Live Pittsburgh 1976

Live shows used to be rare, to the point where it was a staple of a band’s career to release a double live album of their greatest hits, even though it did not count against their label quota as per the contract.

And there was the King Biscuit Flower Hour. If it was gonna be a simulcast in your neighborhood, you listened. I still remember hearing a live radio tape of the Stones at the Slope bar in Aspen in February 1970, that’s how few and far between these recordings were.

And then the internet came along and everything flipped. Live is something you do on YouTube, to satiate your existing fanbase, and hopefully grow it with newbies.

Now in the nineties, those King Biscuit shows came out on CD, but it was too late, the mania was gone. Acts used to be uptight about imperfect performances, they wanted to hold back material, the exact opposite of today, even though we had to fight about it for the last twenty years.

And at the advent of Napster it was astounding what surfaced, live shows you never knew existed, live shows you were at. But most of that material has disappeared with legal streaming services. But on these services you oftentimes find live albums you didn’t even know existed, like James Taylor’s “Live Pittsburgh 1976.”

I saw James at the Universal Amphitheatre back then. It was 1975, just after “Gorilla” brought him back to the top of the charts. Crosby & Nash sang harmonies, Carly Simon came out for “Mockingbird.”

If you missed a tour, you missed material. Sure, the hits remained in the show, but if you were a fan of the act, you had to buy the album and see the act every year. You were bonded. It’s very different from the nostalgia of today, where the acts and their audience try to jet their minds back to the past.

Then again, we thought we’d never get old.

And so many who are old now view music as safe that they used to find dangerous, or were too unhip to know about.

So, last night scrounging around on Amazon Music on Sonos I came across a James Taylor live album I never knew existed, and this caught me off guard, since I’ve got a live album never released in the U.S. and…

“Live Pittsburgh 1976” was only released two years ago, if there was any hype I missed it, I can’t find any reviews online, it’s like it was a stealth release.

1975 was “Gorilla.”

1976 was “In the Pocket.” This show is hype for that album, which was not seen as good as “Gorilla,” it was not as sunny, but contains one of my favorite JT songs, “Captain Jim’s Drunken Dream,” and the exquisite “Nothing Like a Hundred Miles,” but the only track that has stood the test of time, that the hoi polloi know, is “Shower the People.”

So this Pittsburgh show, performed at the Syria Mosque on July 25th, was a live FM radio show. So, you’d expect imperfections, but you don’t find them. This was back when acts needed no help to perform.

And the opening cut is “Lighthouse,” my absolute favorite from “Gorilla,” a song that’s long left James’s set list. Well, it’s a recurrent, according to setlist.fm it got played 23 times in 2012. 20 in 2005. And then it goes down from there. 6 in 1986. And…my point is if you go to a James Taylor show today, your odds of hearing “Lighthouse” are low, odds are you’ve never even heard “Lighthouse” live, and it was not on that 1993 double live album so…this is probably your only chance to hear a live version.

And I quote “Lighthouse” all the time.

But just because I might be standing here
That don’t mean I won’t be wrong this time
You could follow me and lose your mind

When someone hangs on every word, believes everything I have to say, I leaven their expectations by quoting these lines.

Next comes “Riding on a Railroad,” which I mentioned last night, and is not rare, but is always good to hear.

The third cut is a complete surprise, “Secret of Life.” Billed as “Secret O’ Life” on the album “JT”…the recorded version didn’t come out until the following year!

The secret of life is enjoying the passage of time

And that applies in sequestration as much as the old days, where we could go where we wanted to, do what we wanted to do, with whomever we wanted to do it with.

And then comes “Shower the People.” This iteration is not my favorite, it’s slowed down from the take that opens “In the Pocket,” and I’m not in love with the backup vocals, but I am in love with the lyrics, which eluded me until long after this song was a hit. They’re all genius, but I’ll just quote a few, in this era where everybody’s a winner, when everybody’s afraid of revealing themselves. Oh, there are people making careers of oversharing, especially online, but most people are too uptight to tell their truth, but when they do…

Once you tell somebody the way that you feel
You can feel it beginning to ease
I think it’s true what they say about the squeaky wheel
Always getting the grease

One of the reasons I no longer talk on the phone is it’s all salesmanship, the people are not real, but when they are, tell me their inner thoughts and demons, then I feel it was all worth it, then I really know them.

