Been playing banjo off and on for a few years. I’ll never master it, but it’s fun trying to fool people I know something.
Anyway this song was inspired by Flatt & Scruggs and an old Outlaws song too.
Completely different, I know… but I’m trying to fit it all in!
Love-Jude 🙂
Black Mirror this year was meh. Three of the episodes were unwatchable. 3 were fair to mid. Netflix loves dystopic tales, then smears the notion of conspiracy theorists. Ah, the irony. I personally think it’s time they embrace some fresh new concepts, which can only come from conspiracies.
So I have a treatment if you will, for Netflix, for next season. It’s called:
“Someone Out There Wants You Gone”.
The chart above is LA’s weather forecast for the next 10 days.
In this new episode, and just like the previous 10 days or so, and the 10 before that, the sun keeps trying to shine, but every time it does the planes come out, spray and spray and spray until there’s 10 more days of stagnant, lifeless sky that turns cold, gray and drizzly.
Chance, a young girl of 13 is impervious to media’s cartoon-like reasoning for this madness and knows something is going on.
When she looks at the weather forecast online she doesn’t see a chart with icons of sun, clouds, etc. She sees airplane icons smattered across all the nice and sunny days.
It’s like a vision that speaks to only her. She knows what they’re doing.
Wanting to take action, she’s still a child. No military or government connections.
But she has a brave, dystopoic idea. Netflix loves brave girl dystopia… how could they resist?
Through her science studies she’s able to concoct a laser, right above the camera on a new state-of-the-art drone her parents bought for her 13th birthday, and mobilizes the camera to move at a 180º angle in all directions following the specs of a VR set she got for Christmas. Her parents are rich.
In her scientific brilliance she’s also able to scramble her flight frequency to undetectable levels. Yeah she’s really f’ing smart. She’s like Tom Cruise juggling bottles in ‘Cocktail’, only with brains.
Alone, Chance waits for the next beautiful day. Finally she spots a plane above, bellowing more filth upon the town. She closes her eyes and presses the 80’s style buttons on her drone remote, and fires the laser in hope, as it miraculously drills straight into the engine of the aircraft. A huge explosion erupts in mid-sky, and people everywhere look up in horror, believing it’s a freak accident. Of course there’s no one actually in the planes. These are military remote operated vessels being operated from a land base somewhere in Langley, Virginia.
Suddenly another plane is struck, and another. The Pentagon is called in. “Someone is taking out our planes!” they cry. “Immediate action is paramount and must be taken now!”.
Trucks, tanks and armor move in on the town with dramatic, ominous music. They have no idea what’s causing the disasters.
They plot a mission to fly remote helicopters over the entire town to find any activity from the ground that may be causing the calamity..
But, as the helicopters hover above, they too are blown into oblivion. By the time the deranged, evil-doers receive any visual evidence, it’s too late… they are scattered pieces of confetti, floating and shimmering slowly to the ground.
The sun dimming mission is aborted until enough intel is reached.
Chance calmly walks back to her room, puts her drone in the closet and walks to school.
As she sits slowly down to her desk, she suddenly bolts up in her bed in a cold sweat. It was all a dream. She frantically grabs her phone, face ID’s, and logs into the weather site to check the forecast.
The forecast shows airplanes where sunshine should be. Her vision wasn’t a dream, just the mayhem. She rests her phone down on her nightstand and shuffles to the kitchen for an extremely colorful bowl of Lucky Charms and milk. The camera slowly pans in on the cereal box’s toxic ingredients, as the screen fades to black.
The end.
People ask all the time how they can support my music and other artists like me. I always say ‘just enjoy it!’… but you know there is something you can do to help us who are kind of dismissed to the middle for whatever reasons… not on a major label, older than the mainstream public, not that well known etc.
Anytime you add a song to a playlist, it gets played more frequently. The more songs you add to playlists that play during parties or just on weekend listens, it gets streams where normally it wouldn’t. You can get creative with it, adding songs that sound like they’re from other eras and just slipping them in, or if you have totally random playlists where they fit in, that’s good too.
