This could have been lousy, but instead it was JOYOUS!

You know, ancient rocker listlessly sings his hits, would rather be anywhere but here and you can feel it, going through the motions for cash. BUT IT WASN’T THAT WAY AT ALL!

First and foremost because Peter Noone has a sense of humor about himself.

And secondly, although in reality firstly, he/Herman’s Hermits HAD SO MANY HITS!

You can’t imagine the sixties unless you were there. A strange combination of innocence and progressiveness. At first you were just minding your own business in the greatest country in the world, playing baseball, and then suddenly there was a crack in the system and it became all about the individual, thinking for yourself, feeling empowered.

And the grease was the music.

Malcolm Gladwell pointed out all the work the Beatles did before they hit. Hell, they were recording in the fifties! Today, you cut a song on your laptop and post it to Spotify and spam everybody to listen to it, even though it’s the first thing you ever did.

But you used to have to pay dues. And you performed live without any crutches. No hard drives, no auto-tune. You lived and died on your talent.

I first saw Herman’s Hermits back in ’65, at Kennedy Stadium in Bridgeport, Connecticut. This was back when they were naming or renaming edifices with the moniker of the dead President. We had to go, because Herman and his Hermits topped the chart. I had the albums. When he performed “Sea Cruise” last night, I remembered, it was on the first LP. Which initially promoted “I’m Into Something Good,” but then sported a sticker promoting “Mrs. Brown You’ve Got A Lovely Daughter” shortly thereafter. “I’m Into Something Good” is one of those weird records that sounds even better, with more meaning, all these years later. It got a boost from its use in “The Naked Gun,” but that was over thirty years ago. The song keeps getting better and better.

And Peter started the show with it last night.

Woke up this mornin’ feelin’ fine

Remember that? With the birds chirping and the sun shining, when America was about optimism and you weren’t born with the inability to get ahead, but the opportunity to be all you can be.

That’s what love is, optimism. It makes you feel good. It still makes you feel good. But there isn’t that much to feel good about anymore in this divided country. But back then everybody under the age of thirty was on the same page, we were infatuated with music, it was buoying up society. Sure, the Beatles could be dark, but most of their music was inspirational, it rode shotgun on our adventures. We sang it. We played it. The songs seem simple today, but there’s a virtue in simplicity, your inspiration and talent have to get to the essence and shine bright.

And when you have that many hits, you can start with a big one, you don’t have to wait.

And you can roll right into another one.

Don’t know much about history

We went with my mother to a discount store in Bridgeport that no longer exists. We bought 45s. This, and Sam the Sham and The Pharaohs’ “Wooly Bully.” Yup, the hits didn’t have to all sound the same as they do today.

There was a memory in every song.

And Peter said it was a trip back to the sixties so some of the songs weren’t Hermits hits, but we knew them just the same.

Like “Love Potion #9.” We know the lyrics by heart, we remember taking our problems down to Madame Ruth.

And Peter was a cheerleader, doing shtick and a campy version of “Ring of Fire,” which we all sang along to. That was a feature of the show, audience participation. Not because Peter was tired or uninterested, but because we were that excited, in the moment, bonded to Peter in a salute to what once was, and which forever more will live in our hearts.

That’s the kind of show it was, your whole life flashed in front of your eyes. Summer camp, family vacations, it was like “Mrs. Maisel” but it was real.

And I never ever looked at my watch, or checked out my cell phone, you see I was enraptured and I DIDN’T WANT TO MISS ANYTHING!

Come on, “Dandy”? I never heard the Kinks’ original until Napster, with Ray Davies’s sneer. But Herman’s Hermits made it a hit.

“A Must To Avoid.” Better take it from me, she’s poisonous!

And there was a cover of “All My Loving,” done lovingly, all I could see in my brain was that first time the Beatles were on “Ed Sullivan,” when they played this and the crawl beneath John Lennon said he was married.

And when the band performed “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” Peter pranced around like Jagger, it was funny, we knew, we were in on the joke.

And it was a band. A drummer, two guitarists and a keyboard player. Only a backdrop, no pyrotechnics to detract from the performance, which was about the songs. And it made me remember, not only going to shows back then, but picking up the guitar and forming bands, and believe me, I never ever thought I could become famous, I just didn’t have the talent, but it was a thrill to play while you were grinding it out in school.

But the hits just kept on coming.

Peter sang in his original ethereal, high-pitched voice on “Listen People,” it made me want to give him a standing ovation. He wasn’t faking it, the band was down low, and the gravitas was evident.

