My Uber driver was a rapper. Told me about signing with a production company, going to SXSW, buying his beats online.

So I told him to play me his tracks. Not bad, but a lot of references to other rappers and a lot of profanity, not a lot of substance, but is this the new rock and roll?

Everybody had a band back when. And most of them were terrible. But people dreamed, and got fulfilled, as their lives fell into place and the goal became hazy and then drifted into the distance.

But many still play and they all go to shows.

And when he dropped me off the driver told me he was a liquor salesman with three kids and that’s when I realized, it was a hobby.

But we all need something to keep us going.

That was the debate last night at the initial Lefsetz vs. Flom show. Rock versus hip-hop.

Did you read the WSJ article about live grosses?

“Hip-Hop Is Huge, but on the Concert Circuit, Rock Is King”

(Behind a paywall. Information is not free, and those who pay are the best informed, proving once again we live in a two-tiered society.)

It’s a bit apples to oranges. There are not enough heritage hip-hop acts. And Jay Z sells out stadiums, albeit with Beyonce, then again, hip-hop has been around for thirty-odd years, so…

Then a member of the audience brought up country, which bridges the gap. Turns out there are two country radio stations in Boston, and never forget this is where Kenny Chesney’s No Shoes Nation started, at Gillette Stadium.

And if you’re anti-hip-hop you’re a racist.

And the right keeps appropriating old rock tunes to make its points, now Prince’s estate wants Trump to stop using “Purple Rain.” So what is going on?

I don’t know.

But one thing’s for sure, no sound is dominant today.

An ex-Berklee student, a young woman still in her twenties, loves Petty and the classics. Went to see Flo and her Machine and complained the songs on the latter albums are inferior.

And listening to the rapper’s tracks in the car one thing was for sure, the beats were good.

And our school music programs are inferior and it costs nearly nothing to rap. Beats are free online and all you need is a computer, you can even do it on a smartphone.

Then again, the School of Rock people were there last night and they now have deals with Mike Caren and Lollapalooza. Is this the future of performance rock?

And no one in the industry will take responsibility. At this point, the majors labels are all hip-hop all the time, being the sheep that they are.

And streaming companies take no responsibility in breaking outside acts. There are no unknowns on their homepage. We used to rely on radio to break acts, is this now streaming’s responsibility?

And we used to have a new sound every three years, and now we haven’t had a new sound this century.

And just like in politics, the two sides have contempt for each other.

Then again, one of the biggest acts is Ed Sheeran. How come we don’t have more of him? Same deal with Adele, not a difficult formula, great singer with great songs, but all the majors keep purveying is hip-hop.

And has it all shifted to live anyway? Is it truly about the show, the experience? And, once again, there rock is triumphing. As the WSJ article says, Drake does four MSGs and Phish does seventeen. And I won’t say there are more Phish fans, but it appears they’re more rabid. What does this mean?

Maybe hip-hop listeners are more fans of the genre than any specific artist.

Maybe it’s the same Phish fans going to every show.

It’s not as simple as young people wanting a new sound. Boomers never listened to Perry Como, abhorred Frank Sinatra until they embraced him decades later. But so many hip-hop fans love AC/DC and…

And it’s nearly impossible for rock acts to fly up to the top. We’ve got Imagine Dragons and Dave Grohl. And Grohl’s songs aren’t even that good. And then there are acts like Tedeschi Trucks which don’t fly on the mainstream radar but tour incessantly and just made a deal for residencies in New York and Chicago.

And the vaunted festivals are good for promoters, but don’t break acts.

We are in a position of transition folks, and change always comes from the bottom up. What will it be?

In case you missed the memo, voter registrations went way up after Taylor Swift took a side.

You should too, it humanizes you.

Call it the millennial ethos. To succeed in the world today you must have an identity, and be proud of it. Sure, there will be backlash from those who don’t agree, but if you think everybody loves you, you’re absolutely wrong. That’s what the internet has taught us, there is no monoculture, chances are people have never heard of you or don’t know your music. Then again, it’s those who are uninvolved who take umbrage and protest the most. Like the Republicans who attacked Taylor Swift. Were they really her fans, did they really listen to her music? OF COURSE NOT! So what does it matter? Music is not about the court of opinion, people vote with clicks on streaming services, by buying concert tickets, never forget your fans keep you alive, not the media, so play to them, and what fans want most is a 3-D personality that they can relate to. They’re looking to identify, they’re looking for instruction, I learned more about love and life listening to Joni Mitchel and Jackson Browne than I did from my friends, I thought they got me, I thought they understood me, fans feel the same way about Taylor Swift. And the truth is Taylor Swift is an oddball who doesn’t fit in, didn’t she tell us that from the very beginning, on her first two albums? She couldn’t believe she got all the adulation, then she tried to create a girl posse to counteract the backlash, she grew up in public but she never grew up. Taylor Swift is not a rapper, not part of a community, she’s sui generis, a party of one, as are all true artists, by taking a stand she only burnishes her image, when an artist lets their freak flag fly, shows their true beliefs, it bonds fans to them. It’s the wishy-washy pop stars who fade away.