Back in the 80’s and 90’s they had a term called ‘turntable hit’. That was when a song was a legitimate hit at radio, but the artist didn’t become a star. You could classify ‘Baby It’s Tonight’ as a turntable hit. It was actually #4 on pop radio (R&R Magazine), but because Billboard Magazine tallied that number with actual sales, the song only made it to #16 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Many songs on Spotify get millions of streams and no one knows the artist because the songs were cleverly placed by a curator into a hot and trending playlist, alongside more popular artists, therefore riding the wake of songs that people actually tuned in for.
So, adding any of my songs, especially new ones like ‘Subliminal Seduction’, ‘New You-niverse’ or really anything from the albums ‘Coup De Main’ or ‘Coolerator’ really seriously helps with awareness and streams. Putting them closer to the top helps even more.
My version of ‘I Only Have Eyes For You’ from Coolerator has, on it’s own gained momentum on Soundcloud with 375k streams. Pretty successful when you consider most listeners on Soundcloud are into EDM and youthful pop. It’s flattering to read all the mails I’ve gotten on this rendition of a song I loved… so this is another example that, if you add it to your playlists, it helps the song snowball into a more organic success.
THIS can really help… but whatever you do, enjoy it!
Cheers,
Jude
Been quiet lately but so busy… compiling my life’s work into a folder with each song… finished, unfinished, released or unreleased compact with mp3, wav, lyrics… altogether for quick access. Also any alternative version gets put into a separate folder. It’s taken so much of my focus i’ve barely been able to do anything else. But I do have some good news.
I’m going to print CD’s and vinyl of both Coup De Main and Coolerator, as well as release later this year a new album full of all the singles or one-offs that have been recorded and never made a record. Maybe even some of the more quality demos. They will all be for sale in physical copy, and yeah, well…. it’s about time!
Happy Easter to all, belated Passover etc.
Love, Jude
..
It’s like AOC had a daughter and she became an actress. And sure enough, she’s abhorrent. But let’s not blame her entirely. This is what American universities and Hollywood have been producing for years now. Moms and Dads everywhere have been remorse to save all that money for their sons and daughters education, only to have them come home after one semester and accuse them of racism and white privilege.
Hollywood and entertainment works more covertly than universities. They control it with innuendo. There are no memos sent out. You get it real fast what can be said and what can’t. A smile, a frown, a returned call, an unreturned call… Rachel was just following the script that worked for Mark Ruffalo, Seth Rogan, Chelsea Handler and actors and musicians far too many to mention. She probably thought she was going to get a pat on the head with a vegan treat, but she made a mistake. She forgot it was a universal and children’s release, where you have to pretend to be all-loving, all-accepting, and you know… play the game.
If the major execs of these film and record companies switched gears politically, you’d see the rhetoric of these various entertainers change with light speed. They are professional readers and chameleons. They really don’t stand for the things you think they do. They’re looking for those sweet treats…
Agree or disagree… I’ve lived here my entire adult life and have seen first-hand how it works.
Regardless, RIP to Rachel’s career for a good long while. It was fun while it lasted!
https://soundcloud.com/jude-cole-music/dreams-like-this-demo
I came across this one today. Having almost forgotten about it, it was written for 14 year old Lindsay Pagano. Her record was abandoned by Warner Brothers for internal changes, and they didn’t care Paul McCartney guested on one of the tracks. Heartbreaking really, but C’est La Vie…
I wrote this in a bedroom studio in Calabasas in 1999 while my kids were in grade school just a block away. They were some great times days. I’d work most of the day, then walk up and meet them after school and we’d walk back to play basketball or i’d let them ride their bikes around. Hard to believe how young I was, thinking I was so old!
Anyway, I recorded this just as a demo. It was done on MOTU… anyone remember that DAW? Pretty much how I learned digital recording. Pretty soulful too. Gonna try to just get my life in music up online because so much of it has lived in boxes, unheard.
This track was completely rearranged for Lindsay’s version, which is up on all the streaming platforms.
Hope you all are doing well out there and hope all the winners have received their items. Another coming soon!
