“Rock and roll then was real, everything else was unreal.”

John Lennon

This is the most depressing book I’ve read all year.

There’s always been music. It’s not like the Top Forty was blank before the Beatles. Even a few good groups dominated the airwaves prior to ’64, like the Four Seasons and the Beach Boys, but culturally, it was a vast wasteland.

And then the British Invasion began. And wiped out everything that came before it. Oh, Brian Wilson rose to the challenge, his band still had hits, but almost no one else did. Bobby Rydell? Fabian? Everybody who sang before suddenly no longer had a career. It’s kinda like Kodak, decimated by digital photography. Although in the case of the Rochester company there was fair warning, nobody saw the Beatles coming.

It was a revolution. We were invaded. Buzz was rampant, radio jumped on board and when the band appeared on “Ed Sullivan” three times in February, it was over, just that fast, a new world existed.

And it wasn’t only the Beatles, new bands followed in their wake. It was all you talked about, what was on the airwaves. Your records were precious, you spun them over and over.

And then came the San Francisco sound and underground FM radio and it was like the gods of music doubled-down, just when you thought it couldn’t get any better, it did.

And Jann Wenner decided to chronicle this.

He’s not a villain, just another guy with vision out to make a buck. And all the buzz about this book is about the portrayal of Jann and his rejection thereof. But that was secondary to the foundation of the magazine, and the end of the dream.

I’d say it was like AOL in the nineties, but that was about you and me connecting.

I’d say it was like the dot com evolving into the app era, but everybody doing that was more interested in making a buck than art. These were coders and hustlers, success was on Wall Street, whereas the musicians of the sixties succeeded by invading our hearts. It was a revolution based on creativity, money was a byproduct, it was about disobeying the rules, being an individual, who you were was just as important as what you made.

And then it collapsed.

That’s what no one wants to talk about today, how it’s not the same. There’s a hit parade, there’s a chart, but this is not baseball, with the same rules handed down through the ages, this is about personal expression, this is about the zeitgeist and…

We haven’t had that spirit here since 1969.

Hell, one can argue it died when Don Henley sang that line.

But no one wants to admit it. They just want to point to record sales and streams, as if you could quantify art, and hearts and minds.

So what you’ve got here is a relatively lame recounting of the fifty year history of “Rolling Stone.” Not as lame as the unwatchable HBO special with regard thereto, but the problem with history is it’s best when written by people who were there, in this case the author was not.

Yes, the highlight is the beginning, how the magazine was birthed and stayed steady.

And then there’s the tale of Thompson, Hunter S. that is. And this is done pretty well, but then you ask why there hasn’t been a gonzo doctor since. And then you realize writing is a third class citizen. And you can’t make bank, not the kind they do on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley, so the best and the brightest don’t go into the field, which is left to the academics, hell, have you read the output of the Iowa Workshop? It’s like listening to metal records. There’s a code you don’t know that ends up with books you don’t want to read, even though the press keeps saying how great they are. Thompson tested limits, today writers kiss ass.

And the Patty Hearst story is told poorly and the key point is not made… This is what made “Rolling Stone” legitimate, when it broke Patty’s story, when it was suddenly the equal of the big boys. It was the equivalent of SNL, the youth finally took over. And that’s a good analogy. The media keeps trumpeting SNL when the truth is it’s a tired formula endlessly repeated. Like an aged rock star with plastic surgery plying the boards as if he still counted.

After that…

There’s not much to say.

There certainly isn’t much about the music. And there’s little about the blink, the short reviews after “Blender” came on the scene and fudged its numbers. No, it’s basically the story of a rich guy living a good life. Which is what the boomers did en masse, sell out, become their parents, even though their hair was long and they still smoked dope.

I read yesterday that “Sound and Vision” lost ninety percent of its readership, went from nearly a million as “High Fidelity” to under 100,000 with its new moniker. Turns out buying a first class stereo is no longer a dream, but don’t tell that to those still buying equipment, they’ll tell you it’s the same as it ever was.

But it’s not.

But ain’t that America, where no one can sacrifice and everybody believes they rule. Hell, it’s worse than ever in this internet era.

But the truth is times change. And institutions too.