This is a turning point, but it’s also the way it always was, post Beatles. The Beatles took stands, they were cheeky and irreverent and rarely apologized, and they’re the biggest act of all time! And the acts that followed them, wearing their street clothes on stage, they were sending the message that you should focus on the music, they were, once we went to spandex it was over. Of course Elton John pushed the envelope with costumes, but following in his footsteps would be a mistake, we’re not looking for me-too, we’re looking for original!

As was Dylan went he went Christian. “Slow Train Coming” was one of his best albums, listen and see, the backup playing is superb. And you may not have agreed, but you definitely got the sense that Bob believed. We want people who believe, who just don’t focus on the dollars.

Yup, you’d better not do that because you may alienate sponsors!

But the Eagles never had a sponsor, and Adele avoids them, and they’re the two biggest acts of their respective eras. You’ve got no doubt Henley and Adele believe what they’re singing. Too much of what’s on the hit parade today is pap, which is why it doesn’t resonate.

You’re not a performer, you’re an ARTIST! You have to learn to say no, think for yourself. This does not mean you have to get drunk or doped-up and break laws, but…

Remember Neil Young canceling his tour with Stephen Stills right before it started? A jerky move, but it illustrated that what he felt was more important than the money, that’s Neil’s identity, and he now matters when CSN does not, he can sell many more tickets, even though Stills is a vastly underrated guitarist with a great catalog. When you do what’s expedient, you pay for it.

So all those stories talking about the cost of Taylor Swift going on the record have got it wrong.

As for musicians having opinions… The reason they’re shouted down is because people are afraid of their power, their influence. They say performers are dumb and uneducated because they’re afraid they’ll move the needle, and they do!

And Taylor Swift just did. Sure, she’s got a radio hit, but her demo never listens to the radio, just ask them. Swift’s last album was a stiff, because she’s been trying too hard to be something she’s not, a pop star.

Rumor has it she’s going back to country.

I don’t know. But when she speaks from the heart she has her greatest triumphs.

You should follow her, then you’ll win too. Truly.

How can we expect the Saudis to tell the truth when our own President tells whoppers on a regular basis?

The WaPo, which I started subscribing to a few months back, because I was sick of running out of free articles, following the paper on Twitter because the NYT overtweets and needing to read Margaret Sullivan’s screeds, and you righties don’t get your knickers in a twist, I get the WSJ too, reports that our President says the Saudis deny killing Khashoggi.

At least Trump says it’s possible, whereas he keeps believing Putin when he denies his illegalities and Kavanaugh lies in Congress.

Am I the chump, the only person who refuses to lie in court? Putting my hand on the Bible and solemnly swearing, at the risk of perjury if I tell a fib?

I don’t know if Kavanaugh would have been confirmed if he’d admitted to occasionally being blackout drunk, I’ve been, but he certainly lied about it, and some other little things. And as my friend Tony Wilson used to say, if you get the little things wrong, how can we trust you on the big ones?

Meanwhile, Putin keeps denying he poisoned that ex-spy in England, even as the press documents not only the identities of the perps, but their true occupations, in contradiction to Vladimir’s statements, and in “Icarus” not only testimony, but visual evidence of cheating is provided and Putin keeps denying it. What kind of world do we live in?

One where character is subservient to cash.

That’s right.

It started in entertainment, which is built on lies. And that’s what Trump is, an entertainer. Lied about his ascension, and built an empire of identity without investigation. The NYT admitted that he bamboozled them, that he was so busy creating chaos with his image burnishing that they didn’t bother to stop and see if it was true.

Character and honesty are something intrinsic. There are not enough police people in the world to make sure you’re toeing the line. Never mind enough IRS people to make sure you don’t cheat on your taxes. Meanwhile, the GOP keeps cutting the IRS to whose advantage, ask yourself that. We all hate paying taxes, but we all hate being called out on our behavior, but is the solution to loosen the reins so that people get away with bad behavior?

When I went to college there was an honor code. No proctors. You could take an exam in your dorm room. Because if we can’t trust the people, if they don’t live up to societal values internally, what chance does society have. And sure, I’ll admit that everybody lies a bit, but where is the line? Like I said, court used to be one. But not anymore.

Or maybe it’s always been this way and it’s me that is clueless as to the true ways of the world.

Then again, there are cameras everywhere these days and the hoi polloi can’t get away with it but the rich can. White collar crime is where it’s at, baby.

So this appears to be a total breakdown of society.

Or maybe we just had fewer checks and balances back then, like I said no cameras in the street, that’s what the Turks are saying, Saudi Arabia has security cameras everywhere, there’s got to be footage.

But when our own President lies incessantly, and a Supreme Court nominee too, why should I tell the truth?

Hell, that’s my reputation, saying the unsayable, it’s what draws people to me in a world of duplicity. Can I be the only one?

I hope not.

