It’s about the songs, not the band.

It started with Journey. The voice of the act, Steve Perry, didn’t want to work, he needed an operation, so the rest of the act went on the road without him, with a bunch of faceless singers, doing reasonable business. Then they found a replica of Steve’s voice online, and then business started to increase to the point where they’re playing stadiums this summer, with Def Leppard.

Foreigner not only goes on the road without Lou Gramm, but sans Mick Jones sometimes too.

And then Glenn Frey dies and the Eagles not only reunite, their grosses are bigger than ever!

What’s going on?

When your hits are behind you, it’s all about the money. No one’s got enough. And touring gives purpose to your life. And there’s nowhere you can get that kind of adulation, that hit of adrenaline, other than on stage.

But shouldn’t the audience balk?

They did not when all the fifties acts toured with a group of faceless performers not in the original incarnation.

It’s an oldies phenomenon, after the thrill is gone, the cult of personality, the adoration, the laughter and the tears, all that is left is the songs and the memories. And it turns out many can’t get enough of them.

Ergo the tribute acts. Doing a bang-up imitation of Led Zeppelin and so many more.

As long as it sounds close enough to what once was, and it includes some patina of originality, people are in. After all, the Mac toured without Christine McVie for years and played arenas. They’ve proven in the past the act has a hard time surviving without Stevie Nicks, but if god forbid she passed and Grace Potter took her spot, or Lorde…

Queen tours with Adam Lambert.

We could speculate on the cause of this. Then again, it’s been Lindsey’s band from day one, and he’s been irascible. Of course, of course, it was Fleetwood and McVie’s band, but they could play theatres without Lindsey and Stevie and therefore they let Lindsey control the act. And when the noose gets too tight and there are alternatives…

The truth is these acts are riddled with personality problems, all that bonds the members is the music. Would you want to hang forever with your high school buddies? That’s what it’s like. Furthermore, artists are uncompromised, it’s their edges that made them successful, and they don’t know how to trim them. You’d tell them just to get along, but then again, you could never be in the act.

And the act does include Lindsey’s soloing. But the seventies are over, the audience doesn’t want to hear virtuosos extend, they just want the songs, they just want to nod their heads and sing along. And Lindsey’s vocals have oftentimes been…

Rough.

So now you’ve got Mike Campbell, whose ability rivals Lindsey’s, although his sound is different, and Neil Finn comes back from the dead, in this case New Zealand, to demonstrate the chops which never fully got the praise they deserved.

And if you don’t think Vince Gill brought the Eagles to new heights…

You haven’t seen them.

This news would have been revolutionary in the seventies, even the eighties, but today it’s another blip on the radar screen. Fleetwood Mac has long since surrendered the zeitgeist to the younger generation. Hell, the McVie/Buckingham album got no traction. That’s what it’s like being an aged act doing new music in today’s cacophonous world.

So now YOU’RE Fleetwood Mac. When you go to the show and sing along with your head in the air it’s about you, not the people on stage. You’re long in the tooth, remembering when, feeling good for the moment, that’s what you pays your money for and if you want to see these people in the flesh, go soon, because they’re not gonna be around much longer.

But the songs remain the same.

How can she be dead?

I’ve turned into my father, I’m addicted to the obituaries. For the shock, for the connection, to feel good I’m still here.

Last week Bob Beattie died. He didn’t merit an obit in the L.A. “Times,” but he got credit in the “New York Times.” He made the U.S. Ski Team winners, by being a hard-ass. Billy Kidd and Jimmie Heuga won the first male Olympic ski medals. Then Beattie helped start the World Cup, and the Pro Tour, and he even had a show called “Ski World” on ESPN, before YouTube, when you just couldn’t get enough, the commercially unavailable theme song goes through my head all the time, it’s about dreams, about possibilities, I still have it on a videocassette, but I haven’t fired up my VCR in excess of a decade.

Susan Anspach was the intelligent woman who dissed you, who kept you on your toes, who didn’t need you. At least that’s how I remember her. She abandoned Woody Allen in “Play It Again Sam.” She abandoned George Segal for Kris Kristofferson in “Blume In Love.” She went mano a mano with Jack Nicholson in “Five Easy Pieces.” Back when movies eclipsed novels as the great American stories, when music paved the way and directors took over like players, forgoing corporate interference to get it right. You used to have to record in the company studios. You used to have to sacrifice final cut. And then…

We were addicted. We went to the movies constantly. Not to eat popcorn and Raisinets, but to peer into the human condition. It was what was going on in the mind. Spielberg has had a ton of commercial success taking people on roller coaster rides. I preferred to sit in my seat and be transported to another world where people understood me, dealt with the questions I had, gave me hope there was a better life out there.

