I was riding the lift today with a mother who told me her 12 and 14 year olds would never be seen on Facebook, a hundred times no. They wouldn’t even use public Instagram.

Meanwhile, the media is in an uproar over the influence of Facebook on politics. Could it be that the target has shifted?

Last week, a rapper I’ll posit most boomers have never heard the music of, never mind his name, was #1 on the “Billboard” album chart. Kodak Black only sold 5,000 copies of his album “Dying To Live,” but he had 114 million streams for the equivalent of 89,000 album sales. Not that that means what it used to. You can buy an album and never listen to it, we’ve got no idea how many times you play it. But a stream means you actually listened, even if it’s in the background. But you didn’t necessarily stream the album, you probably only streamed the “hit.” Actually, on “Dying To Live,” there’s one cut with triple digit million streams, and four with double digit millions. The rest are in single digits, it appears that people are cherry-picking their favorites. And then there’s the canard that rappers put out long albums to reap rewards when fans play them endlessly, but why do a number of cuts on “Dying To Live” only have one or two million streams?

We’re still trying to figure out this streaming/on demand paradigm. It’s been here for nearly a decade, but we’re still arguing about what the album means, frequency of releases, the impact of hype, the genre of music…

And speaking of hype, “Dying To Live” got a tiny fraction of that of “Springsteen on Broadway,” seemingly every boomer was aware of the play, and now the Netflix production. “Springsteen on Broadway” is #11 on the chart, with 38,000 sales…

But only 1.8 million streams.

That’s right, there’s only one track on “Dying To Live” with fewer streams than the total streams of all the cuts on “Springsteen on Broadway,” and that cut is #15, the second to last.

In other words, boomers don’t stream.

How could this BE? Especially with Spotify’s free tier, never mind YouTube.

As for buying albums, where and how do you play them? If you get a CD… My two computers don’t have a CD drive, and neither do new cars. As for files, you probably are still inured to iTunes, an overstuffed cornucopia of offerings that works poorly on the desktop, and only marginally better on the hand-held.

And 38,000 sales is anemic to boot!

Now if you read Jon Pareles’s Sunday “Times” article

“Pop in the Era of Distraction”

you’ll get a good picture of what’s going on in today’s music business, at least on the recording side. Traditional pop is almost dead, and there’s a plethora of genres and formats triumphing, some of which you might not know. But the article only got 11 comments. In other words, the “New York Times” has almost no impact on the music scene, nada. Not a single person e-mailed me about the article. It appears Pareles is speaking to oldsters, who just don’t care. Because believe me, the music world is an active one, fans weigh in on everything.

But that’s modern America, where the cheese keeps moving but everyone wants to neglect it. If you’re playing to the “Times,” you’ve lost it, unless you’re trying to influence gatekeepers, who mean less than ever before.

So why aren’t boomers streaming?

They could be afraid of coughing up their credit cards. I kid you not, boomers are paranoid.

Or maybe they just cannot adjust to an on demand economy where you don’t need to own almost anything other than clothing. You call up Uber/Lyft, you rent your apartment, you spend on digital goods and evanescent experiences. The boomer mantra was “He or she who dies with the most toys wins.” Millennials don’t cotton to that, although you might substitute the word “followers” for “toys.”

But it gets worse, without big streaming numbers, acts get no traction.

Old acts selling new music, marginal acts selling new music, should be getting their fans to stream. Instead, they’re against Spotify, et al, and keep on going on about how an album used to cost $10+ and streaming pays poorly. But the truth is streaming is about fandom, if anybody is streaming your music prodigiously, they’re a fan, and they’ll pay to see you live and buy merch and…

Boomer and marginal acts are nonstarters, because they’re adhering to an old paradigm. They’re appealing to people who still use iPods, who base their phone purchases on storage.

That’s another thing you no longer need, a lot of memory. Remember when you used to wait for the release of a bigger iPod? Now, with everything on demand, you don’t need that much.

So the chart is not reflective of reality.

And the only chart that really matters is one of consumption. But if you go to that, all the old acts would never break the Top Ten. But do they deserve to? Is selling an album with tickets and/or merch really reflective of the new music’s impact and staying power? Almost never.

It’s kind of like winning a Grammy. Just check the streams and sales of so much nominated work in minor categories. The creators are playing to the Grammy nominating committee, no one else cares, truly!

But the Grammys were always a circle jerk anyway.

But the people who keep saying they know most, who rail against inequities, are the ones most disconnected from modern paradigms. Like that Congressman who asked the head of Google about his iPhone. Or that woman trying to fill up her Tesla at the gas station:

And now, a video of a person trying to put gas in a Tesla pic.twitter.com/TXz4xkCKUL

— MF_Brown @ Earth (@MF_Brown) December 24, 2018

Maybe Congress should be run by youngsters. Maybe tech policy should not be made by old farts.

