https://bit.ly/2M7VXiX

This is more like it.

The right is working the refs. I never see this story in the media, but I experience it every time I mention Trump’s name, the usual suspects inundate me with blowback, putting me down as a “progressive,” telling me about their “facts,” laughing at me.

This is not easy to take, but I soldier on.

But it’s why so many others stop. The right is organized. With their Fox News and talk radio. Hell, if it weren’t for Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh the government would be open and the wall would be just another talking point.

This is the way it used to be before the youth woke up their brethren back in the sixties. The United States was the greatest country in the world, we could win any war, especially in backwater Vietnam, all hail the Red, White & Blue!

Until suddenly the artists took a different path.

You see we need leaders. And oftentimes they’re those who think a little different, who don’t get up at six to go into the office, who contemplate what’s going on and lay it down in song, film or prose.

But it’s hard to triumph in media these days. Where it takes years for a song to bubble up, where we’re all in our own different silos.

But still, take a stand and you’re gonna get blowback.

The Killers have taken a stand.

Of course they’ve got something at risk. This is not the seventies, when the youth was completely left, you can no longer tell someone’s political bent by the length of their hair, music fans can be as right as Abbie Hoffman was left. And since today’s “artists” believe that first and foremost they’re a brand, a business enterprise, they don’t want to offend any potential customer.

But that’s not what they are, they’re artists. Which side are you on, the truth or the dollar? You get to decide. And the further up the food chain you are, the more momentous the decision.

It’s easy to be a nobody and take a stand, but when you’re somebody…

And the classic acts have given up. No one wants to hear their new music and they don’t want to offend the baby boomers who’ve accrued their fortune and have swung to the right, so they stay silent.

And, once again, if you don’t, it’s gonna be news in the right wing blogosphere. And the left wing will report it but not defend you, you’ll be hanging out there alone.

So who is gonna take a risk?

Sure, rappers have. But so many people ignore rap the same way they ignored the exploits of R Kelly and his African-American victims. And in hip-hop, cash is king. Then again, African-Americans have been victimized throughout our history, screwed in the music business by Atlantic Records and so many more companies that didn’t pay royalties.

And the hook here is supposed to be the Spike Lee film.

But in this case, unlike how it’s been for decades, the song eclipses the video.

In this era where you’ve got to hook ’em quick and hook ’em good, “Land Of The Free” has got a long, instrumental intro, starting off quiet and building, it’s more classic rock than Spotify.

“Washing his truck at the Sinclair station
In the land of the free”

That roots it, personalizes the song, the gas station with the dinosaur. In a song that seems like it’s going to be about platitudes, it ends up intimate.

“His mother Adeline’s family came on a ship
Cut coal and planted a seed
Down in them drift mines of Pennsylvania
In the land of the free”

That’s why we came here, for the freedom, everything at risk in D.C. And we all came, almost nobody was here already, except for the Native Americans who’ve been abused for centuries.

“Land of the free, land of the free
In the land of the free”

If you’re aged, you’ll be reminded of Foreigner’s “I Want To Know What Love Is,” with its anthemic chorus supported by a full choir. It makes the song important, that’s the power of the voice in an era ruled by machines.

“But if you’re the wrong color skin
You grow up looking over both your shoulders
In the land of the free”

Truth. So simple, but so right.

And like Leonard Cohen sang, everybody knows.

“We got more people locked up than the rest of the world
Right here in red, white and blue
Incarceration’s become big business
It’s harvest time out on the avenue”

CAN’T HE STAY IN HIS LANE! That’s what the right wing agitated will say. Musicians can’t talk about politics, and how many issues do you want to embed in one song. But the Killers are not holding back, once you break out of the restraints, freedom feels so good. And that’s the problem in America today, the chilling effect, where a President says not to trust the media and if you cross him, you’re gonna pay.

“So how may daughters, tell me how many sons
Do we have to put in the ground before we just beak down and face it
We got a problem with guns”

Whew, now he’s singing about guns too? And isn’t the NRA just too powerful? But the Parkland kids put a dent in ’em, and why do we need the guns anyway? The same nitwits who think a wall will solve immigration problems are the same idiots who think by owning a gun they can stand up and overthrow the government, in an era of drones, where you fight with software.