PS the photo above is me as a 14 yr old in the Quad Cities of Illinois… Silvis to be exact, with some high school girl-friends Cindy Lundeen, Kelly Honn, Mindee Ruthey and Kim Dorbek in the background.. Gary, of Gary’s Music Mart is seated playing bass. He was a good guy.
Cheers, -Jude
Lately it’s been easier to stay quiet and stay in my lane of music than to speak out. I’m sure that’s what most would like anyway, but as a father, my thoughts are on the country and the world more than the record industry, which, in truth isn’t an industry at all, really.
An industry flourishes with many layers of wants and needs, hundreds of departments filled with workers. Hundreds if not thousands thriving in the session world. Thousands of technicians like engineers, producers, 2nd’s, studio techs, studio managers, gear rentals, drum tuners, guitar and bass techs, keyboard programmers, background vocalists, horns, strings, arrangers… i mean the list honestly doesn’t stop.
Then on the record side there are promotion teams, radio stations and DJ’s with some autonomy to go out on a limb for a song, publicists, specialty experts that hook up endorsements, video production, publishers and their many layers of worker bees underneath… all driven to get your songs placed and your catalogs to thrive, ultimately making it to the thousands of record stores… which was an industry in itself. I feel fortunate to have witnessed when this was the time, but it’s over as we knew it.
Of course it still exists in a small way, but in a very small way. Most ‘artists’ are home, like myself, making their own music and hoping for the best. The ones getting the biggest push these days I would classify as athletes and performers. They’re not as creative as they are talented in both strength and endurance.
Others are out gigging… and while I 100% respect this, it’s just not something that ever interested me. Perhaps I played too much from 12 yrs old to 18, doing 3 and 4 sets a night, lugging my own gear etc. For me it was always ‘to the toppermost of the poppermost or bust’.
I was quite happy to do something more civil like manage and produce bands. With Lifehouse, I don’t think I ever got the credit due as a manager… mainly because Lifehouse was never The Eagles or U2. They were a radio success, and this was the plan I had after realizing that the lead singer and writer, Jason, had no interest in being a star. He was and is very much like me. He loves hits.
Putting almost all focus on the band’s radio success, they thrived for 15 years with ubiquitous songs like Hanging By A Moment, You And Me, First Time, Whatever It Takes and many more. This can have a cyclical effect. Think America, the 70’s band. They were never giant concert seat fillers, and altho they did well, never massive record sellers, but their radio presence was 2nd only to bands like the Eagles. Then in the 80’s, 90’s and early Aughts they went away. ::Poof!:: gone. Lame. Now, I hear them all the time. Ventura Highway, A Horse With No Name, Sandman, Tin Man… so many radio singles, so many remembering with fondness.
If you can remember back in the early 80’s when Wham was a part of this British movement that changed the look and sound of everything, the rock band Rush couldn’t get arrested. Yet they stayed the course. Kept touring… never faltered… became legends.
It’s a long game… and ours, or should I say Lifehouse’s was to be part of a soundtrack to people’s lives… which they very much were. It’s unfortunate that it came with this later developed monicker called ‘Hot AC’, defined with acts like Nickelback, Daughtry and others, because that seems to bookmark everyone involved… and honestly if Lifehouse or Jason Wade even played that game it wouldn’t have been true to form. That’s not who he is. Not who the band was. Certainly not who I am.
So I guess this is a little bit of a stream of conscious ramble. The state of the country leaves me speechless. Most artists I ever developed, ever tried to help, ended up getting in their own way and self-sabotaging all efforts. I see Americans doing the same thing, and I do believe it has something to do with Trauma Conditioning… something I’ll speak on at another time.
In the meantime, wishing you all well. Say a prayer for our friend and long time supporter William Pochert who is doing his best to win his battle with cancer. Until next time- peace ❤️
Speaking of pop music, it’s become a slight obsession of mine to think about this dimly defined pop or powerpop genre in regards to bass guitar.
Let’s be honest, when it comes to great bass players, the best of the best in technical terms are probably in the soul, jazz and gospel categories. There you’d find everyone from James Jamerson to Jaco Pastorius to Sharay Reed…. and the list would be in the hundreds. Then there are funk & disco players, who could also make any ‘greats’ lists.
