Tune in tomorrow, Tuesday November 5th, to Volume 106, 7 PM East, 4 PM West.

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They’re treating me like a rock star. As in shuffling me from place to place for publicity. Tomorrow is radio, today was photography for the newspaper interviews I did last week. You can see how relationships matter, at least in terms of promotion. A team of pros build you.

First we went to Geoff’s venue, the Brass Monkey. There were posters all over the door, even one of me, but what struck me most was the tribute bands, the seventies have not died. One was a doubleheader of Eagles and the Doobie Brothers…does the promoter know Irving manages both? And speaking of Irving, there was a Steely Dan tribute, and last Saturday they had Fleetwood Mac. Then again, Amy Winehouse plays too, it’s not all oldsters. People are fans of the music.

And then the photographer for the “Australian” showed up.

He came with a suitcase full of gear, even a bag of lights. And he started shooting, all angles, changing lenses, I kinda cracked up that out of all these shots, they’d probably only use one.

But as John was setting up his umbrella, I asked him about his gig. He was the last photographer left, they’d all fallen by the wayside in the great internet crunch. He shot everywhere, like…Iraq.

Yup, during the war, they got ahead of the Americans. It was John, a reporter and an interpreter. They got accosted. Had guns pointed at their heads…talk about feeling alive.

And then we went downstairs into the venue and John shot even more. I was digging it, it’s good to be the focus of attention, then again, I’m sure it gets old and overwhelming, assuming you’re on the rocket ship to the top.

And when it was all done, we walked down to Geoff’s office, killed some time, and then Don and I went down to the beach, for a shoot with the “Sydney Morning Herald.”

Now you’ve got to know how beautiful the beach is. It’s green and then blue and the surf today isn’t that big, but there were people out there, albeit in wetsuits. I asked what the flags were about, figuring they were warnings not to go in the water, but actually it was just the opposite, you’ve got to swim between the flags, to avoid the rips, if there are no flags, don’t go in.

And Cronulla Beach is…a resort town. Little did I know I was coming to Australia on vacation. Then again, like Donna Summer, I’m working hard for the money. A podcast tomorrow, two radio shows, and then podcasts and panels, sometimes twice a day, until I’m gone.

So we amble down to the beach and there’s a blonde woman with one camera. Yup, she’s got a Canon similar to John’s, but that’s all. I figured we got the B-team, after all, I’m B-level talent at best.

And this woman Kate has me walking down on the beach. I’ll tell you, I was wondering whether to take my shoes off, there’s nothing worse than getting sand in your shoes, then again, that Dido song said just the opposite:

I’ve still got sand in my shoes
And I can’t shake the thought of you
I should get on, forget you
But why would I want to
I know we said goodbye
Anything else would have been confused
But I wanna see you again

“Sand In My Shoes” is about a vacation romance, you know, a fling to be forgotten, only the protagonist in this song cannot, forget that is. Isn’t it funny how what we think is the sideshow becomes the main show.

And I got into Dido because of hearing “Life For Rent” in my mother’s car, with only FM and no satellite. Repetition builds bonds. And when I got home to California I looked through hundreds of CDs until I found that one, and then played it over and over again, discovered “Sand In My Shoes,” even went to see Dido at the Wiltern.

She recently put out a new LP and it didn’t even make a ripple in the water. The paradigm shifted. Funny how you stay the same and times change and you’re done.

So after leaning against rocks and standing by the lifeguard shack, I asked Kate about her gig.

She just came back from Syria. She started telling stories of the Kurds, of going to funerals. How the Kurds hate Trump and no one in the world trusts America anymore. These were not the words of a talking head on MSNBC, Kate had been there, she’d felt it.

Had she been shot at?

“We all have.”

And it soon became clear Kate was part of the fraternity, of journalists.

Recently she was in the Congo. She’s not an adrenaline junkie, she just needs to tell these stories, people need to know them.

And I’m standing there talking to her knowing she can’t get rich, but her life is richer than most of the people who are.

And I asked her what was going on.

