At first I ignored it, figuring it was just hype for his new movie and LP. Yup, Robbie’s selling something, and when the tsunami of hype starts, I tune out.

Now Robbie Robertson can’t sing. Oh, everybody can sing, and his vocal is perfect for his composition “Broken Arrow,” which is more about emotion and feel than perfection, Rod Stewart’s cover doesn’t come close, but there was a reason the songs were sung by Rick, Levon and Richard in the Band.

I don’t understand why they had to stop working together. Then again, the Band albums got progressively worse, certainly after “Stage Fright,” although the double live LP “Rock Of Ages” was great, especially with the horns. But like Steely Dan, the band could have continued to make records without going on the road, after breaking up, nobody equaled what came before.

I won’t get into the politics, the wars, the competing books, what we’re truly left with is the music. Most famously “The Weight.”

Now my favorite cut is “King Harvest (Has Surely Come).” The first time I heard it was in Brad Weston’s playroom, we had identical split-levels in the development. Brad told me I had to hear this one track, not the whole album, just this one cut, and he dropped the needle and…

Dry summer, then comes fall
Which I depend on most of all

This was not the 1960s, all shiny and mechanized, this was a guy living off the land, dependent upon Mother Nature, from seemingly the last century.

And at this late date, I love “Look Out Cleveland” and “Rag Mama Rag” from the second LP, which I think is the best, I can even listen to their take on “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” but I push the button whenever Joan Baez’s version comes on the radio.

And I’m a huge fan of “Stage Fright,” which is seen as second-tier, but not by me, maybe it’s the Todd Rundgren engineering. The killer is “The W.S.Walcott Medicine Show.”

There’ll be saints and sinners, you’ll see losers and winners
All kinds of people you might want to know

Actually, no. Today no one wants to know anybody not from their class. Losers are pooh-poohed, hell, look at the homeless situation.

But the truth is life is only about people, they’re all that counts. Your possessions won’t keep you warm at night. And one thing about people is they’ll surprise you, even the ones you think you know, but if you’re open to adventure you’ll be wowed and excited on a regular basis, that’s why you travel.

To Hawaii, the Congo, Japan, Jamaica, even Venice Beach in this video.

The rendition is not that memorable, but the video is. You’ve got Ringo, you’ve got Robbie, but the rest are a surprise.

Now the first thing you notice is Robbie is playing a brand new Stratocaster, in a world where old is better, you never see a star playing a brand new axe. Even better is the tone, it’s live, it’s not fed through studio sweeteners, it’s a guitar, it’s the sound that kicks you in the gut in live shows.

And I’ve never seen Marcus King live, but his vocal didn’t quite resonate, but it was cool to see him.

But not as much as Roberto Luti in Livorno, Italy. THEY’VE GOT ROCK AND ROLL IN ITALY? Man, if you didn’t see the credit, you’d think this guy was picking down in the delta.

Then Larkin Poe at Venice Beach? Hell, I’ve heard their name a zillion times, but have never heard them or seen them, I didn’t even know it was two women, now I’ve got to check them out.

And I don’t want to spoil it. But I will say that Lukas Nelson was the highlight for me, as well as the women singing in Trenchtown.

You start to smile, you’re intrigued, you come to believe music does link us all together, that it’s an alternative world from the politics dominating the discussion today. Somehow everybody got the message, everybody has commonality, everybody’s on the same page.

You almost feel like it’s the sixties again.

But that was fifty years ago.

Majordomo of the Zappa Trust, son of Frank and Gail (as they told him to call them from birth), TV show host, writer, entrepreneur, Ahmet Zappa grew up by the Utility Muffin Research Kitchen, he has stories to tell.

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It’s on Netflix. I just finished watching it.

Wasn’t gonna watch it, but then I started getting e-mail and texts about it, and last night while Felice was taking a shower I started it and got hooked.

Now if this was 1970, the documentary would only play in movie theatres. We’d line up to go, it’d be a tribal rite. You were either on the bus or off the bus, and you wanted to be on it.

But today no one goes by bus except for the disadvantaged. It’s like the sixties are only a memory. But this documentary brings them back.

The war. Started off as a rumor. We just had “advisors” there. And “there” was so far away. China was closed, Australia wasn’t advertising, Americans went to Europe, but if you flew east, you were positively exotic, because no one did, at least no one I ever encountered. The only reason to fly east was to get your ass shot off in Vietnam, which eventually we saw in black and white every night on the TV screen.