Next comes “Mexico.” In its original breezy arrangement. Today’s radio, which oldsters do listen to, only plays a few hits by each act, so “Mexico” is rare.

Then “Anywhere Like Heaven.” This was the last song I got into on “Sweet Baby James.” Seen as a minor track, it’s anything but. And this is another cut rarely played live. It got 11 performances in 2012, but you have to go back to 1986 to find another live performance.

And then a surprise, “Walking Man.”

James had jettisoned Peter Asher, he was looking to change it up. Eventually he worked with Russ and Lenny on the aforementioned “Gorilla” and “In the Pocket,” but before that he did an LP with David Spinozza and his New York cats. “One Man Dog” hadn’t met expectations, “Walking Man” did worse. The sound is not right, it’s muted. But there are a few great tracks, “Rock ‘n’ Roll is Music Now,” with Paul McCartney on background vocals, and “Me and My Guitar,” and my favorite, “Migration,” but the only song most people know from this LP is the title cut. And it’s amazing how many people know it, not because it was a radio hit, but because despite not garnering the sales of the previous LPs, fans bought “Walking Man,” and know it.

“Family Man” was from “In The Pocket,” and it was played live a couple of times in 2006, but you have to go back to 1987 before that.

And James cannot do a show without “Fire and Rain” and “Carolina In My Mind,” so they’re both here.

Following those two, you’ve got “Bartender’s Blues,” which like “Secret of Life” didn’t appear on wax until the following year.

And then comes my favorite track in the collection, why I’m writing this at all.

The second side of “One Man Dog” was a suite, like the second side of “Abbey Road,” the only thing that pisses me off is that James did not do “Mescalito,” which precedes “Dance” on “One Man Dog.” “Dance” sounds like a barn dance, like it’s Saturday night and you’re having a good time and the rest of the world doesn’t matter, only the music and the people you’re with, the live iteration encapsulates this same vibe. If you were a fan of “One Man Dog” you’ll be thrilled to hear this!

This is a good rendition of “Everybody Has the Blues.” More intimate than the version on “In the Pocket,” but honestly, it was never one of my favorite songs, but if I listened to this take enough I might change my mind.

And then we come to the second side killer from “Gorilla.” “I Was a Fool to Care” is genius in every way, with all that love now behind you, check out the lyrics, and this slowed-down, somewhat naked take is different and nearly equally good.

And another “Walking Man” nugget, “Hello Old Friend,” which is better than the recorded take, sans strings, sans the sonic flattening.

And now we roll to the end of the show.

A heartfelt “Hey Mister, That’s Me up on the Jukebox.” It’ll hit you in your gut more than the original from “Mud Slide Slim,” it sounds world-weary.

And I guess that was the end of the radio show, but there are three additional bonus tracks. The classics “Rainy Day Man,” “Steamroller” and “Carolina In My Mind.” All in good versions.

So what we’ve got here is nearly astounding. We’ve got a live show from almost 44 years ago that sounds like it could be cut today, but it wasn’t. It’s honest, sans the studio trickery that eliminates the life in so many recordings. It contains both classics and songs only a fan knows by heart. But do you need to hear it?

We’re overwhelmed with material.

But if it’s a slow afternoon, like now, in our days of hibernation, pull this up. Put it on the big speakers if you’ve still got ’em. Sit and listen, or do mindless chores, just live your life like you used to, before you were addicted to your smartphone, when you could disconnect.

And you’ll remember what once was.

And in this case, still is.

Well it won’t be long before another day
We’re gonna have a good time
And no one’s gonna take that time away
You can stay as long as you like

I fired up the big rig. I caught up on the latest episode of “Better Call Saul,” debated whether to finally dig into “Chernobyl,” but then I realized I had to jump on the computer and answer a few e-mails before I did anything.

That’s when I decided to turn on the stereo.

I’m trying not to be a hoarder. I’m trying to throw things out. I guess I was building a museum to myself, and then I realized I’d be forgotten anyway. But my stereo equipment, my records, they’re never gonna go, at least not while I’m still here.