Kate said it was about resources, that’s what everybody in the world is fighting for. That Trump’s troops made sure the oil flowed, he was in the process of making a deal with Chevron for its distribution.

And I can’t stop talking to Kate. You see most people are uninformed or unable to tolerate contrary opinions. Then, there are facts. She’s talking about Erdogan’s movement of Turks into this tiny strip, with little infrastructure. She showed me pictures of the Americans leaving, with their tails between their legs. But somehow, it’s all about abortion, identity politics, anything but the real issues.

Now thereafter I went in search of Coke. As in Coca-Cola, caffeine-free, the diet iteration.

I eventually found it in the IGA.

And now I’m back in my hotel room contemplating.

One thing I like about my heavy schedule is the excitement of interaction. As I like to say, walk out the front door and you have no idea what will happen.

And the truth is to a great degree the media is a disinformation society. I’m not talking about Fox and fake, I’m talking about perspective and holes. Unless you have boots on the ground, unless you’ve been there, oftentimes you don’t know. Kinda like the reporters pontificating on what the people want without knowing them.

Everybody’s got a story, and I want to know it.

What are you willing to risk?

Kate doesn’t want to die on the job, but fear won’t keep her from doing her job.

This is who she is.

Who are you?

“Sand In My Shoes”

Spotify

YouTube

P.S. After our first date, I told Felice I was listening to “Sand In My Shoes,” I told her “I wanna see you again.”

“And Tommy doesn’t know what day it is…”

Actually, it’s Monday morning, 9:32 AM. Which is pretty strange, since I left L.A. on Saturday.

I flew Qantas. Didn’t Rain Man say it never had a crash? Well, I think since then they have, but if you think your aircraft is gonna crash, you probably shouldn’t fly to begin with. They say it’s the lack of control. I feel that when I’m not behind the wheel. Felice and I were driving, actually she was driving, to Glacier Point in Yosemite, and if you miss a turn, good luck, I was pumping the imaginary brakes, but on an airplane, you’ve got to have faith, even if George Michael himself is gone.

It was an A380. One of those double-decked thingys. They’re not gonna make any more. Turns out the flying paradigm has shifted, now it’s about shorter flights with smaller, more fuel-efficient aircraft. And now they’ve got these long-range 787s… As for the 737 Max, it’s not the MCAS that concerns me, it’s the whole concept. Rather than compete with Airbus’s new plane, Boeing gussied up an old one, the 737 launched in the sixties, when there weren’t even jetways at most airports. So, the Max had to fit engines on wings with a low height and then came up with software to accommodate the lack of balance…this is kinda like making digital vinyl records. Sometimes you’ve got to throw out the old to get started with the new. Or, as Dylan put it, “you better start swimming or you’ll sink like a stone.” The times are certainly changing, but what’s weird is to a great degree they’re changing back, with populism reigning, a return to what once was that can never be regained, but that does not stop people from believing they can return to an era that wasn’t that good to begin with.

So they gave you pajamas. I shit you not. Was there going to be a rush on the bathroom, for changing?

At first I finished Elton’s biography “Me.” Wherein the music is barely mentioned, it’s all about interior dialogue and experiences, a revelatory music bio. Should you read it if you don’t like, care or know Elton? Probably not. But if you want to know what it’s like to be one of the biggest stars in the world… What’s amazing is how many people Elton knows and stays in touch with, at least when he wasn’t isolated in his bedroom on a coke binge. He talked to Ingrid Sischy every day! But at this point, most people probably have no idea who Ingrid was. But if you lived through the seventies, when Warhol still had impact… Think about that, a visual artist ruling the cultural world. Warhol sold out upfront, which constantly left you guessing, was it art or a joke, was it commerce or conception? That’s back when art was all about challenging perceptions, before it became a second-class citizen all about scrapping for cash. Were Brillo boxes art? Are Marvel movies art? One thing’s for sure, Marvel movies are all about the money, I mean has there ever been a comic book that has been anointed as great, key to the cultural fabric? Oh, I’m not talking about today’s graphic novels…the whole world has gone lowbrow, and the highbrows are so out of touch that they should be ignored. And where does this leave us? With no direction home.