At first we were gonna win the war, after all we were America! And then some on the left started to say we never would and that the Domino Theory was hogwash. And then you started to approach eighteen and got scared. Would I have to go?

They’d find you, you couldn’t escape. You could get a deferment, like Arlo Guthrie, but most of us were not hippies, we were gonna qualify and we were positively freaked.

And the body count kept getting higher. And then there were protests.

The youth were all on the same side. The news referred to it as a “youthquake.” Sure, some areas caught on later rather than sooner, but the baby boomers, the population bulge, decided to question norms and deviate from them if they found them unworthy, and with music as the grease, we pushed ahead.

No one was a Republican. And if they were, you knew who they were. And it was not about being a Republican because you were rich, nobody was that rich. The Republican Party represented what had come before, the Democratic Party was about pushing ahead. It started in 1960 with JFK, and when LBJ started to put on the brakes, he encountered blowback. LBJ did so much good, but he couldn’t get us out of Vietnam. And then Nixon and Kissinger kept saying they were pulling back while just the opposite was true, kids were being killed day after day.

Let’s make it simple. You can either vote for the people who are gonna send you to Vietnam…

Or not.

Then again, you had to be twenty one to vote. You could die in Vietnam before that, the draft age being 18.

And when Mick Jagger sings “I shouted out, Who killed the Kennedys?” today, there’s no darkness, no reflection, it’s just entertainment, but it didn’t used to be. In the sixties they killed the leaders, today we kill the hoi polloi. Come on, admit it, when you’re invited to a mass gathering, when you go to an open-air concert in a non-traditional space, it crosses your mind, “I could die here.”

So they organize the Woodstock festival to make money. But people came for the music. And at the time, it was the bill of all bills, no show had featured so many stars, and this woke up all the fans and they made a pilgrimage to Bethel, New York. It’d kinda be like having a videogame festival outdoors today, based on the most popular multiplayer game, people have no idea how many people are hooked, then again, you play inside.

Back then we went outdoors on a regular basis.

No one is fat in this documentary. What is it, the fructose, the additives, the lazy lifestyle? I don’t know, but that was long ago, and in this footage the times look glorious.

Now you can only do something like this once. You can only push the envelope once. Like Radiohead’s “In Rainbows” promotion. Once people have seen the trick, it can’t be replicated. And today’s music festivals are about anything but the music, they sell tickets before the lineup is even announced. It’s not so much who’s on stage, but who’s in the audience.

But back then, we were all in it together. There was no VIP. Everybody was equal. Kids didn’t judge hippies, they wanted to be one! That was the freedom they were yearning for, and the exploration. You wanted to be all you could be, as opposed to studying economics so you could work at the bank. Who in the hell would want to work at a bank? As for the money…no one we knew, almost no one at all, was a millionaire. Society was much more homogenous. And you could make it on minimum wage.

It’s fascinating to see how word about the festival was spread through alternative newspapers. Those were the internet of their day. Radio was Twitter. There was no Facebook or Instagram, self-promotion was not lionized, you had no thought of becoming a business, first and foremost you were a person.

And the way everybody talked to each other, helped each other…today we judge people and exclude them.

Now I’m not saying everything was better in the sixties, there was poverty and racism but there was hope and a can-do spirit. As for Obama running on hope, wasn’t that a joke. And anybody proposing something new is criticized. We can’t have Medicare for All, the public won’t go for it! It’s like we’re going backwards, we’re isolating our country from the world, people want to go back to what once was as opposed to what can be.

But that can’t happen. And if it did, people wouldn’t like it. They’d lose their conveniences and just be a face in the crowd, if you were special back then it was based on your personality, not your clothing or your ride.

Oh, we’ve strayed so far from the garden.

And we’re never going back there.

But when you watch the footage of Crosby, Stills & Nash performing “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes,” you tingle.

Do you know what it was like to hear this “wooden music”? These were people on stage, evidencing their humanity, the tunes weren’t made by machines without melody.

It’s getting to the point where there’s no fun anymore. Everybody feels powerless, everybody is greedy, they and their family come first.

But back then Sly wanted to take us higher. If we believed in the music our lives were complete. In 1976 Don Henley sang “we haven’t had that spirit here since 1969.” Now we’ve gone even further off course. But it’s those acts from the sixties and seventies who are still alive who sell out stadiums, who fill every seat. Sure, it was about the money, but first and foremost it was about music.

Back at Woodstock they let the music set them free.

