Does this mean he can play now?

Now that the athletes and the owners of the NFL have stood up to Trump, which team will break the logjam and sign Kaepernick?

That’s how it happens folks. Someone decides to cross the line. Someone does the right thing.

I’m sick and tired of the right defining the debate and the left being pussies. If I have to hear one more nitwit say the NFL ratings are declining because Kapernick took a knee I’m gonna spread the canard that the Beatles ruined music. Yup, that’s what they said back then. If you think the diehard blowhards who are spreading this fiction can give up their football, you probably don’t believe in addiction. Come on, a league wherein the players get maimed for life and the games are rotten is failing because one man made a protest? If that was true, NFL ratings would have bounced back now that Kaepernicks’s been excommunicated, but they haven’t, they’re declining further.

It’s sad that it took the bloviations of the head of state to get the rest of the players to take a stand, but now they have, and the owners too, they’ve cooked their own goose, if that’s possible, but the truth is the longer it takes you to do the right thing the longer it takes you to get back on the right path.

We keep sitting by. Thinking it will be okay. That someone else will do the work. That we have too much at risk to protest, to take a stand.

But that time has passed.

I lived through the sixties, which began with blacks in the back of the bus and ended with integration. And today African-Americans rule the culture. But the endangered whites want to put blacks in the back once again, want segregated schools, this time called “charters,” while they want the government to pay for parochial schooling in a country founded upon religious freedom, and the truth is rust never sleeps.

Unless it’s in the music business.

I don’t want to work on Maggie’s Farm no more, and neither do you.

First they came for our unions. That’s why the NBA players are so strong, because of their union. Because the fat cat owners have all the money. That’s right, you bitch about some athlete who makes millions without looking at the faceless owner who’s got billions and is doing his best to keep players down.

But you can’t criticize a corporate winner these days, not an entrepreneur, because they EARNED IT!

Oh yeah, right. Where would they be without us buying their products? Facebook is worthless without our participation. But we get bread and circuses at best.

I don’t know where the breaking point is. We’ve been watching this Trump movie for half a year and the dam hasn’t burst yet. And all we keep hearing is to forget Russia and let him rule. As if we can believe in the government after Russia invaded the voting booth and the right did its best to prevent people from voting. You can only push it so far before there’s a reaction.

I’m frightened of what’s happening with North Korea, but is the country we’re now living in worth saving? Where science is ignored and we’ve seceded from the international landscape?

This is the event of your life, never forget it. It’s not about Trump, but what he represents. A combination of the haves and the have-nots, fighting progress.

You remember progress, don’t you? Where we’re all in it together to put a man on the moon?

Now these same people want to hobble electric cars, want to preserve a way of life that’s already in the rearview mirror.

Change happens one step at a time.

And what we’ve now learned is Colin Kaepernick was standing up for us all. Pointing out the injustice. You focused on him, he focused on the problem. Martin Luther King was imperfect. Curt Flood sacrificed his career to break baseball’s treatment of players as serfs. Imagine if Wal-Mart workers had a union. Imagine if prices went up and you had the wherewithal to pay them. Imagine if the downtrodden and depressed were lifted up by you, the person with more. It’s incumbent on the rich and powerful to make change. It’s time to stop denigrating the youth and start putting yourself in their shoes, with a lot of debt and little future.

Today the NFL banded together and took a stand.

It’s your turn tomorrow.

P.S. Ignore the haters. We had them in the sixties too. If we just rally the silent people on our side we’ll overwhelm the vocal minority.

No, I ain’t gonna work for Maggie’s brother no more
Well, he hands you a nickel
He hands you a dime
He asks you with a grin
If you’re having a good time
Then he fines you every time you slam the door
I ain’t gonna work for Maggie’s brother no more

Because the players run the league.

Sometimes change has to come from the top. History repeats, but with a twist. In the sixties we were a homogeneous society, a middle class which could pay our bills and if you fell behind you were supported by a safety net. Today, it’s every person for themselves and fear reigns, people are afraid of the corporation, but not basketball players.

Who live on Twitter.

That’s right, basketball is the bleeding edge of sports. And the fastest growing. It’s gonna eclipse football in your lifetime. You don’t get CTE and the game moves fast and if you don’t think the NBA rules, you’re probably watching baseball, while your kids are talking about whether LeBron will leave Cleveland.

That’s right, LeBron is squeaky clean. He’s got tattoos, but no rap sheet. His childhood friends run his business, not Hollywood agents, he doesn’t need the system, HE IS A SYSTEM!

