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