She should have stayed country.

In the world of pop you live and die by the hit. In Nashville once you’ve made your bones you’re a star forever.

You see Taylor miscalculated. She put out a pop album when hip-hop rules.

Doubt me?

Check out the Spotify Top 50, where “Gorgeous” is only #6. Sure, it’s got an upwards bullet but these days we know whether a track is successful instantly. It’s in the Spotify data, one can measure skip and save rates and it took less than a day for Gaga’s album to underperform.

But at least Gaga is true to herself.

Swift wants to compete with everybody.

But Post Malone’s “rockstar” is getting 2,379,623 plays a day on Spotify. That’s #1. The same act’s “I Fall Apart” is #2 and is getting 1,145,071 streams a day. This is further indication that Swift has faltered, since “Look What You Made Me Do” was a chart triumph, but “…Ready For It” never quite climbed the hill, and then fell back down.

#3 is Logic’s “1-800-273-8255”, with 1,036,612 streams a day.

#4 is 21 Savage’s “Bank Account,” with 1,027,778 streams a day.

Lil Pump’s “Gucci Gang” is #5, with 1,000, 935 streams a day.

And then we come to “Gorgeous,” which has 910,008 streams a day. And one can say that’s not a lot less than what’s above it, then again, right behind Swift at #7 we have “Havana,” with 876,281. And then Cardi B and Khalid also have tracks eclipsing 800,000 and…

We live in a world of consumption, it’s the only thing that matters. A turntable hit is a thing of the past. Radio can’t prop up a stiff. You get paid by consumption, i.e. streams/listens, so it’s the only thing that really counts. Sure, there’s PRO money on radio, but it’s de minimis compared to streams.

As for sales…

Here’s a whopper. On iTunes “Gorgeous” is #5! Eclipsed by Imagine Dragons’ “Thunder” at #1, and Ed Sheeran at #2, and “rockstar” at #3 and the aforementioned “Havana” at #4.

As for Spotify, Imagine Dragons’ “Thunder” is at #39, with 494,013 streams a day. And we can argue whether the band’s fans are streaming, but the truth is we’re evolving into a world where sales are done and on demand streaming is everything and you live and die by the statistics.

So we can debate all day long whether Swift has been impacted by her publicity shenanigans. Hell, at this point the media covers her a lot less, did you know she played “Reputation” for 100 fans? That’s the old paradigm, where publicity of these stunts mattered, now it doesn’t. People get their info online and they go directly to their streaming site of choice and see what’s happening, they’re sick of being manipulated.

This is important, because the music business has been built upon manipulation, and that will still be a factor, but when you cut out the middleman and go directly to the consumer you lose a lot of control and find out…

Just like country triumphed on SoundScan, unexpectedly, hip-hop triumphs on streaming services. Doesn’t matter whether you’re a fan or not, this is what everybody is listening to.

Meanwhile, Carrie Underwood is still a star in country. Miranda Lambert too. Whereas Taylor Swift has been excommunicated by the format, she turned out to be untrustworthy, a traitor. Used to be Taylor Swift was in the Taylor Swift business, now she’s in the pop business, competing with everybody.

And “Gorgeous” ain’t bad, sounds like the rest of the work Max Martin and Shellback are involved with, it’s just that it needs a better singer, Taylor Swift’s voice is weak, whereas with Kelly Clarkson, Ariana Grande or Katy Perry it would have a much more dramatic impact. As for the lyrics, they come last, they always come last. And in an era of chaos, Taylor Swift is too me focused, she’s out of touch with the times.

But this is not about Taylor Swift, but your career. Beware of wanting everything, be satisfied with the niche you’ve established. If you can remain true to yourself and succeed, more power to you, but if you bend to trends you live by trends, and the trend has skewed away from pop divas and as a result the tide is going out on Taylor Swift.

Everybody’s arguing about Cardi B.

Taylor Swift is last month’s news. She broke the cardinal rule of the internet, which is you’ve got to be part of the discussion 24/7. She’s so tightly managed (and wound!) that she’s inaccessible, in an era where everybody is a star they don’t want to be talked down to by a faux friend.

And I don’t care if she writes another song about me, NO ONE WILL LISTEN!