You’ll feel the same way when you watch this documentary.

“Woodstock: Three Days That Defined A Generation”

Let me tell you how I do this.

I work on inspiration. And when it comes, the words flow out of me, and that’s when it’s best. I know when I do something great, which is difficult to achieve, a mountain I am always trying to climb, if anybody tells you they don’t know what is great, chances are they are not a great artist.

I couldn’t write yesterday. I was booked all day. I had a podcast and then the nutritionist and another doctor and then I had to drive downtown for dinner and a gig. Actually, in stop and go traffic on the 10, I was listening to Trump in New Mexico, on Fox. I was inspired to write then too. Because if you only listen to Trump, he’s pretty convincing. And it’s definitely not boilerplate, he’s making it up as he goes, so you don’t get bored. But needless to say, I can’t write in my car.

Dinner was interesting. The manager of Slipknot and a guy who runs rock for Apple. We ultimately discussed politics, that’s where the conversation goes these days. We were brought together by Jason Flom, to see his act Counterfeit at the Moroccan Lounge. We actually got there ten minutes late, service at the restaurant was slow. But from the moment I arrived, I got it. You know right away. First it was the melody, the old tracks I’d listened to online were more noise, more punk. And the frontman was a good one. And the girls adored him. The new album was cut by Rob Cavallo. Can rock make a comeback? That’s what’s Flom’s fighting for.

And after discussing skiing with the aforementioned manager in his Land Cruiser, I drove home. But the map app said to take the 110 to the 10 to the 405. I’d been planning on stopping at the Shell station on Van Nuys Boulevard, but suddenly I wasn’t going that way. And I really had to pee. So I told myself I’d fill up tomorrow, i.e. today, but then I remembered my radio show so I stopped at the 76 in Bel-Air, which is overpriced, but I had no choice. And after reading Mike Isaac’s book on Uber, I retired, and when I woke up Amazon had gone CD quality. I was inspired to write something, but I did not have the time. How could Amazon catch Spotify and Apple flat-footed? Spotify is so busy trying to make the numbers work, primarily with non-music content, that they stopped pushing the envelope. As for Apple, it’s a me-too company in music, there is no innovation. And now Amazon is offering an upgrade for much less than Tidal and Deezer, absolutely killing Tidal. Amazon is the sleeper, it’s always the sleeper. Give ’em time and they’ll catch up and then surpass you. Apple ceded voice to Amazon, Siri was first, Alexa now dominates.

So I drove to the shrink and Howard was going on about paying your dues, staying in school, hard work paying dividends.

And when I got back at 12:20 I had to answer the urgent e-mail and call to schedule some appointments and by time I got ready to write about Amazon’s new music tier, I couldn’t, like I said, I do it on inspiration, and I wasn’t, inspired that is.

And I thought if I wrote about Ric Ocasek at all, it would be Wednesday, because I had to go do my radio show in Hollywood and I have dinner at 7:15.

But suddenly, I was inspired. I found an entry point. And when I turned on the music (Deezer HiFi actually), I was astounded how good it sounded, and I got into a trance, listening and writing, which is what I like to do most.

But suddenly, the clock was ticking. I looked up at the corner of my Mac, I was gonna have to leave to do my radio show. That’s live, I cannot be late.

So I’m writing and I think there are four dead Ramones, but wanting to make sure, I do a quick Safari search. And whether it was misinformation or I read the page wrong it looked like maybe one Ramone was still alive, I told myself I’d check in the rewrite.

Now I reread/rewrite twice. I change almost nothing, I’ll explain why sometime, but I’ve learned if I change anything, I ruin it, I’m just looking for obvious mistakes, lack of a word, a misspelling, and then…

I realize I probably can’t do the second reread. I’m up against a hard deadline. I ultimately rush through it.

And since I’ve got dinner at 7:15 in Brentwood, I’ve got to send this Ric Ocasek missive before I leave for the radio show, otherwise I won’t have a short window to write about Amazon.

Now it’s getting really late, the software is running slowly. I’m running on sheer adrenaline. I didn’t have time to check the Ramones again and…

I was wrong.

Now I wouldn’t e-mail someone about this little mistake, but I do admit, I would judge someone if they made this mistake, so when I got to SiriusXM and I picked up my phone, my heart sank, I’d been bitten by the deadline.

And I was gonna let it slide, but the corrections kept pouring in.

So I thought of writing this.

But then I wouldn’t be able to write about Amazon.

And right now I’m rushing because I have to make dinner!