I just want a hit record, yeah
Wanna hear it on the radio
Want a big hit record, yeah
One that everybody’s got to know

“Overnight Sensation”
The Raspberries

I don’t stop hearing about Kamala Harris. Since the debate, she’s not only the talk of politicos, but the country. In just one little exchange she got traction. She was waiting in the wings for her moment, hadn’t gotten a lot of attention, but when the lights were on she delivered and became an overnight sensation, literally.

We don’t have those moments in the music business anymore.

Yup, at first I was gonna write about delivering each and every night, especially when the lights are upon you. You hear that story from managers all the time. They tell their acts to give it their all, no matter how many people are in the audience, and then it turns out some bigwig was there one night that was underattended and they proffer an offer and…

One of the biggest movies last year, which debuted on HBO last night, was “Bohemian Rhapsody.” And consensus is the highlight of the flick was Queen’s performance at Live Aid. We haven’t had a show with anywhere near that impact since Live 8, but that was in 2005. It was the last gasp of the old world. The highlight was the reunion of Pink Floyd. What could a concert feature today, the reunion of *NSYNC?

But Live Aid came during the height of MTV. It cemented the outlet’s place in the firmament. It had started as a derided AOR TV station that was unavailable in many markets. But then Duran Duran became overnight sensations with its videos and the station broadened its playlist to include Michael Jackson and if you didn’t have MTV before Live Aid, you certainly signed up for it after.

Actually, it was free. Like radio. As long as you had a cable account.

But in the nineties MTV became a caricature of itself, and then at the turn of the century Napster came along to blow a hole in the paradigm, and after the last gasp of MTV/VH1 dominance at the beginning of the 2000s, breaking Coldplay, Radiohead and Dave Matthews, it’s been all niche all the time.

Not that they’re not trying to convince us otherwise.

Then again, if Chance the Rapper or Kendrick Lamar got that level of exposure, would they become household names too?

Actually, Kendrick appeared on the Grammys. It did not cross him over beyond his core audience.

Then again, the Grammys don’t mean what they used to. Remember when it would supercharge careers? Notably with Bonnie Raitt and then Lauryn Hill? That doesn’t happen anymore. Maybe because we live in an era of streaming as opposed to sales, but I’d argue the Grammys don’t have the impact of the debates, there’s nothing at stake. Acts self-promote and appeal to their niche, and there it stops.

So I checked the ratings.

Night two of the debates was watched by 18.1 million viewers, as well as 9 million streamers.

The 2019 Grammy Awards had 19.8 million viewers, but only a 5.6 rating amongst adults 18-49, which was actually a decrease from the year before. Meaning the Grammys are a show for oldsters, turns out youngsters are streaming or doing anything but watching CBS at that hour.

But even if they were, when was the last time someone made it via a Grammy performance? Especially when you’ve got all these mash-ups/duets…instead of special Grammy moments, they’re turn-offs. It would be like in the middle of the debate Harris and Biden reenacted Kennedy’s inauguration speech. Nobody cares!

In other words, music has given up its stranglehold on the American public.

Not only was there Live Aid, but late night television, which featured musical performances. A great performance on late night Letterman could truly boost your career. Word of mouth would spread.

And then you’ve got the Beatles nailing it three Sundays in a row on “Ed Sullivan.” Almost everybody tuned in, especially youngsters, who can still wax rhapsodic about the experience.

All this proves that politics is the story of the age, with so much on the line.

And somehow the music industry is not resonating with the public. It’s more like governors and state legislatures, which are either red or blue, the south being red and…that’s right, you’re a monster performer in one state, amongst one demo, but not another. How did we get so far from the garden?

So I ask you… Who is out there, plying the boards, who you believe is one exposure away from going gangbusters. The last person who did this, was Lady Gaga. Who made it on EDM-based tracks but then broadened her purview to include Tony Bennett, she went on tour with him. And then, not having a hit in eons, she scored in “A Star Is Born” and now she’s a legend. Beyond hits. Kinda like Barbra Streisand.

Then again, Gaga can convey her message, her essence, just alone at the piano. She’s the act, she needs nothing more.

And in the first decade of this century, all the hipsters were railing against “American Idol.” But it did yield Kelly Clarkson. Now TV music shows get lower ratings and don’t break stars whatsoever. Then again, they’re singing shows. Lady Gaga does more than sing.

So we don’t have the acts and we don’t have the opportunities.

