Duchess

Speaking of stereos…

I heard “Duchess” on Deep Tracks the other day. If I hadn’t been in my car, I would have written about it right then.

And she dreamed that every time she performed
Everyone would cry for more

I’m not sure I even knew these lyrics back when, even though I had the vinyl, this was pre-internet.

I missed Genesis the first time around, I didn’t come on board until Gabriel left the group, although I did go back and buy the LPs with him on them, I love “Foxtrot,” but the truth is I was shopping in Licorice Pizza and they were playing “Wind & Wuthering” over the stereo and I bought it, this is the only time I ever did this.

I was an early Yes fan. Bought the first two Emerson, Lake and Palmer LPs, but funds were limited, I could not afford to get into Genesis or Gentle Giant, although I remember seeing the lines for Gabriel and group outside the Roxy, I’m pissed I missed that, although I did see Gabriel play a flower on “In Concert” or some other TV show, but you know TV sound, it did not register.

And I liked “Wind & Wuthering,” so when I saw “A Trick of the Tail” in the promo bin I purchased that, and it could still be my favorite Genesis album, which I know will offend purists, but come on, SQUONK?!

And then Steve Hackett left and there were three, I went to see the band at the Forum, bought my ticket before “Follow You Follow Me” got traction on the airwaves, became the band’s first hit in the U.S.

And “Seconds Live,” masterful!

But I could not remember what LP “Duchess” was on, I went to Wikipedia. For some reason, I thought “Duke” came before “…And Then There Were Three,” since it was more akin to what came before, but then I looked at the track listing…

“Duke” has “Misunderstanding,” which seemed a bit wimpy, like “Follow You Follow Me” but worse. But it also contained “Turn It On Again,” a harbinger of what was to come, when Genesis dominated MTV, albeit with clever videos.

Yes, the follow-up to “Duke,” “Abacab,” was the true commercial breakthrough, with a slimmed-down sound with synths dominant. But the definitive version is on 1982’s “Three Sides Live,” although there were four in the rest of the world.

But the take on “Three Sides Live”…

You’ve probably never heard it.

But I did, at Freddy and Demi’s apartment. Freddy Moore bought cassettes, I was still into vinyl, I’d go to their apartment and insert it into the deck, I had to hear “Abacab.”

Now “Abacab” is pretty powerful on the original LP, but the live iteration is MUSCULAR! You cranked it and the whole house shook. You were enveloped in the sound, it felt so GOOD!

And on “Three Sides Live” the opening cut is a version of “Duke”‘s “Turn It On Again.”

In the rewriting of history, subsequent to the ubiquity of Phil Collins, the post-Gabriel Genesis is seen as ersatz, a dash for cash, lightweight, BUT THIS IS UNTRUE! And “Three Sides Live” is one of the best live LPs ever cut, but you’ll never hear about it in any discussion of concert triumphs.

Now I became such a Genesis fan, I purchased Collins’ “Face Value” the day of release, I had no idea “In The Air Tonight” would become so legendary, on both black and white radio, my favorite cut in the wake of the breakup with my live-in girlfriend was “You Know What I Mean,” which segued into the exuberant “Thunder and Lightning,” and after the jaunty “I’m Not Moving” the LP became positively depressing, with “If Leaving Me Is Easy” and a droning, futuristic rendition of John Lennon’s head trip, “Tomorrow Never Knows.”

So I was all in, along for the ride when the rest of society showed up, and beware of your dream coming true, because it will end, people will turn on you, they will move on.

So I wasn’t sure which “Duchess” version I’d heard, the studio or live iteration.

So I just went to Spotify and pulled up the take off “Duke” and I’d forgotten what a long, spacy, dreamy intro the track had, it was the chorus that was implanted in my brain.

So maybe it was the live take I was remembering, with rougher edges.

But when I pulled up the live take it didn’t quite resonate either.

AND THAT’S WHEN I REALIZED IT WAS THE STEREO!