“Down at the border, they’re gonna put up a wall
Concrete and rebar steel beams
High enough to keep all those filthy hands off of our hopes and our dreams
People who just want the same things we do
In the land of the free.

The message of the song, the message of the video. What does America stand for? But that wall hasn’t been built yet and the Killers don’t want it to be. They’re making a statement that will reach their fans more than anything in the “New York Times,” never mind Fox News. That’s the power of art, to change minds.

And if this were the eighties, this video would be all over MTV, the talk of the nation. But in the teens, it’s impossible to reach everybody. But disruption never sleeps, it’s just a matter of who is willing to fight.

We’ve been overwhelmed with the innovation of the techies for two decades. But we’ve learned in the past few years that the majordomos have no moral center, which is why artists need to take the reins and make a statement.

Like the Killers.

https://spoti.fi/2CoO6ZG

The rich are just like the rest of us.

Only with a lot more money.

Oh, maybe that’s not true. Maybe they believe they’re entitled to what they want, that the rules of both law and morality don’t apply to them.

First and foremost Bezos lied about when his affair with Sanchez began.

Is he living in a vacuum? Does he not know that in today’s world, the truth always outs? People can choose to believe it or not, but the only thing private is what you say to yourself, alone, in the dark.

And sending his junk in a photo, what is he sixteen? Celebrities bitch about Apple leaking their erotic photos, when the truth is it was their weak passwords at fault, and the world’s richest man decides to send a photo of his personal parts anyway? What, did he think he was immune?

And you know what they say about getting involved with someone who left a marriage for you, they’ll leave you too.

Oh, of course there are exceptions, but the axiom is proven true in most cases, especially for those who don’t have the balls to be single. Play the field, see what it feels like to be alone in this world. As opposed to jumping from relationship to relationship, as if they’re stones that will take you to the other end of the river, that you will never slip and fall and get wet.

And this guy is lionized in the press, he’s a cultural institution. Maybe a bit weird, but hewing the line. Then he blows up his whole life over a woman? Proving, like my first sentence, we are all the same, and sex rules the world.

Kinda like Bill Clinton. If I were President, I’d keep my penis in my pants, especially if that’s what people were looking for. Same deal with Gary Hart. But the rich and famous have large appetites, that seemingly can’t be satiated, and like I said above, they don’t think the rules apply to them.

She’s Patrick Whitesell’s wife. The couples are good friends. Shouldn’t she be off limits?

Does nobody have any morality? Both Jeff and Lauren?

As for lying about the affair… Booking Lauren in the same hotel in Boston where you’re staying with your wife to visit your kid at college… How daring do you want to be, how risky do you want to be, I mean you couldn’t keep your dick in your pants for a weekend?

And lying about the timeline… You were already schtupping Lauren while you were celebrating your anniversary with Mackenzie?

This is why Trump gets elected. The rest of us are playing by the rules, written, ironically, by the masters. And then the masters ignore them. This is true of elites on both sides of the aisle. They worked hard to earn their riches and damned if they’re going to kowtow to any poor people. They have contempt for poor people! Uneducated, on drugs. Screw ’em!

And while the poor get picked up for blue collar crimes, with cameras everywhere, white collar crime is rampant. They blow up the economy, and then the Republicans hobble the IRS so their tax returns are never investigated. That’s right, your job withholds your taxes. But the bigwigs?? Let the games begin!

And the quality of the prose in the texts… As if Bezos had been reading YA novels. Or maybe watching cartoons. This is the language the richest man in America employs?

And I don’t mean to be holier-than-thou, to moralize, but this guy has been canonized in the press, hell, even I’ve lauded him. Because we don’t really know him. He’s not some nitwit entertainer tweeting and Instagramming for attention, to further their so-called career, he’s got a team of publicists releasing just what he wants to, when he wants to. He’s sculpting his image.

And everybody buys it.

Hell, the “New York Times” admits that they bought Trump’s charade, never investigated his financial claims deeply, even though he lived in New York.

So on one hand you can laugh, how this guy blew up his life. You know how it works… After the dust settles, Lauren dumps him, or he discovers that she’s not what he believed her to be, after living with her for a while, and Mackenzie won’t take him back and all he’s got is his money, or half of it.

Then again, Hillary took Bill back and was excoriated in the press.