But I’ll tell you, acts are not born fully-formed. Managers and labels help mold them, give them their shot.

The Allman Brothers were a live act with little impact in recordings. Then they recorded “Live At Fillmore East” and became instant legends.

So Harris, Gaga and the Allmans were all hiding in plain sight. And when they got their moment they delivered. Can you say “Whipping Post”?

We need acts with this potential.

And we need opportunities to expose them to a broad audience.

But we don’t have these opportunities either.

When the Raspberries released “Overnight Sensation,” if you were on the radio everybody knew you.

Today, you can be #1 on radio or Spotify and a great swath of America is clueless.

This needs to change.

In case you missed it, and the point here is you probably did, the mainstream media has been debating the left-leaning Democratic Presidential candidates since the debates. The right is this year’s left. As in, they can’t really nominate one of these lefties, going on about Medicare for all and taxing the rich, and the left is playing the role of the right, as in are we losing control of our party?

But the truth is most people are not paying attention. Oh, they’re interested in politics, but they’re not getting their info from the usual suspects, certainly not the spin.

This has happened in the music business too. The mainstream media and the major labels have detached from music itself. The belief is that which is hyped, written about in these same mainstream media outlets, dominates, but it does not.

How did we get here?

Via the internet.

First, there was the infiltration of the internet. Call it Napster. Suddenly the purveyors were not in control. Furthermore, it turned out listeners wanted what the purveyors weren’t offering, like live tracks and alternate takes and…

Used to be a live album was de rigueur, but why now, when all that stuff is on the internet?

At first musicians and labels bitched about leaks, they didn’t want the public to know an album was a stiff before it was released. This is still haunting the movie business, railing at RottenTomatoes.

But then the situation switched. Suddenly, you couldn’t gain attention. So you posted live takes on YouTube, you gave away music on Soundcloud, anything to make it easier for listeners to partake, to gain attention. Meanwhile, the big shots focused on radio, believing it was best to go where the most ears were. This is just like the TV networks saying they’re the best place to still find mass for advertisers. The ratings are a fraction of what they once were, the audience hates ads, and all the action is on Netflix. Talk about missing a paradigm change.

So not only are the columnists in papers unlistened to, other than in their personal echo chambers, but they’re out of touch to boot. This is how the media miscalled the election in 2016. This is the same media that miscalled the election in 2018. Don’t you remember on election night, for days thereafter, they thought the Republican wall had held, and that the Democrats had made no inroads?

Most people don’t get their news from newspapers anymore. And they certainly don’t get it from TV. Ever check the ratings for Fox News, never mind MSNBC, they’re positively anemic. And they’re trumped by those of the late night TV talk shows, which the music industry now knows don’t sell music whatsoever. If you want to do it, if you want a free videoclip, be my guest, but don’t expect a bump.

This is like the focus on SNL.

I wrote about how Sebastian Maniscalco was a second-rate comic with little mainstream traction and I was inundated by fans, telling me not only that he was funny, but he’d done multiple Madison Square Gardens. They thought since they were in the know, everybody else was too. But they’re not! And I still think he’s second-rate and unfunny.

Used to be a sold out date at MSG meant you made it, you were a superstar. Then again, Phish played thirteen sold-out dates there in a row and most people have never heard their music.

This failing of the power hierarchy is very important, and it does not only apply to news and music. The truth is, today things break from the bottom up. You get your news from your friends. They give you the spin. Only the junkies are addicted to Fox News and MSNBC, and there are few junkies. Like hip-hop. However big it is, and it’s the biggest genre there is today, it’s nowhere near as big as rock was, or Motown, to compare the two is like saying Mariah Carey has the impact of the Beatles, since she has almost the same number of “Billboard” Top Ten hits. “Billboard” itself doesn’t mean the same thing anymore. At least it’s pivoted from the industry to the public-at-large, but the truth is the publication is its own private backwater.

So how does this change?

Via vote.

In the music business, they call it ticket sales. They don’t look like the Spotify Top 50, never mind the radio Top Forty. It’s not only hip-hop and pop, it turns out the public demands many genres of entertainment, you’d think that the recording industry would speak to this, but it doesn’t. And expect these other genres to overwhelm hip-hop and pop. First it’s left field, then it’s mainstream, and then it’s superseded by something else. But one thing is for sure, the starmakers are not in control.

That’s what the Republican Party learned. It did not want Trump.

