{"id":201,"date":"2005-10-25T18:31:06","date_gmt":"2005-10-26T01:31:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/archives\/2005\/10\/25\/this-weeks-podcast-3\/"},"modified":"2005-10-25T18:35:41","modified_gmt":"2005-10-26T01:35:41","slug":"this-weeks-podcast-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/2005\/10\/25\/this-weeks-podcast-3\/","title":{"rendered":"This Week’s Podcast"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nobody on the road
Nobody on the beach
I feel it in the air
The summer’s out of reach<\/em><\/p>\n

The Beach Boys brought me to Southern California.<\/p>\n

It wasn’t only the hits, I loved the album tracks too.\u00c2\u00a0 Everything from "Farmer’s Daughter" off "Surfin’ USA" to "Girl Don’t Tell Me" from "Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!)".<\/p>\n

In the sixties, California was a state of mind.\u00c2\u00a0 A land of opportunity.\u00c2\u00a0 Where the old conventions were irrelevant, where you could be your best self.\u00c2\u00a0 Where hedonism was not a bad word.<\/p>\n

One loses sight of that paradigm residing in L.A.\u00c2\u00a0 Where the traffic is so bad you just give up and stay home.\u00c2\u00a0 Where, in front of the computer, you might as well be in Aspen.\u00c2\u00a0 Or Oklahoma.<\/p>\n

But get out of your comfort zone.\u00c2\u00a0 Drive an hour south or north, and the dream reappears.<\/p>\n

It starts on Crown Valley Parkway.\u00c2\u00a0 With the luscious greenery and the lack of strip malls.\u00c2\u00a0 And ends up on this promontory above the ocean known as the Ritz Carlton.<\/p>\n

You’re just in another hotel room.\u00c2\u00a0 Until you wake up and open the door to your patio.\u00c2\u00a0 Where in the late fall you’re not confronted with a brisk wind but the warm rays of hope.\u00c2\u00a0 The breeze cool against your cheek, but no outerwear being required.<\/p>\n

And then you journey through the maze of halls to the elevator bank.\u00c2\u00a0 And there you see it.\u00c2\u00a0 Outside the window.\u00c2\u00a0 The Pacific.\u00c2\u00a0 Approximately one hundred feet below it’s the same as it ever was.\u00c2\u00a0 On this weekday, in the twenty first century, in an era rife with wireless laptops and cell phones, are thirty surfers.\u00c2\u00a0 In wetsuits.\u00c2\u00a0 Getting off on nature’s thrill ride.<\/p>\n

The waves are coming at a diagonal.\u00c2\u00a0 But they’re spaced evenly, there’s no chop, you wonder if the concierge can get you a wetsuit.<\/p>\n

And then you look off to the side and see an American Riviera.\u00c2\u00a0 No industry in sight.\u00c2\u00a0 You don’t quite consider it paradise, but you hope that everybody in the rest of the country doesn’t catch a glimpse, for then they’re going to load up their cars and MOVE HERE!\u00c2\u00a0 Just like me.\u00c2\u00a0 To the Hotel California.<\/p>\n

Yes, the sunniness of the sixties was replaced by the darkness of the seventies.\u00c2\u00a0 Emblemized by the Eagles’ 1976 album.\u00c2\u00a0 Back when music came on black discs.\u00c2\u00a0 When we bought them on faith, without hearing them on the radio first.\u00c2\u00a0 I was a fan before, but that record catapulted the act to a new level.\u00c2\u00a0 Above everybody else trying.\u00c2\u00a0 They’d gotten there.\u00c2\u00a0 To the destination.\u00c2\u00a0 The intersection of talent, hard work and luck.\u00c2\u00a0 In the crucible of the recording studio they created greatness.\u00c2\u00a0 Not evanescent genius, just listen to the record today.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s about as dated as a Beatle record, which means not much at all.<\/p>\n

Last summer I went to see the Eagles at the Santa Barbara County Bowl.\u00c2\u00a0 The northern equivalent of Laguna Niguel.\u00c2\u00a0 It was a transcendent experience.\u00c2\u00a0 I wrote about it, and I recorded a podcast.<\/p>\n

That podcast was the second I’d done.\u00c2\u00a0 I was experimenting.\u00c2\u00a0 I used little music.\u00c2\u00a0 In retrospect that was a mistake.\u00c2\u00a0 You know all the tunes but when you HEAR the tracks you’re transported.\u00c2\u00a0 To a place where your life works, where everything is possible.<\/p>\n

Put on your leather jacket.\u00c2\u00a0 Go downtown to hang out at CBGB’s.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m a Lou Reed fan.\u00c2\u00a0 I love "Ocean" off his solo debut.\u00c2\u00a0 But that east coast music tends to be intellectual.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m looking for something more sensual.\u00c2\u00a0 As much as I love to converse, there’s nothing that compares to another person’s touch.\u00c2\u00a0 It electrifies you.<\/p>\n

Listening to "The Boys Of Summer" electrifies me.\u00c2\u00a0 Reminds me why I came to California.\u00c2\u00a0 The girl I lived with when it debuted.\u00c2\u00a0 My hopes and dreams.\u00c2\u00a0 My losses.<\/p>\n

Deep inside I’m an optimistic guy.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m a believer.\u00c2\u00a0 What keeps me going through my dark moments is music.\u00c2\u00a0 Stuff like this:<\/p>\n

I can see you
Your brown skin shining in the sun
You know you’re walking real slow
Smiling at everyone<\/em><\/p>\n

My goal is to be the person in this song.\u00c2\u00a0 At peace with himself.\u00c2\u00a0 Radiating openness and warmth.\u00c2\u00a0 Walking in the sand, sans automobile, sans designer clothing, just me.<\/p>\n

That’s what the beach is, a great equalizer.<\/p>\n

Southern California is beach culture.\u00c2\u00a0 Throw off your inhibitions, be the person you always wanted to be.\u00c2\u00a0 I think of leaving.\u00c2\u00a0 But I never will.\u00c2\u00a0 The weather’s great, but it’s the freedom that counts.\u00c2\u00a0 The ability to be the real me, to attempt to be the better me.<\/p>\n

\n

You can listen or download the podcast from Rhino’s site<\/a><\/p>\n

Or you can subscribe in the iTunes Music Store.\u00c2\u00a0 Just search for Rhino, click on "Podcasts" and it will come up.<\/p>\n

OR, click on the link below, and if you’ve got a podcast-ready version of iTunes installed on your computer the program will launch and you can subscribe on the page that results (hang on a second for the process to complete).<\/p>\n

Apple<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nobody on the roadNobody on the beachI feel it in the airThe summer’s out of reach The Beach Boys brought me to Southern California. It wasn’t only the hits, I loved the album tracks too.\u00c2\u00a0 Everything from "Farmer’s Daughter" off "Surfin’ USA" to "Girl Don’t Tell Me" from "Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!)". In the […]<\/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":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-music"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-3f","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201","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=201"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}