Then again, the press loves to beat up on females. And, ironically, women yell loudest about the behavior of other women. Hell, Lauren shared the texts with her friends, what is she in grade school? Even a middle schooler is aware of the pitfalls of this, that’s why they invented Snapchat, so messages would disappear, and then when it was commonly known that with a screen capture they didn’t, the social media outlet changed its business model. Furthermore, Sanchez has a teenager!

Speaking of which, Mackenzie is at home raising their four kids while Jeff is dilly-dallying out in the field, lying about it all the while. And if he lies to his wife, what are the odds he lies in his business…ONE HUNDRED PERCENT!

Life with Mackenzie is old. As it is with every long term relationship. You must invest, you must keep growing, or like in that old Woody Allen movie, you end up with a dead shark.

But the joke is on Jeff, not us. Everyone knows long term relationships pay dividends. That breakups oftentimes ruin not only your life, but those of the people surrounding you. But you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do. You’re driven. You’re in love. As if you won’t wake up one day, when life has normalized and wonder…WHAT DID I DO?

P.S. The only good thing in this whole escapade is Bezos’s lawyer’s comment, that Jeff “supports journalistic efforts and does not intend to discourage reporting about him.” If only our President felt the same way.

Such A Simple Thing

But it’s not.

Used to be buying skis was easy. You chose the racing model from a handful of well-established brands. Now, Volkl, K2 and Rossignol remain, but the shops are inundated with indie brands, some expensive and custom, like Wagner, others off the shelf and in much wider use, i.e. Liberty. How did this happen?

The means of sales and production ended up in the hands of the proletariat. Just like in music.

I have to remind you that in the Napster era, the oldsters cried out that no one would make music anymore, just the opposite proved true, seemingly everybody’s making music, and unless you were a superstar of yesteryear or a hitmaker today, it’s easy to get lost in the shuffle.

There was a limited number of acts. You were exposed to them in print, on radio and in your friends’ bedrooms. Today you don’t know where to start.

But yesterday I did. I decided to go past the Spotify Top 50, and what I found is a plethora of product, most of it good, very little of it great. Wading through the dross is difficult, but sometimes worth it. But didn’t somebody else used to do this for us? We keep speaking of curation… Terrestrial radio only plays the hits, and online, its an endless stream of playlists.

You’ve got to go deep. I clicked on “Genres & Moods” in Spotify.

Funny, rock is in the fourth row, that’s how far it’s fallen. But none of those playlists appealed to me, and when I eventually checked out “Rock This,” I knew why. No total excellence. No one who could sing, play and write. Furthermore, does rock even sound good on headphones? It ends up a wash.

So I went to “Folk & Acoustic.” And clicked on “Infinite Acoustic.” That’s where I found the Sound Stage Studios version of Ray LaMontagne’s “Such A Simple Thing.” But what followed was an endless parade of names I frequently hadn’t heard of playing songs that were not memorable. Oh, if it was the seventies, and I’d purchased their album, maybe I would have played it enough to become entranced. But that’s not how we do it these days.

But after becoming bored, I clicked over to “Roots Rising.” And I heard “People Change” by Mipso. Do you know Mipso? I certainly didn’t.

Nor did I know the following act, Mt. Joy. Or the Dead Tongues. These are the indie skis of music, not on a major. What are the reference points?

And if you pull up “People Change,” you’ll probably turn it off. It starts slow and it never really revs up. If you were in a coffee house and the band was on stage you’d probably get it, the mood would be set. But there’s nothing special about the track, nothing that sticks out about the song, except for these lines:

“The thing about people is they change
When they walk away”

Whew! Hearing that resonated. You dream about old loves, and then you run into them and they’re not the same, you don’t click, they’ve been frozen in your mind but the world moved on, as did they.

And I yearned for more of this, this is what I look to music for, the insight.

Although “People Change” has 26,245,043 streams. Which means some people have found it. Were they the grazers, the hometown fans or people deep into this scene? Can you go deep into multiple scenes these days? Rock, country and EDM? Never mind Americana. Maybe you can be an expert in one, but that’s almost a full-time job.

But “Such A Simple Thing,” it hooked me when I wasn’t listening. Oh, you know what I mean. I wasn’t paying attention, it was in the background, but it jumped out.

