Pat Blythe – The music melting pot…….and music

We all seem to have a penchant for “the good old days”…..those seemingly free and easy days of the 60s and 70s. Thing is, they really were…..free and easy. Oh, they weren’t perfect. People had their personal challenges but the music, oh the music.

There was a special kind of ambience, a unique kind of camaraderie among the artists. It was an exceptional time and it was happening everywhere. The music sonic boom of 60s was taking place on both sides of the ocean. There’s been a cavalcade of books and documentaries written and produced about the artists themselves and the influences they and their music have on us all today, and will continue to for generations to come. It was the perfect storm of change culminating in Woodstock in 1969, propelling us full speed ahead into the 70s.

MUSIC IS DYING…AND IT’S YOUR FAULT by Jaimie Vernon

Now that I have your attention, let’s talk about music in the time of COVID, shall we?
In the Before Times (March 2020 or sooner) the music industry was teetering on the brink of obsolescence as concert tickets had skyrocketed to the price of, well, a moon-landing, and venues were closing down at a rate equal to Nortel distributors. The music itself had been co-opted by the tech industry through streaming platforms, leaving artists wondering how they got robbed so badly (here’s a hint: you’re the cow, the music’s the milk…insert cliché about not buying the former if you can get the latter for free). On a scale of economics, you’re either a starving creator or a billionaire exploiter. There is no middle class in music. And given that most weasels in the music industry aren’t clever enough to become billionaires, they turn to low hanging fruit and pick the pockets of performers and songwriters for pennies on the dollar.

Roxanne Tellier – Perspective

I blame social media and reality TV. I blame reality TV because the flood of singing, dancing, housewifing and endurance series that became ubiquitous during the early 2000s were the catalyst for too many narcissists to believe that their big fish in a small local pond anonymity was only an audition and a bunch of ‘likes and shares’ away from stardom. And that belief, that, in the past, would have been knocked out of them by cruel reality, has gone right to our collective heads.

Roxanne Tellier – Hang in There, Baby

Argggh!!! Woke up in a ‘mood’ this morning, and the weather – grey, cold and damp – isn’t helping at all.

It’s not that I woke up on the wrong side of the bed, it’s more that I’m just tired of playing pandemic. In February, I could still see a path ahead, even though it wasn’t clear how long our preparations and quarantine would last. Still, I had hopes that the light at the end of the tunnel was a bright future. Turned out it was an oncoming train.

Roxanne Tellier – How Much for Your Soul?

On the day after 4 million students from all around the world marched to protest their respective governments’ lack of decisive action on climate change, Bob Lefsetz noted that the photos and the chatter had already been pushed off the pages of both terrestrial and online press sites.

Bob Blames Assholes and Morons for Everything …and Tried to Warn You in 2011, 2013, and 2019

A Message from Bob – This was originally written in 2011. This is an updated version from 2013 updated yet again in January of 2019. I believe these are the things that finally delivered President Stoopnagle and his like-minded skid marks around the world to power, and they have become a combination of shingles, rectal itch, hives, projectile diarrhea, herpes, yeast infections, snot-in-your-mustache, and that white foam that appears in the corners of your mouth when you’re tweaking. It is these “leaders” who have let the dogs out.

…and here we are still, hopefully working toward a miracle on November 3rd, 2020, that at least, could put us on a path of healing and repair. And all the while, the Assholes and Morons continue to erode what’s left of decency and common sense.

Why am I reprinting this today? …Because I am tired of having to shower to wash off the slung mud, ill informed babble, and negative angry horseshit every single time I read my Facebook Newsfeed. (…and I had sheepishly changed Assholes and Morons to Asshats and Headcases when this originally ran…I am no longer sheepish, and let’s be honest …assholes and morons are what they are.)

If it wasn’t for Roxanne Tellier and a few others, I would just give up and shit the bed like so many are doing already.

Maybe I’m just in a bad mood and had to climb up on my soapbox/high horse, and let it all out, and I apologize if you think I’m preaching, but I’m not…I’m just sick of all the bullshit. This column still speaks for me, still says what I feel needs to be said again.

You can read this or not. Please leave a comment at the bottom of the column if you do.

I love you either way….

Part Two of The Wackers will run on Monday

Roxanne Tellier – Exit the Idiot Whisperer

Ever have, oh, I don’t know… about 6 or 700 of ‘those days,’ where you start to wonder if it’s actually possible that you just might have woken up on another, identical, but much stupider, planet?

Bob VS Social Media – Full Disclosure and a Snake!

When I first landed on Social Media, I was smitten with the opportunity to reach 1000s of people with a few key strokes and hitting ‘enter’, or being able to have a conversation with someone without holding a phone to my ear by using Messenger to ask or answer a question without interrupting whatever I was working on for more than a few seconds.

Roxanne Tellier – Thinking About Thinking

Ain’t I a wonder, and ain’t you a wonder too!

Or so we’ve been led to believe, by all of our ‘likes’ and ‘loves’ on social media, which is where we go to show off our funny, pretty, and intelligent sides. It’s where we go to get our ‘strokes’ of approval, to find out who’s doing what, and it’s where some of us go to air our opinions and beliefs, and to challenge the opinions and beliefs of others.

Roxanne Tellier – TO BOLDLY GO …

Thintelligence: “The state of mind where a person does something without considering the consequences.” The idea may seem brilliant at first, but the after-affects usually prove to be deadly. This phrase was invented by Michael Crichton in his 1990 book Jurassic Park.

“They don’t have intelligence. They have what I call ‘thintelligence.’ They see the immediate situation. They think narrowly and call it ‘being focused.’ They don’t see the surround. They don’t see the consequences.