a Dua Lipa loop.

You’re probably aware that “Rolling Stone” just published their updated “500 Greatest Albums of All Time.” It’s a complete waste of time. A way to draw attention to a dying empire hurt by the lack of advertising that is charging up the yin-yang for magazine and online access, SEPARATELY! As a matter of fact, “Rolling Stone”‘s music news is top-notch, far superior to “Billboard”‘s, which is a vast wasteland of wanker writing appealing to a public that’s not interested, a true trade magazine no more. But once you put up a paywall, you inherently lessen your audience. And tycoons and wannabes can pay for the “Wall Street Journal,” and most other highfalutin’ publications have a soft paywall, but the hoi polloi are notoriously cheap, people don’t want to pay.

However, “Rolling Stone” is baked into Apple News+, both the magazine and the online news, but I’m vastly disappointed in Apple’s product, because too often the pages turn slowly, you’re waiting forever, it’s not equivalent to reading in print.

But the “Wall Street Journal” is where I want to start. Referencing Mark Richardson’s article on “Rolling Stone”‘s “500 Greatest” list.

First and foremost, these lists are just a way to grab attention. Buzzfeed built a whole business on lists. But now they’re devalued and seen as clickbait and most people ignore them but since it’s music and “Rolling Stone” there’s been attention, if for no other reason than the re-ranking of legendary LPs, like “Sgt. Pepper.” That breakthrough album was #1 the last two times “Rolling Stone” did this, now it’s #24, and that’s positively insane. It creates controversy just for the sake of controversy. For if you were alive back then, you’d remember the huge breakthrough “Sgt. Pepper” was, an album long statement with no singles, all the rest of the albums on this list would not be there if it hadn’t been for “Sgt. Pepper.” As for comparing albums from the sixties to today, that’s like including Frank Sinatra and Tommy Dorsey in a similar listing in the heyday of the Beatles. Times are different. The Beatles tested and surpassed limits. Inspiration is the essence of creation. Doing something new is what we look to, what we cherish, that we drown in accolades. And then there’s public acceptance and so many other reasons this 500 list is a waste of time but I’d recommend Mark Richardson’s article, even though it too is behind a paywall, because he says something I’ve been saying for eons, to seemingly myself. But now that it’s in the WSJ, maybe the public will accept it.

We no longer live in a monoculture. There is no longer one music business. The major labels and the Spotify Top 50 are one business, but only a sliver of the overall business. They’re getting disproportionate ink.

But here’s what Mark Richardson has to say:

“In 2020, we’re living in a shapeshifting musical world filled with many possible histories. Today, two serious music fans can have lengthy year-end lists of favorites that have zero records in common. The sheer number of releases on offer – tens of thousands of new songs are uploaded to streaming services each week – and the proliferation of new genres and sounds mean that everyone who devotes significant time to listening to and following music is a specialist.

The website Every Noise at Once provides a list of almost 5,000 genres, each of which might have hundreds of subgenres beneath it (the site was started by an engineer at the streaming platform Spotify). When you sort genres by popularity, at the time of my writing this Brooklyn Drill, the aggressive style of hip-hop defined by the rapper Pop Smoke, was the 140th most popular genre; grunge, most associated with Nirvana (the group’s 1991 “Nevermind” is No. 6 on Rolling Stone’s recent list), came in at 266.”

Rolling Stone’s Canon Fodder

BINGO!

5,000 genres? No one owned 5,000 records in the last century, before the internet, before file-trading and streaming. We’re all listening to different music. And the news is a fiction. Nothing is as big as it used to be, and everything is smaller than the media hype tells us it is. The manipulated “Billboard” chart is almost completely irrelevant. There can be a festival that sells 100,000 tickets and none of the acts even appear on it.

Which brings me back to Dua Lipa.

I stumbled upon the Tensnake remix of her track “Hallucinate.”

And I couldn’t turn it off.

