Music Friday: Whither the live album?

I'm not 100% sure, but I believe the first long playing record album I bought with my own money was "Wings Over America" by, you guessed it, Wings.

[Brief explanatory note: Wings was a band fronted by kindly grandfather Paul McCartney, who you may know as Stella McCartney's dad.  He was also in a band before Wings called "The Beatles."]

This was before the Vinyl Renaissance, when it was just vinyl and that was the only way you could buy music.  WOA was an impressively heavy gatefold TRIPLE album with, IIRC, a poster and some stickers inside, along with the record.  It's actually a really good album!



Back then - and by "then" I mean the late 70's, early 80's, live albums were really A Thing.  I think everyone I knew had a copy of either "Alive" or "Alive II" by Kiss.  Neil Young's "Live Rust" isn't just a great live album, it's a great album album.  "Cheap Trick at Budokan" was playing all the time everywhere.  James Brown's "Live at the Apollo" is a legend.  It's a Pitchfork 10! And of course, every kid's older sister had Frampton Comes Alive, or at least the poster.

And today?  Crickets.  You just don't see live albums that much any more!  There was a spate of MTV Unplugged discs that were pretty good (Jay-Z's "Unplugged") to certifiably classic (Nirvana's), but the era of the live album is essentially over.  Once in a while something big drops - like maybe LCD Soundsystem's "The Long Goodbye," in 2014 - but they're no longer the ubiquitous cultural omnithings they used to be.

I found this List of Live Albums Recorded in the 2010s.  Make my Metamucil a double, bartender, the dance floor at the assisted care isn't going to pack itself! A sample:

HOLY SHIT REO SPEEDWAGON STILL FUCKING EXISTS.  They were Classic Rock when I was mowing lawns for snack bar money.  Slash pressed "record" at two different gigs and I guess enough people bought the first one to inspire a second.  Status Quo, who I thought broke up in 1975, is apparerently still giving the fans what they want and what they want is MORE LIVE ALBUMS.

Bruce Springsteen I understand.  Why the world needed a The Prodigy live album I don't.

So what happened?  Part of it, I'm sure, is that music is so fractured now that no single album is big enough to be a Huge Thing like Frampton Comes Alive anymore (with certain exceptions like Tay and Adele).  I read somewhere once that in today's market, you only have to sell like 4,000 records in a week to crack the Billboard Top 100.  (Incidentally, the biggest selling and therefore best album of the 2000s is The Marshall Mathers LP. Oh well.)

Also, when you can go on the YouTube and essentially watch a Video Live Album for free anytime, why bother just listening?  Visuals, that's what we want.  So live albums, dead.

DID I GET TICKETS TO FYF FEST YET: No, but they fell from $200 on StubHub to $180, so the dream is not yet dead.

The One-Stop Pokemon Go Thinkpiece

Jenna Ashworth hadn’t been out of her house for over 13 years.  Then, last Sunday, something amazing happened.  “I downloaded Pokemon Go,” she says, “and it just happened.  I was outside before I knew it.  I know this sounds crazy, but Charmander cured my agoraphobia.”

But Pokemon Go could be even more meaningful than that.  Pokemon Go is actually a sign of the demise of late-stage capitalism.  Freed from the vertically integrated model that delivers products from manufacturers to customers, bleeding edge companies will no doubt use PG-type technology to connect directly with perfectly targeted consumers.  Why keep a warehouse full of stuff nobody wants when you can deliver exactly one thing to one person who wants it?

Besides that, Pokemon Go is a dramatic symbol of our classist society.  The “haves” – freed by wealth and status from having to work regular hours at a menial job – are free to roam the landscapes that we all share, collecting choice Pokemons while the rest of us must make do in the little time we have.  The rich will loot the Pokeballs from the nearest Pokestop just like they looted the Capitalgainsballs from the Treasurystop.

One silver lining, though: Pokemon Go will end racism. 

That is, unless Pokemon Go fails to listen to its players, who long for a better way to connect.  Millennials are lonely and adrift and long for meaningful interaction.  No, Millennials are fine and just want to be left alone.  They want to catch a Pokemon – and then catch up with their friends on Snapchat.  No, Whatsapp.  No, they’re building and using telegraph machines.  No, they have retreated to caves and eat bison now. 

Pokemon Go will finally spell the end for laptops.

Pokemon Go’s first victim will be Marissa Mayer.

Pokemon Go means that the Trump campaign is dead in the water.  

Is Pokemon Go the new Zika?

Music Friday is off today

Music Friday will be back next Friday.

Music Friday: AMERICA

Sorry MF is late, I had a work thing to do.  It's still Friday and you have a whole extra day to read it anyway.