I’ve been thinking about sound recently, listening to music on my phone. Sounds pretty good compared to the old AM dashboard radio, but compared to the stereos of the seventies, it’s crap. And now everybody’s listening to crap, it’s the standard. But when the music is reproduced accurately, clearly, it’s alive, it breathes, and you’re enveloped in the sound and it changes your mood.

The Sonos system didn’t work.

But this stuff always works, so I started to troubleshoot. Turns out unplugging the bridge and replugging it worked.

And then I picked out the tunes.

Oh, one of the reasons I decided to do this was because my stereo is hooked up to Sonos, and I’ve now got Amazon Music HD. But to tell you the truth, I’m afraid to leave my amplifier on all the time, even though it’s no longer new, because the previous one burned up, I seem to be planning for a future that will never come. We all run out of runway. And you get to a certain point and you can feel the end even if you can’t see it, and that’s positively freaky, because suddenly all the stuff that you thought mattered no longer does.

Now when Sonos started, it was all about enabling your stereo system, granting it streaming music. But over the years the paradigm has changed, Sonos now makes speakers, that’s what people buy, hell, I haven’t heard of someone buying a component stereo system in at least ten years, maybe more, that’s just not done anymore. But if you’re someone like me, and you still have the equipment…

Just before he died Ed Cherney told me to throw out my Nakamichi 582. It’s not worth much, but it means so much to me. I’m worried the belts are stretched out and can’t be replaced so I haven’t turned it on. Oh, I’ve turned it on, I just haven’t tried to play a cassette, I still have some of those. And I read about myself in Anne Tyler’s new book “Redhead by the Side of the Road.” One of the characters is afraid to call her landlady for fear of bad news. That’s me. Actually, I always think it’s bad news. Although I’m getting much better, I can open my mail the day I get it.

So I tested the speakers with Supertramp, “Crime of the Century” is one of the best engineered albums of all time.

And then I decided to switch from the JBLs to the Thiels. The sound was completely different. It was smooth, there was more air, you could hear instruments a bit better. Then I played my standards, like Joe Walsh, the James Gang and Boston. I was evaluating sound, but as time passed by the music stopped resonating.

But before I shut the stereo down, I decided to play “Carolina In My Mind,” the original version, from the Apple album, I used to play that every morning at about this time fully fifty years ago, how weird is that, and I wanted to relive the experience.

But I saw “Mud Slide Slim.”

“Mud Slide Slim” is known today for containing “You’ve Got a Friend.” And to tell you the truth, I always preferred Carole King’s version.

But “Mud Slide Slim” represents the spring of ’71, I was in college, it came out at this very time.

And April in Vermont is kind of strange. It’s not like California, it’s not like the Sierras, where they get feet of snow and you can ski till July 4th, one big rainstorm and rising temperatures and the snow is gone, seemingly instantly. But it’s still nippy at night, but winter is over, spring is about to be sprung, but to tell you the truth in Vermont that’s in May.

Now when “Mud Slide Slim” came out all the hype was about “Hey Mister, That’s Me up on the Jukebox.” The articles analyzed James Taylor’s sudden fame, they used this song to explain it. But that song never broke through.

And you never hear about the first side opener “Love Has Brought Me Around,” but I always loved it.

Still, there are three absolute killers on “Mud Slide Slim.”

One is “Riding on a Railroad.” That’s the one that switched my mood, made me want to continue to listen and write.

And the funny thing is this quieter material sounded better on the JBLs, even though I thought the JBLs were better for bass, which is basically absent here.

Then, of course, there’s “Machine Gun Kelly.”

This is not a time for levity, do you understand what happened to Machine Gun Kelly?

I’ll tell you about Machine Gun Kelly
He rode along the outlaw trail

I’ve been watching all these shows featuring drug dealers. And the gig is unappealing at this age. Oh sure, you could always get arrested, but the gig itself…IT’S BORING! And the people who do it are just interested in getting high, screwing and laughing, and if that’s all your life is about, I feel sorry for you. Well, to tell you the truth, I don’t really care.

I’m bugged about billionaires, bugged about so much of today’s world, but once again, when you’re running out of runway, you realize all that you’re not going to be, all that you’re not going to accomplish, and hopefully you’re happy with that. If you hated your job until you retired, I feel sorry for you too. What a waste. Yes, I’m being “judgy” as the kids say today, it’s part of my personality, sue me. If I can read, listen to music and ski, I think that’s enough to make me happy. Then again, I planned to ski at every area in the United States, that’ll never happen.

