You don’t know how many times I’ve wished that I could
Mold you into someone who could
Cherish me as much as I cherish you

Everything sounded good on the radio today.

Last week I was skiing in Colorado, and I came home to spring in Southern California. That freshness in the air, especially in the morning. But even more, the change from long sleeves to short, and soon I’ll be wearing my shorts, but not on the east coast where I’m going tomorrow, it’s not quite as warm there.

And I was listening to 60s on 6 and “Wooly Bully” reached me in a way that it hadn’t in decades. It was a revelation on the airwaves back in the sixties, we didn’t know about that sound, never mind the humorous lyrics.

And Lulu’s “To Sir With Love”…with its line “but what can I give you in return?”

Before, it was just an offer, a quid pro quo, but today, today it sounded like Lulu had gratitude for the experience, for the lessons she learned, and she really wants to let the teacher know she appreciates it, but knows that nothing she can give will equal what she has gotten.

Pop songs. You know them by heart, but then decades later they reveal meanings that heretofore went unnoticed.

I heard “I’ll Get You” on the Beatles channel.

That was the flip-side of “She Loves You,” which meant we played it incessantly until we knew it, that’s how hungry for Beatle material we were.

Prior to this, the B-side was dreck. Oftentimes unlistenable, but the Beatles changed that.

Now when I listened to “I’ll Get You” with my sixth grade brain, I thought it was about payback, I’ll get you for the way you treated me, just you wait.

And then, within the last year, I suddenly realized it’s about getting the woman in the end. He never had her, he wants her, she’s immune to his advances, he’s gonna win in the end.

This is a completely different scenario. It’s about desire, male power. Whereas I always thought it was about rejection and woman power. Whew!

The record didn’t change, I did. The meaning was there all along. It’s not like I misheard the words, I just never understood them!

So after “To Sir With Love” played, the read-out said it was gonna be “Cherish,” by the Association.

Now the first Association hit is an unheralded classic. “Along Comes Mary,” whether it’s about smoking marijuana or not, has the feel of dope, of being cut in another room, through a locked door, you can smell it, but you can’t go there, listening is your only option. The record took you away, made you feel older.

But the subsequent Association tracks were not as edgy, not as deep. The band was a known quantity, kinda like Bread after them, that existed on the hit parade but didn’t quite move your personal needle.

And I pushed the button to 70s on 7, but I didn’t cotton to that track and went back to “Cherish” and heard the above lyrics.

Now you’ve got to know, we heard these songs through a cheap speaker in the dashboard, or a transistor radio. That’s one of the reasons why so many people got the words wrong, like there being a bathroom on the right in that Creedence Clearwater Revival song. We know them, but we don’t know them as well as we think we do. Or maybe I was just too young to understand them back then.

I mean I thought “Cherish” was a love song, a man singing to a woman, how much he cherished his girlfriend/wife, but today I realized THAT’S NOT WHAT IT’S ABOUT AT ALL!

Oh, he’s got a feeling for her inside all right, he’s TORTURED!

I figured the lyrics about how many times he wished that he could hold her were about being on the road, I didn’t know it was an unspoken crush.

That I am not gonna be the one to share your dreams
That I am not gonna be the one to share your schemes
That I am not gonna be the one to share what
Seems to be the life that you could
Cherish as much as I do yours

I guess previously I just heard “dreams” and “schemes” and I thought it was just fear, of losing her, which is why he wanted to tell her he cherished her. But NOW, I realize he realizes that he’s never gonna get her, unlike in the Beatle number.

Oh, I’m beginning to think that man has never found
The words that could make you want me

He’s in the friend zone! She’s nice to him, but she doesn’t think of him that way.

That could make you hear, make you see
That you are drivin’ me out of my mind

That’s what it feels like. You can’t sleep, you think of them all the time, and you avoid them, because you realize if you talk to them you’ll be paralyzed, you’ll come across badly, better to dream than to have hope extinguished.

Oh, I could say I need you, but then you’d realize
That I want you just like a thousand other guys

She’s an icon, she’s desirable, and he’s nothing special, he knows he’s got no chance against the hunks, so he thinks he’s got to try a different approach, but he can’t approach her at all.

Meanwhile she’s got no idea.

He wants to change her, mold her, have her cherish him as much as he cherishes her.

And I do cherish you

He’s testifying, but only to himself. He’s in his own private universe, which may as well be in Idaho, that’s how far he is from her.

So “Cherish” isn’t a beautiful love song, but more a tale of frustration, of desire, of unrequited love.

And I didn’t know that until today!

Mastering…the final process in making a record, but most people don’t know anything about it.

Stephen Marcussen has mastered the records of the Rolling Stones, Eagles, Stevie Wonder, R.E.M., Gillian Welch, the Decemberists, the list goes on and on.

If you listen to this podcast you will understand what mastering is and how it is done.

You’ll also hear how Stephen followed a tip in the grocery store to Richard Perry’s Studio 55 and ultimately to his mastering gig.

If you make records, you want to tune in.

