Under The Graveyard – Spotify

Under The Graveyard – YouTube

What kind of crazy fucked-up world do we live in where Ozzy Osbourne releases his best new track in eons and no one knows?

One in which Ozzy has become so overexposed with story as opposed to music he’s become a cartoon character, and one in which culture washes over you in a tsunami to the point where nothing is important, to where everything can be ignored or marginalized, despite the hype machine.

Today I woke up and I hate myself

This usually happens deeper in the day for me. But if you’ve never hated yourself, you’re not human. Life is about inner dialogue, you’re yourself all day long, and sometimes it hurts.

Death doesn’t answer when I cry for help

Suicidal? It’s a tendency many of us have. Especially in this world of “winners,” where we’re judged by likes and followers, where if we raise our head we’re denigrated by self-appointed executioners, we’re taught to keep our noggins down, licking our wounds, feeling bad with no means of expression.

No high could save me from the depths of Hell

Drugs. Cool. Unless you take them. Maybe it’s because they’re illicit, maybe if we legalized them their outlaw image would dissipate. Then again, drugs offer escape when life is just too hard, like when you’ve got an endless string of one-nighters, when you can’t sleep, when you experience adulation but feel ever more removed.

I’ll drown my mind until I’m someone else

This is when you know the drinking is out of control, when you use it for escape as opposed to good times.

My misery owns me

It’s hard to escape, it’s hard to be optimistic, we all experience losses, we all get caught in traps, this is why music resonated, it spoke to our humanity, whether it be soft singer-songwriter tunes or metal. We wanted to know someone else was on the same page. That’s why the musicians were our heroes, not because they were rich, not because they were brands, not because they sold clothing and perfume and had endorsement deals.

I don’t wanna be my enemy

If we cry for help oftentimes our exclamations go unheard. Everybody’s so self-centered, they don’t want to understand us, they just want us to buck up, when we’re incapable of that.

Now the last great work Ozzy did was almost thirty years ago, with Zakk Wylde and “No More Tears.” Since Zakk has been gone, Ozzy’s missed the target. But somehow the inclusion of Duff and Chad, from the Peppers, and youngster Andrew Watt has lifted him higher. That’s what happens when you’ve fallen from the mainstream, when you’ve become the sideshow, you reach down deep, you want to triumph once again. And in metal/hard rock, a too-insular world, this is possible, because once you’re a member of the club…you are so for life.

Black Sabbath became even bigger in the decades after Ozzy left. People finally understood it. They weren’t afraid of it. Kids killing themselves because of songs? No, that’s today’s bullies on social media, songs you identify with, hopefully they keep you alive.

We all now know that Ozzy is not dangerous. Just troubled. A child in a man’s body…isn’t that what rock and roll always promised, eternal youth, even if it was only in your mind, isn’t that why we go to see the shows of the oldsters?

On that long ago MTV show, Ozzy was seen drawing. He is an artist. He needs to express himself.

As we all do. But oftentimes we don’t have the words, we depend upon artists to delineate them.

And the funny thing is despite the downbeat lyrics, “Under The Graveyard” is uplifting, it’s the anti, to our winner take all world, if you don’t fit in where are you supposed to turn? This loud music, with its riffs, with its darkness, actually puts a smile on your face. You feel like someone is on your page.

“Under The Graveyard” makes me feel like Ozzy Osbourne is on my page.

Tune in tomorrow, Tuesday November 12th, to Volume 106, 7 PM East, 4 PM West.

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I thought I didn’t care about the Black Crowes reunion. I’ve known about it for months, felt that it was a dash for cash, everybody’s got to pay their bills, it was interesting to me on a business level at best.

And when I heard Chris and Rich doing their best to make nice on Howard Stern this morning, I was wincing in the car.

And then they started to play.

I didn’t realize Rich Robinson was such a great guitarist until I saw him with Bad Company. As for the Chris Robinson Brotherhood…poor man’s jam band. I’ve seen the CRB, it’s not offensive, it’s just not that endearing, the material doesn’t stick to you. And how important are the Black Crowes in rock history anyway?

In case you don’t remember, or weren’t conscious, the Crowes burst on to the scene in 1990 and immediately had huge success, “Hard To Handle” was everywhere.

And then came Nirvana and Pearl Jam, the Seattle sound, grunge.

