What kind of crazy, fucked-up world do we live in where Jay Z makes a deal with the NFL and Nike’s Colin Kaepernick shoe sells out?

One in which keeping your mouth shut for money is passe and being a member of the group is less important than being an individual.

It’s the sixties all over again. Despite the cries of OK Boomer!, there’s been a sea change in the ethos of the populace, and once again the old white men are out of touch.

Aren’t the people buying Kap’s shoe supposed to be the fans of the NFL?

Well, if that’s not true, aren’t African-Americans the soul of the NFL?

The NBA realized this and the players gained power. Furthermore, the NBA allowed the game and its penumbra to be fluid, as opposed to being sacrosanct, as it is in the NFL. The players rule the NBA, they’re serfs on Maggie’s Farm in the NFL.

But doesn’t money rule? Aren’t the billionaires in control? Don’t they know what’s best for America?

No.

In the last couple of years, everything we know has flipped. First with tech. The soul of America, its innovation, the luxuriating in products and features instead of being cool is now seen as uncool, too many know-nothing billionaires protecting their riches at the public’s expense.

And then there’s the anti-environment polluters. Scratch a millennial or a member of Gen-Z and you’ll find they’re militant about climate change, it’s not only Greta Thunberg, whom Trump made fun of.

So you get to decide what side you’re on if you’re a corporation, and an individual too.

In other words, America is no longer tribal only when it comes to politics. And the young tribe, the tribe on the left, is all about individual superstars while that on the right has closed ranks, circled the wagons, and is positively out of touch with what’s going on.

When it comes to corporations…

It’s like Europe and Trump. You can now stand up to the man. Especially in an era where TV advertising no longer rules and no one can organize an effective boycott.

And your goal is not to satiate everyone, but your core constituency. Today haters and trolls are de rigueur, to be ignored.

Women stood up with Me Too.

Now everybody is standing up for their rights, and the powers-that-be don’t like it.

Hell, the movie companies don’t even like that streaming is eating their lunch!

We were so overwhelmed by the tech innovations of the past thirty years that we are now ignoring the cultural changes in our society.

Look at the YouTube/Instagram influencers, it’s all about ME! ME! ME! whereas previously millennials refused to speak up for fear of being excoriated and left out of the group.

We are in a new age of the individual. And one person can move mountains, assuming they believe what they say.

As for Colin Kaepernick? He would have been a forgotten quarterback, living on his pension. Now he’s a household name never to be forgotten while he profits on shoes and more.

As for Nike?

The company took a risk and it paid off. It ensured its longevity with the younger generation, and they’re making new people every day if you haven’t noticed, we are here to be replaced.

For the last thirty years, forty, it’s been all about being fake to get ahead and be rich. Yup, you went to business school to learn how to get along with people, kiss their butts to get paid.

As for the techie/nerds… They had their era, just like classic rock, but now it’s over.

But just like people believe today’s music means as much as classic rock, they think that tech continues to rule, that billionaires are entitled to control society, and they’re just plain wrong.

This is what the DNC doesn’t see. It’s no longer 2016, it’s 2020, and times are different.

In 2016 we still loved Facebook. Only the left behind were disillusioned, i.e. those without college educations who lost their jobs.

But today, everybody is disillusioned, everybody is questioning whether they’re gonna get their piece of the pie. Which is why when you boast in a song how great your life is, how you’re a winner, you’re out of touch. Furthermore, the hoi polloi know that entertainers earn just a fraction of the money of billionaires, that they’re glorified court jesters.

And then you come down to the talent agencies, competing with each other to replace the movie studios even though there’s no there there. The writers have rebelled, gone on strike, because they don’t like being pawns in the game, and the agencies refuse to settle because it will ruin their whole business model, saying they’re representing talent when they’re really in the game to build monoliths and get rich.

And today the individual does not need print or TV to get his or her message across.

And stories break online long before they break in the news.

Which is why foreign countries want to control the internet, censor it and occasionally shut it down. And the American tech companies just play along.

But then Tim Apple refuses to give a back door to the government into iPhones. And stands up for privacy. Because we’re all upset about being bought and sold, known, even though we can’t break our addiction to free services.

Politics is just evidence of what is going on, it’s not the main show.

In 2016 Bernie Sanders almost upset the apple cart. He proved that it’s no longer business as usual. But what is the DNC trying to do? Institute business as usual. That’s what the whole Biden campaign is about. Kap gets excommunicated for standing up for his rights and is a hero to the younger generation and Biden gets another chance by saying let’s go back to the past. Young people don’t want to go back to a past that they never were the beneficiaries of anyway!