I still get “Rolling Stone,” but I’m not sure who it’s written for. Aged boomers or young hipsters. And by trying to appeal to multiple demographics it ultimately appeals to none. So far from its original mission, where it cared about its generation and nothing more.

But the generation got old and the music died and…

The dream is over.

P.S. There’s a lot of Lennon in this tome, but my favorite story was when Wenner and John went to lunch and fans approached the Beatle for an autograph and he said…GO AWAY! That’s a rock star, not someone who keeps championing his fans and trying to please them. That’s a sycophant, however rich. We need leaders, when we’re not watching the parking meters.

“Sticky Fingers: The Life and Times of Jann Wenner and Rolling Stone Magazine”

This is the best comedy special of the year. Forget Seinfeld, forget Chappelle, this is it.

Not that it’s a competition. It’s just that we’re searching for excellence, something that touches and titillates us, in an era of ever more product we’re overwhelmed with choices and looking to be led to the promised land.

Which is why I research.

This is what the studios hate. Statistics. They believe the enemy is Rotten Tomatoes, no, the enemy is quality! We learned this in the music business, why can’t they learn that in movies too?

Not that everything on Netflix is great, but one thing’s for sure, they give the artists control, and the artists know best, they can lead you into the wilderness, over the cliff, miss deadlines, but they’re also the only ones who can deliver that indescribable element that keeps us hooked.

Like Hasan Minhaj.

That’s how far we’ve come, you don’t have to change your name to make it.

The Jews used to rule comedy, and Hasan is doing the Jews’ act. Making their insularity universal. By time you’re through watching “Homecoming” you too will wish that you were brought up in an Indian family.

Hasan’s an outsider with brown skin, raised by a single parent who expects A’s and has no time for pleasure, work is king and all gratification must be delayed. Isn’t that interesting, we live in an instant gratification society and only those who can hold off win.

Anyway, I’d never heard of this guy.

I know, I know, he’s on the “Daily Show,” but I don’t watch that! I’m wondering when we’re all gonna agree we’re clueless, stop putting each other down for what we don’t know. No one can watch every show, listen to every record, but those “in the know” expect us to. And the whole story of how Hasan got that gig is detailed in this special. But to be sure, he was a nobody going nowhere before he got it, that’s the line between success and failure, very thin and very sharp, meanwhile his sister is an attorney with an Ivy League degree, the apple of his parents’ eye.

So I Googled. Again and again. My time is just that valuable. And that’s how I found out about “Homecoming King.” And I got it from the very first instance, because Hasan was sincere. Not smarmy, not playing to the audience, but real. Authenticity rules. This is what they don’t understand in D.C., the duplicity will be the death of them.

And Hasan chronicles his growing up. As the outcast who wants to be in.

Yes, this is not your typical standup show, flailing from joke to joke until the last ten minutes when the comic winds up and delivers an extended piece that represents their best material.

This is the story of Hasan’s life. Previously it was a one man show.

And I really don’t want to delineate the high points. But I’ll put in just a couple to give you flavor.

The Camry. Referenced over and over again as the family’s automobile. That’s us, we’re trying to individualize, look cool and superior, but underneath it all we share the same basic building blocks, it used to be Wonder Bread, now it’s the Camry.

Bethany Reed. The one who got away. The one whose parents couldn’t accept Hasan. The one he can’t stop thinking about.

She reappears.

They always do. Not the pure fantasies, but the ones you felt a spark with, just wait, they’ll reach out and touch you online, it’s just a matter of time, it’s a very long game.

AND WATCHA GONNA DO?

They hurt you so badly, yet you wanted them so much. They affected your whole life.

Bethany’s story is here.

As well as the sibling rivalry. Does the number one son plow the way for those who come after, or is he given unfair advantages?

The reason “Homecoming King” works so well is because of its humanity, because of its truth. At times Hasan is a bit awkward, his delivery could be a bit more natural, but that’s picking nits. That’s review talk, always trying to balance the good with the bad.

The point is comedy rules. It’s more profitable to be a comic than a musician. Just check the grosses and realize it’s almost all net.

And during the last comedy boom everybody sold out to be on television. Sawed off their rough edges to fit in.

But now those sitcoms don’t pay so well, because so few watch them. The cultural icons are those who grab the zeitgeist and wow us when we finally find them.