I used to come home, break the shrinkwrap, drop the needle and…

TURN IT UP!

My music was my sanctuary, a way to excise and drown out the world I was not accepted in, the world I’m still unaccepted in.

Sure, we were all addicted to the radio, but we had to OWN THIS STUFF, so we could go DEEPER, so it would be indelibly enmeshed in our DNA.

Full spectrum music does not sound good utilizing today’s playback systems. You need a multi-speaker system, with tons of power, to avoid clipping, watts are not about loudness, but avoiding distortion.

And I was disappointed until I put on headphones.

Then the sound, the experience, came back.

Times were good
She never thought about the future, she just did what she would
Oh, but she really cared
About her music, it all seemed so important then

Boy did it.

But now every time that she performed
Oh, everybody cried for more
Soon all she had to do was step into the light
For everyone to start to roar
And all the people cried, you’re the one we’ve waited for

That’s right, we were addicted, we were waiting for your new opus, and when we got it, we spun it, learned it, and then went to the show, we had to go to the show, when tickets were ten or twelve bucks, certainly under twenty.

And when Genesis would go into “Duchess,” another of their anthemic numbers, we’d stand and sway and sing along at the top of our lungs, this was a religious experience, far exceeding what we’d been exposed to in church or synagogue, we were now truly home.

That’s right, anthems.

Our listening wasn’t casual. There were no playlists, no Pandora in the background, we chose what we listened to, what we bought, our collections were expressions of our identities.

And I’m driving in my car and when the band reaches the chorus…

This was art rock, this was prog rock, “Duchess” is more than six minutes long, it was not made for Top Forty, this was before MTV, when you made music to make a statement, at the length it required, if there needed to be a multi-minute instrumental intro, SO BE IT!

And the sense of ANTICIPATION!

We knew it was coming!

And, like I said, Genesis has been forgotten, put down, the band is uncool, especially the post-Gabriel era. But some people remember. And then you put the headphones on and hear the melody…

And then there was the time that she performed
When nobody called for more

Nobody’s calling for this music.

But back then fans did, before the band had any hits. There was this weird melding of experimentation and melody, that’s what makes “Duchess” so great, along with the changes and the instrumentation, the notes, engendering the desire to sing along.

And you may not.

But if you listen to “Duchess” you’ll find it impossible to sit still, you’ll start slapping your thighs, nodding your head.

From an era when music was truly royalty.

But most of all, I wanna have some FUN!

We self-satisfied baby boomers think we know it all, lived through the best era, that nothing can compete, so we might as well just stay home and marinate in our glorious feelings.

I was literally the oldest guy there. I saw one dude who was in his fifties, but otherwise I was the odd duck, wearing sneakers. That’s right, it was like an archaeological site, with all the lost shoes in the sand.

WHAT AM I TALKING ABOUT?

Kaskade. Possibly America’s preeminent deejay, he had a vision, he wanted to have a BEACH PARTY!

That’s right, he may have started out in Chicago, gone to school in Utah, paid dues in SanFran, but now he lives in Santa Monica and is entranced by the lifestyle, and it took him five years to make his vision come to fruition, but last year it did in Long Beach, and earlier this year in Miami too, he wants to establish a brand, a la Lollapalooza, ultimately get to the point where it can succeed without him headlining, so everyone can have FUN!

Santa Monica said no. The NIMBYS are everywhere these days, these same baby boomers with a lot more money than sense, thank you Rod Stewart, NOT IN MY BACKYARD! And, actually the beach was in the backyard of high rises, between them and the water, and some residents were not happy, but the show ended at TEN! This was not the rave of yore, beginning long after dark and playing until the sun came up, rather Sunsoaked began at two and ended at the aforementioned ten, anybody can tolerate that for some cash for their city, RIGHT?

And Long Beach has a bad rap, as a subsidiary municipality, I haven’t been there in eons, because it’s off the beaten path, you’ve got to diverge from the 405, take the 710 to the water, where redevelopment has been done right, movie theatres, a Nike store, it looks better than it reads.