These were short songs, without long instrumental breaks, they’d come and they’d go and you’d want to hear them again. Like when I saw Gary Puckett & the Union Gap at Fordham in ’68 and they started with the smash “Young Girl” and finished with a replay.

“There’s A Kind Of Hush” brought me back to that bus trip to Butternut Basin. It played on the way back to Westport.

I remembered skiing at the Concord.

All those moments, they were still inside me, just ready to be awakened by the performance of these songs.

And at first, I thought I didn’t need to go, after all, I’d seen Peter on the comeback tour, at the Yale Bowl. But then I realized, THAT WAS 49 YEARS AGO!

That’s right, we’re getting older by the day. Strange, you look at aged audience members and then you realize you look that way too.

But it would have all fallen flat if it weren’t for Peter’s patter. Joking about dreaming of playing the Saban back in Manchester. Saying he sometimes thought he was seventeen, but the truth was in the reversal of the numbers, he’s seventy one.

Peter wasn’t asking for respect, he was a tour guide, whipping you into a frenzy from note one. You were whisked away on a Magical Mystery Tour, a journey of wonder.

And when it was all over, you were ready to hear it all over again. It was a moment in time, both the performance and the memories, and you wanted to go back.

Hell, singing “I’m Henry VIII, I Am” was like participating in the Olympics at Camp Laurelwood, the height of the summer season.

You can’t go back. But the truth is these songs are forever in our brains, they rekindle memories whenever they are played. And when the original performer is still so robust, with the lines in his face just like yours, you feel happy, like it was all worth it, that you lived through a special era, that you were privileged.

P.S. Rick Nowells cornered me in the lobby after the show. He said he goes to all the shows at the Saban, testified about Frankie Valli, who is eighty five years old. Said these performers were gonna be dead in ten years and that you had to see them now.

P.P.S. I asked Rick if he was still into it, still excited about the music. After saying yes, I asked him about the beat-driven hits of today. He said he was a MELODY GUY! And that’s when I realized this was the essence of the British Invasion.

P.P.P.S. When it was all over, and the house lights came up, Felice turned to me, and all she could say was…THAT WAS GREAT!

First everybody played.

Now everybody’s pissed.

For years it was new and exciting. The connection of AOL, the gadgets of Apple, the social networking of Facebook and the arrival of the smartphone. The promise was an improved society, where we were all networked and all important.

But it didn’t turn out that way. We didn’t foresee the Balkanization. We didn’t foresee the lack of individual importance. We didn’t see technology breaking down the world into the haves and have-nots.

Social interaction online used to be cheery.

Now it’s angry.

That’s right, you were sold a bill of goods. You’ve got that smartphone in your hands, all that power, and no one is paying attention to you. You’re inundated with mostly worthless information about successful bozos, influencers and minor celebrities, and it makes you feel like you’re worthless. So what do you do? YOU FIGHT BACK!

Everyone can play. And everybody is reachable.

Analogized to high school, the social misfit is alone with no power, but now he can hassle the quarterback, the prom queen, poke fun at their foibles while risking nothing.

That’s right, there are no guardrails, few laws affecting online behavior. Furthermore, when you’ve got nothing, you’ve got nothing to lose.

Societal interaction has flourished as a result of the internet. But twenty-odd years later, when the promise has not been delivered, the hoi polloi are fighting back.

Look at Amazon reviews. Read the one star ones and it’s always someone complaining not about the product, but Amazon and customer service. Believing if they just scream loud enough, they’ll get a response. And if the product itself is taken down in the process, who cares, they’re deep pockets and can afford it.

Anybody with a name is the enemy. They need scapegoats. Whether it be immigrants or Jews or… Isn’t Mark Zuckerberg Jewish? It’s his fault!

And by rooting for the Palestinians, you’re standing up to those nasty Jews.

Then again, the Palestinians have their own media machine, painting Israel as the problem, as if it disappeared harmony would reign in the Middle East.

If you can’t get ahead, you must bring others down.

And what tools do you have? You ain’t got no money. Chances are you ain’t got no education, so you can’t get a good job, but you do have a megaphone, your smartphone.

And we have the battling cable news stations. Fox isn’t about the implementation of ideas, rather the heinous behavior of the left. And MSNBC reacts defensively thereto.

And the traditional news outlets failed to defend themselves and have therefore been marginalized. The “New York Times” and the “Washington Post” were so busy making sure they got paid online, blaming Google and Facebook, that they didn’t realize they’d lost their impact in society at large. When you’re demonized by close to half the populace, it’s like you don’t even exist.