Now the truth is after you watch this show we’ll have a number of shared references. That’s what connection is about, the references. The above-mentioned Camry, the slapping of the children, the faces during the spelling bee. We’re all affected and we all want to talk about it.

So fire up Netflix. Or borrow someone’s account. The service stole comedy from under HBO’s nose, by not only paying more but realizing there were many more slots. There’s a competition to be great. And right now Hasan Minhaj is the reigning champion.

It takes more than a decade to become a household name.

But with “Homecoming King” Hasan is on his way.

It’s got more truth than any hip-hop record.

And it’s no different from you and me.

Welcome to America where we’re all immigrants and we’re all alienated.

If only we’d admit and own this.

Hasan has.

Which is why he’s a giant.

Hasan Minhaj-Homecoming King

By embracing streaming.

That’s right, you cannot get ahead if you stay behind. While other formats railed against payouts, declaring that music had “value,” while they bitched about everything from the loss of artwork to the decimation of the label, hip-hop hurdled over those barriers and won.

The youth live online. The youth are early adopters who drive trends. Hip-hop went where the people were. Rock did not. Nor did country. Which is how they became second-class citizens.

By depending upon radio. Radio no longer drives consumption, it’s the cherry on top, it comes last if not at all. And only one format matters, Top Forty. You can rave all you want about being number one Active Rock but chances are most people have never heard the name of your act. And country is a ghetto that R&B used to be. However, it’s so interesting that country has infused its music with hip-hop elements whereas instead of marching towards the mainstream, rock has splintered further and gone down the rabbit hole of core fanbases, leaving the rest of us to care not a whit.

Everything you know is wrong. Everything you read in the paper is wrong. Because it’s perpetrated by oldsters without vision trying to preserve their fiefdoms. Come on, was anybody at a label behind Napster? They fought them all, and never forget if they’d approved Spotify sooner, YouTube would not be home to music, that came in the window wherein Warner said no and Spotify did not launch in the U.S. because it believed without everything you were nothing.

This is how television is screwing itself right now. Just think about it, the big kahuna is Netflix. Netflix wasn’t built on the back of ignorant content makers so much as delivering an experience the public desired before it knew it. Remember when Netflix said it was going to on demand streaming? The public howled, but that is what it wanted, much more than HBO and Showtime and five hundred overpriced channels of junk. That’s right, most cable channels are kept alive by provider payments, which are disappearing, so they will too. Turns out there was not enough public demand.

So when radio tells you how well it’s doing, that it’s bullish on the future, ignore it, completely. Once again, old men trying to hold on to a past paradigm. When was the last time you heard a kid declare he wanted to work in radio? As for the vaunted Beats product, it’s moribund, there’s no longer even any publicity, and believe me if there were good numbers they’d crow about them. But Beats 1 was pushed by Jimmy Iovine, another boomer lost in the past. Jimmy keeps declaring that free music is the enemy, that the musicians must be saved. What hogwash, Apple Music does not have a free tier, it’s all self-interest baby, if he can kill music on YouTube and get rid of Spotify’s free tier he’s got a huge leg up, think about that.

So if you’re playing to radio instead of streaming you’re losing. That’s it, end of story. And if you’re not losing today, you’re gonna tomorrow. Just like Kodak was decimated by digital photography. The future comes, no matter what you say.

The other thing hip-hop focused on was a plethora of product speaking to contemporary culture. While pop stars were trying to get it right, while rockers were plying moon/June lyrics, the hip-hoppers were focused on what was happening in their lives, which was much more relatable.

And they believed in owning and purveying their lives.

The rockers and popsters and country acts believe it’s about the machine. About being in “People,” getting on “Today,” “CBS Sunday Morning.” They’re so busy casting a wide net that they’ve become niche, they’re out of touch in a world where you lead with your product and it takes you there. Come on, Migos, Cardi B, Post Malone, were they built by traditional infrastructure? The usual suspect outlets came last. But since that’s where the oldster tastemakers get their info, the word is spread that they count, but they don’t, and it’s only gonna get worse.

And all we hear amongst the fat cat businessmen is the economics of Soundcloud, when rappers care not a whit and post their stuff there.

A stiff no longer kills you, the lack of a hit does.

