Albums, tracks or acts that have faded into the woodwork that deserve attention/recognition.

Like Blondie Chaplin’s “Lonely Traveler,” have you heard it? The whole initial solo LP is fine:

Blondie Chaplin

Or Nik Kershaw’s “15 Minutes,” absolutely brilliant in sound and lyrics and it’s not even on Spotify, never mind any other streaming music service! (Although you can find tracks on YouTube.)

Then there are albums by acts like the Rowan Brothers. Their initial Asylum LP was hyped heavily by Jerry Garcia, yet other than the opening track, “Hickory Day,” it was positively pedestrian.

Call in or tweet your favorites!

Tune in tomorrow, Tuesday December 4th, on Volume 106, 7 PM East, 4 PM West.

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Six13 – Bohemian Chanukah (a Queen adaptation)

This is so last decade.

But it’s got over a million streams in under a week on YouTube.

Now, is Article 13 gonna prevent these parodies? Beware of what you wish for. Rappers stole samples and then when rightsholders refused to license on reasonable terms, it became all about beats. Every action has a reaction, and we want more freedom, not less. But the truth is the copyright bullies, the movie studios are the worst, but music publishers are pretty bad, have crippled creativity, all in the name of more money. Meanwhile, rightsholders get paid on these YouTube parodies, but it isn’t enough, it’s never enough.

Now when anti-Semitism is rampant, it takes balls to let your Jewishness fly. Believe me, I’ve got the e-mail to prove it. But this act Six13 doesn’t care, then again, this is their shtick, Jewish songs, but I’ve never heard of them before today, even though their bio tells me they’ve been on “The Today Show,” “The View,” CBS and CNN. Shows the power of those outlets, as in little. You see we live in a word of mouth culture, and we need a trusted filter to get us to check out ANYTHING! In this case, my nephew Blake. I clicked and…

I smiled.

You remember smiling, don’t you? Back when music was about pushing limits within the record, as opposed to social media online. When acts as diverse as Allan Sherman and Frank Zappa put out music that rarely got Top Forty play, but owned living rooms and bedrooms for years. Come on, have you listened to Frank’s “Status Back Baby”? It still applies today!

And the replication of the original “Bohemian Rhapsody” video…

Shows that they put in some effort. And we appreciate effort, when you take your work seriously. Now, in the big time world, people only put in the effort if they’re gonna get paid. But it’s those not worried about money who always gain our hearts. Humanity comes through with the creativity

And the air guitar… Obviously this is an a cappella act, they can’t play.

But they can sing.

Funny how the voices are so good and the songs singable. This is a bit of what “The Voice” is selling, but the contestants want it so bad, it’s a turnoff. We don’t like it when you need it, when you grovel, we like it when the performance, the production, the singing, the song, is enough.

In a world of hype, it’s those who don’t hype, who let the work alone shine and stand for them, that we embrace.

And sure, there was a TV show about a cappella groups, “The Sing-Off,” it ran for five years, and one of the winners, Pentatonix, consistently tops the chart. Think about that, they’re not like everybody else, but they’re winning.

So, this act made a YouTube video and it’s connecting, it far outpaces their previous work, then again, they do this every Chanukah, and three years ago they broke seven digits with their “cover” of “Shake It Off,” but they’ve been posting for seven years, that’s how long it takes to get recognition in this world, far different from the pre-internet era, where if the label signed you, there was a good chance people would be aware of you, then again, would Six13 ever get signed?

I’ll be looking for Six13’s Chanukah song next year.

And know that you’ve got to satisfy yourself, you can see Six13 having fun in this video, they aren’t grimacing trying to get it perfect while exhibiting their hours in the gym, they’re being human, and once again, humanity resonates.

So they struck at the right time, when Queen and “Bohemian Rhapsody” are top of mind in the public sphere, but they got it right.

You too can get it right, if you stop complaining about money and focus on the art.

