What kind of crazy fucked-up world do we live in where Trump ignores Puerto Rico after the hurricane and the biggest act in the world today is Bad Bunny, from the destroyed island?

Fox News is spinning in its grave. Because Bad Bunny owns Christmas, he’s everything the whites are against, people of color supposedly taking their jobs, their culture and if you deny this…

You’re part of the problem. Just like all the people who are afraid to call themselves Republicans so they keep protesting they’re independents when they’ve never voted for a Democrat in their life.

In case you missed the memo, and you probably did, because paying attention to the news is a 24/7 job and you’re more worried about what’s happening in D.C. than on Spotify, Bad Bunny released an album on Christmas Eve and it’s exploding.

Used to be no one put out music in January, Van Halen made a big statement releasing “1984” at the beginning of the month of that year, but now…

Music never sleeps. Acts are always putting out new music. Fourth quarter, fourth schmauter. Holiday releases are physical product and Christmas music. Otherwise, the goal is just to get people to stream. Hell, Bad Bunny’s “X100PRE” doesn’t even have a physical release. The music business has moved beyond that, unlike the book business. You don’t have to print in advance, you’re ready when the music is ready. This is what digital/the internet allows, and it’s good for art. After all, isn’t the best art about capturing lightning in a bottle?

And Bad Bunny started on Soundcloud. Once again, white people keep bitching about the net eviscerating their business, they want to get paid, just today I got another one of those inane e-mails about low Spotify payments…you’re missing the memo, jump in, the water is fine!

Seemingly everybody ruling the charts today started by giving it away for free. They didn’t wait for a gatekeeper to say yes, for a label to give them money, they just started, they just played. And sure, most of them failed, but not all of them.

And while Trump shuts down the government saying it’s important to keep the brown people out, veiled racism at best, a brown person rules in music. And the great thing about music is it doesn’t matter what it looks like, just what it sounds like, so it’s open to everybody!

And sure, Puerto Rico is part of America, but ask Trump and his supporters whether they truly believe that.

And Bad Bunny’s music certainly doesn’t sound like classic rock, so the fans of Lynyrd Skynyrd and modern country avoid it, pooh-pooh it, yet it’s infiltrating the culture. It’s just like Kodak and digital cameras. We keep hearing that whites will become a minority in the U.S. but it doesn’t happen, and then it does, overnight. So many musicians are people of color. And Latin music has finally hit the mainstream, it was just not about “Despacito.”

It’s happening in music. The distribution wars are over, streaming won, you can get everything for one low price per month. Now the focus is on software, i.e. the music itself. And those taking chances are young with nothing to lose. They’re experimenting, collaborating, building it from the ground up. And it’s incomprehensible to those who lived under the old umbrella.

There’s a burgeoning scene in music. It’s finally going somewhere, the endless dominance of hip-hop in this century is fracturing. There are new sounds, oftentimes growing out of hip-hop, and it’s exciting.

But none of the media outlets and gatekeepers can adjust to this new world. They want one chart with defined hits and defined stars. They want to be in control of who makes it and who doesn’t. But those days are through. The creators are in charge of music. They can just post it to streaming services and triumph. They don’t need radio or TV, those are afterthoughts. They’re just infecting the hard core, their fan base, until they become so big others get clued in.

There is something happening here, and it certainly isn’t exactly clear, but it’s exciting.

Music may change the world once again, just you watch!

If I could turn back time, I wouldn’t watch this show.

Welcome to the twenty first century, where old media has not caught up with new.

First and foremost, special events must be televised live, or we don’t care. You see we read all about these events after they’re recorded and before they air, there is no surprise. But the producers and acts are afraid of live. Well, welcome to the now, where mistakes are badges of honor, where they evidence your humanity, where if we want it perfect we can listen to the recording.

That’s why people go to the gig, to experience something different, when you know the answer to the question, why play the game?

This is the difference between now and then. We want to live in the moment. We want the edges. We want to feel part of the show. Or no go.

And these people honored who’ve risen above, don’t expect many of them in the future, no one can get that much mindshare. Except for maybe Lin-Manuel, and isn’t it interesting that he did it by creating a live experience that you couldn’t, experience that is. Never underestimate the power of sold out, the inability to go, exclude someone and they’re dying to go. In other words, “Hamilton” is unlike a movie, it doesn’t play for a weekend, it plays forever. And it features real people instead of comic book characters.