Ditto on Steph Curry. He does his job best. He lets his work speak for him. But when you cross him…

They’re unafraid of the consequences, they do what’s right. Hell, LeBron handpicked his coach, this is not the NFL, where owners are in charge and the players are fungible as they work themselves to death, literally. Sans players, the NBA is worthless. They wouldn’t even bother with replacements. The game would suffer too much.

And the NBA was on Twitter long before Trump put his finger to his phone. When you attack someone on their medium, you get attacked right back.

And we need heroes and people to learn from, now that politicians are sold out and CEOs are venerated who else are we to turn to other than sports stars and entertainers? I won’t say you’ve got a responsibility so much as an OPPORTUNITY!

So Trump picked the wrong target. But ignorant people always do this. Unaware of the consequences of their actions.

It’s great that football players are protesting. But the Warriors organization got behind Curry long before the NFL owners woke up. But waking up is good, even if it takes you a beat. We were for the Vietnam War before we were against it, we just needed to be educated.

Our country is divided in a way it hasn’t been since the sixties. And you can denigrate poor African-Americans in Ferguson, but don’t pick a fight with NBA stars who make double digit millions a year, who net more cash than musicians. Who march to the beat of their own drummer and go their own way.

Hell, Steph Curry went with Under Armour when the man at the machine missed the memo, one of the reasons Nike is now struggling.

Lonzo Ball’s dad might be a blowhard, but these companies depend upon athletes, just because they don’t upset the apple cart in the NFL doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be done.

I don’t know what happens next.

But I do know when you’re trying to please everybody you please nobody.

You’ve got to take a stand.

He’s the last rock star.

And he’s finally comfortable in his own skin.

He used to have attitude, a chip on his shoulder. He kept his distance. He needed to express his anger.

Now he knows what he’s achieved and he can accept our love and the end result is satisfaction and transcendence.

I’m not like my fellow baby boomers. I cannot go see the aged acts again and again. I saw them when they were new, when they were in their prime, on the comeback tour, the one after that…

And now I’m done.

Oh, there are exceptions. But when I see the usual suspects at the shed I wince. This is commerce, not art.

But Petty’s different.

What is a rock star?

Someone who doesn’t fit in, who has to do it his way, who labors in the trenches until he finally breaks through.

And refuses to sell out.

That’s one of the reasons rock died. Everybody’s taking money from the corporation, doing privates, hoovering up cash. And that might make you rich, but it leaves you empty inside, and the audience can tell, because those on stage are our hopes and dreams, our best selves, we need not only something to believe in, but something to direct us. We’ve gone off the rails but want to get back on. They kept chugging down the line.

But now the only one left is Tom Petty. The rest have dyed their hair and gotten plastic surgery and are selling nostalgia. It’s no wonder one of the best tracks last night was the new one. Because you’ve got to grow or die. You’ve got to hone your chops or lose them. If you see the tour as an endless grind to make your nut you’re really no different from a factory worker, and there aren’t that many of them left. You can do the same thing night after night, tour after tour, or you can change it up.

Petty’s catalog is so deep he doesn’t have to play “The Waiting.” “Listen To Her Heart.” “Don’t Do Me Like That.” He can dig deep and surprise us.

But this is the first time he looked outward, to the audience, included them, as if he finally accepted it was good to be king.

And a benevolent one at that. Who never gave up his mischief, but wanted to keep his subjects happy.

But L.A. audiences are notoriously subdued. And outside it can be hard to feel the noise, it escapes into the atmosphere. And boomer acts have boomer audiences, with frail knees, who would rather sit than stand.

But Petty was having none of that.

He came out and marveled at the assembled multitude. Insisted the house lights go up so he could see us. Told us we were gonna have a night. Where did this loquacious man come from?

Then he and the Heartbreakers lit into “Rockin’ Around (With You).”

Leon Russell had already peaked. Shelter Records was on the decline. And even the most casual observer knew it would be difficult for an act on that label to break through.

And Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers didn’t. They were seen as a derivative Byrds-influenced act with a touch of punk, maybe since Tom wore a leather jacket on the cover of the debut album, so they went to the U.K. where they gained traction, since they got none here.

But then there was a live version of “Breakdown,” with that inimitable descending riff, with a slow talking mid-section, and KROQ, when it was still a free format station, started to play it and a buzz was begotten.

They were up and coming in a world where the scene was in Los Angeles. More new wave, before that became something different in the U.K., more power pop than the punk of CBGB’s. Petty’s outfit was one of many.

Not the last remaining enterprise it is today.