So what we should expect in 2020 is more individuals standing up to power and not backing down.

And savvy corporations will align themselves with these individuals.

And those who take a chance will be lionized while those who hew to the company line, who resist change, will be challenged.

Now is the time to use your brain. Forget the influencers selling products on social media, they’re just an interim phase. The next step is using your message to gain power online to effect change.

And one thing’s for sure, the wheels are turning and a change is gonna come.

We start with “I Feel Fine.”

Now once again, this is the American experience, my experience, with the truncated/bastardized LPs. “I Feel Fine” was on the second side of “Beatles ’65,” which, along with its successor, “Beatles VI,” corresponded with the English “Beatles For Sale,” now my favorite Beatles album. (Once again, I’m not saying the BEST, but just the one I play MOST! I could listen to “Every Little Thing” every day, and sometimes I do!)

“Beatles ’65” cemented the mania. Released for the holiday, Christmas of ’64, it had elements of darkness to go along with the short days. And “I Feel Fine” was all over the radio, it was our first exposure to feedback (at least the first we were aware of, save me the e-mails reciting musical history).

“Beatles VI” was neither fish nor fowl, which is why I didn’t buy it. With probably the worst cover of any Beatles album, its only hit was “Eight Days A Week,” which was a monster, one of my sisters bought the singles, by this time I was purely an album guy. And in the sixties no one could afford everything, so when you went to a friend’s house, you played what you did not have, and vice versa.

Now “Beatles VI” is full of covers, evidencing the band’s roots in Hamburg and the Cavern Club. But it does contain “Every Little Thing” and…”What You’re Doing.”

By this point, we all had electric guitars. And most of us had the songbook “The Golden Beatles.” We’d taken enough lessons to know the chords, if we were not yet experienced enough to know bar chords. I remember playing “What You’re Doing” having never heard it, and stunningly I got the rhythm right!

Now I never cottoned to “Yes It Is” back in the day, but with the appearance of Napster, when everything surfaced, I was exposed to Don Henley’s amazing cover, recorded live at a Bridge School Concert. You need to listen to it:

Spotify
YouTube

So tune in tomorrow, Tuesday, December 24th, at 7 PM East and 4 PM West.

Or catch it on a replay, or on demand on the SiriusXM app.

We’ll relive the history of what once was, Beatlemania, which was not only mania, it contained gravitas, there was no doubt in our minds that this music was gonna last…AND IT HAS!

“I’m Gumby, DAMMIT!”

What kind of crazy fucked-up world do we live in where SNL has its best show in decades?

One in which Eddie Murphy comes back to Rockefeller Center to exhibit his talent and blow the rest of the cast away.

Of course I wasn’t gonna watch this. I was convincing Felice to watch either “El Marginal” or “Gomorrah” on Netflix. But she said she had to see the opening of SNL first.

Well…

Rather than fire up the Roku downstairs, I decided to watch the opening. Which featured stars galore, and fell flat as it usually does, I didn’t laugh out loud once, and neither did Felice. Sure, the studio audience was howling, but they were just thrilled to be there.

But then Chris Rock showed up. And Chappelle.

Seems like a long time ago, but our comedy heroes have come back to roost. Watching Rock one remembered all his A-level specials, he was the new Carlin on HBO.

But Chappelle had even more stage presence, today he’s a bigger star than all of them, walking away from his TV show, going into hibernation and then coming back on Netflix and angering the same people who can’t seem to understand why Trump is President. What did that famous African-American seer once sing…DIFFERENT STROKES FOR DIFFERENT FOLKS? I’m not gonna say I agree with everything Chappelle says, but he’s got a right to say it, and when people utter the politically incorrect, conversation flows, we get to figure it out for ourselves instead of being told how to think, or that we can’t think. Yup, what kind of crazy fucked-up world do we live in where you need trigger warnings, where colleges are so out of touch that the Republicans gain a talking point. I went to college, we protested, but we did not Facetime our mommies multiple times a day, going away to school meant you were an adult, you had to figure it out for yourself, you even had to do your own laundry!

But as the white nationalists rage, watching tonight’s program illustrated that it is black culture that rules the world, that is cool. Come on, Chappelle smoking a cigarette? And Lizzo! I hate that she sang to track, and the dancers in the first number were superfluous, but she evidenced talent and she was having so much FUN! I’m not saying it was dangerous, not Elvis Costello or Sinead O’Connor back in the day, then again, isn’t it illegal to be fat? I’m down with anybody questioning precepts. Isn’t that what rock and roll used to be, before it became about conformity and selling out to the man?