And, on the beach, 31,000 REVELERS!

Think about this, one gig and you’re set for the YEAR! Of course there are costs, but that’s a lot of paying customers, although most only paid fifty bucks, that’s the difference between this scene and the supposed mainstream, fans can get in, tickets blew out in a matter of minutes, because you’re either clued-in.

Or you’re not.

Now on the stage is a table. With speakers pointing inward at the deejay. And then a bunch of pyrotechnics, did you know there are these machines that spout fire, over and over again, they’re very hot up close. And smoke machines. And in front of the precipice, throngs of people twisting and turning, going up and down, throwing their hands up in the air!

I wanted to see what was going on, so I ventured into the crowd.

It was not crushworthy. And as you worked your way back in the horde you found giant fans spreading mist, and a humongous inflatable water slide, with a JUMP! That’s right, you climbed up nearly a hundred steps, then plopped down on the ramp and just when you were in the groove, sliding, you were thrown into the air and ultimately into a puddle.

And there was alcohol, you should have seen the lines. And food. Everything from french fries to Kogi. Food trucks along with stands. And Rockstar gave away free beverages, and damn if the watermelon no sugar can didn’t contain a satisfying elixir, this is not the horse piss of Red Bull, but I had to throw most of it out, otherwise I’d have been awake until now, that’s how much caffeine they contain.

And at Wienerschnitzel you could spin a wheel for a fridge magnet or a hat or…

And on either side of the stage there was a medical tent, but so far no one has ever had to go to the hospital.

But the stars of the show were the PEOPLE!

Your eyes would have bugged out. Girls in bikinis. Short ones, tall ones, big ones, small ones. So many fish in the sea you became inured to them. I didn’t know breasts came in that many shapes and sizes. That you could be that thin and be so naturally endowed. This is not EDC, where everybody was wearing a costume, their body was their costume, and they showed it off, this is the California of your dreams.

And an equal number of men. Some paired up with each other, some paired up with women, an endless parade, AND NOBODY SEEMS TO KNOW ABOUT IT!

And everybody’s dancing to the music, thank you Sly Stone.

And then at eight, Kaskade came back on.

I wandered over to the VIP section. Which was far to the side, but elevated by six or so feet so you could see over the heads of the hoi polloi, straight to the stage. Even better, there were speakers in VIP, boy did they have it right, this is the difference between the rock festivals of yore and today, at Woodstock they were inventing it, now it’s been refined, there are enough bathrooms, free water stations, and…

Now there’s a difference beyond cost in VIP, it comes down to color.

You see California is integrated, we’re already living in the future, the rest of the country might be racist and immigrant crazy, but for sure the assembled multitude was a rainbow of colors, as many Latinos as whites, maybe more, blacks, multicultural people, if you’re afraid of beings of color, this was not the place for you.

But it was not scary, AT ALL! Bump into someone by accident and no one took offense. With that many people in attendance you could get scared, think of violence, but there was none of that, it was strangely calm.

But in VIP most of the people were white. So we’re still segregated, albeit by economic opportunity and success.

So you get to the point where all you can do is stand there and drink up the visuals, it’s astounding. The couple dancing furiously in front of me looked like they just came from overtime at the law office, she was one of the only people in pants, but she moved like a jumping bean.

And the girls behind me, on the couch, twisting and turning, prancing upright on the cushions.

And they were mouthing the words.

Strange world we live in, no one knows what’s going on. You don’t read about this music in the newspaper, it gets little attention, but these fans were fully aware, this was their soundtrack.

And then Kaskade said we’d know this one…

FUN!

I wanna go out
Dress up real nice and find someone
Who’s ready to run
But, most of all
I wanna have some fun

That’s what life is about, fun. You live a life of drudgery, in the office, at the construction site, and then you lay your money down to cut loose and smile, to have FUN! And you can’t have fun without MUSIC!