But I’m zooming in on a field that one could say was spawned by The Beatles, though it’s roots are derived from other eras like 20’s American and Ragtime music. These bass lines walk up and down with an independence. They don’t follow the kick, as rock players do, but they dance around it. Mainly a guitarist, I played bass on much of my own music, and always tried to emulate this kind of playing when I could. It’s a song within a song. You can take the vocals and entire track out save bass and drums, and the track doesn’t fall apart like it would in a reverse scenario. It requires a special skill or technique, sound and sensibility. It’s timing, like a great comedian.
One example of this would be ‘Getting Better’ by The Beatles. Verse opens, 4/4 time, bass is playing staccato quarter notes, two low and two high establishing a pace and story, but in less than a half minute comes the chorus and it’s like McCartney breaks out of his cage with wings. (pun intended) The bassline walks, creates it’s own melody, changes root chords along the way, all the while keeping the march that was established by the verse… and in four bars! To me, that’s the magic of records over songs. Bass is generally how I listen and judge a record. A good song is everything, but then again, so is a good record.
Those of you on Facebook, please share this link if you can as I’ve vowed to stay away for a time.
So with that, I give you my top 12, starting at the bottom:
#12 – Graham Gouldman. This underrated pop player with 10cc has a knack for hiding in the shadows. However, when you really listen to his parts, you realize he’s more of a master than he lets on. Great examples of this are The Things We Do For Love, Honeymoon With B Troop, Blackmail and of course, I’m Not In Love.
#11 – Larry Knechtel. All around master musician, Larry could play anything. When it came to bass guitar, he played on most of Bread’s records, The Monkee’s, Nilsson & even some Paul Simon. His skill was subtle, but he had a great instinct of staying out of the way while influencing the next part with his lead-in lines. The Doors didn’t have a bass player, but they should have, and it should have been Larry Knechtel.
#10 – Kevin Parker. Tame Impala is Kevin Parker, and bass is just one of the many instruments he does well. The Less I Know The Better, Let It Happen, Feels Like We Only Go Backwards and No More Lies are a few examples of his creative instincts and ability to deviate from the norm. He’s a fearless musician who has something I always wanted… an ability to let it flow without obsessing too much. Or should I say, that’s the impression he gives. If I’m wrong, even more respect.
#9 – Sting. This sound was going to happen in the UK with or without Sting and The Police. There was too much buzz about reggae not to influence the many brit kids with guitars to borrow the genre and try to get it on the radio. Sting actually did it with much success, and though I wouldn’t give him an A for originality, he certainly had his way with great lines in songs like Can’t Stand Losing You, Walking On The Moon, Spirits In The Material World, Canary In A Coalmine. A pick player, it feels like he might have played rock most of his life, then that fateful shift happened and boom! Out went the lights.
#8 – Brian Wilson. With Brian, it’s hard to give entire credit to any sole musician in the studio, even Carol Kaye or Ray Pohlman, because he was involved in every note of every instrument. A true arranger and learned musician, not only did he play bass on most of The Beach Boys records, but his arrangements are still being studied to this day.
#7 – Carol Kaye. They’ll do a documentary on her and she’ll be even more legendary, breaking ground for so many women and men alike. Talk about fearless, she held her own with the best of the best of that era, and that’s no easy feat. Tommy Tedesco, Hal Blaine, Don Randi, Larry Knechtel and Carol F’ing Kaye. Wouldn’t It Be Nice, Good Vibrations, Scarborough Affair, The Beat Goes On… and on and on and more and more.
#4 – Bruce Thomas. This begins to narrow it down to what I love about bass the most. Bruce’s lines are always right for the song. Pump It Up, Oliver’s Army, (I Don’t Want To Go To) Chelsea, Accidents Will Happen… such a melodic bassist he walks through songs in the same way McCartney does, with just a little more punk rock attitude. If there’s an Elvis Costello record without The Attractions, I’m not gonna like it as much. Well, save the first one, which is a whole other story of great players.
a
I thought it might be best for my headspace to deactivate the Facebook page for awhile. I’d like to see the country succeed, no matter the president. It’s not the tone of most people on my feed, however, and frankly there are days when it affects my mood… so rather than sound off on every post I think is highly irresponsible or downright Marxist, I opt to focus on more productive things and keep my fingers crossed that our president can negotiate his way through this world quagmire.
