Billy Bush and Kathy Griffin lose their gigs but the offender in chief keeps rollin’ right along.

Ain’t that America!

What is CNN afraid of? Like anybody cares about the activities of a nitwit comedian with a brain who’s in search of attention. I’m not saying I would have done it, I’m not saying it’s not in bad judgment, but after all, that’s a comedian’s gig, testing limits, is this the country we’ve evolved into, one wherein we all have to color within the lines?

I’m not saying we’re not a country of laws. Then again, we’re famous for our forgiveness. Just cry and go to rehab and you get away scot-free, you can go back to your television show. And what is it we want to protect, institutions like CNN, corporations, or the individuals who make up this great country of ours… Isn’t that what the right is always saying, that we want government out of our lives and the ability to walk and speak freely?

Yeah, right.

As for Baron Trump being offended… Like he never speaks to his dad? Does he not have a smartphone? And, if not, what was he doing cruising the sites where this pic was displayed? Ever hear of parental controls? And if he really fell for it, he needs to go to a better school, one not focused on religion but the ability to decipher truth from falsehood.

It’s only a picture, it’s only speech. Yet the whole nation has got its knickers in a twist while the President sells access to the Russians and promulgates policies where we all burn in hell, only this time it’s above earth as opposed to below.

Kick her off the air for a month, penalize her, hell, we all went to high school, we know actions have consequences. But the penalty far exceeds the crime, assuming there’s a crime at all. And to tell you the truth, I believe what comes out of Kathy’s mouth more than that of social climber Anderson Cooper and fake Mr. Gravitas Wolf Blitzer. Come on, she’s got more creativity in her little finger than either of those MALES and she worked hard to get where she is. Bill O’Reilly harasses women for years and keeps his job, until the payments hit double digit millions and Fox’s owners want a Sky license, but a COMEDIAN exercises her fair right to free speech and she’s suddenly a pariah. What next, ban Chris Rock from Netflix? Stephen Colbert tested limits and CBS stood up for him, the FCC backed down. Hell, the government is a paper tiger. And if you don’t stand up for yourself you’re gonna get run over.

And the people pissed about this aren’t watching CNN anyway, they’re over at Fox.

And if CNN hadn’t amplified this, the story would have gone down the drain of internet detritus, that’s how hard it is to get noticed. Hell, Scott Pelley loses his gig and I don’t even know what network he’s on. I’ve moved on. And the challenge CNN and the rest of the cable networks face is not Kathy Griffin, the lone gunwoman, but the internet.

A cop kills a black man and after a million dollar trial he goes back into uniform.

A comedian makes a joke and she’s in celebrity jail, without a key, serving a life sentence.

Hell, the same people cheering for lethal injections would probably want her on death row when the truth is I’m much more worried about the Administration’s faux pas than the words of any celebrity.

And if the celebrities don’t stand up and test limits, what chance do we have of changing the course of this country?

Let your freak flag fly!

New York Tendaberry – Spotify

1967 wasn’t so different from today, it was hard to get noticed.

Sure, it was hard to get a record deal, but it was even harder to get someone to buy your music, and if they didn’t, chances are it went unheard, unless, fortuitously, you were inundated with talent and your composition was covered by an established act.

Can you surry, can you picnic?

Gobbledygook to millennials, all baby boomers know this as the initial line of “Stoned Soul Picnic,” a monster smash by the 5th Dimension in 1968. But it was written by Laura Nyro and appeared on her second album “Eli and the Thirteenth Confession,” her first for Columbia, her initial LP, 1967’s “More Than A New Discovery,” went completely overlooked, but not for long. Blood, Sweat and Tears went to number two in 1969 with her composition “And When I Die” and Barbra Streisand went top ten with her rendition of “Stoney End,” but Nyro had already moved on. Sure, “Eli and the Thirteenth Confession” included “Eli’s Comin’,” which helped make Three Dog Night a household name, but it also contained “Poverty Train.”