Speaking of patriotism and tradition, I'm glad to see the New York Daily News getting on board with FINALLY stopping the singing of "God Bless America" at baseball games.

But it wasn’t long before heartache became headache. The Yankees still play it at every game, but most teams, like my beloved Mets, play “God Bless America” only on Sundays or holidays. But even that’s too much.

Part of my outrage stems from ponderous Mussolini-esque introduction of the song, when fans are asked to rise, remove their caps and place them over their hearts.

Reality check, friends: “God Bless America” is not the National Anthem. The only songs Americans should stand for are “The Star Spangled Banner” and “Here Comes the Bride.”

PREACH.  I've been a GBA truther for a long time now.  9/11 was 15 years ago, for Christ's sake. Give it a rest.

Not that there aren't a host of excellent America songs to pick from!  No 4th of July party is complete without Kim Wilde.




Oh that reminds me, here's a great interview with Kathy Valentine of the Go-Go's about the song "Vacation."  This has nothing to do with July 4th or America except in the sense that Kathy Valentine is an American but for some reason "Kids in America" always reminds me of the Go-Go's so you can see my train of thought here.  Anyway.

Then there's your dad's America song:




Or maybe your grandad's. "Comments disabled until after the election." GREAT JOB, GARBAGE PEOPLE.

There are lots of others.  If you're making a killer playlist for your cookout, you can find some here and here.  Those lists are boring and predictable, though.  Esquire has a better version here, with stuff like Kendrick's "Alright" and Father John Misty's "Bored in the U.S.A."

Did you watch Aziz Ansari's very very very funny show "Master of None"?  If you didn't, you should watch it right away.  Apart from being funny, it also had a killer soundtrack.  There's a Spotify playlist you can use if you have Spotify.  If you don't have Spotify, you probably feel smug because you're not ripping off artists.  Anyway, one plot point in one (or maybe two episodes) is a Father John Misty show and how hard it is to get tickets and how everyone wants to go to the Father John Misty show and I like FJM just fine but really?  It's not like a surprise Beyonce show at Mezzanine or something.  It's Father John Misty.  Calm down.

Somehow I'll find a way to wedge and Elliott Smith song into this feature every week.  This one for obvious reasons.



That's about it. Get your pets into Thundershirts and your sausages on the grill because IT'S JULY FOURTH MOTHERFUCKERS.  Be safe out there.

Lyft, Airbnb, and Unintended Consequences

Because I drive and live in San Francisco, I come face to face with Lyft and Airbnb every single day of my life.  Lyft (and Uber, too) because their ubiquitous cars are constantly stopping in the middle of the street and blocking traffic and turning without signaling and generally driving like they don't give a shit about anyone else.  Airbnb because the sight of a bunch of Europeans with wheeled suitcases and track jackets going into what appears to be private homes instead of hotels is now commonplace.  And there's a full-time Airbnb hotel on my block, as I've mentioned.

It occurs to me that both of these companies have similar origin stories and similar trajectories from high-minded idealism into rank Monolpoly-man-style capitalism.  According to its origin myth (recounted at some length in this excellent TechCrunch piece "Lyft-Off: Zimride’s Long Road To Overnight Success," Lyft (then Zimride) began as a way, basically, to coordinate carpools.

If the Santa Barbara MTD gave Logan reason to question the future of transportation, it was a trip to Africa after graduation with his friend Matt Van Horn that gave him hope: Locals in Zimbabwe used carpooling to get around more efficiently.

“The streets were quiet because nobody was driving, and the government was too busy ruining the country to think about providing services like public transportation,” Logan says. So instead, people piled into shared minivans as a way to get around.

“There was this crowdsourced transportation network where anyone could be a driver and they could set their own routes,” he tells me. It impressed Logan that a country like Zimbabwe, which he says “had close to zero resources,” in many ways had a better transportation network than an affluent city like Santa Barbara. When he returned from his trip, he set out to change that.

Great stuff.  Who could be against a service that puts people going the same direction into the same car, reducing the number of single occupancy cars on the road?

Fast forward to today.  The current business model of Lyft, at least in San Francisco, appears to be: Dump as many untrained drivers, unfamiliar with San Francisco[*], onto city streets as possible, and encourage them to pick up and drop off as many people as possible.  It's gone from Casual Carpooling to a Vast Unlicensed Unregulated Off the Books Taxi Service.

[*] I say this because in my limited experience taking Lyft rides, I have yet to meet a single driver who lived in the city.  Many - if not most - had only a vague idea or none at all about where my destination was.

Airbnb has a similar story.  In the begining it was just a couple of guys renting out air mattresses on their floor for $80 so they could afford their rent.  Aw, that's sweet!  Now it's a global behemoth that pushes city governments around and encourages people to evict their tenants to operate off-the-books full-time hotels.  (Not everyone, of course.  There are still people who occasionally rent out a spare bedroom to help pay the bills.  To those people, Godspeed and have fun.  That's not who I'm talking about.)