So we keep hearing what a triumph the Taylor Swift album is, when the truth is it’s a stiff, because no one is playing it. A lot of the non-singles haven’t even broken the ten million stream mark on Spotify. Finally she has a track in the Spotify Top 50, “End Game” is #38, but it features Future, as well as Ed Sheeran. And this does not mean Swift is not making money, but her gigs don’t sell out and she’s not a feature on the streaming hit parade and we’re just interested in temperature and trends, which the mainstream media got COMPLETELY WRONG!

As for Ed Sheeran being shut out of the Grammys, he cares not a whit, because the audience does not. That’s a once a year show with phony forgotten trophies, the real metric is consumption, where he triumphs.

But he’s not hip-hop. Although he does work on hip-hop songs.

But what about Sam Smith? After the four initial singles from Swift fell off the Spotify chart, his “Too Good At Goodbyes” is still #11, with 722,981 streams a day, with a cume of 350,826,831.

And what Sheeran and Smith share is singability. Proving if you’re not a rapper, you not only have to know how to sing, you have to sing ditties that others can sing along with, not a composition baked by dozens with flares of sounds trying to insure a hit.

That’s right, rock and pop are driving off a cliff and it’s their own damn fault. Not only did they not embrace new technologies, they broke the number one rule of music, that it must be appealing, you must want to sing along with it.

But nobody wants to hear any of this. They hate hip-hop and streaming. Radio is king. Publicity makes winners and the Grammys count. If you believe ANY of this you’re already toast.

Plan for the future. Your goal is to be so personal that you become universal. And you do this by taking your swings, stepping up to the plate again and again. Trying new stuff, being part of the culture.

Hip-hop broke away from the mainstream. Many of its stars don’t even have major label deals. They did it by themselves, which is positively old school.

It’s time for the rest of the music makers to follow in their footsteps.

“You’re on the road to hospitalization.”

That’s what my shrink said, and he never does, speak, that is.

I was wondering how I was gonna make it another week to the Rituxan infusion. I’d already canceled my trip to Colorado. I was supposedly on the road to improvement, so why did my body feel so bad?

I grew up in a house where it was illegal to be ill. If you said you felt bad my mother insisted you go to school to get better. Doctors were for other people, with real problems.

Suddenly I had a real problem.

My shrink asked to see my back.

Then he called the dermatologist and the internist on my dime. Saying I needed to go to the hospital right away. But they were wary. Because when you go to the institution there are high odds of infection, and with pemphigus, infection kills. Used to be eighty five percent. Now it’s somewhere between three and fifteen. But the bottom line is if you get one, good luck!

So I’m driving home after my shrink appointment facing the very real possibility, this could be the end. And how does it end anyway? Maybe you get cornered, by maladies that don’t seem so bad and then intersect and no one lives forever and certainly not me, not you either.

So the following morning the dermatologist squeezes me in. I lift my shirt and she is stunned, she says I immediately have to go to the hospital. But there’s a problem, UCLA is closed because of the fires and Cedars-Sinai has no rooms. But it gets worse than that, since Puerto Rico is down and out there are not enough IVs, so even if I check in…

But we devise a plan. I should see the wound doctor first, as scheduled, and then go to the ER at Cedars and wait for a room to open up.

The wound doctor wouldn’t touch me. Said in the hospital they’d just rip off his work. So we went to the ER and waited and waited and…

If I’d known it was gonna be four hours I would have pulled rank. Yup, it’s all about who you know, but I wasn’t in the mood to make contact with the outside world and I figured it would never take that long but the real problem is when I finally got to the room it was after six and therefore it was…

The weekend.

You don’t want to be in the hospital on the weekend. It’s a holding tank, nothing happens until Monday. And since I’d waited so long in the ER I was going to go untreated, but I didn’t know that yet.

So they want to give me pain pills. Which I don’t want to take, because I want to be fully aware. But they convince me otherwise, I get an IV drip of steroids, and in the elevator up to my room I see a sticker on the door, saying there’ve been no hospital incited infections in three years, and this makes me feel better, until I wake up Saturday and feel worse.

Meanwhile, the hospital is an alternative universe. Where celebrity and fame are irrelevant, all the totem pole markers of the regular world. You’re a patient and they’ve dedicated their lives to saving you, D.C. be damned.

