The oracle from St. Louis, Sarah Kendzior is the author of the bestselling books “The View From Flyover Country” and “Hiding in Plain Sight.” You can see her in bits and pieces on MSNBC and Seth Meyers, but here we go deep, covering her life story, tales of self-publishing, fear of selling out to the man and her love of metal music. For a fresh and honest take on today’s political landscape, Sarah Kendzior is the one.
He must’ve had a bad case of something.
Music has turned into news. There’s no filter, no trusted authority. There’s an endless firehose of material and no one can be trusted to separate the noteworthy from that which should be ignored.
But that’s not the way it used to be.
It was very simple…did you have a record deal?
I’m not talking about an indie. That’ll take your rights and give you bupkes. I’m talking about one of the well known majors, or one of their divisions. Who didn’t sign you for a single, but an album. Who promoted you as if you were gonna break through. Who signed you for five records, even if they only put out two, but you got a good push, like Moon Martin.
He got five. That’s how many albums John David “Moon” Martin had on Capitol. I bought three of them.
Now there was a scene in Los Angeles. In the mid-seventies it was punk in New York, but in the late seventies it was new wave in Los Angeles. And Moon Martin was considered new wave.
Although you could tell he was not. As in he wasn’t new. It’s hard to hide age. Even though everybody in the public eye lies about it. Yup, that record executive, that act, they’re perceived to be young when they’re old. And the truth is they’re old because that’s how long it takes to make it. The young phenoms are often products of the system, the idolmakers, whereas those who stick tend to have been kicked around a bit, took time to get their footing before they broke through, even though they wanted it more than the young phenoms, it’s all they ever wanted.
So if you go to Moon’s Wikipedia page, he was born in 1950.
But if you read some of the obits, he was born in 1945. Which makes complete sense. If for no other reason than his hair was prematurely gray nearly instantly. And there’s no way he could have played with Hendrix and Joplin if he was only 20, they died in 1970.
But Martin did.
Once again, there was not only a clear line between who was worth paying attention to, you either were a musician or you were not. If you weren’t, you couldn’t survive. You couldn’t play in cover bands, you couldn’t move to Los Angeles and scrap your way up.
Moon Martin was from Oklahoma. A state many had never been to, still haven’t been to, which we knew as the home of Leon Russell and his posse. Other than that…the state sat above Texas and had oil and..?
It was a bigger country back then. But a smaller world, because there was less in it.
So, Moon Martin moves to Los Angeles with his band Southwind. Not that I ever heard of it. He plays with Linda Ronstadt and hangs with Glenn Frey and then he got his deal. And when the album came out, the first, “Shots From a Cold Nightmare,” in ’78, we knew about it, because the rock press was still a thing, and he got coverage in the “Los Angeles Times,” before they cut the newshole down so small most people gave up their subscriptions.
And the truth is you saw Moon around town.
Music didn’t dominate bedrooms, it dominated clubs. And you went. Because staying home was anathema. Moon was a cut above, because he had his aforementioned record deal, he was a nascent star.
And then came “Bad Case of Loving You.”
By this time we’d already moved on to the second album, “Escape From Domination,” “Rolene” was heard on KROQ, back when that was a free form station, before the ROQ of the 80s, before the death of rock and the decimation of the station this year.
But at this point, Moon Martin was not famous for the Robert Palmer cover, but the Willy DeVille covers. DeVille also had a deal with Capitol, but he was from New York, and anything but earthy, it looked like the daylight would kill him, although I did see him once during the afternoon at the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre, but he was better at the Whisky, his natural environment. DeVille covered “Cadillac Walk” back in ’77, which is one of the reasons I bought “Shots From a Cold Nightmare,” I was a big fan of DeVille, and if you wrote his most famous song, you were worth paying attention to.
As for Robert Palmer… I’d already moved on. I started with “Pressure Drop,” with the delectable “Give Me An Inch,” and went back to the debut, “Sneakin’ Sally Through the Alley,” with its killer opening medley, but “Some People Can Do What They Like” disappointed me.
It was the fifth Robert Palmer LP that contained “Bad Case of Loving You,” upon which Palmer, or most likely his record company, added “(Doctor, Doctor)” to make sure the audience knew this was the track and album to buy.