So they had a lot of good movies on the plane. I wanted to watch “Booksmart” and “Yesterday,” but I never got to them, I was too busy reading. After I finished “Me,” I turned to Gary Shteyngart’s 2002 novel, “The Russian Debutante’s Handbook,” written before social media, when everybody decided they were a winner. Used to be you graduated from college and then…who knows? You tried to find yourself, get loaded, have sex, try to identify yourself before you were tied to kids, a mortgage and car payments. The funny thing about “The Russian Debutante’s Handbook,” is the interior dialogue is much more intriguing than today’s art. You know, doubts, dreams, reflections on one’s parents, your upbringing, where you fit in the social structure… All of this has been wiped clean. In music, you have to boast or blast. In movies the characters aren’t even real. But there is hope in television, for now anyway.

So I changed into my pajamas and slept quite well. And when I woke up it was only forty five minutes till touchdown. So I went to the bathroom to change and…there was a line. So I ended up changing under the covers. I mean I couldn’t wear my PJs into the airport!

But I’d missed the instructions. And when I got to the machines, I didn’t know whether to use them or not. And just when I was ready to pull my passport, voila!, I got a ticket, allowing me to avoid the line.

Don met me and we got into his Audi and he told me how he was eager to get a Tesla. He talked about the acceleration. Yup, the upper middle class are the trendsetters in this case, and none of them are going back to gasoline cars. But what’s really weird is in Australia they drive on the wrong side of the road. I know, I know, it’s the right, but how come we can’t all get on the same page here? I guess for the same reason the U.S. never adopted the metric system, even though Canada did. It’s easy, like taking candy, from a baby. And we could switch overnight in the States but somehow that would be unpatriotic, we’d be sacrificing our freedom, to be ignorant, left behind. What kind of country do we now live in where up is down and vice versa? One in which the underclass is so far behind it has contempt for the educated and successful. Income inequality has consequences, but the rich don’t want to suffer, they believe they’ve earned their cash, as if they could have made it without customers, i.e. the hoi polloi.

So we’re driving away from Sydney, to Cronulla Beach.

You see it’s spring here. Which is so weird, having exited L.A. in the fall. You can feel the rebirth, even though there was a Christmas tree in the airport. But I guess they didn’t have snow in Jerusalem.

You feel the optimism, even though statistically more people commit suicide in the spring. Then again, what do we have to live for anymore? Art, baby. And sex. And art that explains sex. It’s all about the human condition, but we’re denying that.

So I’m here for Australian Music Week. Doing interviews, doing press.

Funny how you can go to sleep in one time zone, and then wake up halfway across the world. Where rugby and cricket supersede the NFL and MLB. But where football/soccer is making inroads, just like back home. Yup, just you wait, we’re all gonna be kicking the ball soon, it’s just a matter of time.

But no one thinks the future will ever come. Even worse, in the States, everyone wants to be inoculated against its consequences…I can’t lose my job, my standard of living… But just like yesterday’s music does not top the chart today, things change, and you’ve got to change with them or fall behind to your detriment.

Then again, learning, education, has a stain on it in America. You see it generates elites, who think they know more, who think they are better than the rest.

Only in America can bettering yourself be seen as a detriment.

Now I’m a big supporter of a social safety net, no one should starve, everyone should have a roof over their head. But the truth is while you’re busy denigrating the achievers, you’re falling farther behind.

How did this turn into a political screed?

I guess in an era of social media backlash, you can cower, protest that you are not worthy and get out of the way or…

There are more ways to get ahead than jumping through hoops. Believe me, I’m not in a hotel room overlooking the beach because I’m a lawyer, my SATs have got nothing to do with it, baby.

The truth is I went down the road less taken. Which most people are unwilling to do. I ain’t got no kids, I sacrificed. But that’s the only way to get to the unknown, to the pot of gold, which in many cases isn’t even cash.

