I want to turn you on to a great track.<\/p>\n
I got an e-mail.\u00c2\u00a0 About Sirius XM.\u00c2\u00a0 The listener wanted the company to understand, we didn’t want to tear the service down, we wanted it to be BETTER!\u00c2\u00a0 We wanted to go back to those XM days when we couldn’t leave the car, when we had to sit in the dark and not only finish hearing what was pouring out of the stereo, but what came next.<\/p>\n
I had one of those experiences Saturday night.<\/p>\n
What Mel Karmazin doesn’t understand is music sells satellite radio.\u00c2\u00a0 There’s nothing that can compete on the terrestrial bands, nothing without commercials.\u00c2\u00a0 Instead, the company takes full page ads trumpeting their talk stations.\u00c2\u00a0 Huh?\u00c2\u00a0 Like someone is going to wake up today and become a Howard Stern fan?\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, most of his audience didn’t even migrate to Sirius.\u00c2\u00a0 As for Oprah and Martha Stewart…did I miss something, do they have reps for being great radio broadcasters, are they even on their stations?<\/p>\n
No, the linchpin is music.\u00c2\u00a0 Theatre of the mind.\u00c2\u00a0 Creating stations that are not just compilations of the top forty tracks in the genres, but listening posts, bars, clubs where fans want to hang out.<\/p>\n
That’s the rage online.\u00c2\u00a0 The club.\u00c2\u00a0 And clubs in real life are all about the vibe, talk to a creator, they finesse the smallest details, the physical space has got to be exactly right.\u00c2\u00a0 So, how can Sirius XM fuck up the number one mindspace so bad?<\/p>\n
I don’t know.<\/p>\n
But some of the old XM stations remain.\u00c2\u00a0 Like the Loft.<\/p>\n
Just before midnight, I was cruising Wilshire towards the freeway and I heard this lyric:<\/p>\n
Heaven knows I’m a pain<\/span> With the death of the mainstream, it’s not about blanding out your material to appeal to an ever-decreasing mass, but being yourself, letting your warts and creativity shine through, so the audience can hook onto you like velcro. Wow.\u00c2\u00a0 Honesty.<\/p>\n I’d love to have you hear this Julian Coryell track, but I can’t find anywhere to stream it online.<\/p>\n But then this song ended.\u00c2\u00a0 And what came next didn’t quite float my boat.\u00c2\u00a0 So I started pushing buttons.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s the theoretical magic of satellite radio, you can jump around and find a plethora of interesting stuff.\u00c2\u00a0 But what was playing on the other stations lacked the magic of "Asshole", and once on the 405, I eventually found myself back on the Loft.\u00c2\u00a0 Where I heard a track so good, I couldn’t believe I hadn’t heard it before.<\/p>\n That’s the power of radio.\u00c2\u00a0 What it used to be and could be once again.\u00c2\u00a0 The FILTER!\u00c2\u00a0 We want someone else to do the job, of combing through the crap, to find the gems.\u00c2\u00a0 We want people we can trust to do this job for us.<\/p>\n But we don’t trust anyone on the terrestrial band.\u00c2\u00a0 And the bloggers are so inside, laden with so much attitude, so many biases, that it’s hard to find someone online you can trust.\u00c2\u00a0 But I’m still checking in at the Loft, to see what I can find.<\/p>\n And I found a gem Saturday night.<\/p>\n The car is the ultimate listening room.\u00c2\u00a0 Just you alone, doing a job, but with enough brain space to concentrate on tunes.\u00c2\u00a0 You hear the right one, it energizes you, allows you to speed to your destination without frustration, it’s like you’ve got a passenger, riding shotgun.<\/p>\n "Rise Above It" is not new.\u00c2\u00a0 It came out in 2003.\u00c2\u00a0 But it’s new to ME!<\/p>\n Sure, I know that Afro Celt Sound System song with Peter Gabriel, "When You’re Falling", it’s great.\u00c2\u00a0 But I’d never heard "Rise Above It".<\/p>\n I came in in the middle, about five minutes in, when the fiddle starts to wail.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s like I opened up a door in the darkness and found a party, without a barker outside imploring me to come in, no one was selling, there were just people inside having the time of their lives!<\/p>\n In an era where too much music is an assault, where divas try to score on a scale, proving their range but shrieking us away, I just wanted to get closer to "Rise Above It", I didn’t want it to end, I couldn’t get out of the car until it was done.