This is important. You’ve got to downgrade your estimate of stardom. If you’re shooting for the top, you’ll be lucky if you make it to the middle. People now have options and most don’t want to spend time with you, they like something different. Without MTV, Cyndi Lauper does not appear on this show. That channel and its limited offerings, which weren’t available on most cable systems at first, made Lauper a star. Not that she was not deserving, but today if you’re on MTV…when was the last time MTV created a star, since the 16 and pregnant people?

As for Cher…

It’s the power of a great song. When Lauper sang “Turn Back Time,” it fell flat. The hit was the video, not the song, with Cher and the ass tattoo and the strutting and the sexuality… Lauper evidences no sexuality, that’s not her game. As for the song… Sure, automatons in the audience stood up and danced, but that’s probably because they were bored on their asses for the hours it takes to film one of these shows.

But “I Got You Babe”…

That’s the funny thing, the personalities die and the work remains. What did you create, what did you leave? If it’s good enough, you’ll be remembered, if not, SAYONARA!

So the concept of a smorgasbord awards show is done, history, toast. From the Oscars to the Grammys, not enough people care, no one wants to be that bored, that’s why they turn to their phones. I certainly did during this trip back to the last century. To keep our attention you must be great, you must have edge, you must be pushing the envelope. Is there anybody in creation who loves those Grammy duets? They satisfy no one but the producer, they aren’t Grammy Moments but Shammy Shenanigans that are instantly forgotten unless they’re train-wrecks.

First they came for the classical, then they excised the jazz and the country, all to get you to watch the Grammys, but you stopped. You never cared about who won, but you do want to see your favorite acts live. Which is why we watched “Ed Sullivan,” we had no other options! Do you really think we wanted to watch Topo Gigio?

I’m not saying you can’t acknowledge a person’s life work. I’m just saying that in the future, most people won’t care, maybe won’t even know who that person is and certainly won’t tune in for the ceremony.

As for the production…

Prince owned the Super Bowl and Aretha owned the Kennedy Center Honors.

Give an NBA player the ball with seconds to go and they’ll deliver.

Give a has-been performer the mic and they’ll see it as just another exposure, when the truth is we remember when you hit a grand slam, these are the moments worth living for, and if you can’t deliver them, maybe you shouldn’t show up on stage.

But that’s modern America, where no one can say no, believing exposure is everything and if people just saw you, they’d like you.

No.

Furthermore, anything worth watching is available online instantly.

And if it’s great we watch it over and over.

Hell, why would you watch SNL in real time?

Hell, I watched this show to placate the family, to be a member of the group, but there were no hosannas, because the production fell flat.

That’s another thing about art, especially music. It’s oftentimes singular, a bolt from the heavens into the brain/body of the performer. But TV shows are made by committee, trying to please everybody and ending up appealing to nobody. And no one can say no.

Isn’t it interesting that most truly great artists are mercurial, they haven’t got time to listen to your opinion, they’re too busy doing it their way, and if you don’t let them…

So we’ve got the schism between the old and the new, between the networks and the streaming services, between the oldsters and the youngsters.

But the truth is for decades we were hung up on our devices, that’s what we thought the tech revolution was all about.

But truly, it’s about software, we’re only seeing the after-effects now.

Why go to the theatre when you can watch it on Netflix?

You can build it yourself on social networks and Spotify.

The world is changing, but too many don’t want it too, won’t acknowledge it.

Isn’t that what’s happening in governments around the world? People agitating on the right to bring the old days back, Carol Burnett and the Sonny & Cher show?

But that ain’t ever gonna happen. We’ve been blasted into the future, where everything’s up for grabs. New people will be winners, color won’t matter, it’s those who use the new tools best, who understand the culture best, who will emerge victorious.

And once again, music is the on the bleeding edge, the canary in the coal mine.

We’ve got creators using the new tools to make, distribute and promote their wares.

We own live performance.

As usual music gets no respect, but everything’s going our way.

Into the land of cacophony, where it’s all about building an audience and serving it. Mass is dead, that’s why pop expired.