Then again, it’s a long way to the top if you wanna rock n’ roll.

The rewards are on the edge, but it’s easy to fall off.

Everyone who pushes the envelope does so too soon, you always have to wait for the audience to catch up with you.

People are confounded by the new and different before they embrace it.

Legends push the envelope, journeymen don’t.

Record labels used to push the envelope, now they’re stuck in the present, waiting for “artists” to prove their worth online before they invest. Meanwhile, true artists go it alone, without help and many give up. Record labels are ripe for disruption because of this.

The envelope is pushed live as opposed to on record today, that is where people take risks. More people talk about Beyonce at Coachella than they do about her album “Lemonade.” You had to be there, it was an experience. Ditto with David Byrne’s tour. The ex-Talking Head has not released a record the masses have embraced in decades, but this tour had huge buzz. Sure, people want to see Bruce Springsteen on Broadway, but Byrne’s a close second.

Speaking of the Boss on the Great White Way, it reinvigorated his career when he was known for playing oldies shows to acolytes. Expect the Netflix special to become legendary, unlike his recent albums and tours. Fans will watch it Day One. Their chatter and press (which works with oldsters, but is not the driver of the Byrne hysteria, that’s positively word of mouth, and boomer word of mouth is slow, which is why the Byrne tour is not top of mind like it should be) will get casual fans to tune in and the film of the show will become part of the national fabric.

The more different it is every night, the more buzz you’ll get, the more people will want to go. Jam bands proved this eons ago.

Drake’s playlist on streaming services pushed the envelope, it made people want to check it out.

Rap beefs pushed the envelope decades ago, with the east coast/west coast wars. Today’s kerfuffles are no different from the WWE, albeit with guns.

Using a TR-808 is no longer even retro, it’s the epitome of me-tooism, use real drums to stand out.

You can only get away with a substandard voice if you’re the best lyricist of all time, i.e. Bob Dylan. If your songs are not this good, get someone else to sing them.

If you cover a song, make it different, Joe Cocker rode this all the way to the bank.

The odds of someone under nineteen having something to say are low, they haven’t lived long enough. So they can have cowriters, like Liz Rose, or you can ignore them and see them as “phenoms” jammed down your throat.

Tricks can only be done effectively once, like Radiohead name your own price, or Amanda Palmer with Kickstarter. Best to focus on the music rather than the penumbra.

Licensing or buying beats was pushing the envelope, utilizing the internet to create your music, but that’s standard now.

Giving it away for free was pushing the envelope. When there is a sea change in distribution, get onboard. Go where the public is, not where you think it should stay.

Flipping the script is oftentimes revolutionary. If everyone is using machines, use real instruments, and vice versa.

Follow distribution innovations. The major players are stuck in the past, they still want to embrace television and radio, when those formats are moribund. PSY broke on YouTube. Hip-hop dominates Spotify. If there’s a new way to get your message out there, employ it, as long as it’s not too retro. You hear about the cassette comeback, it’s a press story, not enough people have cassette players! And mainstream press is traditionally behind, like it was on Trump. If getting a record deal and your name in the paper gets you off, you’re still living in the last century.

Hoovering all the money by selling tchotchkes and doing endorsements is passe. You may make some money, but you’ll build cred by saying no, and cred is everything, it’s what leads to a long career.

Live by the sword, die by the sword.

As for Kid Rock’s use of the b-word, isn’t there a Rolling Stones song entitled that? Oh, that’s right, that was the seventies, no wonder rock is in the dumper, you just can’t be sexist anymore. And I don’t want to get into a long discussion of whether you can say the b-word at all these days, there are people who study these things who know more than I do, but I do know that TV is full of hypocrisy. Taken aback by the words of this one or that one while they’re shooting daggers all the time.

In case you missed the news, Kid Rock, aka “Robert Ritchie,” called Joy Behar the b-word. He singled her out. It made no sense. Until you learned that she singled him and Sarah Palin and Ted Nugent out for their visit with Donald Trump saying:

“The saddest day in the history of the White House since the British burned it to the ground.”