Same deal with network and cable. Netflix trumped them and now the streaming giant is the enemy. Misinformation about the expiration of Netflix’s TV show contracts has been rampant, even if it’s untrue. Yes, truth has gone out the window.

Even with Tesla. It’s become a financial story, not a changing of the world story. Those invested in the old game decry the electric car company, even though the international auto giants are trying to catch up, even though every single Tesla owner testifies to the car’s greatness, from no need for tune-ups to acceleration to…

But you don’t see that in the media.

Every step forward has a concomitant tribe demonizing it. To the point we have gridlock, turning the USA into a second class country. Funny how these are the same people constantly chanting USA, USA!

But the future doesn’t exist. No one wants their cheese moved. Whether it be the baby boomers who became doctors and lawyers who are angry they weren’t aware they could become billionaires to the manufacturing workers who believe they should be able to labor for umpteen dollars ad infinitum.

Then again, it’s hard for the disinformation police to get traction when you’ve got a President who tells you China and Mexico will pay the tariffs.

Sure, we’ve now got access to more news than we had in the twentieth century, but the end result is everybody believes in their own news, and is convinced if they just stand their ground, things will work out for them. Used to be we could at least agree on the facts. Now facts are fungible.

So you’ve got the aggressors, usually know-nothing individuals, and those with traction, who are gun-shy, or performing stunts for attention.

You get the impression if you’re a law-abiding citizen not looking to get rich on the internet you’re a loser. When the truth is almost all of us are losers by those metrics. We’re never gonna be famous, we’re never gonna be rich, and most of those with attention will fade back into the woodwork, attention doesn’t keep you happy and it doesn’t necessarily pay anyway.

It’s just like the Republican Senators afraid of their base. If you go against Trump you’re going to earn the wrath of people tweeting and primarying you so you’d better stay quiet. Just like the Republican Party infrastructure has lost control of its party.

And on the left, the ethos is a distillation of social media. If you’re not posting, you don’t have a voice. So what do those silent want, Biden or Bernie or..? It’s hard to tell, everybody’s guessing.

It isn’t going to stay this way forever. Just because you made a record that does not mean anybody’s going to listen to it. And all over the world there’s a return to the right, authoritarians pledging to make the trains run on time, to get rid of the chaos. That’s right, people are willing to give up their individual power just to not have to think about these things anymore, they want someone to lift the burden from their shoulders.

Meanwhile, the small will get smaller and the big will get bigger once the small learn they truly don’t have any power. Yes, one person can change the world, but it probably isn’t you. Decision-makers have to ignore the rabble-rousers and do what’s right. But they’re afraid.

Then again, everybody’s so busy fighting there can be no progress. If you don’t have power you’re gonna make sure the powerful pay a price. That’s why you’re a troll.

But the trolls have inherited the earth.

I saw Linda Perry speak at Canadian Music Week. They have these conferences all over the world, usually supported by the government, and there are two halves, a festival for the wannabes performing in search of deal, and meetings and speakers on music topics. Now the truth is some people make it, but most don’t. But at every conference around the world, the speakers give the attendees false hope.

This happened to me at USC when I was on tour with Jason Flom. He told the students that it was easy to make it in music, that business was booming, jobs were plentiful, and we were eagerly awaiting graduates’ arrival.

Wrong.

I, of course, led with what I always say. I told the students to give up. Unless they were willing to starve and get fired, the music business wasn’t for them. It wasn’t a hobby, there was no need of temps to fill office jobs, the truth is that many people are willing to work around the clock for free, and their job is always on the line, a manager’s acts don’t hit, you lose your gig.

Actually, the business is made up of self-starters, entrepreneurs, who literally couldn’t do anything else.

Linda Perry said this in Toronto. Along with the fact that no one in the audience was a rock star.

Whew! She was not giving false hope, not trying to make the audience feel good, she was challenging them, and almost none are open to the task.

But this hard news went out of favor with the baby boomers and Gen-X. Now youngsters are coddled, given a trophy for participation, told they can win each time they play.

Oh, don’t tell me about millennials and their work ethic, the truth is there are very few standard jobs in the music industry, where you’re working for the man, the corporation. Most gigs are for entrepreneurs, who can fire you at will. And do! The truth is unless you control the talent, your job is always on the line. As for talent… Perry is pissed that it’s all about social networking as opposed to hard practice. The 10,000 hour rule is about hard practice. Social networking does not qualify for musicianship. It may make you an influencer, but it won’t make you a recording star.

Then again, no one wants to hear that. They want to believe the world has changed, but it still comes down to hits.