The king is dead.

Long live the king.

I was riding the lift today with a mother who told me her 12 and 14 year olds would never be seen on Facebook, a hundred times no. They wouldn’t even use public Instagram.

Meanwhile, the media is in an uproar over the influence of Facebook on politics. Could it be that the target has shifted?

Last week, a rapper I’ll posit most boomers have never heard the music of, never mind his name, was #1 on the “Billboard” album chart. Kodak Black only sold 5,000 copies of his album “Dying To Live,” but he had 114 million streams for the equivalent of 89,000 album sales. Not that that means what it used to. You can buy an album and never listen to it, we’ve got no idea how many times you play it. But a stream means you actually listened, even if it’s in the background. But you didn’t necessarily stream the album, you probably only streamed the “hit.” Actually, on “Dying To Live,” there’s one cut with triple digit million streams, and four with double digit millions. The rest are in single digits, it appears that people are cherry-picking their favorites. And then there’s the canard that rappers put out long albums to reap rewards when fans play them endlessly, but why do a number of cuts on “Dying To Live” only have one or two million streams?

We’re still trying to figure out this streaming/on demand paradigm. It’s been here for nearly a decade, but we’re still arguing about what the album means, frequency of releases, the impact of hype, the genre of music…

And speaking of hype, “Dying To Live” got a tiny fraction of that of “Springsteen on Broadway,” seemingly every boomer was aware of the play, and now the Netflix production. “Springsteen on Broadway” is #11 on the chart, with 38,000 sales…

But only 1.8 million streams.

That’s right, there’s only one track on “Dying To Live” with fewer streams than the total streams of all the cuts on “Springsteen on Broadway,” and that cut is #15, the second to last.

In other words, boomers don’t stream.

How could this BE? Especially with Spotify’s free tier, never mind YouTube.

As for buying albums, where and how do you play them? If you get a CD… My two computers don’t have a CD drive, and neither do new cars. As for files, you probably are still inured to iTunes, an overstuffed cornucopia of offerings that works poorly on the desktop, and only marginally better on the hand-held.

And 38,000 sales is anemic to boot!

Now if you read Jon Pareles’s Sunday “Times” article

“Pop in the Era of Distraction”

you’ll get a good picture of what’s going on in today’s music business, at least on the recording side. Traditional pop is almost dead, and there’s a plethora of genres and formats triumphing, some of which you might not know. But the article only got 11 comments. In other words, the “New York Times” has almost no impact on the music scene, nada. Not a single person e-mailed me about the article. It appears Pareles is speaking to oldsters, who just don’t care. Because believe me, the music world is an active one, fans weigh in on everything.

But that’s modern America, where the cheese keeps moving but everyone wants to neglect it. If you’re playing to the “Times,” you’ve lost it, unless you’re trying to influence gatekeepers, who mean less than ever before.

So why aren’t boomers streaming?

They could be afraid of coughing up their credit cards. I kid you not, boomers are paranoid.

Or maybe they just cannot adjust to an on demand economy where you don’t need to own almost anything other than clothing. You call up Uber/Lyft, you rent your apartment, you spend on digital goods and evanescent experiences. The boomer mantra was “He or she who dies with the most toys wins.” Millennials don’t cotton to that, although you might substitute the word “followers” for “toys.”

But it gets worse, without big streaming numbers, acts get no traction.

Old acts selling new music, marginal acts selling new music, should be getting their fans to stream. Instead, they’re against Spotify, et al, and keep on going on about how an album used to cost $10+ and streaming pays poorly. But the truth is streaming is about fandom, if anybody is streaming your music prodigiously, they’re a fan, and they’ll pay to see you live and buy merch and…

Boomer and marginal acts are nonstarters, because they’re adhering to an old paradigm. They’re appealing to people who still use iPods, who base their phone purchases on storage.

That’s another thing you no longer need, a lot of memory. Remember when you used to wait for the release of a bigger iPod? Now, with everything on demand, you don’t need that much.

So the chart is not reflective of reality.

And the only chart that really matters is one of consumption. But if you go to that, all the old acts would never break the Top Ten. But do they deserve to? Is selling an album with tickets and/or merch really reflective of the new music’s impact and staying power? Almost never.