From the very first moment it’s got that EDM sound, that disco beat. Which is anathema to mainstream rock fans, even though Prince employed it to incredible success on “Dirty Mind,” even though seemingly everybody likes the “Saturday Night Fever” soundtrack, even though disco never died.

“Hallucinate” was not a hit in any fashion in the U.S. This disco sound does not work on Top Forty, and it certainly does not fit on Hot AC and it brings up the sign of the cross at AAA. But…

Keep your ears open. Let it play. You will not be able to sit still. You don’t have to tell anybody you’re listening, that you like it, this experience is just for you. This remix is a monster. Not a breakthrough like Avicii’s “Wake Me Up,” but a distillation of all that came before into something undeniable.

And this is how I like to listen. Over and over again. It’s kind of like the short attention span that everybody accuses the younger generation of having. NO WAY! We’ve just got no tolerance for average, even good, but when we find something we love, that rings our bell, we’ve got unlimited time for it.

So, I decided to go to the original track. “Hallucinate” before the remix, from Dua Lipa’s “Future Nostalgia” LP that’s such a smash. And the basics are still there, I like it. But the Tensnake remix elevates it. Blows the roof off the joint and jets listeners into the stratosphere, the remix takes over your body and mind, permeates your physicality, if not your soul.

And what I’m really doing is checking myself. Finding out if I’m behind the curve, if the Tensnake remix is really that good.

So I go to Dua Lipa’s “Club Future Nostalgia (DJ Mix)” remix album, because I listened to it and I don’t remember being stopped in my tracks by “Hallucinate.” And there are two remixes on the album, but neither are by Tensnake. As a matter of fact, they’re a bit generic, in their own genres, neither are as good as the original studio version on “Future Nostalgia,” even with Gwen Stefani’s “Hollaback Girl” inserted into the Blessed Madonna remix.

So, to check my ears, I went back to the Tensnake remix and once again I got that feeling, it was just ten or fifteen percent better than the original studio version, but that made all the difference.

But I could not write about it. Because I’d be inundated with hate, put-downs. The rockers would decry the disco and the Dua Lipa/pop fanatics would tell me I wasn’t immersed enough in the scene to comment.

But then Felice came into my office, where the Tensnake remix of “Hallucinate” was blasting, and she started to dance, it was just that infectious. But was it just for me?

And then I listened to London Grammar’s “California Soil.”

I was a fan, but I was not impressed live, the band did not touch me in quite the same way. But “California Soil,” I couldn’t turn it off! It reminded me of Air’s breakthrough “All I Need,” but it was its own independent concoction.

This could not be more different from “Hallucinate,” in any incarnation, other than for the 808/fake drum sound, which always offends me. But not enough to overlook this dreamy track, which had me floating above the ground, like listening on headphones in the dark fifty years ago, not that it sounds anything like the music I liked back then, that anybody even made.

I left my soul
On California soil

This is not the troubled California of the news, this is the California dream of the English, the non-Americans, who are mesmerized by the freedom and weather of California.

Not that “California Soil” is about the lyrics. Rather it’s about the feel, the sound, the ethereal vocal. It’s hypnotic.

I wasn’t gripped quite as immediately as I was with “Hallucinate,” but then I played “California Soil” so much I started hearing it when I wasn’t listening to it, it was playing in my brain, I couldn’t get rid of it, I needed to hear it, I put it on my phone as I stretched.

And just like with the albums of yore, “California Soil” slipped into “Baby It’s You,” not the old sixties nugget but something brand new. And “Baby It’s You” was more upbeat, more optimistic, and I got hooked on that too.

Honestly, I discovered “Hallucinate” from a playlist this guy sends me, there’s always one or two good tracks. But I was reluctant to mention that for fear I’d be inundated with recommendations from people whose taste is suspect.

And I discovered “California Soil” from Jeff Pollack’s weekly playlist. Nothing else resonated, but I immediately heard “California Soil,” that’s how it is, the greats jump out.

But what would my audience think of what I was into. I knew I’d be judged, negatively. That’s just how it is.