Oops!

She shot first, and Rock has a long memory. Almost everybody has a long memory!

If I single you out, it’s open season, if you want to send me hate mail, testify as to me being an idiot or worse, I get it, you’re hurt. Assuming you truly are hurt, not fake-hurt, all these people taken aback when they’re really not.

Now I’ve got no time for Sarah Palin, she’s proven she’s got less than a full grip on the issues, irrelevant of which side she’s on. As for Ted Nugent, he’s actually intelligent, but myopic, he’s one of these guys who believes whatever he believes is right, and just can’t fathom being uninformed or someone else having another opinion. As for Kid Rock… He too is intelligent, and he’s more center than right, but it befits his image to be an outrageous Republican.

It’s entertainment folks.

And artists, and Kid Rock qualifies, are emotional. That’s why we’re drawn to them, that’s what makes their careers. If anybody could do it, they would. Actually, that’s the problem today, people are social media stars before becoming musicians… We had no respect for David Soul, why should we respect…

Meanwhile, it’s social media that keeps you in the public eye.

This is an incredible win for Kid Rock. He’s too old for Top Forty radio to play his records, he hasn’t been completely embraced by country radio, but when he gets in on the action he proves he’s alive and not dead. Mix it up in the media once, the next time you do something we’re paying attention.

And if you got down from your offended horse, you could see the humor in this.

Ultimately Joy Behar herself did, calling for Rock to come on “The View” with her and the other b-words and have a beer. Rock should take Behar up on her offer, that would be good television, and they’d find out they had more in common than not.

But ain’t that America, where we find out we’re more alike than different.

But that ain’t good TV.

Come on, TV news is all about ratings, it’s entertainment, there’s no gravitas despite all the talking heads acting like they’re reading from the Bible. To be offended is…

So, Kid Rock is removed as Grand Marshal of Nashville’s Christmas Parade.

But the co-sponsor of the parade isn’t so sure.

That’s America too, it comes down to money.

And the truth is Kid Rock’s fans are howling and bonding to him.

And the people who hate Rock just had their feelings reinforced.

Welcome to America. Where there are two tribes, it’s the Hatfields and the McCoys. Every day the left wing media prints the faux pas of Trump and his cronies…and the supporters of Trump DON’T CARE! Ever check the headlines on Fox, they’re completely different! And his acolytes like what the Donald stands for, they forgive his excesses. Then again, this is one thing the right has right, enough with the political correctness and the trigger warnings and…

Abcde.

Did you read that story?

A woman checks in at Southwest with her daughter and the agent cracks up and posts the kid’s name to social media.

I mean come on, if you saw someone’s name as Abcde wouldn’t YOU laugh?

I’m not saying the clerk should have posted it to social media, that was wrong. But if you don’t chuckle when you see a kid has been named Abcde, you’ve got no sense of humor, and I feel bad for you.

As for the mother telling the agent to hush…

If she were truly worried about her child’s feelings she would have named her Jennifer or Madison… Remember when David Carradine and Barbara Hershey named their kid Free? He changed it to Tom!

Can you imagine being saddled with the name Abcde your entire life?

Now I’m gonna get hate mail from the parents who’ve placed outrageous monikers on their kids’ heads. Sure, you’re entitled to do it, but if you don’t think you’ve put this kid on the fast track to bullying, you never went to school.

Actions have consequences. Joy Behar puts down Kid Rock, she should be ready for blowback. Ditto the mother naming her kid Abcde.

And people protest in public and laugh in private. We’ve all become two-faced. I’m not saying racial epithets are cool, I’m just saying that this is supposed to be the land of the free, and suddenly it’s not.

“Kid Rock Replaced as Grand Marshal of Nashville Christmas Parade”

“Southwest Airlines apologizes for employee laughing at 5-year-old passenger named Abcde”