You get there via art, via music.

There’s no degree that will get you there, you fly by your wits.

But the payoff… People don’t do it for the money, they do it for the experience, the learning. Then again, in a culture where cash is put first, it’s all gone to hell.

Keep your eyes open. Figure out how to go your own way, and not the one Lindsey Buckingham was singing about.

As Jim Carroll put it, “I’m just a constant warning to take the other direction.”

It’s those that do who change this world. Money has no chance against art, it’s all about hearts and minds, baby.

And as Bon Scott so famously sang…

“It’s a long way to the top if you wanna rock n’ roll.”

There are two music businesses. The one you see in the media and the one that flies under the radar. You know everything about what Is happening with today’s stars, shenanigans are part of the sale, with it so hard to reach anybody these days, they appear everywhere, just so you’ll know their name, even if you’ve never heard their music.

We saw this once before. In the sixties. With AM and FM. FM was adventurous, played extended cuts, the new and different, it was fully alive with players who thought their music was enough. AM was about safety, pleasing all palates.

And when it was all united on FM by Lee Abrams it had a historic run and then cratered, when disco came along and killed it, or at least put a dent in it. Disco was new and different. And the funny thing is today disco has survived more than rock, there are disco beats everywhere.

And then MTV made it a monoculture. You were either on the channel or not. And if you were, you were making more money than anybody in the history of the music business, you could sell and tour all over the world as overpriced CDs flew out of the bins.

Until the internet came along and blew it all apart. Suddenly we had choice. And there were those who adopted the new systems and those who did not. Hip-hop embraced the internet ethos, they saw giving it away for free as a road to success. Rockers still rail at the net, last night Lucinda was singing the praises of albums, after referencing Sheryl Crow’s decision not to make anymore. Sheryl is right. She had a brief moment of sunshine on her new LP, and then it all disappeared, it’s almost like it never came out. The key is to be in the marketplace on a regular basis today.

But not yesterday.

And “Car Wheels On A Gravel Road” was recorded yesterday, released in 1998, when recordings still resulted in revenue, when a hungry audience ate up CDs, when the scene was comprehensible.

It’s not comprehensible anymore.

You can be exposed to the tsunami of media and feel completely out of it and then…

You go to a Lucinda Williams show and feel superior, knowing this is where it’s really at, this is the epicenter, this is the sound, the music that hooked you in the first place.

Not that there were any youngsters there. As a matter of fact, the Orpheum was filled with boomers, who remember when. And these were fans, there was no in-between songs talking, not even many smartphones videoing and taking pictures, they were relishing the experience, being in a hall with nothing but the sound.

Oh, Lucinda had a backdrop, but the show would have been just as effective without it. How long has it been since the music has been enough? When it sounded live, not programmed, when the people on stage were just as alive as you in the audience, no different except they’d taken the road more challenging, with no guarantees.

Lucinda talked a lot about her upbringing. The mentally ill mother. The incessant travel. She was so honest, your eyes bugged out.

Now to be honest, I am not the biggest Lucinda Williams fan. I met her once backstage at Marc Cohn show back in the early nineties, when she was cruising on success of her legendary Rough Trade record, and if you listen to it you’ll know why it is, legendary that is, but she was struggling to make another album. She needed to get it right. Steve Earle said it was just a record, but she didn’t agree. Lucinda Williams is not a pushover, she’s got a backbone, she’s stood up to the men blocking her way again and again.

But Lisa is a huge Lucinda fan, and when it was announced Williams was going on the road to perform the entire “Car Wheels On A Gravel Road” on its twentieth anniversary, she sent out an e-mail blast asking all of us if we wanted to go. I told her I could miss it, at this point in my life, I can miss anything, but she got a ticket for me and we went last night and I’m glad I did, it renewed my faith in music, made me feel I was with it as opposed to out of it.

It’s just a small band, like the Beatles, if the songs are good enough you don’t need all the trimmings, they’re superfluous.

Not that Lucinda Williams sounds anything like the Beatles, but there was a guitar, a bass, drums and her on and off strumming.