Now Ray LaMontagne is on a major, RCA, but he began in a completely different era, 2004, when there was so much less music, we hadn’t anointed hip-hop as the only sound and MTV and VH1 were in their last throes. Would Ray LaMontagne get signed to a major today? Doubtful.

Not that he’ll be on a major for long, his last album, from which “Such A Simple Thing” emanates, is a stiff on Spotify. Only three tracks are in seven digits. Some are in low sixes. But “Such A Simple Thing” has 31,990,734, which I thought was a lot until I looked up Mipso’s number.

But this probably means that AAA/non-comm stations featured it, and it was eaten up by grazers, who like it but probably won’t go to the gig.

Confounding reality once again.

And the reality is…

There is good music out there, even great, but it’s hard to find it. If you don’t make hip-hop music, you’re hard to find on Spotify. Fans have to reach down deep into your genre to discover you, many clicks down, and don’t forget that Amazon patented “1-Click.” So it’s easy to be a professional, but easy to be broke. Getting attention is a Sisyphean job. There’s a disconnection between production and consumption. And the truth is this job is not being tackled, probably because the solution is not lucrative, except for the beneficiaries, the acts raised up.

And the Sound Stage Studios iteration of “Such A Simple Thing,” on the “Infinite Acoustic” playlist, supersedes the take on the 2018 album “Part Of The Light,” Ray emotes, you can get the message without knowing the lyrics, the repressed anger, the depression, the glimmer of hope. She’s left before. Will she clue him in before she does so again?

And I’m wondering how many playlists Spotify’s curators curate. If they just feature new music willy-nilly. I mean sometimes there’s great stuff, and sometimes there’s not, but there’s still endless playlists every week with new stuff. And like the rest of tech, there’s no help, no one telling you what’s truly worth your time.

But this Sound Stage Studios take of Ray LaMontagne’s “Such A Simple Thing” is.

“People Change”

“Such A Simple Thing” album version

It doesn’t rain the same way in Southern California as it does on the east coast.

The same way it doesn’t snow in Colorado like it does in Utah.

In Utah, it dumps, oftentimes four inches an hour, you can barely see in front of you, you’re in a cocoon of flakes, it’s quiet, you feel like you’re removed from the rest of the world and that feels good.

On the east coast, rain is a regular feature. Make plans outdoors and you can be sure they’ll be interrupted by Mother Nature. Whereas rain is rare in SoCal. And oftentimes brief. Just when you’re curled up with a book, the sun will come out. God dang it. I was just getting ready to break out the board games, now I’ve got to go outside.

My Mac fizzled out. Just after I upgraded it to 10.14.2. I was convinced that was the problem, software. But Apple was convinced it was RAM. But that seemed unlikely, since the computer had booted up in safe mode before it bit the dust completely, and the RAM had come from Apple itself. And the machine was only four years old, and had never ever been moved from its perch. I’d purchased the warranty, but of course it had expired a year earlier.

Turns out you can converse with Apple tech online for free. Not that I was looking to save a buck, but after all my troubleshooting failed, I gave it a shot.

Ultimately, after wasting ninety minutes, they don’t type so fast and are busy looking up knowledge base articles, the tech made an appointment for me at the Apple Store. In Santa Monica. I preferred Century City, because they lend you a cart to carry your machine, but Century City was a day later, and I was worried about it conflicting with my radio show, so I made an appointment for Monday at four p.m. on the Third Street Promenade.

I had to schlepp the damn thing myself, there is no back door.

But there were a ton of employees.

The Apple Store has changed. First of all, there’s no Genius Bar. Just a bunch of tables. So you’re not sure who to talk to, even though the space is inundated with help, as if they’d drafted a community college class and forced it to stand around against its will. Everybody’s wearing a red shirt, and they’re not lookers, and they come in every race and shape and age…yup, they even have a sexagenarian for oldsters, and I cornered someone and told them I had a reservation, and they said to park my ass at a nearby table and then nothing happened.

Thank god I didn’t make the appointment in Century City, I ended up being there for an hour and a half. I kept asking if they knew I was there, they kept telling me to sit at my table and be quiet.

But ultimately they gave me Julia, who they said was one of their best techs.