What does it all mean?  I guess that people want to make money, and if your beautiful idea to improve humanity doesn't make money, either (1) it will stop being a thing, unless it's a charity, and no one thinks transporting drunk millennials around town is charitable, or (2) someone will monetize the fuck out of it.

Who cares?  We'll be under water or living in a Mad Max style dystopia in 30 years anyway.  Release the hounds.

This conversation I had kinda bummed me out

I had to take our car into the shop last week and I had a conversation with the owner I've been thinking about ever since.  Because cars are mysterious and temperamental creatures, I had to take it to a different place than we usually go to.  Anyway, the owner - super nice guy BTW - was taking my info and when I told him my address he said "Oh, I grew up like two blocks from there."

"No kidding," I said.  "Where do you live now?"

"Over by Lake Merced," he said.  Then he said the interesting slash depressing thing I've been thinking about ever since.

"But we're looking to move," he said.  "This city's getting crazy."  I nodded like I knew what he meant, although he could have meant any number of things.  Then he said, "Amd we've got a kid now and we can't send him to San Francisco schools."

I didn't really ask for clarification because, hey, he's a guy working on my car and we're not here to debate the merits of San Francisco schools but MAN IS THAT DEPRESSING.  I have a kid who's going to be going to school in a couple of years and it never occurred to me to just dismiss SF public schools out of hand like that.  I mean, we fully intend to do the whole lottery thing and whatever and see what happens.  (I assume he meant "San Francisco public schools" when he said "San Francisco schools" but who knows, maybe he just can't conceive of his kid attending any school in the city limits in which case never mind.)

It occurs to me that this attitude might be more prevalent among SF natives like this guy than with people who have moved here in the last, say, 26 years like me?  From what I understand, SF public schools used to be worse and have been improving greatly over the past few years, so maybe that's it?

This picture has nothing to do with this story except it's a cool picture of San Francisco. From some astronaut's Twitter, I think. 

The second depressing aspect of this brief exchange - and yes, I can manage to extract two depressing points out of a 20-second conversation - is that this is the kind of guy San Francisco desperately needs and can no longer keep.  A regular, middle-class guy who runs a local business and is raising a family in the city and isn't trying to commodify parking spaces or figure out yet another way to get food from a restaurant to your door.  I feel like we're losing the Normal Guy demographic and that's a vital part of this city or any city.

(Again, I'm making some assumptions here based on the fact that it's a guy who owns an auto repair shop and lives out by Lake Merced.  Maybe he's actually a billionaire who created Repair.io the auto repair app but I didn't get that vibe.)

That's about it.

Music Friday: Work

This seems apropos today:

Baby Britain feels the best
Floating over a sea of vodka
Separated from the rest
Fights problems with bigger problems

Did Elliott Smith predict Brexit? PROBABLY!  There's no way he could have predicted Music Friday, though, because nobody could have predicted Music Friday.

You know how people who are older than the target demo for whatever kind of music is most poplular always say "Bahhhh all those songs sound exactly the same"?  Do they say that?  They say something like that.  I was taking one of my occasional spins through the Top 20 and you know what?  THIS TIME THEY'RE RIGHT.  In fact, two of the Top 20 songs in the US are almost exactly the same song.

Here's Rihanna's "Work," which has seeped into your consciousness one way or another even if you studiously avoid popular music:




And here's "Work From Home" by Fifth Harmony, a video that makes softcore porn look like The Godfather:


What the fuck. I guess "Repeating the Word Work Between 4 and 28 Times" is the hot new genre.

The rest of the Top 20 is Drake songs and "Panda" by Desiigner or "Desiigner" by Panda, I'm not sure.  As far as I can tell, there isn't a song that could reasonably be called "rock music" in the Top 20, or maybe even the Top 50 or Top 100.  In fact, the first rock song might be "The Sound of Silence" by Disturbed at #66 which, amazingly enough, is really and truly a cover of the Simon & Garfunkel song.  I was all set to write that it "disappointingly is not a cover of the Simon & Garfunkel song" and then I went to watch the video and now I can't stop laughing.  Here is a picture of a man singing "Sound of Silence":

That was fun, Disturbed!  Do "Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard" next PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE!!!!! Then cover "Work Work Work Work Work."

In summation, the Billboard Top 100 is not really for me.

We should all collabo on a Worst Covers of All Time list.  I'll get you started:



Sorry!  I'm sorry.  I had to do that.  I want you to hurt like I hurt.

TELL ME WHAT IS THE WORST COVER YOU HAVE EVER HEARD.