But one thing’s for sure, music is now an on demand item. Hell, that’s one reason Alexa is so successful, you just call out what you want.

But if you read the “Billboard” chart, you’d have no idea of this. The standard of an industry that had to be led kicking and screaming into the twenty first century. But the industry loves the ancient chart, because of the bragging rights of #1s.

Who cares?

Only them.

And when I see the sign that points one way

I didn’t know there was a real Renee.

I’ve been trying to finish this book, it’s a real chore. It’s called “Bel Canto” and don’t e-mail me your review, because I know it will contain the ending and spoil it for me. Then again, you know these people who always have to blurt out the ending, as if it’s a badge of honor, that they read the damn book or saw the movie… Everybody’s insecure, everybody’s trying to climb the ladder, everybody’s trying to show you they’re better than you are until they aren’t. Then again, some of the most successful people on the planet have no airs and never reveal their accomplishments. Happens all the time, you’re in the room with a famous rock star, and they introduce themselves with their complete name, both first and last, what are you supposed to say, I KNOW WHO YOU ARE?!! And when you reach a certain age, you stop boasting. There’s nothing worse than a baby boomer telling you how much he has, where he’s been, what he’s done, didn’t he get the memo, didn’t he ever grow up, everybody’s on their own trip, and none of us are better than any other and it all doesn’t matter. I know, I know, you don’t want to believe this, but hopefully you’ll realize this someday, if you ever grow up.

And “Bel Canto” is what broke Ann Patchett, made her career. I read one of the follow-up books, “Commonwealth,” and it didn’t really go anywhere, it didn’t have an arc, now I’m wondering if it’s just not that book, but the writer herself, who is venerated because she opened a bookshop.

I don’t know if you saw that article in the NYT the other day how they’re running out of printing inventory, how they can’t print enough books for the holidays. I have contempt for the book business, because those who run it are holier-than-thou, think they’re better than us. But they haven’t been disrupted because there’s just not enough money in it. But it’s gonna happen, because disruption never sleeps. Through the luck of the court system the publishing industry got pricing power over e-books, that’s what killed ’em, when they were the same price as the hardcover. It’s like saying Uber costs as much as driving a car, that’s why most people haven’t switched, haven’t given up their automobiles, but when it becomes cheaper… But these are the same people saying on demand, self-driving vehicles will never arrive. These are the same people who can’t see the humor in Teslas farting. That’s right, Elon Musk sent the software overnight and announced it on Twitter, your car can now fart. Funny for a car that makes no noise.

But older people abhor the future. America hates change. Businesses must last forever. But they don’t.

So my eyes are glazing over as I’m reading “Bel Canto.” And that’s when I pick up my phone.

That’s what every entertainment option is competing against, the mobile handset, right there on a slab is info tailored just for me, and today there was a link to:

“These People Are The Inspirations Behind Some of the Most Beautiful Songs Ever Written”

DON’T CLICK, IT’S A COOKIE MAGNET!

That’s when you know a site is low rent, when at the bottom of the page it includes garbage links hosted by other sites. A real publication will have links to its own site, a page that is only in it for the money will carry this dreck that they just hope you click on, so they can get paid.

And it’s always some story with a picture and…

Frequently, that picture never shows up as you click through fifteen slides or so.

But it’s worse, you’ve got to figure out where to click, so you don’t end up at some other site whose ad was embedded in this garbage site to begin with.

And a tsunami of cookies descends as you click through the slides. You’re giving away your identity, your privacy, as you click through. So, if you’ve got to hit the link above, copy and paste it into a private web page. Then again, does anybody know how to do this? Kids do, parents don’t. The internet is a self-learning curve, your entry fee is your device and your access fee, after that, the potholes are everywhere, it is not safe, it’s like walking alone in the Tenderloin…

Well, the Tenderloin is improving, but you get the point.

But the reason I clicked through is because the lead picture was of Axl Rose and…it didn’t look like Erin Everly to me, who did he write “Sweet Child O’ Mine” for?

And for some reason I’m less worried about the cookie influx on my iPhone, figuring I can wipe out all the cookies at once, or maybe I’ve just given up, throwing my privacy to the wind.

So I’m clicking through, and stunningly it is Erin Everly and I already knew that, it’s like a test, you know this stuff but it’s deep in your memory banks and then, on slide 19, I was avoiding “Bel Canto,” I tell you, appeared the headline:

“Walk Away Renee” by the Left Banke

Some songs are bigger in the afterlife than they were as hits. When “Walk Away Renee” climbed the chart, never to the top, it was just a piece of what once was, just another hit song when we were all addicted and so many cuts were great.

And then came the covers. By everyone from the Four Tops to Rickie Lee Jones.

It turns out “Walk Away Renee” is part of the national fabric, embedded in boomers’ minds, Gen-X’ers too, but I don’t think those of millennials. So many songs are gonna be lost.

