Coloured Rain – Spotify

The second is my favorite. Traffic album, that is.

I haven’t been able to get “Hey, Western Union Man” out of my brain, I keep singing the lyrics to myself, it’s great to be infected by a tune, and playing Al Kooper’s “I Stand Alone” album on my phone, I heard “Coloured Rain.”

The first Traffic album didn’t break through. Today everybody knows “Dear Mr. Fantasy,” no, that’s not true, the generations have turned over, the old farts have their music and most of it will be forgotten with them, time keeps passing and they keep making new music, and the Beatles will sustain, but most everything else won’t.

Ironically, what made “Dear Mr. Fantasy” most famous was Al Kooper and Mike Bloomfield’s live rendition of it, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

I discovered the second Traffic album at Mike Ginsberg’s house in, West Hartford, Connecticut. I met him on this summer program in New Hampshire, we took a bus up, and I remember having to get off so the vehicle could make it up the hill. This was during the ’68 Convention, the one in Chicago, I was not in front of the TV set, I only know it by legend, and that’s what’s making me crazy, all these people testifying to how it once was even though they didn’t live through it, quoting “Billboard” charts, but those were different back then, and nearly meaningless in the FM rock period from ’67 to ’80.

And one of Traffic’s flaws, if you can call it that, was that it came out too early, the initial LP was released at the end of ’67, when underground FM radio barely existed, you heard about titles by word of mouth, like this and “Are You Experienced?” But by ’68, the FM album sound was infiltrating, and it was in October of that year that the second, eponymous Traffic album was released.

Then the band broke up.

Then they got back together, and released “John Barleycorn” and “Low Spark,” and went out again on the unexpected high of “When The Eagle Flies,” but it was that album in ’68, without the band’s name on the cover, that resonates.

It’s the one with “Feelin’ Alright.”

Yes, Dave Mason was now a full-fledged member of the band. But he sings his version differently from the ultimately more famous Joe Cocker rendition, Dave’s world-weary.

Seems I’ve got to have a change of scene…

And then there’s “40,000 Headmen,” which I saw in a glorious rendition during the comeback tour at the Fillmore East.

And my personal favorite, “Cryin’ To Be Heard.”

But this is about the first LP.

Both were produced by Jimmy Miller, a man whose reputation has faded with time, even though he made the best Stones LPs, but they sound completely different, the second is relaxed, the first is edgier, looking for the group’s sound, but it does have “Dear Mr. Fantasy.”

And the English and U.S. albums are not identical, but my favorite non-“Fantasy” track is “Dealer, which is haunting, about a subject that was still taboo at the time.

And there are more songs that were covered by other acts and became huge before most people had any idea who Traffic was.

Of course there was Blood, Sweat & Tears’ rendition of “Smiling Phases,” arguably better, even though the cognoscenti may consider that heresy.

And while I’m going against the church, I’ll also say that Three Dog Night’s version of “Heaven Is In Your Mind” is superior too. I was not a huge fan, but my friend Marc Goloff bought the live Three Dog Night LP and I was enraptured by their rendition that opened the album.

And then there was “Coloured Rain.”

Feels like coloured rain
Tastes like coloured rain

The original features Steve Winwood, one of the best rock vocalists of all time, one who still has his pipes, and it’s the same song, with great keyboards, but it’s missing the drama of Kooper’s rendition, it’s a demo compared to the cake Al bakes.

First and foremost there’s the storm, Al was into production, sound effects, and then a flourish fit for a symphony or a Broadway pit orchestra and then…

Yesterday I was a young boy
Searching for my way
Not knowing that I wanted
Living life from day to day

That was us when we were young. We were searching for answers, we were experimenting.

And Al’s take is all about the chorus, and it’s not as good as his version of “Hey, Western Union Man,” yet it contains phasers and all that modern stuff and it’s a song by a legendary band you should know.

Even if you don’t.

Don’t waste your time yelling into the echo chamber, love him or hate him, your words about Trump make no difference to the other side, it’s about doing the work, the anonymous drudgery, no one likes to do the work.

Sometimes the softest voice commands the most power. We’re conditioned to yell, but Gus Fring on “Breaking Bad” rarely speaks above a whisper, but everybody listens. We’re conditioned by TV talk to believe that he who yells loudest gets his way. This is oftentimes untrue.

The higher up the food chain you are, the nicer you are. The person at the top doesn’t have to play politics, they can be congenial. You can hate them as much as you like, that just illustrates you’re an outsider. At elite levels everybody gets along, but getting into the club, now that’s a thing.