This was 1979. Six years and three albums before “Riptide” and “Addicted to Love.” “Bad Case of Loving You (Doctor, Doctor)” was a radio hit. And it got played, all the time on AOR stations, you see this was before Palmer was seen as Mr. Suave, the cut was a blistering runaway rock track and it got the attention it deserved.
Actually, Moon Martin got a bit of MTV exposure, with 1982’s “X-Ray Vision,” but this was before Duran Duran, before everybody had the channel in their home, when pre-eighties acts could get a shot, and although it was cool to see him there, most people will never remember.
And then the Capitol deal ended. But we did not forget him. He had that major label record deal!
The last time I saw Moon Martin was probably about fifteen years ago, he was flying back from Canadian Music Week on the same plane. I did not go up to talk to him, he did not project airs, but he was on a level above me, he’d played in the rarefied world of rock stars.
Moon Martin died. TWO WEEKS AGO!
I just found out yesterday. There was no obit in the “Los Angeles Times,” no big story I saw anywhere. Just this tidbit, whose thread I followed back to obituaries.
They said Moon lived comfortably on his royalties. Can one big hit deliver that much cash?
Well, you got paid more in the old days. But these days, having written a classic rock cut, how much money could you make?
I don’t know.
I don’t know how he died.
All I know is Moon Martin sold his soul to rock and roll. He followed the music to the very last note. He died with his guitar strap on. It wasn’t a fling, something he did before law school. He had no desire to work at the bank. (Although let’s not forget Harry Nilsson was a teller!) It was all music, all the time.
That’s my generation, we got bitten by the rock and roll bug and could not let go.
It’s my brethren who are buying all those tickets to the classic rock shows. They’re not just reliving their youth, this is their identity!
And then there are those who dedicated their entire lives to the sound. Musicians. And people on the other side of the fence. For every famous manager you’d be stunned how many are starving, or people who once had a gig at the label… They can’t let go, they can’t leave the circus. They’re in it til they die.
Like Moon Martin.
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“The American ideology, on the left and the right, that props up inequality”
The problem is us.
This is the most important article you will read this week, assuming you read it at all. If I sent it to you personally, if you were the only one getting it, I know you’d at least skim it. But since this is a mailing list, one to many, you can avoid taking the time to read this article, but you shouldn’t.
Now the nature of writing anything about politics is those on the right come out in force to tell you you’re wrong. The left tends to sit somnambulantly knowing it is right, therefore not having to act. This is wrong. But I focus on the left because it is not as right as it believes it is.
The above link takes you to a review of Thomas Piketty’s new book “Capital and Ideology.” That’s right, the French economist whose previous book was the definitive statement on income inequality.
You see the left is self-righteous, to the point of obfuscation, it’s got no idea what is really going on in this country. And it’s simple, globalization has left many behind. We live in a country of haves and have-nots, and the haves in the Democratic Party, who earned their wealth, have contempt for the less advantaged, if they think of them at all.
“‘Improving the lot of the disadvantaged ceased to be its (the Democratic Party) main focus. Instead, it turned its attention primarily to serving the interests of the winners in the educational competition.’ By 2016, according to post-election surveys that Piketty analyzes in depth and across several countries, the Democrats were the party of not just the highly educated but even the highly paid.”
And the consequence of this?
“…Piketty identifies the turn toward identitarian politics as a direct consequence of the left-wing parties’ conversion to market capitalism. ‘The disadvantaged classes felt abandoned by the social-democratic parties (in the broadest sense) and this sense of abandonment provided fertile ground for anti-immigrant rhetoric and nativist ideologies to take root.'”
But the lambasting of Democrats goes further:
“Beginning with Bill ‘The era of big government is over’ Clinton, party leaders actively repudiated what they saw as an embarrassing legacy of industrial unions, welfare programs and redistribution. Having repeated for decades that public policy must bow to the iron laws of economics, the Democrats ‘remain unable even today to perceive the alternatives to the situation they themselves created.'”
It gets even worse, and I know I’m quoting a lot of the article, but there’s so much genius in it:
“The result is that economic elites in the United States have their choice of two party ideologies: one favoring educational achievement and rationality, the other entrepreneurialism and wealth. Both assume the primacy of competitive markets and justify their outcomes as the natural workings of a meritocratic system. Compared with earlier belief systems that conferred advantages based on birth or race, this shared ideology of meritocracy has the distinct advantage of justifying inequality as a pure product of natural (market) forces operating on a presumed starting point (however fictional) of equal opportunity.”