As for the ’92 follow-up album, “The Southern Harmony And Musical Companion”…”Remedy” was in the vein of what came before, just not quite as good, like the album itself, except for ‘Thorn In My Pride,” a six minute opus that recalled the great southern rock of the seventies, an updated, slower “Can’t You See,” by the Marshall Tucker Band, with gravitas. This was the sound that endeared us to the sounds emanating from Georgia and Florida two decades previously.

And then the Crowes lost the plot. The sound was still there, but not the material, and as stated previously, the sound had moved on.

And then came hip-hop.

And now we’re in the late teens, the decade is almost over, and rock and roll is on life support. Metal is so far from the basics that you need to study history to understand it. No straight-ahead rock band has a combo of great singer and great material, the basics, you start with the song, then the execution comes next, but if the building blocks are not there to begin with, if there’s not talent to begin with, the effort is futile, and that’s what’s happened, now that everybody can play, with the bar to entry so low, we get substandard music in an era where we’re only interested in the great.

And then the Black Crowes play “Jealousy Again” on Howard Stern.

Now it’s early in the morning, the worst time to sing and…

Rich Robinson pulls off the lick as if he owns it, which he does. And then you can hear the ivories twinkling, usually this sound gets lost in the mix, and then Chris Robinson starts to sing and…HE’S STILL GOT HIS VOICE!

All these rock acts reuniting, they’ve always lost a step, it’s only about memories.

And the sound is not perfect, the guitar is too loud, you’re straining to hear Chris, then again, now I’m listening to the original studio recording and except in the chorus, he’s buried in the mix the same way.

And it’s rough, as opposed to the perfection you expect today, where everything’s on hard drive.

But this is not, this is rock music, played by the assembled multitude, and it sounds so RIGHT!

I’m wondering if it’s because I know the song, but then I realize it’s the glorious noise, that was built into rock music, it squeezed out all other thoughts, it was an elixir, a release, it was the grease for all our wheels, it rode shotgun throughout our lives, from the dashboard of our cars, from our transistor radios, from those stereos we turned up nearly to distortion.

But that’s not happening today. We always hated pop, it was saccharine, that’s my problem with Ariana Grande, WHO CARES? I want you to test the limits, I want you to say something, I don’t want you to play to me, I want you to pull me out of my comfort zone, make me come to you.

As for hip-hop…got to tell you, I don’t find the drum machine offensive, just dated, we heard the 808 back in the eighties, about the same time synth drums came and went. But before the lyrics became so self-congratulatory, when it was still about samples rather than no-melody beats, I got it, but today…

Rock and roll ain’t that hard to do, just ask Chuck Berry.

But the truth is it’s hard to do right.

Stop, understand me
I ain’t afraid of losing face

This is the magic, when the song slows down, when it takes a left turn, when Chris sings almost sotto voce, at least for rock and roll, these are the moments that put songs over the top, that make you need to hear them over and over again, “Jealous Again” is a romp until this reflection.

And it all made sense when Rich said he was inspired by “Tumbling Dice,” its chorus kinda stops like this, but the verses of “Jealous Again” are even better, and there’s that piano playing, the special sauce, what Stu used to provide, that puts it over the top…”Jealous Again” is better than “Tumbling Dice,” heresy I know, but that’s the truth.

And it’s like we lost the recipe. The Crowes found it and brought it back thirty years ago, and now they’re bringing it back once again, why can’t anybody see it, why can’t anybody realize this is the essence of rock and roll, rollicking bar band music played on a minimum of instruments, that doesn’t beat your head into submission, that doesn’t put you to sleep, but makes you smile, makes you happy, makes you MOVE!

And Chris is telling Howard he’s afraid of looking uncool, afraid of being judged, how it was uncool to play an entire album back then but cool today, still he’s worried, as Howard said, musicians are always worried that they’ll end up on the wrong side of the equation, laughed at, pushed aside.

And once U2 played “Joshua Tree,” they instantly became an oldies act, but the Crowes are already an oldies act, this tour is definitely a look back. And U2 was about energy, mood, heightening your senses, message, but…

Always drunk on Sunday

Come on, how many times did you wake up with a hangover, start drinking again just to get rid of it? The sound emanated from the jukebox, it was pounding in the car, the dorm room, you know what rock and roll is, and it mutated into metal and singer-songwriter, prog, but the only people who went back to the garden were the Black Crowes.

And now the land is bare. There are no seeds. The land is lying fallow, part of it has been reclaimed by country, but…that’s the rock music of the seventies according to Tom Petty, that’s what he said at the Fonda, while he was still here, when there was still an arbiter pushing the envelope.