It’s kind of like winning a Grammy. Just check the streams and sales of so much nominated work in minor categories. The creators are playing to the Grammy nominating committee, no one else cares, truly!

But the Grammys were always a circle jerk anyway.

But the people who keep saying they know most, who rail against inequities, are the ones most disconnected from modern paradigms. Like that Congressman who asked the head of Google about his iPhone. Or that woman trying to fill up her Tesla at the gas station:

And now, a video of a person trying to put gas in a Tesla pic.twitter.com/TXz4xkCKUL

— MF_Brown @ Earth (@MF_Brown) December 24, 2018

Maybe Congress should be run by youngsters. Maybe tech policy should not be made by old farts.

But one thing’s for sure, music is now an on demand item. Hell, that’s one reason Alexa is so successful, you just call out what you want.

But if you read the “Billboard” chart, you’d have no idea of this. The standard of an industry that had to be led kicking and screaming into the twenty first century. But the industry loves the ancient chart, because of the bragging rights of #1s.

Who cares?

Only them.

And when I see the sign that points one way

I didn’t know there was a real Renee.

I’ve been trying to finish this book, it’s a real chore. It’s called “Bel Canto” and don’t e-mail me your review, because I know it will contain the ending and spoil it for me. Then again, you know these people who always have to blurt out the ending, as if it’s a badge of honor, that they read the damn book or saw the movie… Everybody’s insecure, everybody’s trying to climb the ladder, everybody’s trying to show you they’re better than you are until they aren’t. Then again, some of the most successful people on the planet have no airs and never reveal their accomplishments. Happens all the time, you’re in the room with a famous rock star, and they introduce themselves with their complete name, both first and last, what are you supposed to say, I KNOW WHO YOU ARE?!! And when you reach a certain age, you stop boasting. There’s nothing worse than a baby boomer telling you how much he has, where he’s been, what he’s done, didn’t he get the memo, didn’t he ever grow up, everybody’s on their own trip, and none of us are better than any other and it all doesn’t matter. I know, I know, you don’t want to believe this, but hopefully you’ll realize this someday, if you ever grow up.

And “Bel Canto” is what broke Ann Patchett, made her career. I read one of the follow-up books, “Commonwealth,” and it didn’t really go anywhere, it didn’t have an arc, now I’m wondering if it’s just not that book, but the writer herself, who is venerated because she opened a bookshop.

I don’t know if you saw that article in the NYT the other day how they’re running out of printing inventory, how they can’t print enough books for the holidays. I have contempt for the book business, because those who run it are holier-than-thou, think they’re better than us. But they haven’t been disrupted because there’s just not enough money in it. But it’s gonna happen, because disruption never sleeps. Through the luck of the court system the publishing industry got pricing power over e-books, that’s what killed ’em, when they were the same price as the hardcover. It’s like saying Uber costs as much as driving a car, that’s why most people haven’t switched, haven’t given up their automobiles, but when it becomes cheaper… But these are the same people saying on demand, self-driving vehicles will never arrive. These are the same people who can’t see the humor in Teslas farting. That’s right, Elon Musk sent the software overnight and announced it on Twitter, your car can now fart. Funny for a car that makes no noise.

But older people abhor the future. America hates change. Businesses must last forever. But they don’t.

So my eyes are glazing over as I’m reading “Bel Canto.” And that’s when I pick up my phone.

That’s what every entertainment option is competing against, the mobile handset, right there on a slab is info tailored just for me, and today there was a link to:

“These People Are The Inspirations Behind Some of the Most Beautiful Songs Ever Written”

DON’T CLICK, IT’S A COOKIE MAGNET!

That’s when you know a site is low rent, when at the bottom of the page it includes garbage links hosted by other sites. A real publication will have links to its own site, a page that is only in it for the money will carry this dreck that they just hope you click on, so they can get paid.

And it’s always some story with a picture and…

Frequently, that picture never shows up as you click through fifteen slides or so.

But it’s worse, you’ve got to figure out where to click, so you don’t end up at some other site whose ad was embedded in this garbage site to begin with.