If you’re a student of the business, you want to tune in.

If you just like a good story…YOU’RE WELCOME!

Listen on:

iHeart

Apple

Spotify

Stitcher

Conventional wisdom is frequently wrong.

It’s kind of like a superstar act releasing a new album. Expectations are high, but frequently there’s disappointment. Not only Frampton’s “I’m In You,” but everything Michael Jackson did past “Thriller.” He kept telling us he was the King of Pop, we got turned off and stopped listening.

The newspapers will tell you where you’ve been, but not where you’re going. That’s the problem with research. That’s what’s great about art, you never know what will truly succeed, what will resonate, and when people will stop paying attention to what they once were riveted by. Kind of like movie musicals… A staple, and then unmakeable. Everything falls off the cliff. Whether it be baseball, football, Debbie Gibson or mood rings. Razr scooters too. There are fads and there are trends and if anyone could call them right, they’d be a billionaire. That’s what wowed us about Steve Jobs, he constantly gave us what we didn’t know we wanted. Meanwhile, Microsoft fell behind with me-too products, constantly refining what came before, as if we were looking for more features as opposed to a breakthrough. As for Amazon, it’s eye-popping numbers are a result of cloud services, hell, they make more money selling others’ products than their own, they’re the new eBay (and the new Google too, Amazon is the place to advertise).

The “New York Times” missed Trump. The whole media enterprise missed Trump. The statisticians missed Trump. They were just not in touch with the will of the public. That’s the game, what the public wants.

Does the public want an aged politician who hasn’t run for solo office for an eternity who’s got a long history of putting his foot in his mouth? Biden didn’t realize he could challenge Hillary in 2016, that he was more appealing, and the media got Bernie Sanders wrong then and now. They keep criticizing the Vermont senator for being a millionaire. His fans don’t care, he keeps saying things that appeal to them. Columnists thought he was a joke, they told him to drop out, but he’s leading now.

As for Mayor Pete, no one saw this coming. Come on, a gay mayor from Indiana? But he spoke truth to power and admits what he doesn’t know and that resonates with people. What resonates with Biden? His hair plugs and rust belt talk? The rust belt rusted, like coal it’s in the rearview mirror. We live in a tech/gas/solar world right now, youngsters know this, does Biden?

The Presidential race is not sports. Sports are littered with bad people who succeed. You may not be able to predict the winner, but you know who is excellent, who’s got the best possibility of winning. But Presidential races?

What the media doesn’t understand is not only has the game board been flipped, it’s been taken away. It’s like playing Monopoly without GO! Or tennis without a net. You can move your pieces, hit the ball, BUT WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

Hell, the news outlets themselves have been challenged, by Google, Facebook and the internet. Are they the sources to be trusted to know what is really going on? As for TV news, it’s professional wrestling, pure entertainment, outrage is king. But if you were that outrageous at work, you’d get fired, you’d have no friends in your personal life.

The truth is most people are hurting, except for the wealthy. They think the game is rigged against them, whether it be the right or the left. They don’t want incremental change, they want something more akin to revolution. That’s why they voted for Trump, that’s why Biden is in trouble. He’s the safe entry. The one in the middle. Look at music, in the middle always fails. We want something new, and edgy. And more people pay attention to music than politics.

I’m not saying it’s impossible for Biden to get the nomination, but he hasn’t run yet and the public hasn’t voted yet. Polls don’t reflect the truth… First and foremost, most people never answer them. Few have landlines. I’ve never answered a question online. It’s not the seventies anymore, it’s a whole new era, and it appears the populace wants new faces, or old faces that don’t reflect the status quo.

But the media keeps shoveling us the same old crap, believing they live in the pre-cable era, when the three networks purveyed bland product to appeal to everybody. But it turned out the public wanted edgier and racier fare on not only HBO, but FX and A&E and Bravo…

And then Netflix came along and upset the apple cart. Everybody is chasing the newbie and no one in Hollywood saw it coming.

Do the prognosticators see what is coming in politics?

NO!

My favorite game show was “Kideo Village.” The junior version of “Video Village,” it aired on Saturday morning, along with “Crusader Rabbit” and “Andy Devine”…PLUNK YOUR MAGIC TWANGER, FROGGY! Boy did I hate that show. And there were no other choices. I’d sit in front of the TV with the can of Charles Chips and wait for the hour to go by so I could watch something else.

We were addicted to television. It was the internet of yore. New. Remember when there was COLOR? Maybe not. Maybe you don’t even remember when computer monitors went from black and white to color, never mind flat screens. Steve Jobs stuck with black and white, it’s one of the many reasons he got kicked out of his own company, but he thought the screen was sharper and it cost less.

We knew every show. There were three networks and in the New York market, three independents. The independents aired stuff like Claude Kirshner’s circus show and Soupy Sales and Zacherle, but at 7:30 PM, prime time began, and we all tuned in.

And there were some game shows at night, but most aired in the afternoon.

Let’s see, “Password.” We used to play the home version in the car, my father always refused to play and then blurted out the answer.

