I kept thinking of the Kinks song…it took me ALL day and ALL of the night
to get here!<\/p>\n
Where it’s raining.\u00c2\u00a0 Manchester being Manchester!\u00c2\u00a0 The Seattle of the U.K!<\/p>\n
Fascinating flight to\u00c2\u00a0 Chicago.\u00c2\u00a0 The woman sitting next to me was a
Christian.\u00c2\u00a0 We read about this shit, but when you experience it it blows your mind.\u00c2\u00a0
She went to a religious college…you know, one with a name you’ve never HEARD
OF!\u00c2\u00a0 And she got married at 19, since you can’t have premarital sex.\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, you
can barely even touch.\u00c2\u00a0 But then she committed the cardinal sin.\u00c2\u00a0 She got
DIVORCED!\u00c2\u00a0 Now her parents will have nothing to do with her.\u00c2\u00a0 Yup, she’s 26, no
children, not only self-sufficient, but she paid for college herself, and now
she’s going straight to hell and they can’t be associated with her.\u00c2\u00a0 I heard
her story.\u00c2\u00a0 Her ex constantly put her down, did some creepy things, you’d get
divorced too.\u00c2\u00a0 But now she’s starting over sans emotional support.<\/p>\n
She moved to Chicago with her college roommate, whose family is on THE
AMAZING RACE!<\/p>\n
That was one of the things she asked me.\u00c2\u00a0 Did I watch "Survivor".\u00c2\u00a0 She sent
four audition tapes, but they haven’t selected her yet.\u00c2\u00a0 Now, her FRIEND,
following HER lead, is on television!\u00c2\u00a0 She’s PISSED!\u00c2\u00a0 I tried to explain to her the
cost of fame, but she didn’t get it.\u00c2\u00a0 She told me she had a thing for
Chandler Bing, she wanted her chance.<\/p>\n
But, she’s got a new love now.\u00c2\u00a0 And he’s slowly making her CDs for every day
of the week.\u00c2\u00a0 He got up to Thursday for her trip to California.\u00c2\u00a0 He’s got a
thing for Wilco, he’s even driven around Jeff Tweedy’s neighborhood trying to
catch a glimpse.\u00c2\u00a0 I asked her what was on the compilations, but she didn’t know,
because she’d lost the labels.\u00c2\u00a0 But she told me for this trip he’d burned
Joni Mitchell’s "California".\u00c2\u00a0 And the song by that name by Phantom Planet.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh,
she felt like she was living in the dark ages with her CD player, she was
afraid to show it in the waiting area, and she was embarrassed about her Justin
Timberlake CD, but she loved music.\u00c2\u00a0 Even though she was just getting into it
now.\u00c2\u00a0 All these years later.<\/p>\n
And sitting there, hearing her wax rhapsodic, I thought what a great world we
live in.\u00c2\u00a0 One wherein people can exchange their favorite tunes, turn their
friends on to stuff, CONNECT through music.\u00c2\u00a0 This is what the major labels want
to eviscerate.\u00c2\u00a0 They know what is happening not at all.\u00c2\u00a0 As the driver to the
hotel told me about the problems with a bad neighborhood on the outskirts of
Manchester, the horse has already left that barn.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s a new world.\u00c2\u00a0 To think
that you can kill trading and burning is laughable.\u00c2\u00a0 If only these companies
would EMBRACE technology.\u00c2\u00a0 See that if they licensed trading EVERYBODY would be
a music fan and revenues would SWELL!\u00c2\u00a0 But they’d rather live in the past.\u00c2\u00a0
Ruminating on the way it used to be.<\/p>\n
And on the plane from Chicago to the U.K. I read an article in the "Wall
Street Journal" about the price of digital photo printing.\u00c2\u00a0 You see the old wave
companies, like Fuji, they don’t want to be killed by HP and the other
companies purveying home photo printers.\u00c2\u00a0 So now you can buy a print for a dime.\u00c2\u00a0
If one or two rather than bulk, it might cost you up to fifteen cents.\u00c2\u00a0 And I
thought of the iTunes debacle.\u00c2\u00a0 With the labels wanting to raise the price.\u00c2\u00a0 They
just don’t get it.\u00c2\u00a0 You lower the price to sell MORE!\u00c2\u00a0 You don’t raise the
price to make more money on each transaction.\u00c2\u00a0 God, if tracks were a dime, who’d
download P2P!\u00c2\u00a0 Not that they should sell them by the track, that’s what I
don’t get about Edgar’s position.\u00c2\u00a0 If you’re selling ones and twos, you’re going
out of business.\u00c2\u00a0 You’ve got to sell a BUNCH at a time.\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, can you buy ONE
RAZOR BLADE AT A TIME??<\/p>\n
But now I’m back in the old world.\u00c2\u00a0 The TRULY old world, but with more modern
cars than you ever see in the States.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s an automobile wonderland.\u00c2\u00a0 Not
only are manufacturers like Renault and Peugeot represented in iterations that
are positively stylish, there are models of every household make you’ve never
seen.\u00c2\u00a0 BMWs and Mercedes with diesel engines of all sizes.\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, I got a ride
in a Mercedes VAN!\u00c2\u00a0 God, think of all the rich people in the U.S. that would
want to own one of THESE!\u00c2\u00a0 (Not the minivan just introduced, but something
closer to the VW Vanagon.)<\/p>\n
And I got a whole education on the social system of the U.K.<\/p>\n
You can live on the dole and make twenty to thirty thousand pounds a year.\u00c2\u00a0
Does the public bitch?\u00c2\u00a0 No.\u00c2\u00a0 Well, not according to my driver Jon anyway…<\/p>\n
And National Health Care.\u00c2\u00a0 There’s a patient’s bill of rights, you’ve got to
be seen in 48 hours, and sure, the rich have private hospitals, but at least
the poor are COVERED!<\/p>\n
And I still can’t completely understand the educational system.\u00c2\u00a0 With the
comprehensive schools and the grammar schools and the A levels and the O levels.\u00c2\u00a0
And, as a Californian , it’s hard to think of living somewhere where it’s
gray every day, but it is eye-opening, it is fascinating.<\/p>\n
So, Tony’s arriving at the hotel around 10:30, we’re going to go to the
library to kick off In The City by telling youngsters how it all works.\u00c2\u00a0 (Then
again, could they tell us!)\u00c2\u00a0 Tony’s a constantly entertaining whirling dervish, I
treasure my time with him, for the history of Manchester, the life philosophy
and the music philosophy.\u00c2\u00a0 Nobody this educated is working in the music
business in the U.S.\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, last year he took me to City Hall where there are giant
murals depicting Manchester’s history.\u00c2\u00a0 He took half an hour, maybe more, to
explain it all to me.\u00c2\u00a0 The advent of the industrial revolution to today.\u00c2\u00a0 God,
if only those kids being taught the Bible could be exposed to Tony Wilson.\u00c2\u00a0
Nahh, never happen.<\/p>\n
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I kept thinking of the Kinks song…it took me ALL day and ALL of the night to get here! Where it’s raining.\u00c2\u00a0 Manchester being Manchester!\u00c2\u00a0 The Seattle of the U.K! Fascinating flight to\u00c2\u00a0 Chicago.\u00c2\u00a0 The woman sitting next to me was a Christian.\u00c2\u00a0 We read about this shit, but when you experience it it blows […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-2M","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=172"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}