You can’t drive anywhere anymore.<\/p>\n
I’m old enough to remember when you could go to the Valley on a WHIM!\u00c2\u00a0 When
there was no traffic on the weekend WHATSOEVER!\u00c2\u00a0 But now it’s gridlock all day
in L.A.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, you can get lucky in the neighborhood of noon.\u00c2\u00a0 Make it from the
Cahuenga Pass to Brentwood in half an hour.\u00c2\u00a0 Then, of course, you hit the
405\/10 interchange, which now backs up to before Sunset, a good FIVE MILES from
the cloverleaf.<\/p>\n
It’s utterly amazing.\u00c2\u00a0 You wait till traffic ends to go to Silver Lake, you
wait for all the commuters to make it home, but you pull onto the freeway at
8:30 and it’s wall to wall cars.<\/p>\n
Surface streets?\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, not a bad alternative.\u00c2\u00a0 But what if you’re going to
BURBANK?\u00c2\u00a0 And when I first moved to Santa Monica there were no jams west of the
405.\u00c2\u00a0 But, the city planners, on the take somehow, have enticed every
entertainment corporation in creation to establish an outpost on Olympic and now
you breathe a sigh of relief when you cross into West L.A.\u00c2\u00a0 It can take me half an
hour to make it to the 405.\u00c2\u00a0 And that IS taking all surface streets.\u00c2\u00a0 Going a
grand total of…three miles.<\/p>\n
So, that’s my rationalization for my alternative lifestyle.<\/p>\n
I won’t go to the grocery store during the daytime.\u00c2\u00a0 Not one of those mega
Ralphs\/Vons jobs anyway.\u00c2\u00a0 I won’t buy gas.\u00c2\u00a0 I stay home.\u00c2\u00a0 A lunch date?\u00c2\u00a0 That’s
three hours out of my day.\u00c2\u00a0 At least half of it travel time.<\/p>\n
But, the one good thing about L.A. is all the grocery stores, the drugstores,
they’re open 24\/7.\u00c2\u00a0 And, as long as you don’t hit it wrong, when there’s a
line of twenty people waiting for one cashier, you can breeze right through.\u00c2\u00a0
After midnight it’s just you and the stockpeople.\u00c2\u00a0 With the stereo turned way up
high.\u00c2\u00a0 Nobody blocking your way.\u00c2\u00a0 You park right by the front door, waltz in,
it’s like it used to be…back in the FIFTIES!<\/p>\n
Which is how I found myself at Rite-Aid last night just shy of the witching
hour.\u00c2\u00a0 I pulled my machine right up to the meter on Wilshire, I had my pick of
spots, none requiring any change for space rental, lifted the parking brake
and then…couldn’t leave the car.<\/p>\n
Living in a fantasy Give a little bit of heart and soul When Richard Branson finally decided to go for broke in the U.S., when he Oh, it was a different era.\u00c2\u00a0 When we were glued to MTV.\u00c2\u00a0 And saw this little Oh, there’s magic in "Heart And Soul".\u00c2\u00a0 It’s not just the vocal.\u00c2\u00a0 The intro Yup, that’s her name.\u00c2\u00a0 You remember her.\u00c2\u00a0 She just wasn’t good-looking I’ve got "Heart And Soul" in my iTunes library.\u00c2\u00a0 I had to download it.\u00c2\u00a0 But I Yup, Jack.\u00c2\u00a0 You see I don’t have satellite installed in my new car yet.<\/p>\n At first you think terrestrial’s not really that bad.\u00c2\u00a0 But, suddenly you And KROQ.\u00c2\u00a0 It doesn’t resemble what it built its reputation on, conceptually Oh, the announcer is obnoxious.\u00c2\u00a0 And the format’s bad for ratings.\u00c2\u00a0 Because This was SECOND-RATE Duran Duran.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s not "Girls On Film".\u00c2\u00a0 Not up to the And then, as I turned into the alley, the one that leads to my garage, I Some tracks just have this groove.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, maybe it’s only two.\u00c2\u00a0 "Rubber Band I bought the album because the track was a monster in the U.K., I found a Well, it wasn’t a hit here.\u00c2\u00a0 At least I never heard it on the stations I Then again, Hot Chocolate is kind of like 10cc.\u00c2\u00a0 Stuff that SOUNDS "Every 1’s A Winner" is like "Heart And Soul".\u00c2\u00a0 The intro hooks you.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s And it was during this listening experience, grooving in my car, and you Jack’s creator realized something simple.\u00c2\u00a0 People want MORE MUSIC!\u00c2\u00a0 They want I love AC\/DC and Joni Mitchell.\u00c2\u00a0 Peter Gabriel and Stevie Wonder.\u00c2\u00a0 My taste That’s what XM and Sirius are missing.\u00c2\u00a0 A Jack station.\u00c2\u00a0 A mixed up I thought that Jack would run out of tracks by this point.\u00c2\u00a0 But they’re just Top Forty.\u00c2\u00a0 The Top Forty of the sixties.\u00c2\u00a0 It turned us on to so much stuff It’s about challenging preconceptions.\u00c2\u00a0 Breaking rules.<\/p>\n And on satellite, you can do this.\u00c2\u00a0 Because you don’t need to keep people <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" You can’t drive anywhere anymore. I’m old enough to remember when you could go to the Valley on a WHIM!\u00c2\u00a0 When there was no traffic on the weekend WHATSOEVER!\u00c2\u00a0 But now it’s gridlock all day in L.A.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, you can get lucky in the neighborhood of noon.\u00c2\u00a0 Make it from the Cahuenga Pass to Brentwood […]<\/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":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-91","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-business"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-1t","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91","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=91"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