But in “Mr. Robinson’s Neighborhood”… Eddie inhabited the character without chewing the scenery, he took a formula and jetted it into the stratosphere!

And how about that holiday cake sketch? He was the only one who evidenced any star power.

Yup, stars. That’s what we’re interested in. And we know it when we see it, just like pornography.

So back in ’73, I went to see “Lemmings” at the Village Gate. And it took only one performance to be closed by John Belushi and Chevy Chase. Their performances were embedded in my brain. Such that when they appeared on SNL…not only was I ready, but they became instant stars. Yup, it was a smaller world, easier to make it, but since Eddie Murphy, no one’s become an overnight, instant star on SNL. Well, Tina Fey came close, but otherwise we were exposed to nobodies going nowhere or people on their way to making hackneyed movies, unlike “Animal House.”

And Will Ferrell… He was too safe, he was warm and cuddly, you could take him home to mom.

But Eddie Murphy?

The closing segment, the one with the reputation for being way out there, that usually sucks, with Eddie hogging the camera at the North Pole? Come on, that’s local news to a T! If I say anything more, I’m gonna appear racist, but Eddie nailed it.

And even though Velvet Jones is not a new character, Eddie blew away the rest of the cast on “Black Jeopardy.”

We’re looking for excellence. In the everybody can be a star world of the internet, we give credit to those who do not deserve it. We’re looking for transcendent performances, ones we can never forget, where someone fully-formed comes out and knocks us dead.

Come on, did you ever see Prince?

Some people just have it in them.

And some people had it and lost it.

And to tell you the truth, I thought Eddie Murphy was lost, that he jumped the shark, with too much money and…

But when he talked about being the American Dad Cosby is not, staying at home with his kids, joking about having to go back to work to feed his progeny…

It reminded me of Richard Pryor at the Comedy Store, not long after he burned himself up, when he took the stage and started telling Richard Pryor jokes. You know, like lighting a match and bouncing it up and down and asking the audience what it was…

I wanna be taken to the limit, I don’t want to settle.

And our whole world is about settling these days. Everybody has the right to become President, everybody has the right to do everything, and what most people are best at is self-promotion, other than the work.

But most of us are just the audience, admit it. And when we’re lying in bed, or on the couch, and someone comes along and lifts us up, takes us away from our humdrum lives, makes us feel it’s great to be alive…

We’re all eyes and ears.

And tonight that was Eddie Murphy.

Retribution

It will make you want to go to Scotland.

And speaking of traveling, you might have caught the story about Norway refraining from drilling for oil off the Loften Islands. That’s important news, but even more staggering is the picture that accompanied said news, see it here:

Norway won’t drill in Arctic archipelago for billions of barrels of oil

Now if that does not make you want to go there…

So I’ve run out of sure bets on Netflix and Amazon.

Oh, let me throw down some criteria. I don’t watch movies. Well, I don’t watch non-fiction movies, just like I do my best not to read non-fiction books. If it’s based on a true story…well, I’d rather just read the story. I’m looking for a series, something I can dig my teeth into. And after finishing “Mrs. Maisel,” we pulled up “The Kominsky Method,” and after three episodes turned it off. There was some good word of mouth, but could anything by Chuck Lorre be worth watching? You know, the guy who did “Two and a Half Men”? Hopefully this kind of entertainment will die with network television. You know, lowbrow trying to appeal to the masses. It’s kinda like music, that which is unique, that takes itself seriously, is usually the most appealing. I’m not a big fan of Radiohead, but it fits this paradigm.

Now I’m not lacking for recommendations. My inbox is full. But it’s kinda like music recommendations, people don’t understand the concept, it’s not what YOU like, but what you think I will like. Believe me, when I’m recommending music I don’t start off with Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers, even though I love that initial LP.