But then I read Mark Richardson’s article in the “WSJ” and I realized just like in the sixties, it’s about letting your freak flag fly. You can feel comfortable being into what you are. It’s those stuck in major label/Spotify Top 50 land who are suffering, who are left out, as well as the rockers who cannot be open to a synth, to a new sound, their ears are closed.

The “Future Nostalgia” “Hallucinate” has 93 million listens. The YouTube clip has 32 million. The Tensnake remix doesn’t break a million on either platform. It’s like it doesn’t even exist, yet I’m hooked on it, it’s superior to all the other iterations.

“Hallucinate” is the most streamed track from “Future Nostalgia” in the U.K. But in the U.S…CRICKETS!

As for the London Grammar tracks…”California Soil” has a million streams on Spotify, “Baby It’s You” has got five million. As for YouTube, “Baby It’s You” has just over a million, “California Soil” about half of that.

These are the numbers the acts of yore bitch about, that they’re not getting paid enough for. But London Grammar knows all the money is not in streams, but fans! Who’ll come to see you live, who will invest in the act’s culture, irrelevant of whether the band ever breaks into, probably doubtful, the Spotify Top 50. And chances are London Grammar fans never ever listen to Top Forty radio, never. Chances are they don’t listen to terrestrial radio at all!

So I’m wandering in the wilderness just like everybody else, assuming you haven’t given up as a result of the tyranny of choice and the labels and the complicit media hyping a very narrow sliver of what’s available.

This is the new world. We are never going back to a monoculture. There are more genres, more sounds than ever, we just need a way to establish coherence, expose those who are interested in what they very much might like.

YouTube links:

“Hallucinate”-Tensnake Remix

“Hallucinate”-“Future Nostalgia” original

“California Soil”

“Baby It’s You”

Mrs. Everything: A Novel

I loved this book. I mean loved, loved, LOVED!

I am not a guy’s guy. If you want to make fart jokes and snap towels in the locker room I won’t be there, or I’ll be standing in the corner, detached.

Not that I don’t like a good fart joke. I’m just referencing the way guys interact, with sexual innuendos, talking about people’s appearances, what they’d do to so and so, however laughingly. I guess I’ve been put down enough in my life that I’m unwilling to put down another. And I’ve been made to do so much I don’t want to that I won’t force anyone to do anything they wouldn’t want to. In other words, I’d never get arrested for sexual harassment. Or as that old shrink once told me, I’d rather talk to women than screw them.

Which is all to say this is not a book for most men.

Men like to read books that get them somewhere. Biographies, business books. They want to improve themselves, they want to see themselves as members of the group, participants in the game. And even though music is very much an independent business, where individuals thrive, inside the halls of the corporations, the labels, the radio stations, the promotion outfit, it’s very much about getting along. That bro behavior I referenced above. It’s anything but being vulnerable. You can be vulnerable in your music, but that does not work if you’re a cog in the machine. And in this machine, the music business, if you’re not going up, you’re out. Which is why all the successful acts have managers, because they themselves can’t interact with the suits. The better the artist, the less they’re able to be compromised. They can’t go through the mental machinations of negotiation, they don’t have a tolerance for it.

But women?

Women are different.

Then again, our entire culture has changed. You can express vulnerability if you’re on your way to rehab, or giving a mea culpa, otherwise everybody is a winner, at least on the exterior. And groupthink is rampant, whether it be on the college campus or amongst your own little circle. Challenge the precepts at your peril.

In the seventies it was different. Sure, we had the personal development programs like EST, but after the tumultuous sixties, people were looking inward, trying to figure out their problems, and that’s when Sara Davidson’s “Loose Change” came out. It was a rage amongst my older sister’s friends. It told the story of girl friends from the sixties and how their lives played out. I read it, I’ve never forgotten it. Even though I’ve never read it again. I don’t understand rereading, watching movies over when there’s so much stuff left to check out for the first time.

But life, it’s a mystery.