There’s never any room to breathe
Hoping every waking hour
You’ll turn around and say that we can start
Oh won’t you even try to<\/p>\n
Give a little bit of love to grow
Give a little bit of heart and soul
And don’t you make me beg for more
Give a sign, I need to know
A little bit of heart and soul<\/em><\/p>\n
decided to start his own standalone outpost rather than license his wares, he had
no homegrown product.\u00c2\u00a0 There were no American records in the pipeline.\u00c2\u00a0 So,
the new team worked the English records.\u00c2\u00a0 Hard.\u00c2\u00a0 Stuff like Cutting Crew.\u00c2\u00a0 And
T’Pau.<\/p>\n
red-haired girl who BELTED!\u00c2\u00a0 From the bottom of her heart.\u00c2\u00a0 Like she MEANT IT!<\/p>\n
CAPTIVATES YOU!\u00c2\u00a0 The whole song is subtle, understated, until Carol Decker GOES
FOR IT!<\/p>\n
ENOUGH, which is why she did it for you.\u00c2\u00a0 They think we want perfection
but we want someone we can IDENTIFY WITH, CONNECT WITH!<\/p>\n
haven’t heard it on the radio in eons.\u00c2\u00a0 But here it was.\u00c2\u00a0 On Jack.<\/p>\n
realize that KLOS is playing the same songs they’ve been spinning for TWENTY
YEARS!\u00c2\u00a0 There’s no depth.\u00c2\u00a0 Just all surface, all the time.<\/p>\n
edgy, even scatological stuff.\u00c2\u00a0 Now it’s almost all hard rock.\u00c2\u00a0 Is this REALLY
what people want?\u00c2\u00a0 And the housewife station, 98.7, that’s got about one good
track in seven.\u00c2\u00a0 You almost can’t listen.\u00c2\u00a0 But Jack…<\/p>\n
you don’t stay on the station, you just check in.\u00c2\u00a0 But, as the months have
unfolded, they’re going deeper and deeper.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m hearing tracks I haven’t heard in
eons.\u00c2\u00a0 Like Duran Duran’s "A View To A Kill".<\/p>\n
standard of "Rio".\u00c2\u00a0 But, years later, it’s astounding how good it sounds.\u00c2\u00a0
Simon’s vocal is so sweet.\u00c2\u00a0 PERFECT driving music.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m cruising trying to
remember the year, the girlfriend, the James Bond flick it accompanied.<\/p>\n
heard one of those tracks that reminds you of a movie…the movie of YOUR LIFE!<\/p>\n
Man" and this, Hot Chocolate’s "Every 1’s A Winner".<\/p>\n
promo.\u00c2\u00a0 I played that vinyl over and over, never the rest of the album, just the
hit.<\/p>\n
listened to.\u00c2\u00a0 (My book says it went Top Ten, but in 1979 no one listened to Top
Forty, which was still on AM!)<\/p>\n
mainstream, SOUNDS commercial, but is done that way intentionally, as a JOKE!\u00c2\u00a0
Hell, most people think "The Things We Do For Love" is a sappy, earnest love song.\u00c2\u00a0
Of the type that AIR SUPPLY would write.\u00c2\u00a0 They don’t know that 10cc did it as an
exercise, to crack their audience up, to nail the commercial format.<\/p>\n
all spacy.\u00c2\u00a0 And then there’s this guitar that sounds like a clavinet.\u00c2\u00a0 And a
synth.\u00c2\u00a0 And when Erroll Brown starts to sing, you crack up, he’s almost affected,
PARODYING the way Philadelphia soul singers emote.\u00c2\u00a0 And, the lyrics are so
new agey, so Me Decade, so ridiculous, that if you’re in on the joke, you smile,
you LAUGH!\u00c2\u00a0 It’s like Hot Chocolate tried to create the perfect soul\/disco
track…and SUCCEEDED!<\/p>\n
can’t help yourself, that I realized Jack was on to something.<\/p>\n
the dreaded V word, which all stations promise and none deliver…VARIETY!<\/p>\n
isn’t like that of a modern radio station, I like MANY KINDS of music.\u00c2\u00a0 And I
like to HEAR IT!<\/p>\n
cornucopia that makes you feel like you’re living in the mainstream, not the
hinterlands.\u00c2\u00a0 With some killer NEW tracks spliced in.<\/p>\n
broadening the playlist.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, they don’t have years worth of music.\u00c2\u00a0 They’ll
never go into album cuts, it’s contrary to the paradigm.\u00c2\u00a0 But, a hip station
could do this.\u00c2\u00a0 Insert stuff like Robbie Robertson’s "Broken Arrow".<\/p>\n
we’d never have partaken of.\u00c2\u00a0 Given the option, we would have dialed in an all
British Invasion outlet.\u00c2\u00a0 And stayed there.\u00c2\u00a0 Instead, we were exposed to
Motown.\u00c2\u00a0 Is a rap fan gonna learn to love some English art band today?<\/p>\n
tuned in to one channel.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s OKAY if they bounce around.\u00c2\u00a0 Because they’re
already SUBSCRIBERS, you’ve GOT their money.\u00c2\u00a0 Still, an innovative mainstream
channel.\u00c2\u00a0 One with just…hit tracks.\u00c2\u00a0 I’d listen to that. <\/p>\n