We’ve been on a bad streak. We’ve watched a bunch of shows that have not been up to recommendation level, but last night we started one…

If there’s one show I want to recommend before that, it’s “Srugim,” on Amazon. My sister Jill said to check it out, but I was reluctant because its focus is Orthodox Jews in Jerusalem and Felice is not Jewish. But she got hooked and was sad when the show ended as was I. You get involved in these people’s lives, you know them, and then the series end and you’re wondering where they are now. Actually, with these Israeli shows, with a lot of these foreign shows, you can look the actors up online. Of course it’s real life, as opposed to their characters, but still… They’re on Facebook, Instagram. It’s different from the U.S. They don’t consider themselves stars so much as actors. They partcipate online as regular people, as opposed to boasters reinforcing they’re better than you are. Maybe it’s because the markets are so much smaller. Unless they graduate to American productions, they can only be so well known, can only be so rich. Furthermore, you get used to the people, the same ones appear in multiple shows. Like Caroline Proust in “The Tunnel.” Proust is the star of “Spiral,” which if you haven’t watched I once again will recommend that you do, it’s one of the best streaming shows on television. Anyway, in “Spiral” Proust is a beautiful, but down to earth cop, who is psychologically screwed up and therefore can’t have a good relationship. In “The Tunnel” Proust is a mousy housewife, you almost don’t recognize her. And it’s strange that she’s got a lesser role even though “Sprial” was already a hit. This does not happen in America, once you’ve made it, you must be the star.

Anyway, relationships are relationships, which is why “Srugim” resonates. Yes, they are Orthodox Jews, but they are not black hats, and other than praying and wearing kippahs, they’re no different from you and me. One is a doctor, one is a graphic designer, another a teacher… But there is a strong sense of community. They get together every Friday night for Shabbat dinner. But if you’re thirty and unmarried, whether a girl or guy… And there are unfulfilled crushes and… I really recommend “Srugim,” assuming you’re into relationship shows. And, one of the stars, Tali Sharon, was in the original “In Treatment.” Yes, it was an Israeli show first, as was “Homeland.”

As for “The Tunnel”… I recommend it, but probably the original Danish-Swedish production entitled “The Bridge” is better. It’s kind of like music, the person who wrote the song usually does the best version, it may not be a hit, but the way they emote…they wrote the words! Anyway, I will not buy a series, what am I going to do with it after I watch it once? It’s not like a record, which you can play over and over again. And a show should be on one of the services I already subscribe to, I subscribe to all the major ones. But, “The Tunnel” is good, very good, but not “Srugim,” not great.

Oh, did I mention “False Flag”? That’s another Israeli show, it’s just that like too many crime novels there are twists at the end that explain it all, keeping the series from being absolutely top tier.

And we just finished watching “La Mante.” A French series about serial killers. It stars Carole Bouquet, one of the most beautiful women in the world. You might know her as the face of Chanel. Anyway, in “La Mante” she wears no makeup, and she’s had no plastic surgery, pretty fascinating. But despite the acting being good, “La Mante” is flawed.

But “Delhi Crime”? WHEW!

We’ve only watched one episode, but usually it’s best to write when I’m hot, when I feel it, when I can’t wait to watch the next episode.

Now sometimes “Delhi Crime” is in English, not that you’d fully understand it, but if you’ve got a problem with subtitles… Once again, all those American remakes of foreign shows are inferior to the originals.

So, “Delhi Crime”… It’s based on a real crime. And it’s on Netflix. And they spent a ton of money, you can tell by the images. Funny how cinematography has moved to the flat screen. Beautiful images made “Goliath,” at least the first season, after that it’s junk. But “Delhi Crime”…

Cops. Where there’s not enough money and too much crime.

And we believe in the U.S. that everybody with a different skin color in a far away country is exotically different, probably inferior. But you watch “Delhi Crime” and that is not so. These are educated, middle class people.

So, the rich colors, the rickshaws…this is India. If you’ve been there, you’ll recognize it. And if you have, you’ll want to go back. Despite the huge economic issues, so many people living in poverty with few chances of moving up the economic ladder, once you do, everybody’s got a college degree, everybody can analyze the issues, it’s mind-blowing. In the rest of the world, the music business is not an intellectual pursuit, but in India… Well, maybe I’m overstating the case, maybe I should just say the people in India are as sophisticated as those in the rest of the world. And it’s a huge country with a different system, everything derives from Bollywood and…

The head cop’s daughter wants to go to school in Toronto. If you’ve been to Toronto, you know it’s a hotbed of nationalities, a cab driver told me more than any other city in the world, and he’s got to be at least, if not more, trustworthy than those testifying in Congress.

And the head cop knows who is slacking.

And the window to catch the perps is short.