Proven by the point that the drone creating this page doesn’t even know that the pic is not of Renee, but Rickie Lee Jones. And, if you’re on a desktop computer, you can scroll down to #19, you don’t have to click through, and you will find that “Walk Away Renee” was written about Renne Fladen-Kamm.

Hmm… I immediately went to Google. Renne has a Wikipedia page, but I had to click on Images to see a picture.

Turns out she was a band member’s girlfriend, and Michael Brown, nee Michael Lookofsky, had a crush on her.

Are all great songs based on real people?

I guess that’s why we rockers avoided Nashville. We wanted songs channeled straight from the hearts of the writers/performers. We wanted honesty, we wanted truth. Back before the days of artifice, with corporate rock and blockbuster films like “Jaws,” when music was personal and intimate and if it resonated, it lit up your whole life.

But “Walk Away Renee” was not the Left Banke’s only hit.

There were two more, but one sounded very similar, “Pretty Ballerina.”

It was released just about now back in ’66. And it turns out Brown wrote this too about Renne Fladen-Kamm, talk about a fixation!

Then again, this is typical of guys. Girls talk about romance, guys keep it inside, but if you can open them up, they always talk about the one who got away, oftentimes one who they never had a thing with, like Renne.

I had a date with a pretty ballerina

They tell me kids don’t date anymore, that they go out in groups, hook up, but it used to be you had to get up your gumption, keep that inner mounting flame of hope lit, and while praying that you wouldn’t get rejected, ask.

And it was always days before, you went out on Saturday night, so if she said yes you had days to ponder your luck, your good feeling.

And sometimes the date wasn’t as good as expected, once you two were alone, you found out you didn’t like her, you didn’t click, then other times…

You were in love. Even if she wasn’t.

I called her yesterday, it should have been tomorrow
I could not keep this joy that was inside

She’s all you can think about, you’re thinking she feels the same way as you. But that’s not always true.

I beg for her to tell me if she really loved me
Somewhere a mountain is moving
Afraid it’s moving without me

You lie on your bed, too devastated to play a record, infused with the hurt, you want to die.

And when I wake on that dreary Sunday morning
I open up my eyes to find there’s rain
And something strange within says go ahead and find her
Just close your eyes, yeah, just close your eyes
And she’ll be there
She’ll be there
She’ll be there

Even though you were rejected, you cannot get over her.

Sometimes you never even talked to her and you cannot get over her.

So it’s after dark on Christmas, a meaningless day for Jews, and I go to Spotify and play “Pretty Ballerina” on Spotify.

I didn’t even bother with headphones. The music came out of the tiny iPhone speakers and I suddenly felt warm, alone but happy, knowing this is the essence, why music is the hottest medium, why it means so much to me, when it clicks, it makes me feel like I belong when I don’t.

Pretty Ballerina

You don’t mess with people’s money. Social issues are one thing, cash is another. That’s how we got into this mess, people left behind by globalization and the crash of 2008. Or did we? Did Trump supporters want their piece of the pie, or were they just racist whites railing against change?

We may never know.

But one thing we do know is Trump is single-handedly putting the market in the dumper. And the market affects everyone. Not only their job, but their savings. How many people are so ignorant as to think otherwise? Maybe these same people who survive on government safety net programs and vote Republican.

Trump is a man for the internet/social media era. The only problem is he’s President. Trump understands that in an attention based economy, you’ve got to make news every day. Only he’s no longer just the host of “The Apprentice,” but running the country. How long until the outrage spreads?

Maybe never. Maybe his acolytes are like those of Taylor Swift, dug in deep, supporting everything she does. Ever criticize a social media/entertainment star? Be ready for your inbox to explode, everywhere online you’ll be excoriated, to the point where most people retreat. That’s their game, getting you to shut up. Opponents are working the refs every day, to cause a chilling effect. That’s what the Supreme Court decides, whether a law inhibits free speech, not only literally but whether it inhibits people from speaking. Then again, the Supreme Court is now stacked, because people with little power don’t see that courts are their last resort, and the more they’re in the hands of corporations, they’re screwed.

But corporations and banks used to be the enemy. Wall Street broke the economy. GM and Chrysler were not prepared for change. Now it’s the government. The government used to fix the problem, now it causes it? Lincoln spoke of a “government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish.” Then again, the Gettysburg Address was uttered when the country was tearing itself apart, south versus north, and that division is happening again today. There’s a faction of America that wants to keep the status quo, that refuses to move forward, and if you don’t think suppression of the ACA is such, then you don’t understand how health is the bedrock of humanity. In Canada, you can change your job and keep your health insurance, in America, you’re tied to your gig, which may be expiring due to no effort of your own.

So they say that Trump got elected because of a backlash against 2008, that no one went to jail. So what happens now?