And now Tom Petty is dead. Petty was always about attitude, he took no crap, he liked the sound, he grew up on it, he wanted to push it just a bit farther, that’s what made him matter. But now there’s no one left leading the charge.

Except the Black Crowes. They’re back not as nostalgia, but as the Bible, walking the earth like the rock gods they once were, when giants ruled the earth. And the guitar was brash. And the vocal’s bravado was baked into the sound.

Stop, understand me
I ain’t afraid of losing faith in you

LONG LIVE ROCK AND ROLL!

I’m not sure whether this works or not.

Not quite a year ago, before the circus began, I said that if Bloomberg ran, he’d win.

But he didn’t, run that is.

That surprised me, since you don’t become a billionaire, certainly on Wall Street, without an ego. Didn’t he have the law changed so he could run for a third term in New York City? That takes chutzpah. I figured Michael had skeletons in his closet, or believed he was just too old.

But the story today is he believed Biden would win, so he stayed out. How delusional is he? I knew Biden had no chance, first and foremost because he’d blow himself up, he has a long history of this. Furthermore, we know there are Biden fans in Scranton and Delaware, but anywhere else? He’s like an opening act, a favor for the agent, someone tolerable if you come late, who you don’t mind missing.

Now in tech, where Bloomberg made his money, there’s a first-mover advantage. The key is to run so fast, as Mark Zuckerberg once said, “move fast and break things,” so no one can catch up. Bloomberg owns the terminal space, even when it was discovered the company was spying on its customers, despite there being talk of an upstart, nobody challenged the behemoth.

So…

Getting in late is kind of like RFK in ’68. Yup, RFK didn’t think he could win, but then when Gene McCarthy was getting all that traction, he felt it’d be easy, like taking candy from a baby. Unfortunately, Kennedy was shot, and ultimately in a year of unrest, where the convention itself was a site of protest and police overreaction, the candidate was Humphrey, and Hubert lost.

Biden isn’t even Humphrey. But the lesson of ’68 is there are incalculable grass roots, disaffection with the status quo, that the inside players and the media aren’t in touch with.

So that brings us to George McGovern. 1972 was not 1968. The younger generation was licking its wounds, the mass protests were over, it was the wrong time. Which is the lesson the DNC does not get, it’s not 2016 anymore, it’s 2020, and people have changed.

Which brings us to Dukakis. That’s the paradigm the DNC is afraid of. It believes Warren is Dukakis, but it’s not 1988 anymore. Sure, it’s important to study history, but also not to be blinded by it. If history repeats at all, it’s with a twist.

And the history we’re talking about is 2016, and the twist is now. Trump tapped into discontent. The DNC and its cronies believe it was all white supremacists, hogwash! I know three people right off the top of my head who voted for Trump, all friends. One a famous musician, from one of the bluest states. Trump pointed out the flaws in globalization, the raw deal for the rank and file. And Hillary was damaged goods, the right had defined her.

And now the right has defined Adam Schiff. They pushed back and Schiff shut up. WRONG! Anybody will tell you you stand up to the bully. As for this newfangled b.s. that you need to campaign without mentioning Trump’s name… THAT’S NOT THE WAY HE PLAYS! Get into the street fight!

If the Democrats had balls, Trump would go, long before the election. If they stopped being such wimps and went on every TV show and sold their position, spread it online, it would help the cause. Instead, the Dems allow the pundits, the media, the usual suspects, to say that there’s no way Trump gets convicted in the Senate. WRONG! You’ve got to shame the Republican Senators. Make it about the vaunted Constitution. Paint them as traitors to subsequent generations. Declare them enablers. Trump is like a five year old with crumbs on his lips who says he didn’t raid the cookie jar. Just because the evidence is in plain sight, that does not mean they’re not guilty.

So these same wimps in D.C. have a fantasy that the public wants a centrist. Huh? What Trump taught us was just the opposite, you play to the disaffected, you speak truth, you bring the voters to you, and not vice versa. If Bloomberg had gotten in early and attacked Trump he would have run away with the race. Now he looks like an opportunistic billionaire, when everybody hates billionaires except the people themselves and those sucking on the tit of them. I know I’ll never become a billionaire, I don’t think there should be billionaires, I’m sick of the billionaires pontificating, thinking just because they have money they’re right and we should listen to them. And Bloomberg played right into the hands of Warren and Sanders, who both pushed back today. Once again, Bloomberg is too late.