And the infrastructure of the police is so bad. Cops manning a checkpoint who don’t, they let everybody through. Cops without wheels. Favors to get anything done.

You can tell watching these shows, what is great and what is not. You can feel it, you’re drawn in, it’s a whole world that you are now inhabiting. This is the richness of streaming television. It used to be in the movies, but those days are gone, as for foreign films, they’re only two hours or so, these series can go on for years!

So, I’m always looking for something that demands my focus, that I enjoy experiencing, with a visceral edge, with a sense of truth. That’s “Delhi Crime,” at least so far.

TWO MONTHS??

We had to endure this story for all this time for Lori Loughlin to essentially get a slap on the wrist? Meanwhile, get caught with drugs and you go up the river for years!

As for her husband, Mossimo, he got five months, but it’s still de minimis, there was a threat of twenty years, but since these people are rich and famous they may not skate completely but their lives are minimally impacted while the general prison population resides in hothouses of coronavirus, with their lives at stake.

Oh, Lori and Mossimo are not going into the general population, this is not “Oz,” they’ll go to the country club prison, read, go online, and wait out their time. It’ll be little different from vacation other than the food.

Our system is screwed up. We’re busy focusing on these rich people gaming the college admissions system when the real story is…THEY’RE GAMING THE COLLEGE ADMISSIONS SYSTEM!

Want to have riots in the street?

Tell private schools that twenty five percent of their students will have to sacrifice their first college choice so the slots can be filled with the underprivileged and disadvantaged. This is why the Democrats lose. They disproportionately make up this privileged class. They’re willing to lift those on the bottom up but they can’t sacrifice a whit, not whatsoever, it’s somebody else’s fault.

As for the truly rich, the Republicans, like Jared Kushner’s father, the rules never applied to them, they just buy a building and their kid gets in.

And what do you get at an elite institution? It’s less about what goes on in the classroom and more about the people you meet and hang out with. Would Mark Zuckerberg have come up with the idea of Facebook if he hadn’t run into the Winklevoss twins at Harvard?

As for Lori and Mossimo, they got bad legal advice from the start. Of course they were guilty, it’s even come out their kids were complicit, which they denied until they fought the charge and the investigation went deeper.

Then again, the legal fees are a drop in the bucket for these two. Look at their real estate holdings. That’s where celebrities make their money in L.A. today…a TV show may come and go, but if you own enough property, you’ll be okay.

And if Lori had offered a mea culpa from the beginning, she could have saved her career, on Lifetime, on “Full House.” America loves the repentant. I sinned, what was I thinking, give me a few lashes and let me back into the club. And speaking of the club…unless you kill someone or abuse someone sexually you’re never kicked out of the celebrity/rich/elite club. So, you got caught. Members are testing the limits constantly, that’s how they get ahead. Just think about Hollywood, it’s built on fraud. The studios owe money to the profit participants they never pay, no matter how successful the project becomes.

So, you hire a lawyer and obfuscate. Bad strategy in this case, since Lori Loughlin is a public figure to begin with, people are interested in her life, it sells ads. She threw gasoline on the fire. And, she got bad legal advice. Never forget, lawyers are business people too, they have to make money. A reasonable attorney would have assessed the landscape and settled soon. But then the attorney would have gotten paid much less.

As for Loughlin and Giannulli… What made them think they could win, when every other parent was convicted? What made them different? Oh yeah, they didn’t go to college, they don’t know how to analyze the issues, which is what you learn at the elite institutions they want their kids to go to.

So, this whole fracas has turned into a celebrity story when it should be framed as an income inequality/rigged system question.

As for discouraging shenanigans in the future… If the worst offender only got a handful of months in prison, maybe it’s worth the risk! Do you really think the arrests in Singergate are preventing rich parents from trying to game the system? They’re just finding a different way. Because an elite education is worth more than any real property, for the rest of your life you can say “I graduated from _________” It opens doors. It gives you the imprimatur of success. It’s priceless.

You’d think this was O.J., that people had died, with all this focus on Loughlin and Giannulli. But that’s America today, the sideshow becomes the main show so people won’t focus on the real issues. You can buy the Kardashian perfume, but you go to a school without supplies, with a low graduation rate.

Furthermore, these two won’t even serve their complete sentences. Loughlin will be in for six weeks, maybe only a month, she’ll be let out for good behavior or overcrowding or some such nonsense. If you think her attorneys are now off the payroll, you’re nuts. It’s kind of like curling, the lawyers are gonna continue to sweep the ice in order to change the speed and the direction of the stone.