A graduate of Occidental, she was an Apple lifer. She started in Pasadena and had transferred to Santa Monica only five months previously. She was living in Culver City, and at these wages she had to have a roommate, but boy was she into her job.

She knew what she was talking about.

This was very different from AppleCare, where unless you get booted upstairs, you know more than the techs.

And she too thought it was the RAM.

But she called me later and said it was not.

But then I got a call on Tuesday from Christian telling me it was the RAM SLOTS! Two of them were dead, I needed a new logic board. $600 and change, which sounds expensive until you realize the computer itself cost $4600, actually a bit more, and of course I said yes.

Today it was ready. I asked for help carrying it to my car.

They said no, that employees could not leave the store. But if I waited fifteen or twenty minutes, they could call a cart from Promenade management.

I wasn’t gonna wait that long.

So I lifted the machine, I’d saved the box, that’s the kinda guy I am, and carried it and when it came time to turn the corner, to the parking structure, there was a young woman on her phone and I ever so gently told her I was coming, she wasn’t looking up, and I didn’t want to bump into her.

She then raised her eyes and put me down, telling me to walk around her.

And I did, but she didn’t know how heavy the computer was, and it ruined my whole day. I’ll never see her again, but when people yell at me I think it’s my fault.

And the computer worked, it was fixed!

But some of the bookmarks had been changed.

And my messages weren’t synching.

Eventually I got some of the past week’s messages to synch, but certain ones wouldn’t. I was gonna call Apple, but then I got carried away and it was too late and I was chatting online with help once again.

I’d already done an hour’s worth of research. To no avail.

And to tell you the truth, the hour I spent in chat was worthless.

And I got frustrated, I wanted the problem solved, I didn’t want to waste time another day.

But when you’re in this situation, you cannot stop. You keep thinking you can make it work, even though you’ve done everything twice or three times. And your brain is foggy and you can’t tear yourself away, even though I know from experience that perspective is a good thing, and sometimes the problem’s unfixable.

But in the process I was developing theories.

It was only the SMS messages that weren’t synching.

And then I plugged my iPhone into the charger, it synched with the cloud and it all worked.

Oh, there’s much more to the story, but the point is upon solving the problem I felt so good. After tearing myself away for a late dinner, I was getting new insights, I felt I knew what was going on, and when I checked my machine and it all worked, I felt fantastic!

And then I went out hiking.

I upgraded to an Unlimited Plan. There are three of them on Verizon, I know it makes no sense. But I kept on having to buy more data and then they said for five bucks more I could go unlimited, so I went for it. And have been using data like crazy ever since.

Which means I streamed while I hiked.

And I’m going from playlist to playlist, queuing up gems from the past, and then…

I feel a raindrop on my arm.

Hmm… Did I spit?

But then it happened again.

The iPhone Xs Max is supposed to be waterproof, but are my headphones? And I’m starting to walk faster, and it’s raining harder. And I make it to the bathroom whereupon I find out from Dark Sky that not only is it going to rain for hours, it’s gonna pour many days next week.

Which reminds me of 1998, when it rained for seven days straight. I remember having cabin fever and driving out to Norm’s, a cheap eats place that got torn down, worrying about getting stranded in the deep water.

You see there’s nowhere for it to go. Too many hills, too much concrete. Just a little bit of rain and L.A. is inundated with rivers finding their own way.

But I made it back to the house tonight. And wondered what to read while I was icing my knees. I’d finished the Sally Rooney book the night before, and I was just starting a new one when…

I heard this sound.

I figured it was industrial. The fridge or something.

But the dishwasher wasn’t on, it was two in the morning, it was quiet except for…

THE RAIN!

I jumped up, figuring it might stop soon and I wanted to see it. And I opened the front door and it was a veritable curtain, like being high on a mountaintop, in the elements. Could my car wash away?

And you wouldn’t play in this rain, nor would you sing.

You just stay home until it stops.

But it’s not supposed to stop for a while.

And Barbra Streisand famously said she wished it would rain. But the irony is, unlike in the movie, she stayed in SoCal, because living is too good, as is the weather.

But every once in a while, less now than in the past, it starts to pour.

Kinda like the snow turning into rain, in that old Dan Fogelberg song.

It’s coming down heavy now, I’m in for the duration. But through the magic of the internet I can connect with you.

It wasn’t like that back in 1998.