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

Songs About L.A. Playlist

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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!

Are you still scared?

I’m not seeing anybody face to face, but my anxiety is greatly reduced. The facts are hard to synthesize…Garcetti and Newsom say self-quarantining is flattening the curve, but more people died in L.A. yesterday than ever before. But you don’t have to read the papers from cover to cover every day, you don’t need to be glued to the news to have an idea of what’s going on. It’s clear, it’s here and you’ve got to stay home. For how long? WHO KNOWS!

But into this vacuum has seeped analysis.

The big story was in yesterday’s “New York Times”:

“He Could Have Seen What Was Coming: Behind Trump’s Failure on the Virus – An examination reveals the president was warned about the potential for a pandemic but that internal divisions, lack of planning and his faith in his own instincts led to a halting response.”

You might see this as preaching to the choir, the leftist cabal, but as I’ve written previously, the “New York Times” sets the agenda for the country, it’s tossed up on TV and people react to it. Rachel Maddow embellishes it, Fox News tears it apart.

But yesterday…

Chris Wallace confronted the panel with this story.

Then all hell broke loose.

Trump excoriated Wallace, and then Fox host Jedediah Bila bit back at Trump:

“Enough with the 3rd grade name-calling. Chris is doing his job. The news should not be any president’s friend, ally, or buddy. If it bothered you when Obama complained about Fox News, but you’re silent on this complete nonsense, then just stop. Seriously. Enough.”

But it didn’t matter. The right was calling for Wallace’s head. How did I find, out? Wallace was trending on Twitter. Although I listen to Fox News more than a bit, I do not watch any channel’s Sunday shows, they’re all spin, news is almost never broken.

And then Trump tweeted Fox’s call for Fauci’s head, and today the White House denied Fauci was on the chopping block. Then again, everybody else has been subject to the chopping block, the only person who’s been immune is Trump himself, and maybe his son-in-law Jared Kushner, because when your back is against the wall, family is everything, it’s about all you can rely on.

But irrelevant kerfuffles right? No one’s opinion is being changed here.

But today the “Los Angeles Times” piled on:

“‘It all could have been different’ – Trump administration disbanded team of pandemic experts”

This front page article blames Bolton.

But what’s interesting is we’re in the post-impeachment world. In other words, these stories are not being revealed to achieve a specific goal, rather they’re analyzing what happened, before the government does, which it always does, way too late.

So, once again, now that we’re all on the same page, now that spring breakers are not at the beach, now that we all know the consequences of interaction, the story has shifted.

But there are still facts.

The first sailor from that ship just died. You know, the one where the captain was relieved of his duties.

Now there are no mea culpas in the government, certainly not in Trump’s administration, but Brett Cozier is living in today’s world, where you make your own story, because the system no longer works. That’s today’s America, nobody abides by the rules, because they just don’t work. Supposedly, Cozier didn’t follow the chain of command. We can argue whether his statements were leaked or not, but where does sympathy lie when someone dies?

In other words, it’s everybody for themselves in America today. If you’re obeying orders, you’re a chump, no one else is.

Then there’s the chloroquine story:

“Small Chloroquine Study Halted Over Risk of Fatal Heart Complications – A research trial of coronavirus patients in Brazil ended after patients taking a higher dose of chloroquine, one of the drugs President Trump has promoted, developed irregular heart rates.”

Once again, do I think all this is going to change the hearts and minds of the Trumpsters? Absolutely not.

Then again, the DNC is out of touch with reality.

Rachel Bitecofer has gone on and on how it’s a waste of time to try and convince those who voted for Trump to come back to the Democrats. Ain’t gonna happen. This flow was established over years, it just wasn’t Trump. It was NAFTA and the Democrats’ focus on corporations as opposed to workers. In other words, the Democrats can only win if they get out the vote.

But they’re doing a piss-poor job of that.

The Democrats still believe the war is fought on TV and in the newspapers, when the truth is it’s fought online, where the Republicans are so far ahead it’d be funny if so much weren’t at risk. Donald Trump has 76.9 million Twitter followers. Joe Biden has 4.8 million. It’s like the difference between Drake and your local bar band. And one thing’s for sure, the bar band isn’t gonna get bigger unless it broadens its focus, plays in other locales, ties up with an entity that can bring the message to millions. But Joe Biden keeps making videos no one sees in his basement and posts an opinion piece in the “New York Times” that is so inconsequential it’s laughable. It’d be like the police chief speaking to the academy when there’s a riot outside. GO WHERE THE PEOPLE ARE!

But the Democrats don’t know how to do this. Because the DNC is run by oldsters who think they know technology, but don’t. Just because you’ve got an iPhone and a Facebook account, that does not mean you’re social media savvy. Here’s the dividing line…if you don’t know how to launch Zoom and go into Gallery View, get out of the way.

But Mark Cuban has 7.8 million Twitter followers, and he’s on TV seemingly every night. People know more about Cuban than they do about Biden, and Cuban is talking about running.