And now you’re sitting there with your arms crossed, saying how this is not real music, how it’s repetitive, made by machines, that the deejays are not musicians, and then you stand in the crowd and you find yourself…

DANCING!

It happened spontaneously. I was checking everybody out. But then the sound infected me. As if I was injected with a serum. And first I found my shoulders twisting, then my arms shaking, and then I was no longer an outsider, I’d been swallowed by the crowd, by the music, by the good time.

And you would have been TOO!

It was like the Fillmore.

Only it happened at a hellhole in the middle of nowhere.

Actually, not a hellhole, that’s the amphitheatre in Glen Helen, which I last went to when it sported the moniker “Blockbuster,” it would be best if they both disappeared. The shed began with Tanglewood, but a few decades back every local promoter built one on the cheap and although they afford a night under the stars, almost all have no soul, unlike my beloved Fillmore East, which began as a Yiddish live spot, then became a movie theatre and had its heyday with rock until Bill Graham shut it down in 1971 citing economics.

And this tour is based on economics. Everybody needs money. Did you read that Johnny Depp article in “Rolling Stone”? No matter how rich you are you can blow all your cash, and so many who made it back then did not reap the rewards of those plying the boards today.

So the FivePoint is in Irvine on land that used to be the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station base. That’s right, a vast field of nothingness, but you’ve got to applaud the free parking.

But there’s no hill, no lawn for picnicking. I wouldn’t be surprised if I went back today and the whole amphitheatre was gone. It all looked so temporary. From the honeywagons to the foldup seating to the bleachers… The only thing professional was the stage, and its accoutrements. The sound was impeccable, and the big screens were both large and dense. So you could get into the music.

And I did.

The opener was Ann Wilson. Who’s still got her pipes, but should get back together with Heart. Sure, we want to hear her do covers, but mostly we want to hear Heart songs.

And then came Paul Rodgers.

Now this was an Orange County crowd, not the one you see on TV, not the one that lives on the beach, but the true denizens. Used to be L.A. and Orange County merged, but those days are kaput, traffic is just too bad, it literally took us two and a half hours to get there from Santa Monica, which is longer than it takes from Stockbridge to Boston, although we zipped right home in an hour. And these were not young ‘uns…

These were fifty and sixtysomethings. Some of whom dressed up for the evening, but most of whom partook back in the seventies, of drugs, alcohol and music. This was before the era of haves and have-nots. Before the era when you were relaxing you were falling behind. When we sat in front of the stereo, zoned out, and went to bars and lived for the music.

So Paul is taking a risk, with his new band Free Spirit, comprised of Deborah Bonham’s backing band, he’s playing a plethora of Free tunes, many of which the audience did not know, but he needs to grow, he just can’t do the same old thing.

And then he played “Feel Like Makin’ Love”…

“Baby, when I think about you”

And that’s when women popped up all over the amphitheatre, grooving to the music, thrusting their arms in the air…

FEEL LIKE MAKIN’ LOVE
FEEL LIKE MAKIN’ LOVE TO YOU!

These were not the social x-rays you see in the society pages. They had some miles on them, just like their now-seated male companions. There was no plastic surgery, maybe a few more pounds, but you could see straight back to that era, these were the girls you wanted to hang out with, who winked, who were up for anything, who wanted to have a good time, who were not afraid of the music…the ones we wallflowers were infatuated with. And with the music infecting their souls last night one was infatuated with them again.

And for someone who never saw Free, which is just about all of us, but is besotted with their material, Paul played a spectrum of legendary songs, beginning with “Little Bit Of Love,” going on to “Wishing Well,” “My Brother Jake” and even the STEALER, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say I missed Paul Kossoff’s guitar, whom Rodgers believes is the greatest axeman of all time, and he’s worked with Page, May…

But the audience embraced “Mr. Big.” And to hear “Fire And Water” was to jet back to the past, when I first bought that album, back in my first year of college.