And now the whole party has gone Trump, because he’s speaking to the party’s hard core, its true base. Turns out there are many more disaffected blue collar workers than professionals, never mind billionaires. Which is why these same rich(er) people should beware of what’s coming down the pike. Sure, Trump has taken care of them this time around, but it’s not what his base wants. It’s just that he’s satiating his base by pointing to enemies/scapegoats, like immigrants.

And the Democrats… The DNC is as clueless as the RNC was in 2016. It thinks it is in control, but it is not. So it’s freaked out when left-leaning candidates get traction. But these same candidates are tapping into the true base of the Democratic party, not the one ruled by professional elites that lost all these elections. If you’re beaten down, working two jobs, you don’t want gradual change, you want to turn over the table, you want instant revolution.

But the so-called experts in the media will talk about history. That’s like predicting the aforementioned Beatles by listening to Pat Boone and the Four Seasons.

And these same people are confounded when things go quite differently from what they expect.

The public sees the talking heads, the columnists, as no different from internet influencers. People striving for attention, wanting to get rich by being in our faces.

But we don’t have to pay attention to the internet influencers.

And very few pay attention to the mainstream media analysts/pundits.

At best, the biggest names are cheerleaders. Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson? They twist the facts and say heinous things on a regular basis. But ever been to a high school football game, where it’s all about destroying the enemy? As for Rachel Maddow, she appeals to these same Democratic elites, overeducated with time to watch her, that have lost touch with where the nation is going. Rachel is most famous for the history lessons that start her show. Do you think most people care?

All we hear are battles between left and right.

But the war is being fought online. And it’s not so much fake ads, as leveraging information to tighten bonds with voters. You want someone who speaks your language. The writers/pundits in the mainstream media don’t. So they’re not paid attention to.

Meanwhile, the mainstream is all about saving the past. Bookstores, time away from smartphones, decrying what was lost. But the truth is most people would rather not make dinner and love delivery. The same way they’d rather order from Amazon at home. And all the out of it oldsters can talk about is Wal-Mart destroying Main Street. The mall is history. Maybe the fast food outlet too. The key is to adjust.

But the mainstream does not know how to do this.

Who under the age of forty (sixty?) watches the network news? I dare you to name the anchors. Sure, they reach more people than Carlson and Maddow, but that’s just like the music business. The off the chart acts have more sustained passion than the mainstream ones.

If you want to know what’s going on in this country, go online. Connect with your friends. Surf the net. Try to find the pulse.

Meanwhile, Chuck Schumer still uses a flip-phone.

But Buttigieg didn’t even know who Alfred E. Neuman was.

And plenty of people don’t trust the mainstream anyway. Hell, look at the anti-vaxxers, most of them educated and wealthy, they don’t believe the science touted and printed by the mainstream media.

Think about this. Expand this concept. Don’t make it about right or wrong.

The anti-vaxxers do it to feel powerful, in a world where they’ve got little true power. They think if they’re educated and have a few bucks they’re entitled to their own say, to make up their own facts. Sound like someone you know…TRUMP!

One thing’s for sure. The fourth estate has lost touch. Journalists don’t realize we’re living in the age of the cult of personality. That’s what’s gonna give a Democratic candidate the chance to win, not a utilization of old paradigms to try to define the present. Baseball went to statistics and the NBA went to three-point shots, nearly overnight.

But in media…

It’s the same as it ever was.

Shake, rattle and roll.

We weren’t expecting this. Maybe an aftershock, but a whole new quake?

Andy and Felice were talking at the table. I was listening. And then suddenly, like Carole King, I felt the earth move.

It’s always subtle at first. And then you know what’s happening.

But they didn’t. I said it. EARTHQUAKE!

And they stopped their conversation and acknowledged what was going on and we made a few comments and then we waited, for it to end.

It’s eerie. You’re thinking about the end of the world, and what to do.

I’m wondering if the brick pillars surrounding us will fall. Where to run if we wanted to. I thought, if we jumped in the pool would we be safer there, like that guy who supposedly put on his scuba gear and survived a fire? I mean water slows down impact and…

Then the water began to move. It had been placid, now it was rocking from side to side, overflowing its barriers, and we were silent.

There’s nothing left to say. You just white knuckle it. Try to enjoy the ride unless it gets worse, like it did in ’94.