Last call for the poverty train

They don’t make tracks like this anymore, piano-dominated with a flute with lyrics about the underside of life, the disadvantaged on drugs. Today everybody’s a winner, if the song isn’t laden with hooks Max Martin doesn’t want to be involved, but in 1968 songs were still just that, songs, with melodies and changes, yet Nyro and her contemporaries were testing the limits, stretching the form, and if some young ‘un with pipes went on Jools Holland and performed “Poverty Train” jaws would drop. And if Gaga sang it… No, the problem is she oversings, ever since Mariah Carey that’s been the paradigm, all subtlety and meaning is sacrificed in the desire for personal attention, the song is trumped by the performance, but…

No one with any traction wants to sing anything controversial. You’re just supposed to shake off your losses and delineate your personal victories and petty complaints, but Laura Nyro was trying to vault a different bar.

Now let’s be clear, David Geffen was her manager. And although Geffen’s admired for his money-making abilities, he made his bones as an artist-protector. He stood between the label and the act, made it so Laura could play by her own rules. It all didn’t end well, but when “New York Tendaberry” was released in 1969, the stars aligned, people now knew who Nyro was and she released just the music she wanted to and the song with the most traction, once again a hit for the 5th Dimension, was “Save The Country.”

I got fury in my soul, fury’s gonna take me to the glory goal
In my mind I can’t study war no more
Save the people, save the country now

Hmm… Our country still needs saving. But now it’s not from war with enemies, but war within. We’re divided, not united, and no one with a voice is willing to challenge the status quo, for fear of pissing off those on the other side. But Todd Rundgren, a famous friend of Laura, said Trump fans should not even buy tickets to his show and if you’re not willing to take a stand you’re living outside the conversation, you might have a fat bank account, but you’ve got no impact.

Now the times were different. The young ‘uns were all on the same page. Or were they? Believe me, most teenagers and twentysomethings were for the Vietnam War before they were against it. After all, the United States was the greatest country in the world, couldn’t we just clean up wherever we wanted? But we’d never experienced guerilla warfare, we didn’t know that those who truly believed in their cause would never give up. But as these songs by their contemporaries filled the airwaves, as the carnage was paraded on the news, students started to change their minds, because kids are still malleable, it’s adults, the establishment, who are stuck in their old ways. Fewer than forty percent of people over sixty five have smartphones, how are you supposed to explain Uber and Spotify to them? And this is the government, this is the heads of corporations, this is why the oldsters are no match for the youngsters when it comes to innovation.

Traditionally.

But it’s the oldsters who are rebelling against the political status quo, leading the charge, but we need artists to infect the youngsters.

Come on people, sons and mothers
Keep the dream of the two young brothers
Gonna take that dream and ride that dove

The two young brothers were the Kennedys. Laura Nyro was inspired to write “Save The Country” in the wake of Robert Kennedy’s assassination. That’s how art used to work, before songs were composed by committee, sanitized for consumption. It’s the lightning burst that attracts us, how did we get so far from the garden.

And inspiration is plentiful these days, it’s everywhere you look.

But to be inspired and create on Nyro’s level you have to have paid your dues, honed your chops, put in your 10,000 hours. And in the sixties if you hadn’t you couldn’t get a deal, but today everybody can play. So the waters are muddied. But this just means the professionals must play on a higher level, strive for greatness, undeniability that eclipses the work of the hoi polloi.

We could build the dream with love, I know

I do too. Isn’t that what John Lennon was preaching? I don’t think it’s possible for all of us to love one another unconditionally, but we’ve still got a lot of room to move. Then again, when you can’t get a good ticket to the show, when acts whore their ducats out to scalpers, it’s hard not to become disillusioned, we’re all disillusioned, that’s how we got here, hating each other, we’re all pissed about the lack of upward mobility, except for those on top, who are doing the best to keep the rest of us down.

Come on people, come on children
Come on down to the glory river
Gonna wash you up and wash you down
Gonna lay that devil down, gonna lay that devil down

Come on artists.

1. Be informed. There’s no excuse not to be. Hell, iPhones come with a news app built-in. No one’s that informed, including our President, read every day and feel confident weighing in.

2. Be prepared. Practice instead of sell. Believe me, one great track will eclipse years of social-networking. Become better at what you do best.

3. Channel inspiration. All artists know when it hits. Drop everything and catch lightning in a bottle, that’s always the best stuff. We’re looking for human emotion and honesty, not seamlessness. Just because you can perfect it in Pro Tools doesn’t mean you should.

4. Be fearless. Be willing to endure the blowback. There are three hundred million people in America, gain the attention of less than one percent and you’re a star, ignore the haters.