But the scene-stealer, the one that truly resonated, was “Ready For Love,” sung by its writer Mick Ralphs on the Mott The Hoople album “All The Young Dudes” and remade on Bad Company’s first.

This rock and roll music, it makes you feel good, it squeezes out all the bad feelings, it has you thrusting your arm in the air, it has you singing along. When done right, nothing else matters.

And nothing else mattered last night.

And now everybody was into it, and then Paul played his legendary hit.

ALL RIGHT NOW!

And it was and still is. That’s how I felt last night, all right NOW!

And backstage, which looks like it was carried intact from the old Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre, I asked Paul why he didn’t play “Bad Company,” the eponymous track, I thought it had to do with mood, but Paul wanted to separate the acts, the perception of the audience, and then I told him I was gonna go out front, to see Jeff Beck, and Paul said there was no problem, I’d be able to HEAR HIM!

And boy could you.

This is the greatest rock guitarist of all time, still playing live, looking worse for wear in his seventies, but his playing… He made it look so easy, yet it’s so hard.

And it was a master class, because of the aforementioned big screens, which focused on him. You could see his fingers pluck the strings, you could see him move the whammy bar, you were positively stunned.

And if the girls loved Paul…

The boys were there for Beck. It was kind of like a Rush show, guitar geeks there to pray at the altar.

And Jeff did not disappoint.

Let’s start with the band. Jeff Beck is single-handedly doing more for women in music than seemingly any other man. He has a long history of employing women, from Jennifer Batten to Tal Winkenfeld. Last night, his bassist was Rhonda Smith, the Canadian who spent ten years with Prince. I know, I know, women are famous for playing bass, but Rhonda levitated the instrument to a new height, when she soloed early in the set, your jaw dropped. This was a trained musician, who was exhibiting chops without showing off, it was a revelation.

And on cello (and sometimes twelve-string guitar!) was Sonus Quartet member Vanessa Freebairn-Smith. And for a good part of the show, her playing was lost in the mix, but there were other moments where her bowing shone through.

And then on drums…

Straight from “Catholic Girls” (and BOYS), was the man himself, veteran of Zappa and more sessions than one can count, VINNIE COLAIUTA!

Now if you’re counting the best drummers of all time, Vinnie’s on the list, even if you didn’t know who he was, you were wowed. He wasn’t showing off, just keeping the beat and adding flourishes and you realized that Jeff had surrounded himself with SUPERSTARS!

And it was not a greatest hits show, it was almost as if he said to himself if he’s bothering to go on the road, he might as well make it interesting to himself, which is probably why these players signed on.

And you’d have to be a muso nonpareil to know the initial songs, a Billy Cobham cover, “Stratus,” and a Mahavishnu Orchestra cover, “You Know You Know,” but it didn’t matter, it was like you were jetted into outer space, to experience the work of an alien, knowing soon it would end and you’d be left in silence, you had to pinch yourself.

And then the unmistakable “Morning Dew,” with a vocalist…

JIMMY HALL??

Whom you might remember from Wet Willie, “Keep On Smiling,” sure, he sang on Beck’s “Flash,” but what’s he been doing all these years, is this what happens, you become infatuated with music and can’t give up?

And speaking of giving up, the couple next to me departed, but everybody else stayed, this was mostly unfamiliar guitar god material, I thought people would leave, but they did not.

And then a cover of “Little Wing”??? Which Derek and Sting made famous as covers of Jimi Hendrix’s original?

And then there were the traditional numbers…

“Cause We’ve Ended As Lovers,” exquisite as ever.

“A Day In The Life.”

And my personal favorite, “Brush With The Blues.”

And then a rollicking cover of “Superstition,” which Stevie Wonder gave to Beck and then took back. And it was…

Over.

Whew!

It was only 10:50, did this venue have a curfew? Unions? I mean who would you be disturbing out here in the middle of nowhere?