So Linda Perry has her own recording studio, in a house. This is not the typical home studio, with a Pro Tools rig and little more. Sure, they’ve got the requisite Mac, but an API board, multiple rooms, a zillion guitars…hell, there were three axes in the bathroom!

Linda isn’t here to play around, she’s here to write hits. Which she has done for Pink and Christina Aguilera and Gwen Stefani. Hell, she’s even worked with Weezer and Adele. She’s in demand. She hasn’t taken a vacation in years. She’s writing, she’s delivering.

And she’s intense.

Now I’m not challenging in an interview, there’s no point. People will get their hackles up. The key is to let someone feel comfortable so they can tell their story, always revealing what most rapid fire questions won’t.

And I’m trying to connect with Linda, make her feel comfortable, but then after about ten or fifteen minutes she asks, WHO ARE YOU?

Whew! I took it as a challenge, to put forth my bona fides, so I did. Early in the podcast you’ll hear me tell my life story, albeit quickly by my standards. And then I felt accepted by Linda and…

I wasn’t sure we were totally connecting, but when the recording was over and I went to leave, she asked for a hug.

Linda’s in the belly of the beast. And on a rainy day in L.A., I was there too. Linda climbed her way to the top, she had a vision, and she executed it. if you’re interested in making it, you should listen.

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How do you lose a Presidency?

Very slowly, then all at once.

Clinton lies about a blow job and he’s impeached. Trump obstructs justice and acts like a doofus, but he skates. HOW CAN THIS BE?

This is the way it is folks. The Republicans are an alliance between the rich and the poor, with a few religious nuts thrown in the mix. The Democrats are made up of the middle class. The educated, those who’ve paid their dues to make it in the new economy. But they’ve been labeled LOSERS! THE PROBLEM! God, the right wing propaganda machine is so strong, you’d think that the economy of Alabama is stronger than that of California.

Regulation bad. Hinders business people. But how would you like it if your apartment building collapsed, good luck getting the government to pay for your loss, even disasters aren’t disasters anymore.

And they say impeachment will slow down the wheels of government. HUH? They’re not getting anything done anyway. The House proposes and Trump and the Senate deny. Nothing happens.

Meanwhile, the Republicans play a long game. Not only with the Federalist Society and the demonization of taxes, but the demonization of the left. Believe me, if the Republicans hadn’t spent twenty plus years defining Hillary Clinton as a witch, she’d be President. You see you get ahead of the news, you play for the future, or you lose.

Just ask the music business, trying to put its finger in the dike of file-sharing. You know what killed recording revenue? The youth, with their high speed connections at college and their facility with technology. And the youth are key to the government, and there are a lot of young people, especially women, rallying the troops and delivering excitement. But they too are demonized, defined, why is the left so afraid?

Impeachment… Will offend the electorate. The Dems are so afraid of offending people that they’re paralyzed. Trump grabs women’s private parts and the left is so busy defining rape and making men cower that the big issues are left behind.

Yes, the big issues. Everybody wants everybody to stay in their lane, to have no opinion. But the dirty little secret is if you raise your hand up, have a profile, you’re annihilated, by the rank and file. That’s what the internet has wrought…it’s empowered everybody with a connection to reach up and grab someone by the pussy and make them doubt their views and their participation.

Used to be you were disconnected from the blowback, and the hoi polloi felt powerless. Hell, the reason those Senators won’t break rank is they’re afraid of being primaried. Everybody’s so afraid they won’t do what’s right.

Come on, how can we believe in the government, in the American Way, if Trump is not impeached. Will he be convicted? I’ll get to that.

But this wanker has done so many heinous things. Putin assures him the Russians didn’t interfere in 2016 and he believes it, at least parrots it. Meanwhile, Mueller definitively states the Russians did.

And the truth is as a result of gerrymandering and voter suppression the left’s voice has been stymied. Throw in the electoral college while you’re at it. But whenever you do this, the right cries FOUL! When there’s a foul in the NBA does the perpetrator GIVE UP? No, he doubles down, it incentivizes him.

So according to Fox and Lindsey Graham, Trump was exonerated today. It’s like bad science fiction, there’s no truth left. My inbox is filled up with idiots sending me right wing sites as if they’re the truth. They can Google and find out they’re biased with an agenda, but they won’t. You know why they won’t? THE RIGHT WING HAS WON!

That’s right. There should be no taxes, you’re entitled to all the money you make, and the reason you’re broke is because of immigrants.