Then again, there’s the issue of having the light shined upon you. (“Shone”? Who knows!) Like the NYT Sunday “Book Review.” They ask people what they read and they proffer the most obscure stuff, in order to make themselves look cool. Or maybe you should check out the WSJ’s best albums of the year

The Best Music of 2019: In an Age of Short Attention Spans, the Album Is Alive and Well

Oh, they mention Billie Eilish, Brittany Howard, Lana Del Rey and even Justin Howard/Bon Iver. You’ve probably heard of all those. But how about the first LP mentioned…the Brooklyn band 75 Dollar Bill, with their big hit album “I Was Real.” You’ll be glad to know none of the cuts on the LP reach six digits on Spotify, one doesn’t even reach five! Then there’s the famous Angel Olsen, and her album “All Mirrors.” Five of the tracks actually reach seven figures on Spotify, but with all this talk of hip-hop/pop concentration at the majors, the label is…Jagjaguwar, same as Justin Vernon/Bon Iver. Or how about Big Thief’s “U.F.O.F.”? A bunch of tracks in low seven figures, but have you even heard of the band? Oh, there is a rapper, Polo G. And at this point, most people have heard of FKA Twigs, at least those paying attention to the scene, but how about Jessica Pratt and her LP “Quiet Signs”? Actually, one cut does have four million streams, but the rest don’t break six digits.

And the point is not that the music featured in the WSJ list is bad. Who knows, I haven’t heard a bunch. But it certainly isn’t what you’re seeing on the “Billboard” chart. Used to be a limited number of projects were released per year, now it’s virtually endless. And almost nothing worth listening to is on a major label, and all the hype is only about what’s on major labels, and if this doesn’t make you feel overwhelmed and want to check out, you’re a better person than me, and one with more time.

That’s the problem with TV shows, they take a lot of time. You could click through a playlist of the above, but watching a number of TV shows? And as for playlists, we’re inundated with them, and after you skip through a bunch of bum tracks you beg off. Yup, music distribution has been figured out, but not music marketing. Used to be you could rely on the deejay, when the deejay could choose what to play, now you’re on your own, good luck!

As for short form video… Did you read the story in the WSJ about creators being burned out?

YouTube Created a Generation of Young Stars. Now They Are Getting Burned Out.

How many articles have we read about the YouTube stars being the future? The same wankers writing this are the same ones pontificating about the election and swaying it. Now even PewDiePie is taking a break. Want some good advice? Go to college, get an education, preferably one in the humanities, then you’ll be able to navigate the future.

Which brings us back to…

“Retribution.” A four part miniseries shot in Scotland and released by the BBC in 2016.

That’s what I love about today, art is a time bomb, just waiting to be discovered. You don’t have to be first, you don’t have to be hip, you can wend your way and find the good stuff eventually, it’s like a glorified board game and you’re the only one playing it.

So…

At first “Retribution” seems a bit hokey.

No, not at first, at the end of the first episode, when the construct is revealed, you think you’ve seen it before, you might even wince.

But as you power on…

Everyone’s got complications. No one is pure. And that reflects real life. Go under the surface and everybody’s got issues, even if they don’t reveal them to you. And life isn’t fair even though you want it to be and do you go along with the group or your own way and end up ostracized?

You’ll recognize John Lynch from “The Fall” (watch that before this) and “In The Name Of The Father.”

Lynch is calm, and then he’s intense. And just when you think he’s gonna hit someone, when he’s in their face, he doesn’t. And that’s a big issue… Could you ever hit your wife or husband? Don’t immediately say no. It may be you’ve never been put in certain situations, you might not know about certain situations, and if you do…

As for Laura Fraser, the DI…you’ll recognize her from “Breaking Bad” (which you should binge, you get hooked, but I’d say to binge “The Americans” first).

And you’ve seen Gary Lewis (not the one with the Playboys) and Juliet Stevenson and Joe Dempsie but the star is Joanna Vanderham, who is constantly confronted with crises of conscience.

So who did it?

That’s one of the things I hate about mysteries, there’s always a twist at the end, to a great degree it’s why I don’t read them. But unlike mystery books, the miniseries made from them are often fleshed out to the point where the conclusion is not the most important part.

So the two families are living in the middle of nowhere, what happens when you know everybody and everybody knows you?

And are you a weak person, can you endure the twists and turns of life?

And can you trust anybody but yourself. I know, I know, that sounds extreme, but you’d be surprised how the most loyal are not.

And are you listening, or are you alone together?

We watched the first hour and I wasn’t so sure about going back. But last night we marathoned the final three episodes, we couldn’t turn “Retribution” off.

Now I don’t like how they explain things. I prefer when you can infer, from what happens, what is said. Then again, is everything true?

Now “Retribution” is not light. It’ll change your mood. And that’s a change from so much of today’s disposable art.

And it’ll make you wonder about your own choices, your own life, it’ll set the wheels turning, and isn’t that what we want art to do?