Today I had a long conversation with my mother. In December, she’ll be 94. You think you want to live that long, but you don’t. All your friends are dead, you’re forgotten by society, at best you can play cards and go to the movies and to a great degree just wait to die.

You don’t want to be old in America. First and foremost because you might be broke. This is what I don’t understand about people taking social security early. You’ll want more dollars if you live that long, because you won’t be able to make any, there’s no place for you in the workforce. And I’m willing to die with some money on the table, letting the government beat me, but in a world where the government is the enemy and it’s everybody for themselves that’s anathema. You blew your money on a fancy car and now you want someone to rescue you when times are bad. I feel for you, but how come our entire country can’t save for a rainy day, assuming people can do more than make ends meet. Meanwhile, the rich get mad when the public hoards its money, because by not spending they’re hurting the economy, the stock market, the rich are not continuing to get richer.

And if you’re over sixty, wait for it, you’re instantly irrelevant. Younger people make fun of you. You’re happier and have earned wisdom but that does not matter, you’ve got lines on your face and are subject to derision. So how many people can be true winners, have all of their dreams fulfilled? Very few, if any at all.

So “Mrs. Everything” is the story of a family, from there to here, essentially from the nineteen forties until now. The two sisters are a little older than I am, and that matters, because what was acceptable in the seventies was not in the sixties, but people are people, as Depeche Mode sang.

So you think you’re in charge of your journey. But if you keep the reins too tight, you miss out on opportunities. And if you loosen them too much, you close doors. I didn’t want to get married, because I didn’t want to get off track, I didn’t want to sacrifice my vision. Buy a house, have kids, and you’re working to support them. Then again, family might be the most important thing, who knows.

And your choices…

Talk to anybody and they have dreams. Some times puffed-up, false dreams. Oh, I was pre-med before I dropped out and became a musician. Yeah, right. I went to college and I know that organic chem separated the winners from the losers. If you didn’t get an A, find another career track. I’d see it in slow motion, students’ dreams getting dashed.

But you’ve got to pay your bills and you end up with a job that becomes your life. It started out temporary, or maybe you prepared for it in graduate school, and now it’s unfulfilling, it was your safety net, but you’re making too much money to start over and you certainly wouldn’t be able to pay your bills so here you are, this is your life.

This describes many huge music fans. They use their bucks to feed their addiction. They couldn’t risk coming to Hollywood and trying to make it. It was too dangerous. Or maybe their parents would not have been supportive. Which is to a great degree why entertainment is run by individuals, entrepreneurs, oftentimes college dropouts, who are so unique that if they didn’t run their own organization, they wouldn’t be able to get a job. That’s what they don’t teach you in school. As a matter of fact, school teaches you to conform. It’s very hard to break out of the system, just like it’s very hard to be anti-bro amongst bros.

So…

Kids never turn out the way you planned. The one with straight A’s drops out of school, or gets pregnant. Or loses their job.

And who is your responsibility to? Your parents or your siblings or yourself?

And what if what you’re doing is taboo? Kind of like trans rights today. But that was just like gay rights back then. And gays are still fighting for equal rights, look at what Thomas and Alito said just this week.

So, life is complicated, daunting, and you wake up one day and you find out you’re too old. Hopefully, before that, you found out you don’t matter. Even Sumner Redstone died, even though he believed he never would.

So I grew up in a female dominated household. My dad earned the money, took care of the financial issues, but my mother and two sisters steered the softer issues, the social issues. So, I’m quite comfortable hanging with women, I know what they’re interested in. However I have learned, that despite their delineated preferences, their yearning for softer men, they frequently like the exotica of the opposite, the bros. For every woman who wants to forge their own path, there’s another who wants the door opened, the chair pulled back and the man to bring home the bacon.

I’m not laying down the percentages. I’m just saying it’s complicated, not that we can discuss any of this out loud, because chances are we’ll fall into a politically incorrect pit, where we’ll offend someone and when you’re the target of slings and arrows, those bros won’t come out and defend you, no way, they’re staying silent behind the scenes, which is also to say that despite Harvey Weinstein many men are still unconscious sexual abusers.