Don’t believe the entertainment press, in most cases reporters are stenographers, underpaid people who will write whatever their subject wants.

Just because they said it’s sold out doesn’t mean it is.

Just because it’s illegal doesn’t mean they don’t do it. Hell, your phone rings all day long with junk calls, even though that’s illegal.

It’s about continuity, not the one time event. What happened this morning is already forgotten by the afternoon. It’s about the continuity of mass shootings, not any individual one. Kinda like hijackings, they were de rigueur until new security protocols were enforced. So if you think your album release date is important, fuggetaboutit, that’s just the beginning, the hard work is in front of you.

#1 on the “Billboard” chart is irrelevant. It’s one week, a snapshot in time. The charts are for the industry, but they’re disseminated to the public. They’re nearly meaningless.

It’s hard to break through the clutter, which is why hit records sustain, it’s so hard to get noticed that when you do there are still people who don’t know you, it takes longer than ever for the public to burn out on a song.

The medium affects the message. FM underground radio allowed bands to stretch out, then it was codified into hit programming and disco slipped in. MTV made bands gargantuan, instantly, but they fell to earth just as fast and then it became all about how you looked and the production values of your video. Now streaming rules and how you look and the production values of your video are barely important, oftentimes lyric videos triumph, and when anybody can play only a limited number get attention, it’s hip-hop now, but there’s no barrier to entry to another genre, it just needs quality and an online culture.

You’re not waiting for the cool new app or gadget, that’s so last decade.

Virtual reality was an overhype, augmented reality is not.

It’s about getting the little stuff right. How come my iPhone doesn’t rotate back from landscape to portrait like it used to? The same reason the Watch didn’t work on cellular, not only was there not enough testing, there was no difficult guru insisting it be their way. It’s like a band, someone’s always the leader, it causes problems, but without this you’re doomed.

Just because you can make it doesn’t mean anybody cares.

Consolidation limits choice. It might be good for Wall Street, but it’s rarely good for consumers.

People are invested in their livelihoods. No one at radio will say it’s troubled, everybody working for the company will defend it. This is what’s wrong with America, we say we want change, but personally we abhor it.

Most of America has fallen out of love with going to the movies. They are not big enough events to break away from your on demand world. We expect everything to be available when we want it.

Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, Disney, CBS…they all can’t succeed as standalone apps. Netflix is winning because they know online there’s one victor, one company with 65-70% of the market, and that you gain momentum and keep it with innovation. Starting from scratch is too difficult in a mature world. And people don’t like to be pecked to death by ducks, they don’t want to sign up for all these different services.

Food is personal in an industrial world. Which is why it triumphs. It’s an exponent of creativity, every meal is different. The twentieth century was about mass production, the twenty first century is all about artisanal individuality.

Don’t encourage and pay younger people and your business dies. This is what is happening at the major labels, there’s one overpaid majordomo and peons who are underpaid and overworked.

We expect everything to just work. Cars, computers… Used to be you knew the inner goings-on, those days are history.

You can’t hold back the future. The elimination of subsidies might kill Tesla, but it won’t kill the electric car. Furthermore, there’s no guarantee that the U.S. dominates in the future. Protect the past at your peril. Can you say FRANCE?

It’s about who you know. If you expect excellence to triumph all by its lonesome, you’re delusional.

Don’t be proud to be poor, it just leaves you out of the discussion.

You’ve got to play the game to succeed, don’t think you can win otherwise.

I finally downloaded the app (and live.ly too!) It was the article in today’s WSJ. magazine. Let me see, can you access this without a subscription?

Unfortunately you can’t, welcome to the new world of haves and have-nots, you thought information was gonna be free forever, but it’s not, you’re gonna pay if you want it, and that’s gonna boil it down to the informed and uninformed, and forget about politics, if you want to know about trends, what’s going on in business, you’ve got to pay, sorry.

That’s what content companies don’t understand. It’s an evolution. Get them hooked, then close the doors, you’re gonna make more money than ever before. But only a few companies in each vertical will sustain. And in news, it takes infrastructure, which is not easy to replicate, the HuffPo is a shadow of what it once was, even though it’s better, and BuzzFeed actually has gravitas, but in the world of social media…

It’s about innovation. For all the scuttlebutt about the power of Facebook, if it didn’t buy WhatsApp and Instagram it would be struggling now, kinda like Apple, why does everybody always look at today instead of tomorrow?