So I went to see them at the Whisky. And it was not about shenanigans, only the music, and it was good, and the second album delivered but we did not expect the band to become superstars, as they did with “Damn The Torpedoes.”

And then after a walk in the wilderness, they returned with the MTV smash “Don’t Come Around Here No More,” a left field hit if there ever was one.

Then there were the triumphant solo albums, and the two tracks added to the end of the “Greatest Hits” package and that was song number two, “Mary Jane’s Last Dance.” This was when riff rock was in the toilet, but from “I Want To Tell You” to “Smoke On The Water” to “Mary Jane’s Last Dance,” it’s what reaches and motivates us most, that line played loudly that eliminates all other thoughts in one’s brain, that makes one feel powerful, that makes one believe one can win.

Yup, our music was optimistic, even when it was pessimistic. It fueled our hopes and dreams.

And much earlier than I anticipated, believing it would be saved for the encore victory lap, Petty lit into “I Won’t Back Down,” which seems to have become the anthem of America. Ain’t it always the truth. Songs by outsiders are misinterpreted and appropriated and misused by the mainstream, like the Boss’s “Born In The U.S.A.,” but the dirty little secret is the less demonstrative, less talkative Petty has even more impact than Springsteen. Springsteen’s got a couple of anthems, Petty’s got a slew, Springsteen’s for a devoted cult, but Petty is for everyone.

And then came…

The Los Angeles anthem.

That’s right, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers were formed in Santa Monica, when it was still downtrodden, the burg upon the shore.

But it’s the rest of the city that comes alive in “Free Fallin’.”

It’s a long day, living in Reseda

The Valley is not as downtrodden as it once was, especially now that you’ve got to be rich to live on the Westside, but the truth is Reseda is little different from Gainesville, Petty’s hometown. It’s flat and suburban and youth have nothing better to do than to get in trouble.

All the vampires, walkin’ through the Valley
Move west down Ventura Boulevard

Sunset may be more famous. But these days, more happens on Ventura, the business street of the San Fernando Valley, that’s endless, with restaurants, shops, car dealers, we keep hearing from right wingers how their tiny hamlets are the real America, but if you want to see the U.S. tried and true, drive down Ventura, not that I’m giving it a thumps up, but it’s us, with its mini-malls and nail salons and supermarkets, it grew organically, just like the U.S., it’s a mumbled jumbled mixed up world that needs to be wiped clean and rebuilt.

But this will never happen.

I wanna glide down over Mulholland

There’s no cheap real estate on the road that bifurcates the city, atop the hills, separating West L.A. and Hollywood from the Valley. If you’ve never been here, drive up here first. Wind your machine through the curves. You’ll see why it’s a car culture, as well as seeing the landscape, the mountains, the valleys and the ocean.

And this is everyday life in SoCal. You can read about it elsewhere, listen to the record, but when Petty’s playing it here, you can only stand up, thrust your arm in the air and sing at the top of your lungs…

And I’m free, free fallin’
Yeah I’m free, free fallin’

You know what that’s like, why you go to the show, not so you can shoot selfies and tweet, but so you can bond with the act and its music. The assembled multitude was standing, singing, praying to the god of song and its creator, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

And a slow song from “Wildflower” turned into a rave-up.

And the title track from that album was prefaced by Petty’s comment that he hoped he didn’t screw it up.

He did not. He picked it on his acoustic guitar perfectly.

And here’s where we stop and credit Mike Campbell and lifer Benmont Tench. And newbie Ferrone. And prodigal son Blair. And quasi Heartbreaker Thurston. And the backup singers known as the Webb Sisters. This is strange, not only are the original members alive and kicking, playing their hearts out (except for Stan, of course, all families have one outcast, one member they can’t get along with), Benmont and Tom were kids together. Campbell was playing a Japanese electric in a bad neighborhood when Petty said he was gonna be in his band FOREVER! Most people come to L.A. and forget their roots, shed their friends, become someone different, phony, untrustworthy, but Tom and the Heartbreakers are friends, a gang, and despite Jeff Lynne sitting right by me and getting up with a few numbers left he did not grace the stage, because that would be sacrilegious, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers don’t need no cherry on top, because they are the entire sundae, ice cream, whipped cream, chocolate sauce, nuts, they bring their own maraschino, and it’s enough. MORE THAN ENOUGH!

So Tom told stories. Conducted the impossibly tight band. The big screen flashed images from their career, not only their lives, but our own.

