America and her major cities have a diverse amount of status.  The tents lined up on sidewalks throughout most of Los Angeles can be heart-wrenching.  Their own system of prison rules and hierarchy are in place.  Terrifying and right there in plain sight.  No mental institutions or rehabilitation centers, just the street.

Middle class homes that were once in the mid 200k’s, now over 1MM, mostly with people who’d love to cash out but would have to leave the state to do it.  Lots of stress here.  It was easier being in the middle.

Then the rich and uber rich, who have an endless supply of f*ck-you money and are uniquely unqualified to give an opinion about much of anything real-life, as their gilded cage provides a limited view.  They shop the high end Italian/French brands of clothing, Bergdorf Goodman, Neiman Marcus for gadgets and glory.  And for the fridge it’s Erewhon in Calabasas, where the latter I now frequent for lunch, simply because it’s the best eats.  But there’s a few things you notice about Erewhon and it’s customers.

First, the incredible amount of healthy and organic selection, organized with such precision and meticulous care that it’s almost too pretty to be a market.  It’s stacked with elves, furiously working the entire perimeter to bring out the very best natural food has to offer, cooked dishes, salads, at least a half dozen or more employees behind the smoothie bar concocting all kinds of fruit & vegetable drinks, coffees, pastries etc.  Vitamin and herbal specialists, butchers and produce handlers… It’s like a world of its own.

Then the prices.  One hand-basket full is at least 200.00.  ouch … but my motto this year has been ‘food is the new European vacation’.

And there’s a negative side.  The clientele are upper demo.  New millennial yuppies.  They come in Range Rovers, BMW’s, Bentleys and Mercedes.  They wear oversized sweats, yoga pants, designer sneakers and sunglasses, looking ho-hum hungover and being day-trained privately by a Kardashian sister on how to perfect a ‘California smug chic’.  You can pick them out before they even reach their 100k+ cars.  They exude a sort of look that says “So I’m rich, but I’m bored.  Please notice me”.

Contrast this with my walk today (picture above)

I was thinking this might be the most beautiful place in the world.   It’s in a part of LA that’s either sneered at, or at best dismissed by the city.   But today I imagined it on a postcard.  Rocks abound.  Trails, railroad tracks, freeway underpasses, kids laughing, birds singing, sun shining in December, I mean… it’s a little slice of heaven, honestly.  To add to that, I’ve had some sort of time travel childlike regression, placing coins on the tracks to flatten them while my dog waits like a loyal girlfriend yards away.  At first it was to make guitar picks, but honestly it just brings me some oddly satisfying joy.  Like a kid.  Like if I were on my death bed I doubt I’d regret not taking another meeting to make more money, but I guarantee you I’ll be happy I took this time for myself, my dog.

Anyway, as I was walking and taking it in I thought to myself, If this were Italy, we’d see a picture of it on a postcard and our dreams would run away with us.  We’d log on to Expedia and start doing the math.

Because the grass is always greener.  Yet everywhere in the U.S., from the naked winter trees of the northeast and midwest down to the shores of the Gulf Coast and Florida.  From the mountains of Colorado and Utah to the vast desert of California, Nevada and into Mexico, it’s all rugged beauty.  How often do we notice it as the gift it is?

While our minds are on our work, our goals, 401k’s, health benefits, (misnomer) our kids, what we leave behind, who said what, politics… a million and one things.  While are minds are doing all this, we’re not present.  We don’t notice the obvious.

How many times have you driven home from wherever, and realized you can’t even recall getting there?  You were somewhere else.

But would we notice this beauty around us if it were stripped away?  Wiped clean like a Twilight Zone episode… barren with no green life or sunshine… no squirrels or rabbits, no birds.  You know we would, in a heartbeat yes.

I encourage each and every one of you over the holidays, myself included to step outside, walk around, take it in and soak it up… find the postcard. It’s everywhere, and you don’t have to fly somewhere and show & tell it on Instagram to feel the joy.  You just have to turn off the mental noise and notice that it’s there.  And it’s been there, waiting for you.

Love and Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays to all ❤️

Jude

 

Collecting guitars is overrated.