When the Oscars take place, there’s no doubt that the best movie of the year was Trump and his shenanigans. If it wasn’t true, we wouldn’t believe it. Untold twists and turns. Riveting. It dominated, everything else was a sideshow. It was the only thing we could watch.

Because our lives and livelihoods hang in the balance.

They got a wall in China
It’s a thousand miles long
To keep out the foreigners
They made it strong

Paul Simon’s solo debut, not counting the “Songbook” album that was rushed to the American market after the success of “Sound of Silence,” was a commercial disappointment. Sure, “Mother and Child Reunion” was a hit, and “Me and Julio Down By The Schoolyard” had impact, but the audience was expecting Simon & Garfunkel and got something darker and more introspective.

But those who purchased the LP were rewarded with some of Paul Simon’s best work. Like “Armistice Day” and “Duncan.”

And seemingly pissed at the lack of acceptance, little more than a year later, Simon released an album with a hit that dominated the airwaves and sold prodigiously.

That LP is entitled “There Goes Rhymin’ Simon.”

At this point, Paul Simon is seen as an appropriator of foreign sounds, known primarily for “Graceland,” and one must applaud Simon’s continuation of exploration, his decision not to rest on his laurels, but if you go back and play “Rhymin’ Simon” you’ll be stunned, it’s one of the best albums ever made.

They say rock is dead. The call Elton pop. But back in the early seventies, it was a big tent, it was all rock. Guitars were king, piano accepted, real strings too, and we appreciated it all.

Now when “Rhymin’ Simon” came out, FM radio was in full swing. But every car did not have that band installed, so AM still counted, and “Kodachrome” was ubiquitous, so somehow in rock history “Rhymin’ Simon” has been forgotten, seen as not hip enough, neither fish nor fowl, then again the best stuff always is.

And the above lines from “Something So Right” have been going through my head the past week or so, as the government approached a shutdown and then closed. You see it’s about the wall.

Nixon visited China in 1972, knowing that you could not ignore a nation this large. But now, as our country is entwined with the foreign power, we’ve got a White House that’s trying to separate us from it, teach China a lesson.

But those days have passed. Why do Republicans want to jet back to the past? We live in a global village, globalization happened, it’s to our country’s advantage, you’ve got to adjust to it.

But our nation abhors change, no one can lose their job, no one can sacrifice, meanwhile the Silicon Valley titans sewed up the globe.

Think about that, a prodigious wall built long ago. Has China maintained it? No, other than as a tourist attraction. It’s kind of like guns, if you think they’re going to keep you safe from government overreach, you know nothing about technology, a world in which a drone can kill you in your own home. Building a wall to keep foreigners out in the twenty first century is not only ignoring technology, but practicality, what’s preventing immigrants from utilizing a really big ladder? There cannot be guards on its entire length… We’ve got invisible dog fences, but somehow nitwits see a giant edifice as a solution. Then again, what is the problem? Net immigration from Mexico is zero, once again, it’s about preserving a past that no longer exists, our nation is no longer white, it’s more homogeneous, did you ever watch MTV decades ago, have you ever looked at the ethnicity of the hit parade?

Now as I’ve been playing “Rhymin’ Simon” today, another track jumped out. That’s what’s intriguing about great art, it’s set in stone, but it reveals itself over time, you grow with it, as you age and gain experience.

You got to learn how to fall
Before you learn to fly

This is why I’m against outsiders in government, people with no experience coming in to “fix” things. Politics is a profession, experience counts, as does failure, isn’t that the mantra of Silicon Valley?

Oh, and it’s the same old story
Ever since the world began
Everybody got the runs for glory

Men driven by testosterone, looking for attention and accolades, whipping out their members to show how powerful they are, what a joke. This is why women run the world, they’re more balanced, they’re big on a sense of community, men are oftentimes solo vessels, believing they need no one else when that could not be further from the truth.

And every day there’s news from the White House. As Trump whipsaws the country.

As “Learn How To Fall” continues, it says:

Nobody stop and scrutinize the plan
Nobody stop and scrutinize the plan
Nobody stop and scrutinize the plan

It’s all over Twitter today, there is no adult supervision, there is no plan.

Now if you’re rich and you support Trump, I get it, after all, he lowered your taxes.

If you’re anti-safety net, I get it too. But just admit it, you want no takers, you want everybody in America to fight on their own. Then again, be sure you yourself are not a beneficiary of government money, just read about Harlan County, Kentucky in yesterday’s “Times”:

“Where Government Is a Dirty Word, but its Checks Pay the Bills”

Then again, you probably don’t read the “Times” if you’re a Trumpster.

And I don’t expect to convince you, and don’t expect to convince me, I’m just lying on the floor listening to a forty five year old record with more wisdom than anybody in the executive branch.

They Got A Wall In China