Musical.ly is looking at tomorrow, Generation Z.

This is not for you, for old farts, this is for kids with more time than you, who are still figuring out their place on the social stratum, who are unafraid of taking a risk, making fools of themselves.

So basically, you post a video of yourself to a short musical clip.

Doesn’t sound so revolutionary in concept, I’ve been tracking the story for over a year, sifting through the e-mail, because overhype is rampant and trends frequently don’t last, but when I read about John Janick getting his acts involved, and Jason Derulo, when I saw the impact of these videos, I decided to check the app out.

And it is an app. Just like an older generation never knew a world without computers, without the internet, the youngest generation never knew a world without smartphones. You parents can bitch and moan, say your kid doesn’t need one (doesn’t DESERVE ONE!) but without a smartphone you’re disconnected, not part of the firmament, never mind the discussion.

And for all the hogwash about the downside of technology, whose fires are stoked by the ancient intellectuals in the “New York Times,” most of what technology brings is good, hell, did you see that article in the “Wall Street Journal” extolling the virtues of Kindles, especially the new Oasis? The writer said he’d never go back to print, and one day the publishers will wake up and see they’ve made a mistake, after all the Luddites buying physical books disappear.

Now musical.ly is not like Snapchat, there’s very little learning curve.

And it’s not like Facebook, where you boast about what you’ve done.

Nor Instagram, where you fake it for pictures.

No, musical.ly is all about the here and now, about making a video and posting it instantly. You almost want to participate, until you realize you’ll never be that skinny, and your aged body can’t take the workout.

It’s riveting, to see what these kids come up with. And you instantly see beneath the surface, wanting to become a neighborhood (national, INTERNATIONAL!) star, the passing of information, which is so fast these days.

And then you look at the chart. And realize this could be the most important one in musicdom, even more important than the vaunted Shazam, this is what kids are listening to right now, kids who may or may not have a streaming music service, this is where hits are being BUILT!

And the categories are simple to divine. Popular, Song Chart and Leaderboard. Kids are involved, it’s a community, with stickiness.

“Sensor Tower’s data suggest that on average people spend more than three minutes in Musical.ly every time they open the app (compared with roughly two minutes on Instagram and 85 seconds on Snapchat) and that users are spending more than 15 minutes on Musical.ly each day (compared to more than 22 minutes on Facebook).”

I don’t think musical.ly stars are forever, hell, I don’t even think musical.ly is forever! This is one thing the straight media gets wrong, believing that acts can translate their success from one vertical to another, from social media to Hollywood. Sure, they’ve got fame, but so does that guy who roller skates and plays his guitar on Venice Beach, fame is not enough, especially today, when you’re lucky if it last 15 minutes, and your talent is this, making musical.ly clips, not acting, not writing scripts, not supporting television shows, you overwork yourself to make coin, and then you’re broke down and busted, sitting on the side of the street. As for musical.ly itself, what we’ve seen in the past ten years is a succession of social networks, there’s always another cool one, one that captures the fancy of children, most of them are fads, and there are so many, but musical.ly is based on music, CHECK IT OUT!

“The Social Media Platform That Has Gen Z Obsessed – Musical.ly has captured the attention of the millions of teens who post videos on the platform – and now its influence is rippling through the music industry”

I’ve written about this before.

Been one of those days, my computer speakers blew up, now what? That makes three dead sets on my desktop. And the manufacturers of all of them have gone out of business. Do I spend a lot, the internet seems to recommend Audioengine, or do I go for cheapies, those JBL clear ones for $160, or maybe sequence to Sonos Ones, but that’ll be good for Spotify, but not everything.

The night before was wonderful.

Coran Capshaw was being honored by the City of Hope. And although the entertainment was Trey Anastasio and Dave Matthews, nobody listened. And although the food included sushi, it seemed like nobody ate, everybody was so busy TALKING! It was like a reunion, people from across the country you see once a year, or once every couple of years, we caught up, talked about Trump and Weinstein, I coulda stayed there all night. Actually, I did, just about closed the place.

And I was so revved up I could not fall asleep. I don’t know about you, maybe you’re integrated, but not me, most of the time I’m alone in front of a computer screen, and to tell you the truth I don’t want to hang with most people, but there are certain environments that are so satisfying and rewarding I could stay there forever, like summer camp, like that month in Mammoth, like last night.