As for Bernie, there’s no doubt that he would have beaten Trump in 2016. But he was an outsider who didn’t play the game so the DNC got behind Hillary, saying it was “her turn.” When I hear that crap I cringe. It’s nobody’s turn, nobody’s earned it, that’s what we’ve learned in music, in Hollywood, where there are feuds and the only people who sustain are running on fumes, playing their old hits, because the younger generation doesn’t care and the old fans don’t want to hear new music.

Warren is today’s Sanders.

But it gets worse for the DNC. They may have a dozen people at the debate, but there are only three candidates, Warren, Sanders and Buttigieg. Biden is done. Klobuchar has got no chance. As for Harris, the media built her up but there was no there there, she didn’t really have any fans. As for Buttigieg…he was the great gay hope ten months ago, then he couldn’t control chaos in his own city and moved to the center and lost his credibility. It’s not that he’s gay, but because he’s got a bad track record and no one can get excited about his new stances.

So I can’t get excited about Bloomberg, I just saw him as somebody who could win. And then the media said Warren had no chance when she came from behind to be the frontrunner. Showing you how much these pontificating nitwits know. Warren is tapping into mistrust, a feeling of being screwed over, those who didn’t have the money to pay Rick Singer to get their kids into an elite college. I mean I jumped through all the hoops and now I’m a loser, a chump? That’s how I feel when I compare myself to the billionaires. The government used to be on my side, and then Reagan labeled it inefficient and needing to be pruned and the right stayed on message and the media bought it and now the biggest crime in Presidential politics is saying the word “tax.”

Which undercut Warren. She was sailing smoothly and wouldn’t answer the question directly. I winced, was this her Billy Squier moment? At least she finally released a plan, who cares if it’ll work, it’ll never be enacted, but it illustrates her heart is in the right place. And Warren keeps fighting back! Something Hillary didn’t and Biden choked on Ukraine, let the President define him, and Bloomberg wouldn’t even enter the race.

It’s about passion people. Kids believe in Billie Eilish. With the baggy clothes hiding her body and…

If you talk to kids today, they chastise you when you use a plastic water bottle. But somehow the right owns this issue, making California a laughingstock with its banned straws. If you run with the climate crisis it will energize those who’ve given up hope, those who say the game is rigged.

Yup folks, this is the same DNC, the same insiders, who got it wrong last time and are still getting it wrong today. It’s almost like they want Warren to lose to make a point. That you play their game or you’re out.

Of course Warren can win. The worthless polls keep telling us that. As for Trump, everybody said he couldn’t win. But even those on the left, even the “New York Times,” thought he was not really a crook, and that he was smart. Now we know he’s a narcissistic buffoon, you think that people aren’t aware of that? Look at last year’s elections, and last Tuesday’s, do you see the blue surge?

But the funniest thing is writing about the Democrats I’ll hear from the Republicans, defending Trump and laughing at those on the left. Where are the people on the left working the refs? Everybody on the left is so worried about offending somebody that they don’t take action.

As for identity politics…a minor story involving few people, ignore it. Candidates should say these are issues that need to be addressed once they’re elected, that they want to support minorities, but that without power there is oppression.

And it’s not even about stretching health care, but making sure coverage doesn’t shrink.

And the tariffs and sale of public lands and everything people are passionately against…crickets.

So Bloomberg will come along and satiate the DNC, but other than that organization and some rich people, maybe even left wing billionaires, nobody will get excited. We’re not looking for daddy to save us, we’re looking for someone ready for a knife fight, a leader, who will attack the other side. For Bloomberg to win, he’s got to come out punching…but no, he’s a quiet mastermind, the wrong guy for the time.

So, the DNC and its cronies are alienating their base. I know it sounds impossible, but they are, the same people who voted for Jill Stein last time around, the same people who are new voters, they think they’re being ignored. They want to send a message, that it’s not business as usual, they want to storm the asylum, and the DNC wants to bring the asylum back?

Who are these mysterious centrists? Are you really telling me African-Americans won’t vote for Warren?

Statistics and polls will tell you where you’ve been, not where you’re going.

It’s no longer business as usual. It’s closer to 1968 than 1988. The youth are restless. And Trump will do his best to scare those who voted Democratic and then switched to Republican last time. And what will the Democrats do? Have a circular firing squad.

They call this disruption. The DNC should read Clayton Christensen’s “Innovator’s Dilemma,” institutions super-serving the usual suspects are overthrown by enterprises that appear to be fringe and then go mainstream and take over.

All this b.s. about infrastructure. A man with Bloomberg’s money and relationships can build it in a day, or close to it.

But will the hoi polloi buy it?

They just might not.