But in ’94, there were no trees surrounding my house, nothing to fall but the house itself. In Andy’s backyard there were trees and…

We waited. Alternately looking at each other and into space. No one had any control. It wasn’t a matter of bad judgment. We were powerless, Mother Nature was in control.

And if you’ve never experienced it…

The truth is, every place has got its downsides. Flooding, hurricanes, tornadoes.

But you expect the earth to remain solid and still beneath your feet.

This ain’t no movie, this ain’t no VR, this is real life.

And as the ground continues to roll, you wonder what is really going on. Are the plates shifting, is one slab sliding down and the other rising up?

But that’s a different kind of earthquake. Yes, there are different kinds. That’s a jolt. You’re thrown off guard. It ends quickly, except in ’94.

And in ’94, the ground was tilting, insulators were exploding on telephone poles. You thought it was the end of the world, at least until it stopped. You know, like when you’re on a thrill ride, or slipping in the mountains, you feel like this moment…could be your last.

And it did not stop. Usually these aftershocks are relatively minor affairs, you get to the point where you adjust to them, it rolls for a few seconds and then it’s done.

But last night, it kept going on.

And on one hand you’re enjoying it, on another you’re freaked out.

It doesn’t pay to get excited, to lose it, until you feel that monster shake, but that did not happen.

But it would not stop. How long would it go on? Was something worse in the offing?

The earth kept rolling and rolling and…you’ve lost control, and that’s a weird feeling.

Kinda like getting caught in an avalanche. The strangest thing is when the snow slides, you slide with it. Let me explain, you normally expect the snow to be stable and for you to plow down it, be in control. But when the surface starts to slide, it is moving, but you are not, you’re sliding with it. There’s nothing you can do but ride it out. It’s happened to me a couple of times. Most noticeably at Mammoth Mountain. I was skiing with the World Champion and his buddies, I didn’t know them, they were afraid to go first. So I did, to prove my mettle.

And that’s when it started to slide.

And when it stopped, shortly thereafter, when I was only six or ten feet further down this slope, just before it got very steep, the assembled multitude did not help me, they did not even cry out to me, they hightailed it out of there, very quickly, very softly, trying not to disturb the snow, leaving me behind.

So I sidestepped ever so slowly up the slope. To the trees. Knowing with one false move it could all be over, the snow would slide again.

It did not.

And they did not wait for me when I got out.

But last night we were all waiting together. For a minute. It just kept going and going and then…

Twitter said it was a 7.1. And then television revealed it was a whole new earthquake, not an aftershock. And the more we watched the talking heads, the more unstable and scared I got.

Meanwhile, the shaking screwed up their A/C. Was it the Nest or the HVAC unit on the roof? We couldn’t fix it, and the Nest hotline couldn’t either.

And then I’m wondering. What will it look like on the ride home. Will the lights be working? They weren’t in ’94.

Then again, the epicenter was in Northridge. We were much further away this time.

But next time?

It’s utterly fantastic. Riveting. If you were around back then, if “Deja Vu” was a staple in your bedroom, or dorm room, you’re going to be taken right back to that era and marvel, it isn’t nostalgia, but more like being woken up, to the lost dream, and the journey thereto, and the possibilities that still remain.

David Crosby. Didn’t both he and Nash pale in comparison to Stills?

Then again, Stills pales in comparison to Young. Who is famous for going his own way. It’s Neil who abandoned Stephen right before the “Long May You Run” tour, Stills soldiered on.

And then Neil reinvented himself, he told us it’s better to burn out than to fade away, and if you follow your dream and keep looking over that distant horizon and bow to no one, you can remain mysterious and continue to garner eyeballs. But does it make you happy? Is Bob Dylan happy on his endless tour reinventing his songs?

But Bob doesn’t know what else to do. Like Croz. He can only make music.

But the difference between Neil and the rest of CSN is that the latter made it on folk music, dreamy music, pleasant music, touch your soul music, and that never quite goes away. Sure, Stephen stretched into harder rocking and even Latin, but when you think of Crosby, Stills & Nash, your mind is set free as the mellifluous sound washes over you. Even the impassioned “Almost Cut My Hair” or “Long Time Gone,” they’re your inner angst, you can relate.

And you’ll be able to relate to David Crosby in this movie, because he’s human.