We already know he’s lifting the veil I would have assumed was impossible on so many acronymic agencies. Personally I’d be happy if they did away with all of them and just started over. And RFK, hinting they’ll take the fluoride out of the water, cancerous chemicals out of the food, chemtrails out of the sky… if all these actually happen I’m going to buy a g’damn MAGA hat and never take it off.
Anyway, feel free to write to me here. I’m working on a TOP TEN POP BASSISTS OF ALL TIME coming soon, as well as more giveaways.
Stay Gnome, Stay Sane.
Peace, Jude
Hillary Clinton was 18 in ’65. By ’75 she and the baby boom generation had their grips on the power class of America. Of course good ol’ boys from the oil rich south, or prim & proper Penelope’s from upper east side Manhattan hadn’t moved on yet. They didn’t know their time was up. In fact, they didn’t believe it ever could be. But…
The educated and entitled (for the times) youth, came. With cries of freedom, protest songs & riots, hippy love-ins and new ideas for a better life. A unique inability to see anyone’s side but their own… but it was hard to deny them their anger. Vietnam was looming like an enemy cloud for anyone to point at and say ‘yeah? who are you f”ing kidding?’.
The French Film revolution of ’64 influencing the American Film revolution of ’68… Hopper, Peckinpah, Scorsese, Coppola… making Rock Hudson & Doris Day films feel like Kip Winger and Jon Bon Jovi at a Nirvana concert.
Lorne Michaels taking over late night TV after secret threats from Carson and Milton Berle… Johnny went on for some years still, but there are always outliers. Talents, chameleon enough to make it work. The Milty’s and Red Skeltons, well… they were reduced to variety shows the old timers watched. Running on fumes, but it’s really all that was left for them.
The counterculture captured the love and imaginations of the youth and the world. In politics, film, music, TV, fashion and more. They grew their hair, grew their beards, burned draft cards, burned bras, smoked weed, had intellectual arguments… hell one could say they even influenced The Beatles, and they did!
It was a permanent change of the guard. America had been the way it was from post prohibition until this new groovy period, or should I say 35 years to be exact. To hang on any longer to the traditions of their fathers just made no sense. They saw thru it. It had become creepy, glossy, phony, and ‘on the take’. This culture had to go – Bring in the new!
And here we are now. 2025. Hopper directed ‘Easy Rider’ in ’69. Lorne started SNL in ’75. Easy Rider was 56 years ago. SNL, 50.
Is it any wonder we are experiencing change? If then were now, or should I say if now were then, Lorne Michaels and Martin Scorsese would have been red-faced ranting into bullhorns for us to heed the call of the pork-pie hat politics of the 20’s. Rob Reiner would have proclaimed that ‘life was better with real gangsters like Capone, not slick Hollywood mogul types’. (and he would have been right!) Gloria Steinem would have insisted we hold onto those corsets and undergarments, and never ever let a man see you without your hair in place!
So life is changing. You can feel it. For some, all the better, and others whole-heartedly committed to making it the worst possible experience ever. Nevermind the young girls and women/mothers slain by coyotes and cartels when they had dreamed to have a new life in the promised land of Joe Biden, with torn-down walls and open doors, yet left to survive the run to freedom on their own. Nevermind the hard working American tax dollars funding one side of the political spectrum under the guise of a thousand different ‘inclusive’ notions. Forget money laundering to buy homes like jellybeans for our political elite. The blatant and down right shameful photo-ops at the border. The pretense that our media was in some ways fair. The pretense that Hollywood has been in some ways fair. The notion that any one of these industries produce an ‘artist’ that would ever give up their careers and give it to a non-binary person of color. No, no… only your job. Mine takes intelligence and talent that only “I” possess…
Yes, here we are. Counterculture, give yourself a round of applause, you’ve had a great run.
Now sit down and shut the fuck up.
🙂