I fell into the trap of this collector mentality about 25 years ago.  My old assistant Jenn penned a phrase.  Whenever we got a new guitar she’d say ‘you boys and your Hot Wheels’…

For me it began in the early days of having a dream to possess all the instruments I ever wanted.  This is back when I had a single electric, single acoustic, single drum machine, in a single apartment… and oh yeah, I was single!

But all this time later, I wish I’d have made a single guitar my own.  Like f’ing SRV.  Like BB.  Jimi, Jimmy, Keith, Bruce, Bo Diddley, Alvin Lee, i’m just thinking off the top of my head, but there are more.  Rory!  ha.

Collecting things like cars and guitars, you gotta house ’em.  You gotta care for them too.  Keep them strung, tuned, in temperature controlled environments.  But beyond all that, they become a little like jelly beans.  All of them are good, but not one stands out.

I bet cars are this way too.  Jay Leno and Jerry Seinfeld have hundreds of cars.  They all need to be started, gassed, oiled, replacement gassed after 6 months, driven, stored… I mean if you’re rich enough I guess, but it still sounds like one major pain in the ass to me.  I’d rather just go and enjoy a car show at the local park on any given Sunday.  Even go to a dealer’s showroom and test drive it.  That’s about how long you will enjoy one of your 100 cars.

Anyway, the signature you create by becoming one with your main axe, a tool, but one you have perfected… is meaningful!

And it’s like Jeff Porcaro used to say about all the new digital toys coming out one after the other… he’d pause with comedic timing and go “… so… got any tunes?”

 

A lot of different emotions surface with this documentary.  At the center, it’s a light-hearted affair, but so is the music.  None of these songs were about politics or war.  Probably why it was such a part of our lives.

Funny too, to be around long enough and see how sheep-ish the public can be, venomously aiming to humiliate and destroy something at the time of it’s creation, to decades later acting like ‘oh yeah well I always loved them’.  This is where a Black Mirror video recall would be such sweet revenge.

As an earlier example, I hear so many acknowledge The Carpenters for their song and arrangement genius today, not to mention Karen’s perfect vocals. But if you’re old enough to remember, they were absolutely slayed by the press, and by media in general at the time of their run.  It’s hard to even imagine living in the music world with that kind of hate and vitriol.  They were not the cool kids, but instead had to perform on sterile, vapid TV variety shows alongside a vaudevillian array of acts like The Osmonds, polka dancers, jugglers and ventriloquists.

I remember a female DJ on an LA rock radio station even saying at the time of Karen Carpenter’s death, something to the effect of  ‘If I made music like that I wouldn’t be able to eat either’. That’s how bad a time it was for bands like The Carpenters, Bread, ABBA… It was torture to be outside of Jann Wenner’s highly coveted critic darlings, and if you didn’t make that list, you at least had to be considered ‘rock’, i.e., Journey, Boston, KISS etc.  You didn’t get critic love, but you sold seats and records.

And that’s what’s so gratifying about this DOCKumentary and newfound celebration, even with it’s backhanded compliment title. None of these bands were uttered by Rolling Stone, Robert Hilburn, Robert Christgau or any other high priest music critic.  Instead these ‘writers’ preached to us how much this music sucked.  Not one of these unmusical geniuses ever pointed out to it’s readers that a guitar-great like Steve Lukather could be playing on all those masterful hit records at one time while in a hit band, or that a background session singer as ubiquitous as Michael McDonald could also be writing, cowriting and singing hits of his own.

But musicians knew. Average people who loved to be uplifted by music knew, too.

So beyond being long overdue, it’s also nice to see it as this giant, rising middle finger to the rock media of it’s time, because this music continues to live and thrive while it’s the critics and their darlings who are passé now. Bob Dylan, U2, Nick Cave & PJ Harvey with all their merits, are not what people play when they want to have a good time. We’ll let that certain tribe of critics and pretentious music supervisors continue to push these artists as though they represented our daily lives, but in truth they did not.  Radio was king, and radio played upbeat songs and heartfelt ballads.  Yes, hacks [deleted] were abundant, as it always has been, and sometimes hard to endure, but the originals were true greats.

So put on the Yacht Rock playlist and watch the party come to life. Cheers to some well deserved acknowledgment for all these brilliant musicians and artists.  They took a licking and keep on ticking.

Cheers, Jude