U2 tried to be au courant. Madonna too. They ended up being laughable has-beens. There’s nothing wrong with being a has-been, you can still tour, bleeding your acolytes, hell, look at Def Leppard’s ticket counts, but when you try to succeed in the new game it’s creepy. Unlike Bob Dylan, who’s in the Bob Dylan business. Then again, the only people interested in his covers are the press, not one track from “Triplicate” has broken a million on Spotify, ditto “Fallen Angels,” whereas every cut from “Tempest,” his last original work, exceeds seven figures. We want originals from Dylan, and the data tells us that. Used to be you bought the album, played it once and filed it. Now you check out a few tracks and move on.

Not that experimentation is bad. But fan abuse is.

So, if Swift were smart, she’d can “Reputation” and put out a hip-hop track, since she missed the times. Hell, a mixtape like Drake, with her favorite hip-hop favorites as well as a number of her own works in this field. And sure, Taylor Swift rapping might be laughable, but Debbie Harry got away with it.

Then again, she was a lot more credible.

OLD

Believes in the album.

YOUNG

Believes in the single. It’s all about the track, if you like something you go deeper, it’s about a body of work, click on an act in Spotify and you find what’s most popular and you check that out, assuming you care, and many people don’t, especially in hip-hop, the song is part of the culture, the same way British Invasion singles were part of the culture.

OLD

Believes in CDs.

YOUNG

Doesn’t have a CD player. They don’t come in cars, assuming you’ve got one, as millennials move to the city and Uber, and new computers don’t come with them, if you’re still sending someone promotional CDs it’s a reflection upon you, they’re worthless.

OLD

Passive.

YOUNG

Active. Sure, a millennial might put an online radio station, albeit generated by Pandora or Spotify, on in the background, but more likely they’ll be streaming a playlist, in the background, they don’t play terrestrial radio, the commercials are abhorrent and you can’t skip ahead, millennials see the web as their oyster, they’ll click and go from one site or track to another.

OLD

Will listen to the radio.

YOUNG

Won’t. It’s part of the on demand culture. The youngster doesn’t want to wait, that’s an experience that’s dead. Kinda like how cars replaced trains. With a car you could go where you wanted to go whenever you wanted to.

OLD

Buys files.

YOUNG

Sees everything as on demand, you don’t need to own anything, not a car, a movie, a song…

OLD

Laments the passing of the golden age.

YOUNG

Thinks the present is bright and the future is brighter.

OLD

Cares about “Billboard” charts.

YOUNG

Only cares about unweighted charts based on raw statistics. I.e. Spotify streaming. Unfortunately, Apple Music doesn’t reveal its statistics, to its detriment.

OLD

Worried about YouTube.

YOUNG

Will use YouTube when it wants to watch a video, but only the brokest of the broke use it as an everyday music service. YouTube for music is dialup, Spotify/Apple/Amazon is broadband

OLD

Laments the passing of music on MTV.

YOUNG

Never thought that MTV was a music outlet, always saw it as a host for lame reality shows.

OLD

Stuck in the past.

YOUNG

Pioneering the future. The young have no problem switching allegiance from Facebook to Snapchat to Instagram while oldsters are set in their ways and have a hard time chucking aside the past to live in the present.

OLD

Thinks a band is a credible, self-contained entity speaking truth.

YOUNG

Thinks a band is a brand, whored out to corporations, establishing enterprises/brand extensions that will rain down coin. Music is just a platform to make money via your fame.

OLD

Bitch about the price of concert tickets.

YOUNG

Save up money and overpay for what they want to do, they know it’s a mercenary culture, and if they want to attend, they pony up.

OLD

Sees a major label record deal as the holy grail.

YOUNG

Is aware of Chance the Rapper, and is reluctant to share revenue with a parasitic corporation when they can use the online tools to break themselves.

OLD

Expects acts to last.

YOUNG

Knows acts are evanescent.

OLD

Is all about culture.

YOUNG

Is all about culture, that’s what hip-hop provides and other genres do not.

OLD

Stuck in their ways.

YOUNG

Will try new things.

OLD

Believe physical assets are a badge of honor.