That’s like those people complaining about the closure of GM’s Lordstown plant. Reminds me of what Sam Kinison said about Biafra…don’t send food, send SUITCASES! These people have got to move!

How come no one can lose out in America? Techies pivot, but the brain dead doing manual labor believe they’re entitled to lifetime employment. And then they bitch the safety net is not strong enough. THAT’S YOUR FAULT!

That’s the America we live in today, one of division, one of tribes. And if you think you can convince members of the opposite team to switch parties, YOU’RE DREAMING!

When someone tells you they’re an “independent,” that just means they’re a Republican who doesn’t want the blowback. Nobody’s an independent in today’s fractured world, that’s a myth. But the media and the parties pay fealty to it.

And speaking of the youth, you’ve got to tell me how young people will get excited about Joe Biden, who’s got his own trail of #MeToo moments. It’d be like giving the reins of your Lime or Bird to grandpa. Of course he’s gonna fall off, he’s old and frail and he doesn’t know how it works!

But then you have the baby boomers crying ageism.

That’s America, where everybody believes they can do everything. But they can’t. Hell, even professional athletes retire, they just can’t do it anymore, but the boomer needs to believe he can still win the U.S. Open… HOGWASH!

Maybe we were always a conniving, untrustworthy nation, maybe now we just know about it. But one thing’s for sure, morality wins in the end. Because people need something to believe in.

If you can believe in today’s music, you’re delusional. Has a good beat and you can dance to it, but that’s about it. As for rock… People who can’t sing performing songs without memorable choruses and bridges who are playing to an ever smaller audience circling the drain. God, why can’t we get back to the garden? The Englishmen listened to the Delta bluesmen a few decades after their heyday. Now it’s fifty years later and Greta Van Fleet is castigated for sounding like Led Zeppelin. But Greta is the most successful new act out there!

But the music business can’t learn any lessons.

Everybody just wants to get paid. That’s how we got into this fracas. Label heads wanted their bonuses, they didn’t care about the future.

If you second guess what people want, you lose in the end. In music, it’s the left field unheard item that breaks all the rules that triumphs. But we’re told that in politics this won’t work, we’ve got to adhere to the past.

Impeach the sucker. Who cares if he’s convicted. Stand up for something. Play the long game. And, for those who lived through Watergate, Nixon looked like he was winning until the final moment, when the Republican senators insisted he resign. If you don’t think the same thing is possible here, you’ve got no sense of history.

As for pissing people off… WHO? No registered Democrat is gonna vote for Trump and the indies are Republicans anyway. It’s a small sliver of people who make a difference, and most of ’em don’t even vote. Yup, if you get people excited they vote, they feel they can make a difference. That’s how Trump won in 2016 and the Dems took back the House in 2018.

IGNORE THE REPUBLICANS AND FOX NEWS! You just can’t win that battle. If you think Dems on Fox are gonna make a difference, you’ve never watched that channel. Oldsters watch it like kids in the eighties watched MTV, they were ADDICTED! But if you put on Perry Como or Rosemary Clooney would they have gone for it? NO!

Everybody knows better, everybody blinks. It’s all about the data.

But data can’t write a hit song. Data can only replicate what’s already been done. When it comes to innovation, creativity, you need people.

This is the story of our time. In Germany, they’re telling Jews not to wear skullcaps. In America, not only did right wing wingnuts say the Jews would not replace them, as if there were enough Jews to do this, but one ended up killing a young woman.

But all we’ve got on the left is outrage and sympathy, we don’t DO anything!

I always wondered about those people who fought for their country. Lose your life over politics? But now I understand.

Everybody’s got a computer in their hand, but climate science can’t be trusted. It’s as if you were convinced your calculator delivered the wrong result.

People have power. If they organize around a principle and lead.

The Democrats are afraid of offending anybody and as a result no one is excited about them. Come on, I see Chuck Schumer on TV and I want to puke. He’s parsing his words, he’s cooking up nothing, and the guy in the White House is tweeting outrageously all day long?

I don’t like AOC’s view on the Jews and Israel, but one thing I’ll tell you for sure, she got a lot of people excited, and she drew attention to herself and got tons of media. Forget that the right wing branded her. SHE BRANDED HERSELF FIRST!

So I want all you lefties to unite, behind people who are passionate who want change.

Biden returning to what once was? What, do you want me to go back to Windows 95?

Hate me all you want. E-mail me I’m an idiot. That’s just the point. I can take it, I’m not gonna blink.

But for those who are on my side, it’s time to rise up with your eyes open and say…WE’RE NOT GONNA TAKE IT ANYMORE!