“To Tell The Truth.”

“The Price Is Right.”

“Queen For A Day.”

And Monty Hall’s “Let’s Make A Deal.”

That’s right, we not only knew the shows, but the hosts. Bud Collyer. Bill Cullen.

And Art Fleming.

“Jeopardy” was different, it wasn’t about laughs, like the idiotic “Family Feud,” it was about knowledge. But it ran its course and was taken off the air and when it came back after its encore, it had a new host, Alex Trebek, and everybody forgot about Art Fleming. That’s the weird thing about getting older, youngsters don’t get the references and they don’t care, furthermore you realize fame is evanescent. You can’t leave your hotel room and then you’re seen in the grocery store and no one even comes up to say hi.

Now I went to college in a TV-free zone. It cured my addiction. I didn’t have a TV until seventeen years after I left home. Of course we’d go to other people’s houses to watch “Saturday Night Live,” when it was still pushing the envelope and it made cultural history, but I missed so many of the sitcoms and to be honest, I don’t feel like I missed anything, especially in this era of overwhelming product.

That’s modern society, we’re all in our niches.

“Laugh-In” came on on Monday night, and then Tuesday you were all telling the same jokes in school and everybody got ’em, because everybody watched.

Our nation was united. Even Richard Nixon implored the cast to sock it to him.

But now the networks are dying and we feel so alone. We can watch or listen to whatever we want, but it’s unfulfilling, because we’re a party of one. Last night I read “Relix,” you might not even know what that is, but it contained a huge cross-section of bands I’d never heard of. But they’re part of that scene. I don’t even know where to start. No one is telling me what’s important, what’s worth not only my attention, but my time. I’ve got the world at my fingertips but I can’t speak the same language to anybody. I was with friends who work for a classic metal band and I read them the Mediabase Active Rock chart and they didn’t know six of the Top Ten. Anybody who tells you they know what’s going on is lying.

But we know about Trump.

And Tiger.

And now James Holzhauer.

Hell, I wanted Tiger to win, because I love dominance, the same way I enjoy Holzhauer succeeding, but all this fawning bugs me. Tiger’s an automaton, he plays golf, that’s all, he won’t even admit he’s black, he doesn’t stand for anything but himself and his sponsors. So now we’re saying he embodies American values? Oh, come on, this is a manufactured story. Furthermore, today sports stars are seen as narrow identities, able to do only one thing well, except for the players in the NBA, they have views and they express them, that’s what happens when you set people free. America is all about keeping people under control, to their and society’s detriment. It’s best when you let your freak flag fly, evidence your personality.

And to tell you the truth, I never watch “Jeopardy.” I was stunned tonight that the values of the clues have doubled. Hell, I remember when the top value was a hundred bucks instead of two thousand. And video clues?

But I had to see James Holzhauer in action.

And he’s not warm and fuzzy, kind of cold in fact. But the fact that he keeps winning and keeps betting…word on the street is he’s broken the game.

He wagers absurd amounts on the Daily Double. He starts with the expensive clues, he jumps around the board, and we’re riveted. How come in nearly sixty years no one else has done this?

It’s kind of like the Beatles. You can remember before and after. Kind of like the internet. One day there was emptiness, vapidity, and the next day the whole world changed. People off the radar screen turned it upside down. Not the celebrities in the media, but unheralded people. It’s about taking a risk and doing it differently, we’re attracted to that.

And we’re attracted to anything that brings the country together, that gives us the ability to connect with others. We can talk about James Holzhauer and others can express amazement, dig a bit deeper into his technique, whereas with seemingly every other subject, we can’t find alignment.

These moments are the backbones of society. And they always come from left field.

For decades it’s been about being rich. Or the rags to riches story. Alex asked James if he could take care of his parents with his winnings. James said they were already comfortable. Everybody else is poor-mouthing, this guy is owning his middle class status.

And a million bucks really isn’t that much in today’s market. But compared to everybody else? He’s trumped Ken Jennings’s winnings per game. And Jennings is not crying the game is fixed, changed, that he still deserves the title, he’s amazed and supportive. What a class act.

Now the weird thing is “Jeopardy” is pre-taped. People know what happens to Holzhauer. Imagine if it was in real time, then it’d truly be must-see TV.

But still, it’s pretty riveting. A guy making it on his intelligence. Not a drone at the bank, but a sports bettor.

And his parents weren’t criminals paying to get James into USC or Stanford, rather he went to the University of Illinois, that was enough.

And I’m sure James can’t do everything. Maybe he can’t throw a ball, or do quantum mechanics, or maybe even cook, but he’s really good at trivia. He seems to know something about this world. Which is a far cry from the influencers who are selling style rather than substance.

This is an American story, this is what America is about, not the rah-rah crap, but the rugged individual who triumphs employing his own strategy. It’s not about the team or the coach, it’s like Bob Dylan writing “Blowin’ In The Wind”…HOW DID HE DO THAT?

It inspires you to get off the couch and try to put a dent in the universe yourself.

It gives you hope.

And that’s what we need in America today.