And a tsunami of cookies descends as you click through the slides. You’re giving away your identity, your privacy, as you click through. So, if you’ve got to hit the link above, copy and paste it into a private web page. Then again, does anybody know how to do this? Kids do, parents don’t. The internet is a self-learning curve, your entry fee is your device and your access fee, after that, the potholes are everywhere, it is not safe, it’s like walking alone in the Tenderloin…

Well, the Tenderloin is improving, but you get the point.

But the reason I clicked through is because the lead picture was of Axl Rose and…it didn’t look like Erin Everly to me, who did he write “Sweet Child O’ Mine” for?

And for some reason I’m less worried about the cookie influx on my iPhone, figuring I can wipe out all the cookies at once, or maybe I’ve just given up, throwing my privacy to the wind.

So I’m clicking through, and stunningly it is Erin Everly and I already knew that, it’s like a test, you know this stuff but it’s deep in your memory banks and then, on slide 19, I was avoiding “Bel Canto,” I tell you, appeared the headline:

“Walk Away Renee” by the Left Banke

Some songs are bigger in the afterlife than they were as hits. When “Walk Away Renee” climbed the chart, never to the top, it was just a piece of what once was, just another hit song when we were all addicted and so many cuts were great.

And then came the covers. By everyone from the Four Tops to Rickie Lee Jones.

It turns out “Walk Away Renee” is part of the national fabric, embedded in boomers’ minds, Gen-X’ers too, but I don’t think those of millennials. So many songs are gonna be lost.

Proven by the point that the drone creating this page doesn’t even know that the pic is not of Renee, but Rickie Lee Jones. And, if you’re on a desktop computer, you can scroll down to #19, you don’t have to click through, and you will find that “Walk Away Renee” was written about Renne Fladen-Kamm.

Hmm… I immediately went to Google. Renne has a Wikipedia page, but I had to click on Images to see a picture.

Turns out she was a band member’s girlfriend, and Michael Brown, nee Michael Lookofsky, had a crush on her.

Are all great songs based on real people?

I guess that’s why we rockers avoided Nashville. We wanted songs channeled straight from the hearts of the writers/performers. We wanted honesty, we wanted truth. Back before the days of artifice, with corporate rock and blockbuster films like “Jaws,” when music was personal and intimate and if it resonated, it lit up your whole life.

But “Walk Away Renee” was not the Left Banke’s only hit.

There were two more, but one sounded very similar, “Pretty Ballerina.”

It was released just about now back in ’66. And it turns out Brown wrote this too about Renne Fladen-Kamm, talk about a fixation!

Then again, this is typical of guys. Girls talk about romance, guys keep it inside, but if you can open them up, they always talk about the one who got away, oftentimes one who they never had a thing with, like Renne.

I had a date with a pretty ballerina

They tell me kids don’t date anymore, that they go out in groups, hook up, but it used to be you had to get up your gumption, keep that inner mounting flame of hope lit, and while praying that you wouldn’t get rejected, ask.

And it was always days before, you went out on Saturday night, so if she said yes you had days to ponder your luck, your good feeling.

And sometimes the date wasn’t as good as expected, once you two were alone, you found out you didn’t like her, you didn’t click, then other times…

You were in love. Even if she wasn’t.

I called her yesterday, it should have been tomorrow
I could not keep this joy that was inside

She’s all you can think about, you’re thinking she feels the same way as you. But that’s not always true.

I beg for her to tell me if she really loved me
Somewhere a mountain is moving
Afraid it’s moving without me

You lie on your bed, too devastated to play a record, infused with the hurt, you want to die.

And when I wake on that dreary Sunday morning
I open up my eyes to find there’s rain
And something strange within says go ahead and find her
Just close your eyes, yeah, just close your eyes
And she’ll be there
She’ll be there
She’ll be there

Even though you were rejected, you cannot get over her.

Sometimes you never even talked to her and you cannot get over her.

So it’s after dark on Christmas, a meaningless day for Jews, and I go to Spotify and play “Pretty Ballerina” on Spotify.

I didn’t even bother with headphones. The music came out of the tiny iPhone speakers and I suddenly felt warm, alone but happy, knowing this is the essence, why music is the hottest medium, why it means so much to me, when it clicks, it makes me feel like I belong when I don’t.

Pretty Ballerina