<\/p>\n There are actually two tracks, if you’re playing at home on Spotify, it’s easy.\u00c2\u00a0 "Rise" and "Rise Above It".\u00c2\u00a0 The former is the intro, just like those tracks bleed together and build to "Spiritual High (State Of Independence)" on Moodswings’ "Moodfood".<\/p>\n Yes, "Rise" is a three minute intro to "Rise Above It", an awakening.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s like you’re being tapped on the shoulder, it’s time to get out of bed.<\/p>\n And at the beginning of "Rise Above It", you’re walking around the house, into the kitchen, grinding up some coffee.<\/p>\n Then, the day begins.\u00c2\u00a0 You’re sitting at the table, ingesting your caffeine, reading the paper, you’re conscious, you’re awake.\u00c2\u00a0 And Mundy starts to sing.<\/p>\n Mundy sounds like Bono.\u00c2\u00a0 Can’t say the lyrics are extremely memorable, but I’d rather hear "Rise Above It" in a stadium than anything off U2’s new album.\u00c2\u00a0 Because "Rise Above It" makes you move, you just can’t help yourself!\u00c2\u00a0 And that’s the essence of stadium music.\u00c2\u00a0 You can’t really see, but you can feel!\u00c2\u00a0 And when the music gets inside you, when done right, you become inhabited, you can’t help moving, no matter how challenged you might usually be on the dance floor.<\/p>\n And the song is building.\u00c2\u00a0 Kind of like Kraftwerk’s "Autobahn", which has just been released in a remastered box, the magic is mindblowing.<\/p>\n But back to "Rise Above It".\u00c2\u00a0 They’re taking their time.\u00c2\u00a0 They don’t need to get to the chorus.\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, it takes three and a half minutes to build to the refrain.<\/p>\n And it’s after that that the song truly takes off.\u00c2\u00a0 When the fiddle comes in, when you’re at altitude, you’re soaring!<\/p>\n But don’t unbuckle your seat belt.\u00c2\u00a0 Because this is the Concorde.\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, you thought that plane was decommissioned, just like there was no good new music.\u00c2\u00a0 But hang in there, we’re going STRATOSPHERIC!<\/p>\n Yup, just beyond five minutes, they throw the lever and we’re in hyperspace!\u00c2\u00a0 An unknown land that feels so GOOD!<\/p>\n We need people to connect the dots.\u00c2\u00a0 We need places casual listeners, fans who like music but don’t want to dedicate hours a day searching online, can find great tunes.<\/p>\n Satellite radio could be the solution.<\/p>\n Maybe Sirius XM fails, but we’re going to go somewhere to find out what’s good.\u00c2\u00a0 A site.\u00c2\u00a0 With a trusted source.\u00c2\u00a0 A human being.\u00c2\u00a0 Who takes us on an aural journey.\u00c2\u00a0 No computer, no logarithm can tell me if I like AC\/DC and Joni Mitchell that I’ll love "Rise Above It".\u00c2\u00a0 But I love ALL THREE!<\/p>\n If you want to hear "Rise", which precedes "Rise Above It" on the album, google: "afro celt sound system rise".\u00c2\u00a0 Click the Lala button.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I want to turn you on to a great track. I got an e-mail.\u00c2\u00a0 About Sirius XM.\u00c2\u00a0 The listener wanted the company to understand, we didn’t want to tear the service down, we wanted it to be BETTER!\u00c2\u00a0 We wanted to go back to those XM days when we couldn’t leave the car, when we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","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":[7,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-radio","category-the-music"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-CX","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2415","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2415"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2415\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2416,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2415\/revisions\/2416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Heaven knows I’m an animal<\/span>
A criminal<\/span>
I’m gonna fuck it up once again<\/span>
I’m gonna kill another friendship<\/span>
Gonna knock it down<\/span>
Knock it down<\/span>
‘Cause I’m such an asshole<\/span><\/p>\n
But I’m still an asshole<\/span>
I just push<\/span>
I just push that girl away<\/span><\/p>\n\n