Now the truth is they started the IVIG at 11 pm. It takes four to five hours. Illustrating they do work on the weekends. But as for my wounds…

They weren’t gonna touch ’em.

I’m stuck to the plasticized bedding they’ve laid down for my leaking. I can’t move without excruciating jolts of pain. I’m stuck in the bed, barely able to reach the button for the nurse, movement was almost completely out of the equation.

And the hospital is organized and disorganized. And you worry about alienating the infrastructure. But I said thanks and made conversation and they never burned out on me.

But I could not get wound care.

The hospitalist, an internist who only works in the edifice, told me nothing could be done, she’d put in a request, but the odds were low.

So I text my dermatologist. Isn’t this why I’m here, for wound care?

And no one shows up and I’m getting deeper and darker into my mood and at 9:20 PM, that’s right, a plastic surgeon comes in, wraps me up like the Mummy and disappears, after I take a shower that has me screaming at the top of my lungs, after he put this yellow tape infused with Vaseline all over my body, I finally felt good, but he said I’d be there a week.

But two days later my dermatologist showed up and said I could go if the plastic surgeon said so and he showed and I got wrapped again and exited.

You don’t want to be in the hospital, they don’t want you in the hospital, but do you feel safe enough at home?

So I got three infusions of IVIG and steroids inside. Ultimately, they speak to the symptoms, they kick out the bad guys to give you temporary relief. The plastic surgeon said my skin was twenty percent better in two days, but it had been totally gone before, the entire top layer. The only good thing is pemphigus foliaceous only affects the top layer, otherwise I would have been checked into the burn ward.

And the following day, Tuesday, after three days in the hospital, I went back to the plastic surgeon, who re-dressed me.

On Wednesday I went back to Wilshire and Doheny for my second Rituxan infusion. Which could be accelerated since it went smoothly the first time through, it took just shy of five hours instead of more than six.

And I was wearing mesh underwear and still had leaking sores on my legs and butt, but on Thursday night I got the dreaded blisters again.

So I’m starting to peak and freak, this has gone in the wrong direction from day one, but I’m seeing the dermatologist the next day…

Who gives me a positive report. She doesn’t think I need another IVIG this week. I should recover, or not. You see not enough people get pemphigus, there’s not enough data, usually after two infusions of Rituxan most people get better in eight weeks. But since I had the IVIG and steroids, maybe it’ll be three to six weeks. But I might have flare-ups. Anything could happen!

But I started to feel better. Sunday I could walk around like normal. I was slowly beginning to feel optimistic.

And then today I woke up with blisters all over my body.

Will they dry out and fade, like the ones from Thursday? Or burst and hurt, as some did last night. Am I climbing up or slipping down? I DON’T KNOW!

So let’s start at the beginning. I have pemphigus foliaceous. Which thank god is not pemphigus vulgaris, which starts in your mouth and genitalia, you cannot eat, but both are pretty damn bad and rare.

It went untreated for a year and a half.

They don’t know exactly what caused it. But the underlying conditions can be triggered by surgery, which I had, on my shoulder, eighteen months ago.

But it could be a drug reaction, to the Gleevec I take for my CML leukemia. But I stopped that for thirty days and got no better.

But did I get so much worse because I went back on the Gleevec or was the disease just taking its own course?

The hematologist believes the Gleevec is a red herring, but for now I’m not taking it, even though it keeps me alive.

Sometimes immunological diseases, of which pemphigus is one, burn out…IN FIVE YEARS!

Some people have two Rituxan infusions and are cured.

Others need another in six months.

Others need one every six months in perpetuity.

So now you know as much as I do, which ain’t a whole hell of a lot.

So right now I’m functional, can eat and drive, even though I’m itching and scratching. Will this maintain? Your notion is as good as mine.

And to tell you the truth…

I had this all planned out when I was going through last Friday’s shenanigans, entering the hospital, I was gonna write something great.

But I crashed the following day when wound care didn’t show up and still haven’t recovered.

I was waiting to write until I was cured!

But that point has not arrived.

But I’m writing this, so how bad can I be?

I’VE GOT BLISTERS ON MY FINGERS!

(Well, on my hands and forearms and thighs.)