But Jeff came back to applause, and just he and Vanessa, the cellist, did a cover of Jeff Buckley’s cover of Benjamin Britten’s “Corpus Christi Carol.” It couldn’t have been more quiet, it couldn’t have been more at odds with the mood, which is what made it so spectacular, like being at a chamber music concert.

And then…

Jimmy came out and blew harmonica into the microphone, displaying heretofore unknown excellence, on the old rock/soul nugget “Going Down.”

DOWN DOWN DOWN DOWN DOWN

We all know this, the band was firing on all cylinders.

And then the lights came up and it was truly done.

I was expecting an oldies show, rooted in the past, another night on the endless road in the middle of nowhere.

And although we were in the middle of nowhere, that’s not what happened.

Ann Wilson was hampered by appearing in daylight. But where else are you gonna get such a stellar opener, not even at the Fillmore!

And fifteen minutes later you got one of the greatest rock voices of all time, still intact, still powerful, playing songs true fans knew by heart, some of which you never thought you’d hear again.

And then a guitar god putting on a master class, a hall of fame performance, for seemingly nobody but himself and his bandmates. It’d be like running into McCartney in a bar, or Jagger at a house concert. HOW COULD THIS BE?

So I didn’t want to listen to the radio on the way home, I just wanted to bask in the sound and the experience.

There were seemingly no youngsters in attendance, this was not Steve Miller playing his hits for a generation that still hears them on the radio, the audience was not being replenished, rather this show was for people who’d been there, who’d lived through it.

And they were not disappointed.

And for one night, in the middle of 2018, it was like it was the seventies all over again. When giants walked the earth, when musicians were the pinnacle of society, when we all were addicted to the radio, when we all built our collections to exhibit on stereos we scrimped and saved for, when we all LIVED FOR THE MUSIC!

You shoulda been there!

Spotify

YouTube

He doesn’t always sound like this. That’s right, you’ve got to hear Greta Van Fleet’s rendition of

“Rolling In The Deep” on Spotify

It’s quite remarkable, you’d almost think they wrote it, kinda like Zeppelin being “influenced” by all those blues numbers way back when.

But on “When The Curtain Falls,” Josh Kiszka is channeling Robert Plant from the early seventies and if you were there for the original, you might be offended, but today’s audience was not, and they want something new.

What kind of stereo did you have growing up? My dad supplied us with an endless stream of “record players,” the first one gray, two of them pink, truly, my dad was into deals, with heavy tonearms and built-in speakers that we played our records on. My parents had a Columbia console in the living room, where we never went, with an external speaker that I once connected directly to my electric guitar and blew out the lights in my house, not realizing an amplifier was necessary. And then in the sixties an addition was built behind our split-level and my parents invested in a separates system, with components by ADC, other than the turntable, which was a Garrard, which I had to ask permission to use. By this time my albums were treasured, I never touched the vinyl, I took care of my records, preserving them for posterity, believing they evidenced my identity, and the irony is that vinyl, all of which I still have, is now back, then again the stuff I’ve got was cut analog for analog reproduction, and it makes a difference.

Anyway, my parents had a friend who worked at CBS, who ran their audio division, and when I was a senior in high school my sister and I were blessed by Columbia components, but don’t be too wowed, the speakers were small, the sound was not impressive, but it was certainly better than the all-in-ones.

And I never got a great stereo in college, because my parents wanted me to pay for it, and I had no ready source of income, and they were convinced it would get stolen, that was rampant back then, theft of components, along with bicycles, my white Peugeot was ripped-off the last day of freshman year, but eventually, I found myself ensconced in an apartment in Los Angeles and I bought the stereo of my dreams.

With JBL L100s.

What did you have? Off-brand stuff? That was how Cal Stereo made money, by manufacturing its own no-name speakers. And then there was Rogersound Labs in the Valley, with its own speakers, and if you wanted to spend less, there was the Advent, which superseded KLH and AR, and was pretty damn good for the price, which was $125 at first, and then $149 apiece. But the JBLs, which they used in studios, they retailed for $349 per speaker, and it was hard to get a discount.