And the conclusion:
“…if redistribution between the rich and poor is ruled out…then it is all but inevitable that political conflict will focus on the one area in which nation-states are still free to act, namely, defining and controlling their borders.’ And so, in the United States, a pro-market party that claims to defend rural, white, Christian America faces off against a pro-market party that embraces the image of a diverse, cosmopolitan, urban America. To the half of the population that has known only stagnant incomes and increasing income insecurity, one party offers modestly beneficial economic policies bestowed by a technocratic elite; the other promises to restore their faded glory by winning trade wars and expelling immigrants.”
So, the Democrats have become the Republicans without even realizing it. They pulled themselves up by their bootstraps, got a good education, made it as a professional or business person and then conferred these same advantages squared upon their progeny. Meanwhile, the traditional blue collar Democrats were left out, even worse their unions were busted and their jobs shipped overseas and they were told it was the market’s fault, no one took responsibility.
Now the truth is that Biden and the DNC are on the wrong side of this. Sanders and Warren were on the right side. But Biden got the votes. Is it because only the aged and entitled vote? Possibly. Or is it that everybody else is so disillusioned they don’t even bother to vote, if they’re paying attention at all. Bezos is on the way to becoming a trillionaire, and the rank and file lost their jobs. It can’t be their fault, maybe it’s China’s? Or the immigrants stealing their jobs. Trump is speaking to these constituents, the left is just telling them they know better and are less bad than the Republicans and they need to be trusted…does anybody trust a politician anymore?
In other words, the problems in America today are much deeper than Trump. He won because he tapped into them. People were sick of a two-faced overeducated Clinton who didn’t seem to benefit them, as Hillary and her husband became millionaires.
Oh, don’t point to egregious behavior on the right. As stated above, being an entrepreneur and becoming rich is the ethos of the right! And it’s all about perception. And the perception is Democrats don’t care about working people. But it’s even worse, Democrats don’t care about struggling college graduates either. Biden, the man from Delaware, the home of the corporation, was pushed over the threshold and is now depending upon those corporations to get him elected. The funny thing is the people popped up more money for Sanders, who has boatloads of Twitter followers, who said you were entitled to health care and that the corporations were the bad guys.
But it’s got to be business as usual. The writers at the “New York Times” played the educational game, they’re friends with the rich and powerful, they don’t want to demote themselves to the hoi polloi.
And the news is laden with stories of Bernie Sanders putting a stake in his own heart. He just wouldn’t play the game. Hell, most people don’t even get a chance to play the game, who is speaking, who is even thinking about them?
Vote for Biden, I will, but it will only be the beginning. The vaunted Obama didn’t solve any of the above problems. If the rich get richer and the poor get poorer…WATCH OUT!
I told my shrink it was raw insanity. And he agreed. I’m looking for leadership, a way out. And there is none. Some are partying like it’s 1999 and the death rate in L.A. County keeps going up and am I supposed to stay home or go out or..?
Michael Bloomberg may have fumbled the nomination, but he resurrected “Businessweek.” A staid McGraw-Hill publication, in the wake of the last economic crisis, 2008, “Businessweek” was sold to Bloomberg and it got better! It could be the best pure business publication out there. If you have no time, subscribe to “Businessweek” and “The Week” and you’ll be caught up, even more than most people who say they follow the news.
Anyway, in this week’s magazine, “Businessweek” has the definitive statement on Covid-19, where we are, what is happening, and how we can get out of this mess.
David Rocke, a mathematician at UC Davis, says it’s all about game theory:
“The concept is that if you’re behind in a game – say, a presidential campaign – big, bold moves can make sense, even if there’s only a small chance they will pay off. If someone does stumble on a miracle cure for Covid-19, or the national economy somehow gets going by Election Day, then both Trump and the American people win. If the gambles fail, he’s no worse off because he was probably going to lose the election anyway. As far as the American people, they could wind up much worse off from his experiments. But if the president has a bad Election Day, that won’t be his problem anymore.”