YOUNG

Believe experiences are a badge of honor, where you’ve been is more important than what you own.

OLD

Is willing to be spoon-fed.

YOUNG

Wants it all now. The concept that radio goes on tracks months after they’re a hit online is anathema.

OLD

Is prejudiced.

YOUNG

Has grown up with a rainbow of colors and accepts all kinds.

OLD

Fighting for women’s rights.

YOUNG

Believes the women’s movement is akin to the right to vote, way in the past, today’s young women feel empowered, they don’t feel taken advantage of (of course this is a mind-set and not always true but the point is young women were brought up believing they could be all that they could be, so when they hit a wall/are abused by men, they react heavily, kinda like Susan Fowler, who stood up to the bro culture at Uber.)

OLD

Thinks the pace of change is glacial, and will never come.

YOUNG

Have lived through the legalization of marijuana and gay marriage and believe change is right around the corner.

OLD

Worries about sound quality.

YOUNG

Sound quality, what’s that?

OLD

Believe in mystery and inaccessibility.

YOUNG

Believe famous people are open books who are accessible.

OLD

Want to be sitcom stars.

YOUNG

Want to be YouTube stars.

OLD

Stayed at home and practiced.

YOUNG

Practice in public, whilst boosting their brand online.

OLD

Grew up believing money was evil.

YOUNG

Think money is great!

OLD

Laments income inequality.

YOUNG

Knows the score and knows that he not busy getting ahead is falling behind.

George Young – Spotify

1

Walking down the street
Kicking cans

New wave was the hip-hop of its day, something new to wipe out everything that came before it, new wave grew out of punk, which didn’t fully break through until the nineties with Nirvana, but new wave triumphed in the late seventies and blew up in the early eighties and then was decimated by the English sound of Culture Club and Duran Duran, which triumphed on MTV.

But in the late seventies, when new wave burgeoned, it was not up front and center, there was no MTV, needless to say no Spotify, you read about it in “Rolling Stone” and other rags and if you were lucky…your community had a station that played it.

Now Los Angeles was a rock town. Which was ultimately decimated by the MTV sound, KMET ruled, but it refused to play “Tainted Love” and “Don’t You Want Me” and then it died, kinda like pop is thrashing these days, did you read the “Wall Street Journal” article? First they came for our rock, then they came for our pop, what will replace hip-hop?

One can argue hip-hop is like punk, as in its first incarnation it was big, but decades later it was HUGE! That’s what streaming has wrought. Once the public was in control, it hungered for something deeper, more authentic, more meaningful, the same way Nirvana usurped the throne from hair band music, which has never been resuscitated.

So, if you were a hipster in the late seventies living in Los Angeles you lived by KROQ, not the ROQ of the 80s, but a free format station steered by deejays who have disappeared, foisting shenanigans upon their audience whilst playing cutting edge music like Flash and the Pan.

You only had to hear “Walking In The Rain” once.

This is what the wankers don’t understand. Now, more than ever, it’s about one listen. Which is why “Despacito” is huge and your project had desultory results. There’s nothing wrong with being accessible. And that does not mean the sound must be hackneyed, just something that reaches out and grabs you.

Now ultimately Grace Jones had a hit with “Walking In The Rain,” proving a great song is a great song and can be covered by anybody, but as insistent and intriguing as her rendition is, the original is far superior, it’s TRANSCENDENT!

It was the groove, the atmosphere, it felt like a walk down a rain-soaked street after midnight, when you were inside your head and anything could happen.

Summing up the people
Checking out the race
Doing what I’m doing
Feeling out of place

Alienation. That was the essence of music back when. It was the other. The acts were iconic outsiders who spoke their truth which turned out to be our truth and we were drawn to them.

Walking in the rain

But this was when being an individual was treasured.

2

Monday mornin’ feels so bad

By time ’66 was bleeding into ’67 the wheel had turned, the old sound was wiped from the map, Perry Como was in the rearview mirror and the British Invasion ruled. This was truly like hip-hop, as in the other sounds didn’t survive, rock wiped the slate clean.