5. Have a viewpoint, have a backbone, don’t be wishy-washy. Stand for something, or else you stand for nothing at all.

It’s your duty to save the children. Kudos to Ariana Grande and friends for staging a benefit concert so soon after the Manchester disaster. But shows are not as powerful as songs.

I got fury in my soul. I ain’t got no money and I ain’t got no political power, but I do have this platform, I do have a voice, I can take a stand and when I channel my anger, it takes me closer to the glory goal.

And you can do this too.

We’re pissed off. We’ve all got our platforms.

It’s just that that of the musicians is bigger than all of ours.

Bono is over fifty, he’s performing his greatest hits, U2 can’t even crack the pop charts, but there are those who are not moribund, who are less beholden to commercialism who can tap into their inner consciousness and deliver the anthem we need.

Because one thing’s for sure, we need to save the country.

We lost.

We lost in music, in movies and news. The only place we’ve won is in television, which we have to chalk up to innovation and creativity. That’s right, the establishment of cable and the rise of HBO, which proved that people would pay for something better.

Assuming they had any money at all.

That’s the focus of our society today, cash. Some have enough for many generations to come, others have none at all. But we lionize the winners and denigrate the losers. Like having no cash is a moral failure. Used to be we sympathized with those less fortunate, now they’re the victims of our slings and arrows. They’re a cancer upon society that must heal itself or be left behind. Once upon a time Lyndon Johnson promulgated a war on poverty, we’ve still got one, but now it’s been flipped, those living in poverty are takers, who need to be given less, instead of more.

And then there are our institutions of higher learning. University used to be available to all, until that was starved by anti-tax advocates insisting that the common good was secondary to the personal good. And now even the most august colleges are focused on job preparation. The healthy mind, which can analyze and gain insights, which can build the fabric of our society, that’s been put in the backseat. And you can’t blame the students, they’re afraid they’re going to be left behind in the new economy.

And what is the new economy? It’s based on information, and services. And if you think manufacturing is coming back you probably believe coal is burgeoning, but it’s not. The way out is never to preserve the old jobs, but to come up with new ones.

So in the old game we lauded experience and wisdom.

In the new one, we play to flash. Everything’s a soundbite, and it doesn’t matter whether it is true or not.

So, like a coach at high school pep rally, whose team has no chance of accomplishing the goals he sets forth, Trump keeps appealing to the suffering and the truly winning. Promising jobs for the former and tax cuts for the latter, math be damned. Because if you want to win today, you just give people what they want, as opposed to our last national hero, Steve Jobs, who gave people what they NEED!

Elon Musk is giving people what they need. Automobiles run by electricity, reducing our carbon footprint. It won’t be long before all our cars are electric, the machines are much more efficient, never mind not polluting at the tailpipe.

And Musk said he’d stop advising the President if the Paris Climate Accord was nullified. He’s taking a stand. Where is everybody else?

Then again, Musk wasn’t born in America.

But foreigners are the enemy.

Kinda like Mercedes-Benz and BMW, who build untold numbers of cars in the American South. How could Trump not know this? How could he be so uninformed?

But experts are pussies in today’s world. One in which you can be famous for nothing and information is supposedly at everybody’s fingertips, however biased and flawed it might be.

Blame Roger Ailes. Because before Fox, television news had a semblance of bipartisanship. What impressed me most was the tweet after the death of Ailes lamenting that Fox had turned the writer’s grandparents into conspiracy zealots and when his granddad died, they had to hunt for weeks to find the guns stashed all over the house, because you know Obama was coming to take them away.

Blame Larry Tisch, who turned CBS News into a profit center.

But laud the “Washington Post,” which with Jeff Bezos’s money and Marty Baron’s stewardship is now doing the investigative journalism our nation so sorely needs. The “Post” and the “Times” are eliminating false equivalencies. And the “Wall Street Journal” has nary a scoop. That same “Journal” whose editorial page Trump quoted today. I’m stunned he could even read that.

Your music service is based in Sweden.

The deejays you listen to are from France.

You make coin in Asia and South America.

But we’re all supposed to bury our heads in the sand and say AMERICA FIRST?