And then, if they care, somewhere down the line Loughlin and Giannulli will pay someone to get them pardoned. Like Marc Rich or Michael Milken. Or maybe a good friend will do the same for no cash, like Donald Trump with Roger Stone. Loyalty is everything at the elite level, never forget, you circle the wagons and don’t let info seep to the outside. For all the TMZs and Housewives shows the truth is the public knows very little what goes on with the rich and famous. And the truly rich are smart enough not to be famous, so attention is not drawn to them.

Just imagine if these two were sentenced to five years. Even two. Whew! Penalties are never stiff enough for white collar crime. If only we’d sent some Wall Streeters up the river for a decade back in 2008, that would have changed things…instead, all the wanker bankers just bitched about their bonuses and went back to wreaking havoc in the financial system. And when things get bad, the government bails them out. Whereas if you’re a member of the rank and file you lost your job because of Covid-19, the federal government is sending you no more money and you’re on the verge of being evicted.

America, what a country.

Recreating the Sound: The “Ramble On” Acoustic

We used to be gearheads.

I’ll admit this quarantine lifestyle is getting to me. It’s not that I’m not busy, it’s just that every damn day is the same. Get up, read the news, answer the e-mail, check up on the news and…

Well, maybe record a podcast, or my radio show, depending on the day. And then at night read and/or watch a streaming series.

But the strangest thing is I’m a late night person. And what I love is to be so burned out, overworked, that one night I stay up until I’m caught up, until I’m relaxed, knowing that the next morning I have nothing scheduled. But now, since every day is the same, I know if I stay up until four that just means I screw up my schedule, wake up later…it doesn’t pay to stay up.

Oh yeah, I love the nighttime. Oh, I’m gonna bitch when the light fades, as autumn arrives, but it’s only when it’s dark that my brain starts to light up, that the creativity sparks, that the pressure of the world fades away and I can be myself.

Now in the old days, let’s say twenty years ago, I had less on the schedule. And it’s much better being busy, but back then I could surf the web long enough to become relaxed and get inspired. Sometimes that happens again today, during the Covid-19 era.

So, I read the new news, today’s news on my phone. Answer all the e-mail. Check all my sites…skiing, music, straight news. And then…what am I gonna do with the rest of my time? I start thinking of these YouTube skiing videos I want to watch and I go to the site and staring me straight in the eye is the new Rick Beato video.

I’ve got major problems with YouTube. Not the ones musicians have, usage, how much they’re getting paid, but primarily the fact that you cannot turn off autoplay. Oh, you can turn it off, but then it slips back on. I’ve researched online, it’s a known problem, which Google doesn’t want to fix, they want you to watch more. And then a couple of weeks back, they put a scrim over all the videos, with an ad, making you click more to see what you want. Drives me nuts. They’re just trying to drive subscriptions. Oh, that’s another thing, you have to constantly click that you don’t want to pay for their service, don’t want to subscribe. I’m not giving them my money on principle. I like that Google/YouTube hosts all these videos for free, but these bumps in the road are akin to the fees at hotels and on concert tickets…just make your offer, tell me what you need, and let me decide whether to partake or not. Otherwise, you’re just pissing me off.

As for the suggestion to watch the Rick Beato video…

I don’t believe in the algorithm. I never use Netflix’s. Drives me crazy. I wanted to check out the Sam Jay comedy special but since I hadn’t watched any standup comedy recently I no longer had a bar for that. To tell you the truth, I research before I watch anything, otherwise it makes no sense. Streaming series are a commitment, I don’t want to watch for hours and realize something is junk. Oh yeah, I’m also pissed-off at Netflix because they got rid of their star rating system, now everything gets a high rating, absolute b.s., I’m already paying, can’t you help me out?

But Beato has been in the news lately. Most notably the “Wall Street Journal.” He gets recognized, he sells t-shirts. And there’s something self-satisfied about the guy, but I must admit it’s hard to click off his videos.

Most are gimmicks, top twentys. But today’s is different, Beato is trying to reproduce the sound of “Ramble On.”

Now, of course, we’d prefer to have Jimmy Page tell us. But the truth is it probably wouldn’t be as good. He wouldn’t nitpick like Rick does. And the fan experience is quite different. It’s a treasure hunt. One of the few in this Google world where there are no rare records, where everything is available…how did Jimmy get that sound?

Oh, you know the sound. There’s something about “Ramble On.”

Sounds. That used to be a big part of making records, getting sounds. These sounds made some of our favorite records so. Like that wailing guitar in the intro to Supertramp’s “Bloody Well Right.”

Now this video, which only launched yesterday, hasn’t broken a million views yet, and there’s one, “Top 20 Acoustic Guitar Intros Of All Time” which is bubbling under ten million. And I don’t think “Ramble On” will come close to that because it’s for a different type of listener, not a casual fan, but someone who needs to get closer, like we did, in the sixties and seventies.