Now when you reach my age, you’re surprised by two things. The people who get sick and die, and those who retire and give up. Whereas there’s a small coterie who keep trying to push the envelope. David Crosby is one of those people. He’s so loquacious, you lament when he stops talking. He’s not exactly lovable, but he’s so real. In a world of duplicity. He was always this way. Which accounts for both his successes and his failures. Because people don’t like honesty. You tell lies to spare people’s feelings, to get along. David Crosby burns through people, hurts them, he doesn’t get along. All these years later, the body may be fading but the spirit shines through, brilliantly.

If you saw “Echo In The Canyon,” Crosby talks about being kicked out of the Byrds. Emphatically, he says he was a word that begins with an “a” and ends with an “e” and I’d spell it out here, but then this missive would never make it through the spam filters. Crosby never worried about the spam filters in life. He ran around naked, did drugs, he and his music were why we wanted to move to California. To partake.

And Crosby was oftentimes there first. The first musician to move to Laurel Canyon. And he doesn’t want credit as much as he wants to set the record straight. This movie is mostly about looking backward, but somehow, at 77, David Crosby is still looking forward.

He’s got to work, he’s got to go on tour, to pay the bills.

Sure, he blew a lot of money, but there’s this fantasy that rock stars are rich. But did you read that Gary Duncan, who played guitar in Quicksilver, who just died at 72, was a longshoreman after the music money dried up? We all have to pay the piper. Unless you’re lucky enough to be a billionaire, or to inherit the money and not blow it. So David Crosby is working, chances are you’ve got a bigger nest egg than he does. Then again, he’s not cutting corners, he’s got a nice spread with some horses.

So he wants to be a rock and roll star. And he makes it. Today he says he wished he’d realized how hard that was, and soaked it up.

And he did it to get laid. And he took advantage. But unlike too many musicians, he can hold a conversation, he’s not mute, he’s intelligent and can wrestle with concepts and you wish you could hang out with him on his couch, shooting the s___.

So he gets kicked out of the Byrds, which is done very well here, in animation, and he goes to Florida and discovers Joni Mitchell and shows her off in L.A. Because she wanted it. And she also wanted Croz. David says it was her choice.

And in the movie they roll up to that house. You know, OUR HOUSE, and Crosby tells all the tales, of singing with Stephen and Graham for the first time and…

You wished you were there. But you weren’t. That’s the difference between then and now. Then it happened behind closed doors, and usually stayed there, you did not have access.

And music was everything and you could buy the records and go to the show, those were your only options, other than the radio, but that wasn’t for true fans. When you see pictures of the comeback stadium tour, in ’74, your jaw will drop. The only people who can sell that many tickets today, by themselves, are maybe Ed Sheeran and Taylor Swift, for now. But this was already four years past their last hit. Does anybody care after four years today?

You feel the pulse. It’s like that Eagles doc. When they’re walking into the stadium in Colorado. What you feel is…THE POWER!

And it’s not about personality, but music. Which at that time everybody wrote by themselves, or with their group, it went straight from their heart directly into yours.

Now the film is told in a somewhat linear fashion. But there are excursions back and forth and the truth is you lived through this era, addicted to the sound, what were you doing when it all went down?

And there’s Kent State. And even the Dick Cavett show after Woodstock, which Crosby talks about too and…

What if you had a ringside seat. For life, for whatever was going down. If you were a rock star back then, you were international royalty, recognized everywhere by everybody and treated like a king.

But those were just the trappings.

Today it’s only about the trappings. And no one’s that big. And the rich hide behind gates, and vacation on private islands and…

This film will take you back when.

And just like those days, you won’t be able to avert your eyes, you won’t be thinking about anything else, you’ll be glued to the screen.

And movies today are something different. They’re based on comic books. As if real life is too scary. As if we all needed an escape.

But the truth is in the sixties and seventies not only was the music our escape, it was a journey unto itself, we sailed away from our parents as we were inspired to think for ourselves and…

David Crosby has never stopped thinking.

He admits his faults. He says when the adrenaline flows, he can’t help but express his anger, which gets him in trouble.

Then again, all the greats are warped. They’re trying to fill a hole inside that can never be topped-off, no matter how much money and success.

And the money is always cool. But it used to be about what’s inside.

You get inside David Crosby’s head in this movie.

And that’s one of the great journeys of all time.

Who are we? What is this life about? What should we be doing?

Too many drift through life somnambulant, without ever taking a risk, or putting themselves in the mix.

So when someone marches to the beat of their own drummer, we want to know how they did it. What motivated them, what they saw.

And David Crosby saw and did a lot. And when you watch him you know why. He’s different.

Are you?