So I’ve been in a fog all day. And my Fridays are now like college Fridays. You remember those… You’d stay up late, 3 or 4, playing records, getting high, getting drunk, and although I do neither of those anymore on Fridays I stretch out, I rarely get to bed before 3, which is to say I read two days of papers through and through and found out the kneeling has had no effect on the NFL, they studied it, ratings are down because there’s too much football, but no more in red states, which you’d expect, and although I read this in the WSJ, it’s amazing how the scuttlebutt is wrong, all the bloviators on TV, and then I read about the Netflix ratings, which are inherently inaccurate, since they don’t include tablets and phones, but “Stranger Things” is a smash, let me look it up, 15.8 million people watched the initial episode the first three days, 4.6 million watched the entire series last weekend, and that shows the power of programming, a hit, that’s as much as the “Walking Dead,” as many as “Game of Thrones.”

And then I watched Bill Maher, which is depressing because political comment seems to have no effect, the Republican party has rallied around Trump, fearful of being primaried, and then I went out for a hike, just shy of midnight, it was cloudy, yet bright, because there’s a full moon, and it’s cooling down, a SoCal November, which means it’s hovering around 60, and then I walked in the door and took out my contacts, which for some reason were foggy, and on Spotify I heard…

“Hey, Western Union Man.”

I’m shuffling all my tracks, it’s pretty fascinating. And the last time I wrote about this was when I discovered the original by Jerry Butler on XM, but the version that hooked me was on Al Kooper’s initial solo LP, “I Stand Alone.”

Al not only played the organ on “Like A Rolling Stone,” he formed Blood, Sweat & Tears, and got kicked out of his own band, which then went on to monster success with his formula, but the irony is no one ever plays that album anymore, fans just spin the original, “Child Is Father To The Man,” which is spectacular, and it’s this formula that’s employed on “I Stand Alone.”

The flourish on the Butler original is strings, but on Kooper’s take of “Hey, Western Union Man,” it’s horns, the track starts with a flourish right out of Philadelphia, kinda like “Rubberband Man,” BUT THAT CAME AFTER!

It’s like you’re at a castle, but the king is hip, the trumpeteers are part of an ensemble, they’re wearing uniforms, but not military, they’re infected by the sound, they’re not standing still, they’re swaying with the music, you can only stand at attention.

Oh, Western Union Man
Send a telegram

That’s right, now it’s just for moneygrams, but it used to be the quickest way to send a message, the e-mail of its day.

This is what I want you to do
I want you to tell her that I’m all alone

The scourge of humanity, it’ll keep you in a bad relationship, it’ll have you hanging with boring people, because staring at the four walls can drive you to suicide.

And if a telegram don’t do
Send a box of candy too
And maybe some flowers
Tell her that I missed her for hours and hours

That’s lyric writing. The twists and turns, the image, the compactness.

And, as Lou Reed said politically incorrectly back in ’72, the colored girls sing…

SEND A TELEGRAM
SEND A TELEGRAM

They don’t make ’em like this anymore, this sound isn’t even replicated, a sound you’d hear in nightclubs, with big bands, Steely Dan goes out with a horn section, but no one else wants to pay, but the horns put the whole thing over the top.

And after the flourish of the chorus, with everybody wailing, the whole thing breaks down, just a bass, and Al testifying, right in the middle of the number, and then…

Listen to me…

Tell me have you got a boy you can send
This is what I want him to do
Put him on his bike right away
And see if he can get my message through
Date it tomorrow
But mail it today
I want the girl to know that I miss her
Something like yesterday

Nobody even knows about mail anymore, the Post Office is for junk and Amazon on Sunday, but you used to live for what came in the box.

And the hook is that chorus…all about sending a telegram, and just when you’re wishing for it, that horn flourish comes back and there’s literally a telegraph beeping in the track, literally everything, including the kitchen sink, has been included, all you can do is jump up and jive, thrusting your arms in the air, willing her to come back.

That’s the power of music, it’s why women are drawn to musicians, how do they come up with this, how do they lay this sound down, a sound that has yet to come back.

Greta Van Fleet is bringing back rock, but no one seems to be bringing back the big dance bands, all we’re left with is records, deejays, and it’s just not the same.

Do you hear what I say?

I bought Al Kooper’s solo LP because I loved Blood, Sweat & Tears that much. I was a white boy in the suburbs, in an era of experimentation after the British Invasion had started to fade, but the truth is there were people older than me who’d experienced history and knew the greatness of these soul tracks.

Like “Hey, Western Union Man.”

Hey, Western Union Man – Spotify

Hey, Western Union Man – Youtube