And we were all addicted to our transistors. This was just before the advent of FM underground radio, before Hendrix and Cream and so many more, our little radios run by 9 volt batteries didn’t even include the FM band, but we knew exactly where our stations were, and that’s where we heard the Easybeats’ “Friday On My Mind.”

Some records you never forget.

Used to be work was a drag, before the highly educated prized it and the lower class was completely screwed. The key was personal development, being your all, before life became about cash and cash only.

Gonna have fun in the city
Be with my girl she’s so pretty

We were ALL young. And if you look back at the photographs you’ll be stunned how pretty we were. That’s right, the baby boomers ruled, certainly in numbers, there was no competition from Generation X or Y or Z, we completely crushed it.

And so did our music.

3

Gettin’ robbed
Gettin’ stoned
Gettin’ beat-up
Broken-boned
Gettin’ had
Gettin’ took

It’s certainly a long way to the top if you wanna rock ‘n’ roll.

Hotel
Motel
Make you wanna cry

No one wants to pay their dues anymore. They expect instant success.

But if you were living in godforsaken Australia, the land of few people, you honed your chops on the road, so by the time you hit the boards in America you were PHENOMENAL!

This was nearly half a decade before “You Shook Me All Night Long.” AC/DC was just as fantastic but they were seen as a curio, coming along at the time loud guitars were fading, being eclipsed by corporate rock and disco, but when “It’s A Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock ‘N’ Roll)” emanated from the speaker you were immediately hooked.

But what makes a great record legendary is the bagpipes, coming out of left field, evidencing that everything, including the kitchen sink, was being thrown in to make this glorious sound that made you forget about your problems and nod your head and thrust your arm in the air.

The bagpipes were George Young’s idea.

Young was the brother of Malcolm and Angus, he’d been a member of the Easybeats, he was one half of production team Vanda and Young, who also made up Flash and the Pan.

George Young died yesterday.

He made it to the top, he established his place in the firmament, it wouldn’t be the same rock ‘n’ roll without him.

Gettin’ old
Gettin’ grey
Gettin’ ripped-off
Underpaid
Gettin’ sold
Second hand
That’s how it goes
Playin’ in a band

We all wanted to, we all picked up instruments, but it was too long a road for most of us, too rough and mean, but George made it, all the way from Down Under.

It wasn’t an avocation, it was everything.

And it’s everything to us too.

I know you know what I mean.

It’s harder than it looks. It took us off the defined path. Now we’re old and grey and all we’re left with are these records.

And we wouldn’t have it any other way.

“The Pop Diva Identity Crisis-With the rise of hip-hop, a string of A-list pop stars like Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga, Miley Cyrus and Katy Perry have stumbled. ‘There’s a changing of the guard.'”

We went to Storm King.

I told you my mother was a culture vulture. You need to have plans, you need to DO something, watching television during the day was illegal in our house, as is staying home and relaxing. But when we get back from the day’s activities my mother does have a stiff vodka, my dad owned a liquor store, their drink of choice used to be the whiskey sour, as for telling my mother how much to imbibe, in December she’s gonna be 91!

And all of her friends are dead. Except for Franki in Westport and Jene in California and Judy in the building. Oh, she has other friends, but the inner circle has passed, but my mother soldiers on. But instead of the weekends being full of activity, now they’re quiet.

But she gets around. Despite needing a walker and a wheelchair. She’s GAME!

So yesterday we went to the Yale Center for British Art, it just reopened, and…

I’ve told you I’d be cool with living the rest of my life in a museum. In this case, it wasn’t the art so much as the STORIES! It started in the 1500s, and the people…

Looked just like you and me.

Talk about perspective!

We think we’re important, we think what we’re doing counts, and then you read about the guy who spent his whole life in pursuit of marrying the queen. He didn’t make it. And the teenagers getting married. Most people died in their fifties, but they had huge estates and you contemplate their life and you realize they were unaware of mobile phones and the internet, but otherwise it was the same, they worked, they screwed and they gossiped, and they drank, there was a lot of drinking, and if the people in the paintings weren’t wearing different clothing, you’d swear you knew them.

And when we got back from New Haven we stopped at Pepe’s to eat, that’s right, Pepe’s Pizza, considered the best in the land by many, and of course we had the white clam, and Stanton joined us.