You never know how something will play out until you experience it.

I learned this lesson when I was 9, when I didn’t want to go to T.O. Baum’s party. We went to SAAC together, that’s “Science And Arts Camp.” It was held at an elementary school in Westport, Connecticut that no longer exists. It’s weird, you drive around in a circle, you check Google Maps, and then you research online and find out it’s been torn down. And it wasn’t that old. Ah, progress.

This is where I first wanted to be a writer, I think I told you that. I had this small black binder my father had given me and I wrote articles for the paper and the editors laughed at me, they wouldn’t run them, the most I got was sports scores, which were meaningless, since they were in the regular paper previously. And even though T.O. was a year older, I really didn’t know him, and wanted to ignore the invitation, but my mother insisted. That’s my mother, with no social anxiety at all, she’s a goer, she’s a doer, even near ninety two. You couldn’t watch TV during the daytime and not much at night either. But if you wanted to go to a cultural event, the movies, a concert, a play, there was always money for that. Every opera, every Shakespeare play they offered in school, she and my dad coughed up the cash. My dad always said we didn’t live in a fancy house but we ate the best meals and went to the best places. So I went, and had a fantastic time, the party got out of control, we ran through the sprinklers, got all wet, and I remember it to this day. So when I was searching on Yelp for dinner…

My dad had a policy. You never ate dinner in the hotel. He would have loved Yelp!, he was always looking for the best restaurants. And I just searched, and found a place called Eventide, with fabulous reviews, an outpost of the main Maine eatery, I read the menu and decided I was gonna go for the fried oysters, even though I’m temporarily off Crestor, seeing if it’s contributing to my back pain, which I don’t think it is.

And in the seventies, the streets were unsafe. You didn’t walk far in the city. But now that seems untrue, and Google said Eventide was only nine minutes away so I started to walk.

And immediately encountered Fenway Park.

Which proves the point. I was just ragging on baseball, but confronted with the stadium I had a religious experience, akin to the old Yankeee Stadium, I mean the truly old one, the House That Ruth Built, before they redid it in the seventies and then tore the whole thing down. Now only Fenway exists. Oh, and Wrigley Field. But somehow the Chicago park is not the same, even though for a long time it had no lights. And going to Wrigley checks a mark off in your history, but going to Fenway…

It was so SMALL! It didn’t even hold thirty thousand people. There was only one deck. They’ve expanded it a bit. But still… I was walking by it and wanted to be inside, to experience that feeling, of being in a private universe where nothing else matters. And the scale… Fenway is small, and right downtown, but it still dwarfs the surroundings.

But then I got to Eventide.

The help couldn’t care less. The fried oysters were just this side of edible. I remembered the ones I had in Wellfleet, on the Cape. Toasty brown, dripping with gizzards… These seemed to be previously frozen, one step away from McNuggets. And there were so few of them I needed more, I hadn’t eaten for half a day. And the sign said fresh oysters were a dollar, but that was only for the very first one, ain’t that America. And I thought a lobster roll would do the trick, and they were priced at $15 and $23 and I asked the cashier how big the small one was and when she showed me with her hands I decided to pop for the large one which was small-sized and the roll was inedible and all the way there I’d been planning to write about fried oysters, fried clams, the east coast delicacies, but that was no longer possible. I’d have been better off having a sausage from the stand the proprietor had just set up. Seems kinda early, 9 PM the night before a game, maybe he’s saving his space.

I had it all figured out, waxing rhapsodic about Wellfleet, talking about my old roommate Lyndon’s house on a pond there, but the bad food eviscerated that possibility.

And I didn’t know whether to go to Star Market or…

Oh, that’s another thing, the hotel is ABOMINABLE! And nearly four hundred dollars a night. Stinks of disinfectant. And has no amenities, you couldn’t raid the minibar if you wanted to, because there isn’t one.

And I thought I saw a CVS and the Star Market was in the wrong direction and it was cold…

That’s one thing you can’t fathom if you’re from L.A. You start to believe it only gets cold in the mountains. But I’m wearing a fleece, and a windbreaker on top of that, and that’s enough, but I’m contemplating the winter coming, walking in the rain and the snow. And I’m thinking of the skiing, but then I remember, after it gets cold, it gets warm, ah the perils of New England.

So I went to the convenience store where New England Music City used to be, I forgot how small the store was.

But they had no inventory.

So I went to the 7-11, which stunningly had everything I wanted.

And if this is coming across as negative, you’re reading it wrong, or maybe I’m telling it with the wrong spin. You see travel is invigorating, new experiences are fulfilling, kinda like my mother said, you have to go outside, you have to take chances, you never know what you’ll encounter.

That’s life.

P.S. Rereading the above before hitting send, as I always do twice, I suddenly realized it was Michael Baum, not T.O. Ah, memory.

P.P.S. T.O. was my age, his real name was Steven but his older brother said T.O and it stuck, back when we all had nicknames and David was Dave, Steven was Steve and Robert was Bob, or Bobby.