Now Cuban is not a Democrat. And if he does run, who does he negatively impact?

I’d say the Republicans. But I’m not sure. But today Mark Cuban is trusted more than Donald Trump, and Biden isn’t even in their league.

The DNC pulled a fast one on Bernie Sanders. Everybody folded their efforts into the losing Biden and he beat out Bernie. Fine, but was Joe the person to put all that effort behind? I mean they would have been better off with Klobuchar or Buttigieg, at least they’re living in 2020. But so scared of Bernie, the insiders who are actually outside the public discussion, rallied around the wrong guy. This is what happens when you panic. If Amy or Pete were making pronouncements about Covid-19, people would be listening, especially to Amy, who is still in Congress. But the Democrats freaked out too soon. Especially in a world where Sanders’s platform no longer looks left field. Last night John Oliver featured an EMT without health insurance. His job doesn’t offer it and the ACA is too expensive. Is this the guy you want coming to your house? And in a time when people are worried about running out of cash, the giveaways are to the corporations and Wall Street titans.

“Too Big to Fail, Covid-19 Edition: How Private Equity Is Winning the Coronavirus Crisis – Private equity has made multibillionaires of executives like Blackstone’s Steve Schwarzman (net worth: $17.5 billion) and Apollo’s Leon Black ($7.5 billion). Thanks to the $2 trillion bipartisan bailout bill, the industry’s coronavirus losses will belong to all of us.”

Bottom line: hedge funds control pension money, and that can’t be lost, so the funds have to be bailed out. As for you? You’re on your own!

But it gets even worse!

Turns out we had the wrong story about fracking, we’ve been debating the environmental issues when we should have been debating the financial issues:

“Coronavirus May Kill Our Fracking Fever Dream – America’s energy independence was an illusion created by cheap debt. All that’s left to tally is the damage”

The fracking boom was a scam. Sure, oil was produced, but at a loss, CONTINUOUSLY!

Meanwhile, the oil producing nations agree on an output cut and the stock market still drops. You can read all about it in the “Wall Street Journal,” whose editorial page has been in a fight with Trump. Which is like the Koch Brothers being in a fight with the Mercer family.

In other words, it appears that business has little loyalty to Trump. Trump’s true constituency is the people. But the people are broke and dying in this pandemic. And therefore, Trump’s approval ratings have gone down.

But that doesn’t seem to matter to anybody other than Trump. And Trump is still fundraising like a machine, it’s astounding how much cash he’s hoovering up. As for Biden? He’s looking to the corporations to kick in, nobody else cares. Unless you’re rich and have something to lose, you don’t want to give Joe anything.

Trump has a bizarre charisma.

Biden barely knows what day it is, he looks more like Grandpa Simpson than a Presidential candidate.

So that’s the world we’re living in.

Oh, one more thing, if you’re not scared already. You must, and I mean YOU ABSOLUTELY MUST, read Paul Krugman’s opinion piece from last Friday:

“American Democracy May Be Dying – Authoritarian rule may be just around the corner.”

This explains the election in Wisconsin. Be afraid, be very afraid. It was all about getting a Republican Supreme Court judge elected. The Republicans figured city folk would vote against him, so they only had five polling places open in Milwaukee, instead of the usual one hundred and eighty.

Meanwhile, the latest studies say that voting by mail doesn’t hurt the Republicans at all. And even nitwit Georgian governor Kemp allowed the state’s primary to be delayed.

So, what have we learned here?

Most people are not paying attention. Now that they feel safe inside, they’re tuning out the news, especially anything that involves pointing fingers, that isn’t relevant to them today.

And we’ve also learned that nothing sticks to Trump.

And that despite all this news, the Democrats have no plan to defeat Trump in November other than Trump himself. There’s no agenda, no platform that people know about, that resonates.

We are in the midst of a giant sea change in American culture. The retirement of the baby boomers and the subsequent power of the millennials (Gen-X, once again, has lost out, being skipped over).

Unfortunately, Trump is more in tune with the millennials than Biden. He understands it’s a fast-moving culture where the truth is buried by the next event and the most important thing is to keep your name in the online scuttlebutt.

Meanwhile, the Democrats are running on old political theories. That people want gradual change and young people don’t vote. It might actually work this time, but it’s hard not to sleep with one eye open.

And when it comes to business as usual…are you willing to go to a restaurant, are you willing to go to the office? Ultimately, the end of self-quarantining will be decided by the people, not the government. Just like they had to be convinced to stay home, they’ll have to be convinced to go out, and that won’t happen instantaneously, no one wants to die.

And they keep dying.

Some, like Boris Johnson, recover.

But, triage is now even being done in the United States, if you’re over seventy with a preexisting condition, good luck.

So both parties and business depend upon you being ignorant, easily swayed with disinformation. So now is the time to educate yourself.

But in a country where lying is de rigueur and facts are fungible, don’t expect a sea change in public sentiment. People still believe they’re going to win the lottery.

The odds of getting the coronavirus are much higher.