In other words, it’s all about Trump, protecting his presidency, the penumbra is irrelevant, just noise. He’s betting that Covid-19 will fade, the economy will bounce back, and even if a few oldsters die, people will forget the crisis and vote for him. He’s throwing the long ball. The news media and the Democrats are grunting it out in the ground game, going for inches and yards, moving forward and then getting pushed back.
“There’s actually a fair chance that Trump’s bet will pay off. Let’s say the number of new cases continues to fall nationally, as it has in most of the world, because most people take precautions. Deaths remain elevated in nursing homes, prisons and crowded multigenerational housing, but the public regards that as an inevitable consequence of the pandemic and doesn’t blame Trump. Democrats come to be seen as silly hand-wringers, or worse, obstructionists who tried to kill the growth for political ends. Trump suddenly has a good shot at winning a second term.
Two points about that scenario. One, allowing more vulnerable people to die is a choice, not an inevitability. Two, there’s a risk that things will turn out much worse, with a second or third wave of infections that kills tens of thousands or more.”
The author of this article, Peter Coy, says that our failure in fighting Covid-19 has been one of
“imagination: an inability to grasp the magnitude of this disaster and the measures required to combat it.”
“By now we know what works. The pandemic-fighting strategy that was pioneered by China and applied successfully elsewhere is to get the rate of new infections low enough that you can stamp out fresh flare-ups through testing and tracing. If there are too many active infections, though, testers and tracers won’t be able to keep up. They’d be fighting a brushfire with a water pistol.”
The U.S. doesn’t want to spend the money, on testing, or employing citizens to do contact tracing, but according to NYU economist Paul Romer:
“‘To control this pandemic, and any future pandemic, the U.S. should make the investment necessary to test people every two weeks, which would mean 25 million tests per day on an ongoing basis.'”
In other words, there is a way out.
As for economic costs…many people are self-quarantining still, and a second wave will put us even further behind.
In other words, we don’t have to throw our hands in the air and just march forward ignorantly. But this doesn’t align with Trump’s plan to throw the long ball. He’s gambling that it’ll all work out. And if it doesn’t? He still might win.
1. Is the election going to happen.
2. To what degree will voting be suppressed.
3. To what degree will the voting process be hacked.
4. Will Trump decide the election is illegitimate if he doesn’t win.
People are now planning for these possibilities. Unfortunately, I’m not sure what the rank and file can do here. We’re dependent upon elected officials and a few insiders with power. Pelosi is speaking about the integrity of our elections, but the issue is not sexy until AFTER elections occur. We sit on our duffs and complain about the result, oftentimes not having voted to begin with. You can’t complain if you didn’t vote.
It’s twenty years since Bush vs. Gore, and we still don’t have a handle on the voting process. It is not run by the best and the brightest and the more it becomes computerized the more questions come up. We’ve been so convinced that the United States is the greatest country in the world that we refuse to acknowledge our deficiencies and address them.
But in this case, some are.
FINAL NOTE
“Gambling on a resurrection is one of the pathologies that can emerge from what finance types call the principal/agent problem: the potential for misalignment of interests between the principal (in this case, the American people) and the agent who works for them (in this case, Trump). In business, the fix for a principal/agent problem is for shareholders to have the information and power to control the CEO.”
This is from the “Businessweek” article above. Leftists live in the land of emotions, whereas Trump is first and foremost a businessman, and therefore you need to analyze his acts through this lens. We do have a problem. The checks and balances have been minimized, if not outright eliminated. We cannot depend upon the Republicans to fix our national problems. Trump delivers what most Republicans want…an unfettered economy wherein you’re entitled to your spoils and you live by your smarts and your wits. If you don’t succeed, the problem is you. Of course there are distractions, like immigration and school vouchers and gay marriage and abortion…but that’s just to keep the hoi polloi busy as the fat cats get fatter. A realignment, if it is to ever arrive, must come from the Democrats. But that would mean fat cat Democrats would have to suffer a bit. But when Joe Biden considers $400,000 a year borderline compensation, that must have tax advantages, it’s hard to have hope.
So, here we are, with a President running amok and the Democrats disunited, complaining about social issues, while it really all comes down to money. Who’s got it, who controls it and how it is distributed.
In other words, if you’re expecting the ship to be turned around, don’t hold your breath, elite Democrats are more similar to elite Republicans than you. We’re stuck in the middle, and if we’re going anywhere, it’s probably down.
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