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.

Baby Shark Dance | Sing and Dance! | Animal Songs | PINKFONG Songs for Children

Is it time to redo the “Billboard” chart once again?

Or is this the harbinger of a new dawn, wherein radio is less relevant and hip-hop is not America’s sound and a non-major label song can triumph?

In case you missed the memo, and I did until yesterday, “Baby Shark” entered the “Billboard” Hot 100 at number 32.

WHAT?

Now this is also evidence of the internet era. Known quantities drop their albums and the music is instantly forgotten. Whereas newbies can struggle for years to get notice of their songs.

And one thing about “Baby Shark,” IT’S HOOKY!

“Baby shark, doo doo doo doo doo doo
Baby shark, doo doo doo doo doo doo
Baby shark, doo doo doo doo doo doo
Baby shark!”

Sure, the lyrics are stupid, but isn’t that the case with so many songs?

Now if you’re completely flummoxed, and I understand your pain, the derivation of “Baby Shark” is unclear. Some say it was a camp song twenty years ago, others point to a German version in this century. Actually, you can listen to the various iterations, but one thing’s for sure, the Pinkfong! take is the hit. Proving once again that instrumentation and arrangement can be the difference between a smash and a stiff.

And speaking of Pinkfong!, it’s a Korean company, making children’s music. In an industry landscape where kids are irrelevant and hip-hop is all that matters.

And it’s still all that matters on Spotify and Apple Music.

It’s nowhere on either of their top charts.

But “Baby Shark” does have 50 million streams on Spotify, it’s just that they all didn’t happen yesterday.

And weirdly enough, “Baby Shark” is selling on iTunes. It’s number forty there. Proving…

What, parents are oldsters who are afraid of streaming or don’t want to pay $10 a month because they’re inundated with bills? Why own this?

Especially when you can stream it for free on YouTube where it has TWO BILLION VIEWS!

But it was released almost three years ago, in June of 2016.

So, is “Billboard”‘s weighting off, putting too much emphasis on sales, which are de minimis? Only 3,000 tracks were downloaded last week.

But the truth is there were 20 million streams, but nearly three quarters of them were video.

In other words, YouTube, the scourge of the industry.

So what have we learned?

That a catchy song has no ceiling, that it can live in the ecosystem for years, quite happily, and eventually blow up, or not.

Why now?

Well, there was a cover by James Corden.

But late night TV doesn’t matter, right?

Or maybe we’ve got to credit “Billboard,” for unearthing this hit. Maybe the Bible had it right, and it’s the industry that’s wrong.

And, of course, there’s the dance craze, even easier to do than the Macarena. But when that novelty song hit the airwaves were still controlled, by MTV and major labels. Now?

So I don’t think this is a one-off.

First and foremost, “Baby Shark” turns out to have penetration beyond what we consider to be hits, the Spotify Top 50. Expect everybody to know it soon.

It’s catchy, it’s fun, it’s what we’ve lost as music has become a manipulated format where up to thirty writers try to get the sound of the street, and end up missing.

“Baby Shark” had nothing to do with a major label, nothing to do with radio and nothing to do with hip-hop, it made it all on its lonesome.

You can too.

“To Cover China, There’s No Substitute for WeChat – Li Yuan conducts much of her work on the WeChat mobile app, including spotting trends -and prodding sources to get back to her”

I know, I know, you’re inundated with lists of articles to read every day, and if you’re like me, you end up reading none of them. Information overload has consequences. I never go to the movie theatre, except on my birthday, because it’s a tradition (along with a hot fudge sundae and a pastrami on rye), not because I hate the movies, not because I’m protesting, but because I don’t have the time. Never mind driving to the multiplex, the film doesn’t start when I get there, it’s not on demand, like the rest of our culture. And unlike gigs, it’s not live. I mean going to a concert is an event, is that what movies are going to turn into? Quite possibly.

So I don’t understand all this excitement about awards season, because I haven’t seen the flicks, and most others have not seen many either. Used to be I lived for the movies, before they became so high concept as to defy reality, before the golden era of television.

And speaking of television, with nearly 500 scripted series a year, who can get a handle on it, other than the critics. That’s who awards shows are for, the critics and old wave media, stuck in a circling the drain paradigm that the public wants no part of.

I mean who cares who wins the Oscar?

Same deal with the Grammys, although we’re always interested whether it will be a rapper or a woman or both. That’s more important than the music, because most people have not heard it. We’re all down in our niches, if we’re paying attention at all. That’s right, just like I’ve excised movies, waiting for them to come to TV and ignoring them once they do, there are people who’ve completely tuned out music.

Not that the industry acknowledges it.

The music industry is the same as it ever was. Focusing on radio and a Top Ten. Sure, it’s now streaming instead of sales, but despite being on demand, there’s no kowtowing to the public’s desires, no effort to make it comprehensible.

And I read four newspapers a day to try to get a hold on things. I mean you can learn about music from kids, which I don’t have, but the world issues? Everybody’s ignorant these days, that’s the dirty little secret, if someone tells you they know, they probably don’t.

And the papers are all different. As are their owners. Do you believe Jeff Bezos led with his unit? Isn’t that interesting, how we never really change, how business is always secondary to lust and desire and love. Hell, Sumner Redstone summoned escorts.

And the flaw of the “New York Times” is too often it’s living in the past, it’s anti-tech.

But starting a few months back, they began this new series, about how their reporters utilize tech, it’s published on Tech Thursday.

What bothers me is people covering tech who don’t have all the services, who don’t use the latest tech. When they say a 6s is enough. Sure, have a Samsung, as a matter of fact you should have both! But get the latest edition. And subscribe to all the video services. It’s your gig, you can write it off, I have a hard time taking your opinion seriously if you didn’t buy a ticket.

And this week’s story is on the China correspondent.

And she uses WeChat.

Most Americans have no idea of the power of WeChat, as Li Yuan says, it’s “the equivalent of WhatsApp plus Facebook plus PayPal pus Uber plus GrubHub plus many other things.”

Whew!

Got that?

On one hand, you don’t want to give one company that much power.

On the other hand, think of the ease of use! The connectedness!

And most people in China skipped the laptop and went straight to the mobile phone.

Which is why you must not still be using your 5s, never mind your 6s. You need the power and the features to experience the present, never mind the future.

And China’s a nearly cashless society.

But it’s a censored society.

And in this one brief article you get more insight into China than you do hearing the blubbering of the D.C.’ites.

And speaking of D.C…

Are we really talking about physical walls when technology does such a good job?

The issue with China is not tariffs, it’s how the nation has already superseded us in so many ways, and will continue to gain power. For all those America First, USA! USA! people, this is unfathomable.

But if you read this article, not so much.