Now I decided to prepare for this show. Over the weekend I listened to “Car Wheels” over and over again. And the best place is in the car, because suddenly you’re taken away from this news-infested world, you’re just in a cocoon, you and this sound.

So I was ready.

Of course I knew certain songs well, like the title track and “Joy.” I’ve seen Lucinda multiple times, but she’s always been an opening act, last night she was the headliner.

So the evening opened with a video of her family packing up and moving from the States for a year in Mexico City. You see Lucinda as a teenager, and you instantly remember that era, when our lives were in front of us instead of behind us. Lucinda’s now 66, just like me. You always think of musicians/celebrities as being older than you until they’re suddenly younger than you, but Lucinda saw the world from my exact vantage point.

But we lived different lives.

Yet again, they were similar.

I wandered for two years after college, but I felt the urge to get back on track, even though you could live on minimum wage back then, I certainly did.

Lucinda went to Texas, she played, she had boyfriends, she lived her life, she drank. When she said the late seventies were all about drinking, I howled, I certainly lived that life!

I take off my watch and earrings
My bracelets and everything
Lie on my back and moan at the ceiling
Oh my baby

There’s more truth in that verse than anything on the hit parade, it’s honest, it’s real, you can relate.
That’s from the opening cut on the album, “Right In Time.”
But it was my favorite, the title cut, next.

Sittin’ in the kitchen, a house in Macon
Loretta’s singing on the radio
Smell of coffee, eggs and bacon

It’s about Lucinda’s youth, at least that’s what she told us. All about her father being a poet, apologizing after he heard her sing it at the Bluebird.

Yup, every song had a story.

And they were all told in this laconic southern style, not fast like a New Yorker. This is the speech style the elites consider ignorant, but Lucinda is not. If you hung in there, hooked into her rhythm, she always got to the point. It was like reading a southern novel, not about someone making it, but living her life.

The best story concerned “Metal Firecracker.”

Once we rode together
In a metal firecracker
You told me I was your queen
You told me I was your biker
You told me I was your everything
Once I was in your blood
And you were obsessed with me
You wanted to paint my picture
You wanted to undress me
You wanted to see me in your future

That’s a true story. He was a replacement bass player. They fell in love on the metal firecracker, what he called the bus. He was her soulmate. Only one problem, she was living with another guy. Who she told when they hit New York. He promptly destroyed the hotel room, and when the tour was over the bass player told Lucinda she didn’t fit his “agenda.”

WHERE DID THAT LEAVE HER? WHERE DOES THAT LEAVE US?

Some people don’t live their lives, they do what they’re told, color inside in the lines, afraid to take a risk. That’s why we look up to artists, they take chances we won’t, they’re truer to life, they come back and tell us what they saw.

Last night Lucinda told us what she saw. Clive, who loved to take road trips, cook, drink…he’s dead now. A lot of them didn’t make it. You see when you test the limits without a net not everybody survives.

And we’ve got all the women telling us what it’s like to work in the office, to be in business, but I can’t relate. That’s a giant game. Which the men play too, but with even less wisdom. But the main show is really the sideshow. You listen to Lucinda Williams and it makes you want to put on your jeans, throw out your razor, get behind the wheel and see what you encounter, not worried about what you left behind.

This was an adoring audience. Giving Lucinda time to stretch out. She evidenced no charisma, the charisma was in the songs. Played in that style of rock blended with Texas, you know with guitars with few treatments, but with tons of wail.

That’s what life is about, wailing. It’s what we all want to do. Which is why we were addicted to this music to begin with. We boomers remember when you didn’t take endorsements, when your credibility was everything, when you were channeling truth.

And just when you think that’s a dead paradigm, you go to see Lucinda Williams. Everybody should buy “Car Wheels On A Gravel Road,” play it three or four times and go to see Lucinda play it and tell her stories. Their ears will be opened, and their eyes. They will see there is hope, that music can regain its title as the most vibrant art form. When rock music is done right, IT’S LIFE ITSELF!