When a movie star was unattainable and unknown. There was no TMZ. No endless promotional gravy train, publicists negotiating magazine covers. We didn’t really know who these people were, but we thought we did. We were in love with them.

I was working at Star Sporting Goods on Highland when I heard Jack Nicholson was in the store, just before filming “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest,” he and his driver were buying a ski rack and more. I went up to talk to him…

And he was as cool as the legend. Before he was ubiquitous. When youngsters knew him from “Easy Rider” and “The Last Detail,” before he got the front row seat at the Oscars, when the Oscars still meant something.

My mother went to a Judith Crist movie weekend with Frank and Eleanor Perry and told me about “Last Summer.” I went to see it and was transfixed by Barbara Hershey, it was her inner power.

As for Woody Allen….

We cracked up over “Take The Money and Run,” and then my entire family went to see “Play It Again, Sam” on Broadway. That’s right, we were up close and personal with Woody, Diane Keaton and Tony Roberts.

In the film…

Susan Anspach played the ex-wife.

I always thought she was Jewish, but the obits say otherwise. That’s right, we members of the tribe are always aligning with our landsmen. And when a Jew commits a crime we wince. And Anspach never radiated warmth, she was distant, you couldn’t hold her, and this made you want to hold her even more.

Every man has had this experience. The woman who won’t say yes. Who you then can’t help but follow. You ultimately realize it’s fruitless, that this is not what you’re looking for anyway, you always wonder if they find someone and are happy, believing there’s someone better out there than you, but most times the unhappiness is baked into the woman, or you didn’t really understand and get her in the first place.

But we wanted to.

That’s what being a movie star was. Larger than life.

Rock stars were life itself, but you could pay and see them, they were up there on stage. Whereas movie stars were unavailable. They were thirty feet tall and never viewed in real life. When I moved to L.A. in the seventies and would see them around…my jaw would drop, you mean they’re real?

They were icons, living in rarefied air. Forget that an actor plays a role, we suspended disbelief, we thought it was really them.

And you followed the players like sports. You saw actors and actresses from film to film.

And then they disappeared.

Some went to television, not that I ever watched much.

Others just retired.

But they were still the same in your brain. Young and vivacious. Frozen in time. Locked in amber. Hell, when I just pulled up clips I was stunned, because it’s easy to return to what once was, when you didn’t turn on your phone after the lights came on but exited the theatre tingling, thinking, pondering the possibilities.

And the flicks engendered conversation. About plot, motive, interior dialogue, we went to parties and spent hours arguing, it was a staple of college dorm life.

But that era is gone now.

Everybody’s available online, we find out that so many are superficial or unlovable, but back then we invested our own hopes and dreams in our favorites.

Movies were always big. But in the late sixties and seventies they usurped the mantle of the American zeitgeist from television, if you wanted to know which way the wind blew you listened to a record, if you wanted to know what was happening between two people, you went to the movies. Hell, if you didn’t, you couldn’t see so many of these films. They never made it to TV, although you could go to the revival house, it was a regular pilgrimage.

So it’s the end of an era.

I never met Susan Anspach. Never saw her around town. Yet I think I know her. That if I bumped into her we could start a conversation. I could try to peel back the layers, try to penetrate her shield, try to lock on.

But I don’t believe I could hold her, she’d look over my shoulder and see someone better, something more interesting. Because she was better than me.

They all were.

“We Rise With Our Dreams” from “Ski World” (fast-forward to 28:50)

“Play It Again, Sam”

“Five Easy Pieces”

“Blume In Love”

It’s controlled chaos.

That’s what my driver told me yesterday. A Brazilian who spent twenty three years in Texas, illegally, he came home to see his dying dad and now he can’t go back to the U.S. for ten years, maybe he’ll emigrate to Portugal, right now he’s living with his dogs working seven days a week as a driver, in the U.S. he was a pilot, he flew King Airs and Citations.

Doesn’t he need time off? To see his girlfriends from the favelas?

That’s right, he met them on WhatsApp, only in America does that app not dominate, it’s Brazilians’ entire life, they form groups, that’s where my driver met his girlfriends. He’ll let them come to his house, he won’t go to theirs. And he won’t stop at red lights at night. But he’s not complaining, you see Brazilians are optimistic.