Stanton was a year ahead, in my sister’s class, but he didn’t leave town, he stayed here, he’s the city attorney and…

He knows everybody and everything.

Reminds me of my dad. It’s what’s going on beneath the surface that matters, that explains it all.

And we talked about the musicians who live in town, like Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth, and all the acts that now come to FTC, the Fairfield Theatre, and the billionaires too, like Ray Dalio, and then we talked…

About people we knew.

Some dead, some alive, all of whose lives have been written, now that we are this age.

That’s one weird thing, you stop at the grocery store and you don’t recognize the cashier, for years I did.

And so many are retired…

And I want to work forever, but sometimes your health does not allow this. And at what point do you give up anyway, when it’s too much effort to keep up, when you don’t like the new music and no one catches the references and you’re better off hanging with the people you know until…

Felice’s mother is 93, she copes by hanging with the younger set. She’s resigned from some boards, but she’s out seemingly every night, it’s amazing.

But so many of my friends can no longer work in the music business. And so many of my friends have limited retirement accounts, if they have them at all, and just like every generation before us, we thought we’d never get old, but we did.

So today we went to Storm King. I studied it in college. That’s where the David Smith sculptures are. We were allowed to park right up close, because of my mother’s frailty, and it bugs me that the handicapped spots are always full, of wankers beating the system, hell, just getting my mother out of the car and into her wheelchair is a production, if you saw it you’d never needlessly park in one of those blue spots again, but that’s what America has turned into, a selfish state, then again, it’s amazing how people will take the time to open doors.

So Storm King is a sculpture garden. Across the Hudson, in New York, and if you go there you’ll want to move there. It’s kinda like that Arlo Guthrie song “Massachusetts,” or “Sweet Baby James” and that line about the Berkshires, even though it’s in New York, but no one would know the difference if they didn’t have signs at the border, all the landscape is the same, rolling, hilly.

And speaking of rolling, they have this one land sculpture by Maya Lin that resembles waves. Another one that is a stone wall, going across the hill and dale. And you remember that the world runs on art and physical beauty, but too many are chasing the buck.

We took a tram around the property, seeing one sculpture after another, and on the hill are the David Smiths, which is what they started with, they showed slides of them in art class, but that was forty five years ago.

I don’t want to go back, I don’t ever want to be in school.

And I remember wanting to escape, to the west.

But the west is new, and spread out. In the east there are a ton of attractions mere minutes away. Whereas once you’ve been to Santa Barbara, San Diego and Big Bear, you’ve burned out L.A.

And there’s so much history. And the roads are curvy and the trees are close and it all feels so intimate, everything looks good in hindsight, even the dead of winter when you stayed inside and drank hot chocolate, but…

I don’t know what but. You make choices in life and you end up where you do, there are no do-overs. And you lose time, you wake up and your life is set in stone, but you always wonder, should I have done it differently?

And on the way back the app took us across the countryside, avoiding the highways, and you see the ponds and the cows and the churches and your brain starts to spin tales, you feel warm and fuzzy, alive.

And then we stopped at Aspetuck Farms, so I could buy Macoun apples, a fall staple in Connecticut. I did, but they were out of cider, and the clerk implored me to try one of the free Sweet 16s, and it tasted better than any apple I’ve ever eaten in California, then again, everything does when you buy it at the farm, when it’s about local consumption as opposed to agribusiness.

Not that I want to denigrate the future, there’s some b.s. in the “Times” today about traveling without a phone. I’m sick and tired of self-satisfied boomers wanting to jet back to the past, sure, the future is imperfect, but it’s so much better. Hell, remember the cars, that used to break all the time? We may not have vent windows, but automobiles all come with air-conditioning and as I write this I remember how people bug me, run on emotion instead of fact, are set in their ways, which is one of the reasons I moved to L.A., where they tear down the past before you get used to it, it’s all evanescent, it’s all in motion, you just grab on and ride, no one’s in your business and you feel free.

And freedom’s where it’s at.

But on the east coast there’s context, and meaning, and…

I’m gonna miss it.

Yale Center for British Art

Storm King Art Center

Frank Pepe Pizzeria

Aspetuck Apple Barn