So, “Mrs. Everything” is the story of women. Sure, men play a part. And they’re sometimes what they appear to be on the surface, but…

You’re in high school and you’re hyper-aware, everything is important. And then you get old and laugh at yourself. You’re hung up on someone romantically and you get older and you can’t believe you were. Or you get married and wake up one day and realize not only does it not solve all your problems, it hinders you and you’d rather be somewhere else.

These are the questions, the issues you won’t find in business books. Or biographies. The issues of life. The choices, the mistakes, the successes, the willingness to accept where you are, even if it does not match your dreams.

And life never works out how it’s planned. Hopefully not, it’s the accidents that deliver rewards. But a lot of bad stuff happens along the way.

This is what “Mrs. Everything” is about. Life. How it’s rough and tumble. How you make snap decisions that have you turning left and end up somewhere where it’s impossible to turn right.

I looked forward to reading it every day. It’s a treat.

For a special kind of reader.

Maybe that’s you.

Cousin Brucie is a legendary deejay who was friends with everybody from the Beatles to Lesley Gore. Listen to hear how Brucie retrieved Ringo’s St. Christopher medal as well as how he got his start, his name and so much more. Brucie was my gateway drug for music radio. It was a thrill to speak with him!

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Pence wouldn’t commit to a peaceful transfer of power.

You need to read this article. It’s more important than anything I have to say herein:

“Democrats Need To Be Clear About Where This Could Be Headed”

It’s about the system, not the issues. The above was written by a Harvard professor, not someone wearing a tin foil hat.

No one’s mind was changed via tonight’s debate. As a matter of fact, I’d recommend all further debates be canceled, they’re a waste of time. We’ve seen the candidates, we get it, all that is left is for Donald Trump to browbeat Joe Biden while he fails to observe the debate rules that he agreed to.

Just like Mike Pence.

At first you had to have sympathy for the vice president. He had to defend the terrible record of the Bizarro in Chief. But as one continued to listen, one could see that he buys into a lot of the crap he was saying, which is positively scary.

As for the Trump team’s governing philosophy…Pence came out with it right away, and then hammered it over and over again, he believes in the American people, not government, that the people will do the right thing, in other words…YOU’RE ON YOUR OWN!

I’d go deeper but you’ve already made up your mind. But it’s clear if you believe Donald Trump cares about you, is gonna help you, the answer is no, AND PENCE ADMITTED IT RIGHT UP FRONT!

Not that he’d answer the question, almost never. Which is why these debates are such a waste of time. Kamala could think on her feet, Pence just repeated his talking points over and over again, like a third grader who didn’t do his homework.

But having said that, it was painfully obvious that the same people who prepared Trump for last week’s debate prepared Pence for this one. Not only would Pence not answer direct questions, he consistently went over time, again and again, as if the rules didn’t matter. And the truth is both Trump and Pence believe they don’t. Never forget that.

The one thing we learned, that was loud and clear, is that Kamala Harris is the smartest of the four people running, the most nimble, the one who can think while talking, who can deftly argue her case. After tonight, no Biden fan should have any worry about Harris taking over his Administration. She’s beyond competent. As for experience, she’s more experienced in government than Obama was!

But you can see why Kamala lost the nomination. She’s a prosecutor through and through. She’s tough as nails and there to win. And some of her expressions when Pence railed on worked against her, she was disgusted by his lies. However, she did temper those reactions as the debate wore on.

My point being you wouldn’t want to have a beer with either of these people. That was George Bush, who ran on being warm and fuzzy. And I’m talking about impressions here, image, not truth. And the unfortunate thing is running for public office is oftentimes too much about image, substance is kicked aside.

Like Pence’s lies.

We live in scary times. The Trumpers get all their news in a parallel universe, where falsehoods and twists of truth are de rigueur, to the point where when Trump or Pence utter them their acolytes believe them. Then again, almost everybody watching is not up on the facts of what is being discussed. Like fracking…it’s an ungodly large money pit. These companies will never make any money, meanwhile they paid their CEOs millions. It’s been all over the “Wall Street Journal,” the right wing paper of record, but once again, don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story.