But back to “You Can Close Your Eyes.”

Now 1971 was a very good snow year. I skied the day before my birthday at Stowe and there were absolutely no bare spots. And the very next day I went swimming in the quarry. But shortly thereafter, I went with the Zeta Psis for a picnic by the lake. I had no intention of joining the fraternity, but they had Boone’s Farm and I was not legal, and they were nice guys, who brought their girls, and for one moment I didn’t feel uncomfortable and inferior. We played a little ball, drank some wine and had some good conversations. And I sang “You Can Close Your Eyes” in my mind. That used to be a regular occurrence, before the days of the Walkman, I spent an entire summer in Europe singing songs to myself, mostly those from Todd Rundgren’s “Something/Anything?”

Well the sun is surely sinking down
But the moon is slowly rising
And this old world must still be spinning ’round

You can see the stars in L.A. now. You look up and it’s a cornucopia of brightness, it’s thrilling. And even though we’re all on edge, the world keeps turning.

Today everybody told me how they were freaked out. Me too, did you read that story about that doctor in Washington, whew!

Emergency room doctor, near death with coronavirus, saved after experimental treatment

But you can only be so paranoid, you can only do your best, and hopefully that’s good enough.

So tomorrow is another day. Just like today.

All the news is about opening the country for business. It’s all a waste of time. Bottom line, the people are in control, we had to be convinced to stay home, and we’ll have to be convinced to go out. And if one person dies, they’re gonna sue the ass off of whomever or whichever entity told them it was safe. You go first, isn’t that what they say?

So I’m planning on being quarantined to June 1st. I can handle that. Hell, it’s already been in excess of a month.

But what happens after that?

There’ll be no mass gatherings, no concerts, no sports, at least with fans in attendance.

But I’m not thinking that far ahead, I’m in suspended animation, I’m in the now.

And if you think about it, if you kick back and relax, it’s not that bad. We’ve got our Netflix, our Kindles. We’ve got Zoom, and all the other ways to connect online. And today, things slowed down enough to remind me of…

The way it used to be.

I’m ultra-busy, and I’m not complaining about it. But if you’re going really fast, you miss things. Who has time to sit at home and listen to the same songs over and over again?

But I pulled up the new Kenny Chesney and Luke Bryan songs, and they were pretty good. Sure, generic, but they were ear-pleasing. And then I played some of the Spotify Hot Country playlist and I realized this is where rock is. Sure, there are a few too many references to church, there’s too much pandering, but there are changes and it’s not Jason Isbell, but not that much is.

And Jason Isbell is not James Taylor.

You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone?

Kinda like John Prine. And Adam Schlesinger. And in the not so distant future, all the classic acts will pass, and many won’t be remembered.

But it doesn’t really matter, because you won’t be here either. Those memories are gonna die with you, but they mean so much to you.

So close your eyes
You can close your eyes, it’s all right
I don’t know no love songs
And I can’t sing the blues anymore
But I can sing this song
And you can sing this song
When I’m gone

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They broke the number one rule of the internet.

You start from the bottom up.

Downloads are anemic, because most people are unaware of the product, all the hype has been in traditional news outlets, and the readers of those might have credit cards, but they are not the target audience for a service like this.

Take TikTok… Did you see a carpet bomb promotional campaign? OF COURSE NOT! That would have killed it, the kids can smell a rat.

The kids found TikTok, and the press didn’t glom on until Lil Nas X had a hit with “Old Town Road.” As for Drake employing TikTok to break his new track big…that paradigm is gonna die, soon, because everybody will be trying to do this and really TikTok is a platform for the users, not the promoters. Think of viral videos on YouTube, everybody was amazed by PSY’S “Gangnam Style,” has there been a viral video recently? OF COURSE NOT! After the “Harlem Shake,” fully seven years ago, the audience realized it was being manipulated, and refused to be marks. Just like people stopped e-mailing jokes like they did in the AOL era, people stopped e-mailing “viral” videos, there was no excitement there. Right now there’s excitement at TikTok, and it might continue, but it won’t be built to benefit major label musicians, just like all the talk about YouTube these days is about influencers, nobodies who’ve gained traction, many of whom have moved on from YouTube to Instagram, the people remain constant, the platforms change.