And how come sacrifice is pooh-poohed. Why should everybody be entitled to drive an SUV? Do we need Ranger Rovers in Los Angeles? What’s wrong with fuel economy standards, where is it written in the Constitution that Americans should be free to do whatever they want at any cost? Hell, we all sacrifice in our personal lives. If I left the refrigerator door open more than five seconds, my father freaked out. We’ve got a false sense of freedom in this country, we think the government is restricting us when the truth is we’re restricting ourselves, and if anything the government is ensuring our safety.

But not anymore.

Mike Chapman Playlist – Spotify

‘Ballroom Blitz”
The Sweet
1973

Oh yeah, it was like lightning
Everybody was fighting
And the music was soothing
And they all started grooving

This was when you did your best not to listen to AM radio, but not every automobile possessed the FM band, so you’d hear this confounding track that intellectually was offensive yet emotionally was so satisfying. It was simple and stupid, but energetic and catchy. Hell, that’s kind of the Chinnichap ethos. That’s right, this was written and produced by Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman.

This appeared on the Sweet’s 1974 album “Desolation Boulevard,” along with “Fox On The Run,” which was composed and produced by the band, but I prefer 1978’s “Level Headed, which I actually bought, which contains the classic “Love Is Like Oxygen.”

“Can The Can”
Suzi Quatro
1973

This actually charted in the U.S., but in the fifties, which means no one ever heard it on the radio, never mind bought it, but we rock devotees were completely aware of it, Quatro was the queen of “Creem”! In her leather, sister of Mike Quatro, we liked her in principle but never ever heard her music, you had to buy it to hear it, and that we did not. All these years later, I’m not sure we were missing out, but there is undeniable energy in this Chinnichap production.

“If You Think You Know How To Love Me”
Smokie
1975

You know the song, but not the band. This Chinnichap track made it all the way to #96 on the “Billboard” chart, whew!

“Lay Back In The Arms Of Someone”
Juice Newton
1977

A great song is a great song, and this Chinnichap composition made it into the upper reaches of the charts all over Europe, and was covered by Randy Barlow and went to #13 on the country chart in the U.S. in ’79, and was also done by Tanya Tucker and Rick Nelson.

“If You Think You Know How To Love Me”
Pat Benatar
1979

From her debut, “In The Heat Of The Night,” whose production was split between Chapman and his regular engineer Peter Coleman. The Smokie iteration made it all the way to #3 in the U.K., but it’s hard not to prefer this version, which is faster with a hypnotic groove and the vocal stylings of Benatar, who spits the lyrics like she means it, she’s a better Suzi Quatro, one up to the level of Chapman’s developed talent.

“Stumblin’ In”
Chris Norman & Suzi Quatro
1979

The funny thing is this only made it to #41 in the U.K., but it went to #4 in the U.S. and Quatro was on “Happy Days” and a name in America but her hit days were soon behind her. But this track lives on, it’s the most popular of hers on Spotify, with 7,787,748 streams.

Now there were a bunch of Chinnichap hits in between that I haven’t mentioned, by acts like the Arrows and Mud as well as Smokie, never mind more Quatro tracks, but then came…

“Hot Child In The City”
Nick Gilder
1978

All the way to number one, this Chapman production of a Gilder and James McCulloch song went to number one and was ubiquitous. The production was deserving of world domination, it was seamless, it emanated from radios everywhere, but Gilder ended up a one hit wonder, as for Chapman…

“Kiss You All Over”
Exile
1978

A Chinnichap song, this was solely produced by Mike Chapman and a monster hit that is still part of the culture today, proving that it’s not about the name of the act, the history of the act, no one had ever heard of Exile, but this cut shot right up the chart, mostly because of its catchy, indelible chorus, the song built into an anthem, Chapman had truly found his chops, he was on the cusp of sheer insanity, making a band with tons of publicity but little recorded success into superstars.

“Heart Of Glass”
Blondie
1978

Okay, this was hard to fathom, we were supposed to hate disco, but we LOVED THIS!

Then again, the Stones had gone disco that summer with “Miss You,” but this was closer to the clubs than the stadiums, this was unabashedly disco. But the vocal was exquisite, the way Deborah Harry seemed to care but she didn’t, the way she tossed lines off like she was one step ahead of us and we could never catch up, she went from zero to hero, from a two-dimensional woman we saw in magazines to the heartthrob of America, despite already being over thirty. Who said youth is everything?