You feel alive because so much is at risk. In the U.S. you’re somnambulant, sleepwalking through life, in Rio you’re on high alert.

The highlight of Friday was going to Gilberto Gil’s studio, to do a podcast. Gil is a superstar in Brazil. He was jailed and exiled by the government in the sixties, living in London he drank up the culture, it infused his politics when he returned three years later.

Music was everything. That’s what Gilberto told me. Now he has a hard time making sense of the scene. I told him anyone who tells you they know what’s going on is lying.

So we drove up the hill to just shy of the favela. On our way home, we had to detour, there was a shooting. There’s an app for that. My drivers were getting alerts all the time.

And when I descended the steps into Gilberto’s studio…

It felt like fall in L.A.

How to describe it… It’s not like the east coast, with the nip in the air, it’s more about the light, it’s gray and warm and you can feel the seasons changing and I felt snow was coming to Colorado…only in the U.S. it’s spring.

So Gilberto succeeded by being different. He had nearly immediate success. He was called to provide songs for a singer with a TV show, and she liked him so much, she put him on and overnight he was known. That’s the power of uniqueness, that’s the power of listening to your own heart. And as we talked about Nesuhi, how he got him into the Montreux Jazz Festival, and all the other movers and shakers who have passed but were icons, I got energized, by what once was.

It was also fascinating hanging with Moogie and Cherney. They’d debate microphones, this is their language. Credits would come up and they’d search their phones, wanting to get it right, expand their horizons, like that old Bad Company song, they live for the music.

And when I got to the Miami airport I didn’t expect the security guard to speak English. Live in a foreign land for only a brief time and it changes you, I was used to the language barrier, but now it’s gone.

I had lunch in an upscale restaurant in a good neighborhood and one in a not-so-good neighborhood. I ate the Brazilian national dish of… Well, they serve a big pot of beans and beef and sausage which you pour over rice, collard greens, orange slices and pig ears, then you douse it all with farofa, look it up. I mean if you’re gonna go to a foreign country, you might as well have the realistic experience.

And Moogie took us to a Portuguese restaurant. I wish I could tell you the appetizers I ate, which were delectable. Chicken that tasted like sausage but wasn’t, little beef balls, and the main course was cod, the national dish of Portugal. They salt it, they ship it, and then in Rio they soak it and then cook and serve it. To tell you the truth, I still felt it to be a bit salty. And the funny thing is you eat so late, maybe ten, and I overate.

And on the drive back to the hotel, Moogie was talking about security, that’s what everybody talks about, politics and safety. Everyone’s had a bad experience. Gilberto’s family was held up at gunpoint, then he moved into a high-rise. And Moogie says the smart thing to do is to have a fake bag, to give to the criminals. One with an old cellphone and thirty or forty dollars. And then the driver raised her hand, she had one, ready to deliver if detained.

And driving while drunk is a zero tolerance situation. They have checkpoints on the weekends.

And like I told you, gun ownership is illegal. But the criminals have guns.

And what is the solution?

Many said education, giving the underclass a leg up. I was told education is not mandatory, there are people living in the favelas who have never gone to school. Ninety plus percent of them are good, but the neighborhoods are controlled by the gangs, by the drug dealers.

Scary, I know!

And I’m not the paranoid type.

But when you put the idea in my head…

Brazil is a big country, with two hundred million people. It’s got an economy based on beef and minerals and…corruption is rampant. The mayor of Rio skimmed tons off the construction of light rail and then escaped to New York, so far he’s not been extradited. You wanna get rich, you become a politician.

And I don’t know if I’ve got it all right. But everywhere I went I asked the same questions. And got similar answers. I was there, I got a taste of what was going on.

And what is happening is you’ve got an upbeat people living for the music and the partying despite the challenges.

I literally saw how the other half lived.

My eyes were opened in Rio.

The government has been unable to rein in hedge funds.

But the remaining reporters at the “Denver Post” just might.

For far too long we’ve revered money. And believed that those in possession of it know better. We’ve been sold this canard, that the rich are job creators, that if they triumph, so do we, that if we just unfetter them, release them from regulations, we’ll all be lifted up.

Wrong.

This is the story of Trump, this is the story of the Republican Congress. How they’ve lost touch with the people.

Forget “Roseanne,” forget the ignorant angry at immigrants and globalization. They’ve been left behind, unfortunately, they need to be propped up, but it’s the intelligentsia who are going to remake this country.

Remember when that was the goal? To be educated and smart? Before college became a glorified trade school? Before Ivy Leaguers went to Wall Street and became beholden to the Benjamins?