And it’s hard to break a new platform. Bing is pretty good, but after billions it just has a sliver of the search market, and a lot of it is paid for. Google was good enough, people didn’t need an alternative. As for content on the handheld device, there are already too many options. Have you ever heard someone complain that there’s nothing to watch, do or say on their smartphone?

All of the internet platforms that broke big started small. Can you say YouTube and Instagram and Snapchat? People like the process of discovery, they want to own things, they want to be able to turn others on to them, that’s half the fun, they don’t like things jammed down their throat.

And there’s nothing cool about Quibi, the usual suspects telling us to watch? Don’t we have enough Chrissy Teigen anyway? Today celebrities have enough outlets to expose themselves online, can you say Facebook Live?, they’re not yearning for more platforms, they’re yearning for more eyeballs!

Netflix streaming was new. It broke open with “House of Cards.”

Ditto with HBO, “The Sopranos” made it must see TV.

So, if Quibi wanted to do it the right way, they’d have released very little product and waited until they had a hit, and then built upon that, eventually charging. Or at least have a two-tiered system, like Spotify, free with ads and pay without. And Apple would have had no traction with its streaming service if Spotify didn’t pave the way.

And it’s too late for new platforms anyway. You can’t game the system. Everybody’s on overload, we don’t have time for everything we’re paying for already! The new paradigm in TV streaming services is free with ads, because the networks know there’s no way the public is going to pay for one more service. But Quibi seems oblivious to this. The outlet could have pivoted, that’s the Silicon Valley way, but Katzenberg thinks he knows better. No, Ed Catmull knew better. Katzenberg had a moment, like a rock star, and he thinks he can keep innovating and we’ll care, even though after an initial window it’s hard for any musician to have another hit.

So, the second day downloads went DOWN! That’s heat for you! We see no ramping up, no hockey stick. Sure, Meg Whitman trumpeted 1.7 million downloads since launch, but that’s bupkes, and how many apps do you download and not use? I’ve got Disney+ and Apple TV+. I got both of the apps free, as did many, they came with a Verizon unlimited account and the purchase of an Apple product. I haven’t fired up either of the apps since the day I installed them, last fall, there’s no programming I have to see.

It used to be about platforms.

Now it’s about content.

Used to be you built your fame on someone else’s site, and then you broke free and created your own site, hoovered up all those dollars. But now, in an era where you can’t get enough attention, where there are so many options, you can no longer do that, be thankful anybody is paying attention at all, even if it’s on someone else’s site!

And speaking of the media…

Did you catch the multi-page spread on Quibi in the “L.A. Times” yesterday? Almost as much in the “New York Times”? Made me puke. Shows the power of public relations people, but even worse it shows the susceptibility of these “news” outlets. If you think they’re independent, and chasing news, you’re wrong, oftentimes they’re just printing what is fed to them.

Furthermore, this press blast has no lasting impression. It’s here today and gone tomorrow. And most of the target market missed it anyway, never mind not caring about it. There’s no virality whatsoever.

We’ve seen this movie again and again in Hollywood, the old powers trying to eclipse the young. Do you remember all those false starts in the music business twenty years ago? The Farm Club? And others I can no longer remember the name of without research firing my synapses (oh, that’s right, PressPlay!) Furthermore, it was labeled “Jimmy & Doug”‘s, only people in Hollywood would be so self-aggrandizing. The techies let their work speak for itself.

And the techies started with a clean slate. Sony got hung up with MiniDiscs and DRM and missed the MP3 revolution. Furthermore, those stuck in the past can rarely see the future.

So, there’s nothing new about Quibi, other than it’s chopped-up television. Do you think that’s appealing?

But all those investors bet on Katzenberg and Whitman because of what they’d done. But what they’d done had little to do with what they were attempting to do!

Now I doubt Quibi will expire. They’ll pivot and declare victory, and the media will repeat the fiction.

But I ask you, based on almost a week’s worth of numbers and reviews, are you ready to pay?

OF COURSE NOT!