And then they turned up the amps and we heard “Refugee” and “Runnin’ Down A Dream” and the legendary closer, “American Girl.”

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers is an American band.

Some act from Detroit claimed that title forty odd years ago, but they splintered and could not follow it up.

But Tom and his pickers and players and singers have grabbed that mantle and keep rollin’ down the track, and it’s forty years later, and although they claim they might stop, don’t believe it, they’re stoking the engine and…

Last night we were in the passenger car as engineer Petty turned up the throttle and took us on the ride of our life.

But the stunning thing is he does this night after night, gig after gig.

That’s why he’s the last of the rock stars.

What kind of crazy fucked up world do we live in where a late night TV host takes a stand, risking the alienation of his audience, which the medium lives by, advertising driving not only profits, but cancellation, but musicians are silent?

One in which the President gets into an east coast/west coast rap feud with the young leader of a renegade nation and we all could die in the aftermath.

I can’t wait to wake up and see the shenanigans. I’m refreshing my news apps constantly throughout the day, hell, it just broke that John McCain is thumbs-down on Graham-Cassidy. I’m following the news like I used to follow music. But that was before “Rolling Stone” was for sale and Jeff Bezos bought the “Washington Post.”

Now this risk of Jimmy Kimmel’s is important. He did what was right.

We haven’t done what is right in the music business since 1969. Back when Country Joe sang “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-To-Die” at Woodstock. Now it’s nearly fifty years later and the Vietnam War is on PBS but nobody under thirty donates to that outlet and Ken Burns is seen as over-the-hill and you might say today’s younger generation is not afraid of dying, but Biggie did, and Tupac too. That’s what happens when unstable people take the law into their own hands.

Like Trump and Kim Jong Un.

Now the truth of it is is that late night TV ratings are abysmal. Hell, there’s even little virality, usually. Fallon is in the rearview mirror. He’s Johnny Mathis in the era of the Beatles. Maybe the Four Seasons, with a few hits left in him, whereas…Colbert is Brian Wilson without the mental illness. He had hits in late night but then faltered when the revolution came but then got game. But Jimmy Kimmel? The guy who starred in the “Man Show”? Howard Stern’s best friend? Isn’t he MARGINAL?

That’s what you don’t understand about today’s environment. You do the work and then the system blows you up. You can’t premeditate it, it doesn’t stick. Kinda like Taylor Swift’s new singles. A lot of ink and then…nothing. Because when you work it the system plays along but the public does not. But when you’re true to yourself and resonate, you go nuclear.

You can’t premeditate art. You’ve got to do it for yourself. Get aligned with your inner tuning fork and you never know what will happen. The records by the usual suspects committee can be toppled, if those outside the system are willing to take a risk.

And no, don’t e-mail me your protest song. That’s not the point. These things blow up by THEMSELVES! And they’re irrelevant unless they’re ubiquitous. That’s another thing working against music, it’s all about the niche, and if you expect the labels to break the logjam you probably own Clive Davis’s “Greatest Hits,” but the last I checked, he never wrote a note, never recorded a record, that’s left to the ARTISTS!

Will someone capture the zeitgeist and make us all pay attention?

I’m not confident, this has not happened in years.

But the world situation hasn’t been this bad in years.

Now you can’t please everybody and you’re gonna be prone to backlash. The right wing controls the debate, with their inane claim that the Emmy ratings were down because the show was too political, anti-Trump, when the truth is the ratings for the VMAs were down, all the awards shows, because the younger generation ain’t tuned in to appointment TV and many people just don’t care.

They’re pushing back all the time.

And those in the arts are afraid.

But not Jimmy Kimmel. Not Stephen Colbert. Not people who were famous for NOT taking a side. Which side was Johnny Carson on? Who knows? But that’s why musicians many years his junior dominated the conversation, despite there being only three networks.

So, perusing the Spotify Top 50 or reading the front page of the “New York Times”?

It’s no contest.

And like the dear departed Leonard Cohen once sang…

Everybody knows.

We’ve got to shelve the endless self-congratulatory singing of “Hallelujah” and go with this much more appropriate song.

Meanwhile, we sit back while the NFL blackballs Colin Kaepernick as its ratings tank, what, are we living in the sixties once again? Where the old men in charge are out of touch and the young people have to rise up?

So far, it’s only the women who are taking a stand, against bro culture in Silicon Valley.

But there are much bigger targets.

Then again, the Senators are reacting to deep pocket donors pissed that the ACA still stands, and you expect me to be interested in the ramblings of nincompoops in “Rolling Stone”?

Not gonna happen.