Composed by Harry and Chris Stein, the track was produced by Chapman and Peter Coleman, the team was set, they were in a groove, and the sound was seamless.

“Hanging On The Telephone”
Blondie
1978

What an opener, what a great concept, what a KILLER!

You bought the album for the hit, but fell in love with the album tracks.

They hit the ground running, you took off in pursuit, this was an opener as strong as “Under My Wheels” on Alice Cooper’s “Killer,” they both announced that the bands had ARRIVED! And in both cases you can chalk it up to the producer, Chapman in the case of Blondie and Bob Ezrin in the case of Alice Cooper.

“One Way Or Another”
Blondie
1978

Was this really the same NYC punk/art rock act that started off on Private Stock with a mild hit with a recut of an old standard?

What a one-two punch!

“Fade Away And Radiate”
Blondie”
1978

My favorite cut on “Parallel Lines,” primarily because of Robert Fripp’s solo. A kittenish vocal, Debbie cooing, and then Fripp took us into outer space.

“I Need A Lover”
Pat Benatar
1979

Arguably Mike Chapman is responsible for John Mellencamp’s career, but don’t expect the Indianan to admit it. Chapman elevated Mellencamp’s composition to the stratosphere, showed that Mellencamp was deserving.

This is the track that built Benatar’s reputation. Who was the woman with the pipes who could outsing the guys?

“My Sharona”
The Knack
1979

That’s right, the great white hope of Los Angeles, the hated by the other local acts Knack, hooked up with the hottest producer extant and immediately topped the charts.

This is rare. The hype always outstrips the reality. But overnight, the Knack dominated.

“The Hardest Part”
Blondie
1979

In a bulletproof vest, shatterproof glass, overdrive we’re gonna pass
Twenty five tons of hardened steel, rolls on no ordinary wheel

What is that underneath these lyrics? That guitar, or whatever it is, fluttering, it makes the track, never underestimate sounds.

This is my favorite cut on “Eat To The Beat,” which was not quite as good or successful as “Parallel Lines,” but what could be?

“The Tide Is High”
Blondie
1980

Bob Marley was not yet a household name, oh, he was getting there, but this number was the first exposure to reggae for so many.

“Rapture”
Blondie
1980

Yes, they were not the first, yes, they were ripping off the street sound, but they were even further ahead of the game than Madonna was thereafter, most people had absolutely never been exposed to rap.

“Mickey”
Toni Basil
1982

For some reason this is not on Spotify, not that I ever need to hear it again, we all know it, it started off as a novelty and then outstripped its niche and became ubiquitous. The song was written by Chinn and Chapman.

“Heart and Soul”
Huey Lewis & the News
1983

Yes, this Chinnichap composition, originally recorded by Smokie, was covered by Huey Lewis on his monster breakthrough album “Sports.” A success in its own right, with tons of airplay, imagine the royalties that came in from this nearly ten million albums sold in the U.S. This is why all those songwriters are bitching about streaming, in the old days you just had to make it to the collection, irrelevant of whether you got any airplay, the sales of a successful LP would line your pockets.

“Love Is A Battlefield”
Pat Benatar
1983

A Chapman/Holly Knight, this Peter Coleman/Neil Giraldo production was a huge success, driven primarily by the video, wherein Benatar danced and titillated the little boys and enthralled the little girls.

“The Warrior”
Scandal, featuring Patty Smyth
1984

And this video about put Scandal out of business, but if you divorce the images of that abomination from the track, you find the resulting Nick Gilder/Holly Knight composition produced by Chapman quite satisfying.

“Better Be Good To Me”
Tina Turner
1984

Where is she today? She’s one of the few who said she was going to retire and DID!

Credit John Carter of Capitol and “Incense and Peppermints” fame for midwiving this LP, he was the only one who believed, and he started a juggernaut, the album was a cornucopia of compositions and producers and although this cut was produced by Rupert Hine, it was written by Chinn, Chapman and Holly Knight.

“The Best”
Tina Turner
1990

Written by Chapman and Knight, it was originally on a Bonnie Tyler LP.

“We Are Strong”
Pitbull (featuring Kiesza)
2017

It’s “Love As A Battlefield.”

The legend lives on!

(Although there are eight other writers credited besides Chapman and Knight.)