And the salesman said the JBLs were bright, and the only amp that would sound good was the Sansui, or the Luxman, which was way out of my price range, so I ended up with an AU11000, sans tuner, but with 110 watts a channel, and that rig brought the THUNDER!

That’s what it was all about.

There’s some thunder today, but really it’s just bass, emanating from jacked-up car stereos playing hip-hop. I’m convinced we get the music our systems can reproduce, and acoustic music sounds bad on MP3s/streams through earbuds, but rock sounds even worse, for that thin-band stuff hip-hop is best, didn’t Beats advertise they came with bottom?

But the thunder was not only bottom, it permeated the entire range. Like that Maxell ad, featuring those JBL L100s, which made the listener’s hair blow back, no one under fifty remembers, but those older than that, we’re all familiar with the image.

So the goal was to get the best stereo your money could buy, drop the needle, and make not only yourself shake, but your whole damn HOUSE! You turned it up loud enough to shut out all surrounding noise, the music soaked up the atmosphere, that was the essence of rock. But when you listen to Greta Van Fleet’s “When The Curtain Falls” on earbuds, computer speakers…

You’re missing the essence, the thunder. It sounds thin, when it’s supposed to sound MASSIVE!

And the funny thing is you’ll dismiss “When The Curtain Falls” at first, assuming you were around way back when, but then you realize it’s more about the riff than the vocal, that the guitar-playing is not that far away from “Houses Of The Holy” and “Physical Graffiti.” Don’t cry heresy, there’s truly similarity, but can the audience be converted without the big rigs, without the stereos of yore?

You remember how it was. Back before iPhones, back before selfies, back when it was about them, not you, when the stars were on stage and you stood in the audience nodding your head, the sound so loud that you couldn’t speak to the person next to you anyway.

That’s how “When The Curtain Falls” should be heard.

And it’s not burning up the streaming services, and the rock radio format is a ghetto. Then again, Charli XCX said radio no longer mattered in “Rolling Stone,” and Five Seconds Of Summer shifted singles midstream, to great success. Meaning…

The old rules are kaput. Now is the time to take chances, like the above cover of “Rolling In The Deep.” You put stuff out and see what resonates. Satiate the core. Let them spread the word. If you’re playing the old game of one track, pushing it for a year, you’re missing out. That’s how you build a track, but not FANS! Fans don’t care if anybody else likes the act, they’re invested, they’re paying fealty, they’ll show up at the gig, where rock is built.

That’s right, today it’s all about the live show, the opposite of the pop ethos, where it’s built on radio and television and you go to hear a perfect rendition live, oftentimes on hard drive, no, with rock you want it to be a bit different, oftentimes a bit faster, with more power, with more energy.

And Greta Van Fleet is succeeding there.

And the key is they’re young. In an era where Vine stars have already gone on to their day jobs. The generations keep changing, and those prognosticating have often seen too much, they can’t see the show through the eyes of the audience.

But if you’re open-minded…

At first you want to turn “When The Curtain Falls” off, it seems ersatz. Then you get to the change, the chorus, and you want to let the track play through, and then that riff infects you and you find yourself playing the track over and over again, forgetting all about Robert Plant.

It’s not “Whole Lotta Love.” But it’s not me-too, at least not when compared to the other rock acts on the scene today.

Greta Van Fleet is just one monster away from breaking through.

Don’t forget, Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones were long on experience. These guys are brand new, at least to the masses, they’re figuring it out, maybe they’re spearheading a new movement.

Then again, shenanigans on the road are passe, because of camera phones.

But never underestimate the power of music. When done right, it’s not a trifle, it’s not something to be played in the background, rather it’s positively foreground, you need it to stay alive, it makes you feel you’re not alone in this world, it amps up your energy, eliminates your depression, makes you think not being in the mainstream is cool, that you can survive without Instagram followers, as long as this music is channeled into your soul.

But it’s best on a big rig.