So they shoot black people and the white people don’t care. Some bleeding heart liberals do, but the truth is racism is rampant, despite what the Supreme Court said in its voting rights decision. As for a compassionate America… When scores of Muslims are killed in the Middle East, it barely gets any ink. Seems you’ve got to be white and Christian to matter.

But we’ve got cameras now, we can document and see, and what we view is not pretty.

So then the teachers in West Virginia say no mas. They’re entrusted with our foremost responsibility, educating the young, and they’re treated like fast-food employees, viewed as unreliable unionists who must be quashed.

And then the same thing happens in Oklahoma, a red state if there ever was one.

And the teachers don’t even agree with their union, they want more, they want a fair deal. Why should all the energy companies get a pass?

Why should they be subsidized by the government?

Think about that!

Meanwhile, the Kansas Supreme Court keeps saying not enough is spent on education in a state bankrupted by no tax supply side economics and then students, MERE CHILDREN!, are fed up with school shootings and capture the nation’s attention and not only protest, but produce change.

This was not supposed to happen. The NRA was too powerful, they had politicians in their pockets.

But that’s no match for the truth.

And now comes the story of the “Denver Post.”

You’re supposed to feel lucky you’ve got a job, you’re not supposed to rock the boat. The whole damn country is about not rocking the boat. I’m not talking about the agitated on the internet, I’m talking about the working stiffs, trying to feed their families. Sure, you can be a greeter at Wal-Mart, while you subsist on welfare, but if you’re a professional, you need to shut up, for fear of being squeezed out of the marketplace, especially if you’re aged.

And now these reporters have had enough. The hedge fund owners have bled the enterprise dry, using the profits for other endeavors, including lining their own pockets and building buildings.

When you’ve got nothing, you’ve got nothing to lose.

But even if you’ve got something, and you see it slipping away, living in a game of musical chairs, people are now standing up for their truth.

We’ve been at the mercy of these mercenaries for far too long. They’re billionaires, they should be revered like rock stars.

Only there are no more rock stars.

A rock star was someone who made it on their creativity who was all about credibility and truth and not selling out. If a musician makes it today, they’re eager to make a deal, IT’S ALL ABOUT SELLING OUT! Which is why no one’s listening to them, other than the nincompoops who don’t know what time it is.

But the internet was supposed to save us.

Now the truth is these unregulated pricks in search of bucks have belittled our society. The press builds up Sheryl Sandberg as she destroys our country and our minds. But the woman educating your children is pissed upon, told to make do, get a second job.

Our values are screwed up.

Only they’re not.

The truth is we know better, and we’re finally saying it.

Sure, news is a challenged business. But we don’t need extra layers of challenge added on. The truth is the “Denver Post” owners, as well as Tronc, are all about preserving their profit margins, double-digit ones, as not only reporters lose jobs, but the papers lose relevance. First they came for the classifieds, then they came for the full page ads, then they came for the news… The “Los Angeles Times” is a pamphlet, there’s more nutrition in a box of Froot Loops!

But a billionaire bought the “Times.”

And another billionaire bought the “Washington Post,” which went from also-ran to leader. The WSJ is an also-ran and Fox does little reporting, only bloviating, they’re both reacting to the NYT and WP. And we’ve got a President denigrating both.

But the NYT and WP are sticking to their guns. They can handle it, can you?

That’s the story of today. Not about arguing with the other side, but standing up against injustice. When pushed to the wall, people react.

And change results.

This is a wake-up call, as big as the one in the sixties. But then the war was overseas, now the war is right here at home. There’s been a cleaving of society. And despite the b.s., there are facts, and many people know them, and despite the government and the rich trying to lead with misdirection, telling us they know better, we’re not taking it anymore. Because when something smells fishy, it is.

Not every enterprise has to scale like Silicon Valley.

Not every hardworking stiff needs to be discounted because they’re not making beaucoup bucks.

It comes down to people. And fairness. And truth.

And the truth is the nineties are coming to an end. That’s right, forget all that hogwash about the humming economy. The spoils are going to the same sector. A tiny sliver of society. They’ve rigged the game and told us they’re invulnerable. But they’re not.

For twenty years tech ruled. But now it’s hit a wall. Turns out the people steering the ship had no maps for where they were going.

But now we’re here.

Money isn’t everything.

Those who have it don’t know better.

It’s down to you and me baby, we have to change this country, we need to stand up, AND WE ARE!