Funny thing about rock and roll, it’s passé. Oh, people are making rock music, it’s just a caricature of itself. But the classic sound… If you’re infected, there is no cure. You can only get Led Zeppelin one place, and there’s nothing quite like it, the sounds, the playing, the vocals…the same band which did “Black Dog” did “Ten Years Gone,” never mind “Ramble On.”

“Led Zeppelin II.” I prefer the debut. Not that “II” isn’t good, it’s just that the initial LP is darker, more straight ahead, less obvious. Now Jimmy and the gang made up for this by going totally left field on “III,” but we’re talking about “II.” I burned out on “Whole Lotta Love” in a week, if I never hear it again that’s fine with me. I bought the album the day it came out and within a week I was done with it and never really returned to it until I was in a condo in Mammoth in ’75 and it was on the 8-track, and I remembered how great the album was.

In the early days, my favorite cut was “Living Loving Maid (She’s Just A Woman.” But even back then it was obvious that the acoustic numbers were the heart of the LP. Right after “Whole Lotta Love” came
“What Is And What Should Never Be,” which eventually exploded, but this was Zeppelin’s trademark, from quiet acoustic to explosive electric and then back again. But even better were “Thank You.” And “Ramble On.”

“Thank You” was majestic, as if it were being performed in the king’s castle. Or out on the plains with no one around. But “Ramble On” was different, it was positively alive, not reflective so much as marching forward, back when being in your twenties wasn’t about selling out but finding yourself.

So, Rick Beato is trying to recreate the acoustic guitar intro to “Ramble On.” He starts with a photo of Jimmy Page in the studio. The chord he’s playing. The guitar, the mic. He’s trying to put it together, how did Jimmy get this magic sound?

And he’s in the studio.

The studio, that used to be the holy grail, where the music was made. To get inside meant you were a member of the club, or at least a provisional one. Most people could not get inside. To this day I’m mesmerized when I go inside. All that gear! All of Rick’s guitars!

And the engineers, all the rest of the help, never treat you right, this is their job, you’re an outsider. Who got you in…the player or the producer will be friendly, if it’s someone else, you’ll soon have to leave. But we are in Rick Beato’s studio for the duration.

So, it’s a Vox acoustic guitar. With a bolted-on neck. From ’69. All of this is important to the sound. Which Rick and his engineer now try to capture.

And they don’t get it. Now I’m nitpicking. It’s close, but it’s not the real thing. And then Rick starts to tweak the sound in Pro Tools. So many options. He’s getting close, very close, but still no cigar.

And then Rick goes back into the studio and VOILA! He figures it out, he’s got to play the guitar closer to the bridge.

And now he’s strumming and I’m smiling, I can’t believe it, he’s replicated the sound of “Ramble On”!

He didn’t write it. And he’s not getting paid for this video, Jimmy and his mates are. Rick’s cool with that, but he is angry that his videos are taken down when he’s making no money and the acts are. He’s got a whole extended clip about it, that’s how I became aware of his videos, someone insisted I watch it. And I had a bit of sympathy for Rick, but the truth is…the rights owners rule. Then again, if the rights owners, the players themselves as opposed to their hired intermediaries, knew what Rick was really doing with their work they’d okay it, since their efforts are being respected and they’re getting paid for their use.

But I’m watching this clip and I feel at home.

It’s hard to feel at home in the music business today. There’s just too much music and too many special interests and too much blather. Someone sent me that article about the guy who went on vacation and got overwhelmed with new music and went back to the oldies:

LISTENING ANXIETY: Struggling With An Overwhelming Flood Of New Music

I get it. It just takes too much effort to check everything out, can’t someone lead the way? So far, no one’s been able to do this.

I know, I know, a similar paradigm exists today. You try to get the beat. You get a topliner. But it’s different. Forget even judging. They’re two trains running on two different tracks. And today’s music is social, a club, whereas back then the creation involved very few people, the band and the studio hands, to get the sound down that affected us all. The reach of a hit was unbelievable, the tracks were burned into our brains. Come on, you can sing “Ramble On” to yourself right now! And much of the rest of the Zeppelin catalog, whereas most people can’t do that with any hit of today, never mind an album track.

What we’re talking about in this video is the source of creation. Jimmy had the inspiration, how can we get closer to that?

That. You can’t buy it. It’s not for sale. Oh, you can purchase the end result, the record…but the journey to it, no way. It’s a better plot than most movies. How do we get to genius. How do we recreate something that was probably done spontaneously. And when Rick gets there, your day is made. At least mine was.

Lawrence Lessig is one of America’s preeminent legal scholars, a law professor at Harvard, he also ran for president in 2016. Listen as we address the legal issues surrounding the presidential election, social media and antitrust. This is up-to-date legal analysis that is a must listen!

iheart

apple

spotify

stitcher