Americans hate change, sorry to say so. They’re all fearful they’re gonna lose something in the transition. So if you try to throw the long ball, they cower, even though it’s Sanders and Warren who were truly standing up for the average American, who is financially challenged and behind the 8-ball. So we’ve got Biden.

The problem with Biden is he’s not good at conveying his message. He can only lose in further debate. Biden is experienced, he knows the right thing to do, he’s exercised good judgment, but as a candidate…not good. Furthermore, there’s no doubt he’s not as sharp as he was in the VP debates of yore.

Which brings us back to Kamala Harris. She’s too edgy to win general election. But as #2 she’s a princess, a hammer in a velvet glove. To watch her work her way through what she wanted to say to ultimately answer the question was amazing. We haven’t seen this skill since Bill Clinton. Then again, if you’re smart and educated you’ve got two strikes against you with the right. The right would rather pray the problems go away, are so busy keeping themselves in the hole they’re in that they cannot be lifted up. The right is so busy denigrating the left that its disadvantaged constituents can’t see what they’re losing, their religion is hating liberals just as much as loving God.

Now if Biden were to become incapacitated, or to pass, I’ve got complete confidence in Harris, she proved her mettle tonight. She can think on her feet, weigh the evidence. And if she were to inherit the presidency I have no doubt she would do a good job and be electable thereafter. But, once again, I can see why she lost in the primaries. America doesn’t like smart women, doesn’t like women with a backbone. And I’m wary of prosecutors, but maybe that’s exactly what our country now needs, to stand up to the bullies, not that Harris responded as to what measures she and her party would take if Trump refused to leave office.

No one answered the tough questions, no one answered the gotcha questions. Harris bobbed and weaved. Pence employed the Trump playbook, just hammer the points and lie, lie, lie…what are the chances your voters are gonna see the corrections in the “New York Times” or on CNN, never mind MSNBC. NONE!

But the truth is there is now no truth. We all drink from different media wells and Donald Trump has done an excellent job of undercutting truthful media. So far, it’s only been pundits fighting back, but tonight Kamala Harris fought back, and that was inspiring.

It’s time we got a fighter.

And isn’t it interesting that the fighters in the Democratic party are all women. From Harris to AOC to Pelosi. It’s the men we’ve got to worry about, the mealy-mouthed Schumer who seems to have left his balls in the locker room. You don’t bring a knife to a gun fight and to win you have to know your enemy and prepare for their behavior, whereas the men in the Democratic party whine and then say to trust the system. As for that system, I was waiting for Harris to say that Trump put in so many unqualified and biased judges because the Republican Senate refused to approve Obama’s picks. But, once again, these are not history lessons, just impressions.

Maybe, like in “Borgen,” we need a scoreboard. Maybe we have to move to the world we presently live in, reality television, where Trump made his bones. It seems that straight reporting, doing it the tried and true way, no longer works. So let’s get the flashing lights and buzzers. Let’s have a counter that evidences the number of lies told. Let’s declare a winner. Hell, we can have a panel, like in boxing, or in ice skating…a judge from each team and then a neutral arbiter.

Trump has turned America into a cartoon. Harris expertly listed the Trump administration’s foreign policy flaws and Pence couldn’t get out of the Middle East, telling lies all the while.

But I guess their debating style, Pence and Trump, is just like their governing style. Let’s forget the big picture, the “losers,” the people of color, while we drill down on broad issues that don’t speak to everyday life, like religion. Or coal. Or the “fraud” in mail-in ballots.

Unfortunately too many Americans are just that dumb. Whomever hammers their message more consistently too often wins, no matter how flawed and fraudulent.

This is where we’ve arrived.

But thank god we’ve got someone who’s up to the challenge.

That’s what we learned about Kamala Harris tonight.