Admitting Obama is Ordinary

I go back over this blog’s past few months and have to cringe a little over my political prognostications of Hillary’s demise and excess enthusiasm for Barack Obama who, it turns out, is mortal, flawed, and perhaps worst of all, a rather ordinary politician.  He still might become president and still might be an adequate president.  But he is not what I thought he was, nor what most of us thought he was.  He is one more in a long line of Democrats who have been packaged by political geniuses to suit the temper of the times; who, in the end, can’t live up to the hype carefully designed on their behalf.

Kurt Andersen’s piece in New York provides a kind of elegy for the grand illusion that some of us (not just those “in the media”) shared:

Back in February, when the new prince was gliding thrillingly up and up toward nomination, a part of the thrill for the media was their happy astonishment that they were no longer cosmopolitan outliers but finally (unlike in 1984 with Gary Hart) in sync with America: Regular folks, white people in Iowa and Virginia and Wisconsin, were actually voting for Obama!

That was then. With the ten-point loss in Pennsylvania, the latest Reverend Wright eruption, and the shrinkage of Obama’s leads in the polls, the media are feeling lousy, and not just because their guy is taking a beating. If Obama is deemed to be an effete, out-of-touch yuppie, then the effete-yuppie media Establishment that’s embraced him must be equally oblivious and/or indifferent to the sentiments of the common folk.

Uh-oh. As the cratering of newspaper circulations accelerates (thousands a week are now abandoning the Times) and network-news audiences continue to shrink, for big-time mainstream journalists to seem even more out of touch makes some of them panic. And … so … it’s all … his fault, that highfalutin Obama!

Andersen’s still rooting for Obama but more, it appears, because he can’t abide the alternative: A Clinton win.  The Clintons were merely tolerated all along, at least after 1994, because they were up against unattractive enemies.  But the Obama vs. Clinton matchup has unleashed the anti-Clinton id, the beast many of us kept in the cellar throughout the 90s, the silent acknowledge that these people are liars! and what Bill did with Monica was disgusting! and how dare they cart off official gifts from dignitaries as if they owned them! and Jesus, he pardoned Mark Rich!? and how can she live with herself after screwing up health care reform? It’s hard to stop once you get started, and the Obama/Clinton contrast certainly got a lot of us started.

But the depressing fact is: Obama’s not up for this.  He’s already looking defeated.  He’s clearly embarrassed by the man who’s been revealed over the past couple of months.  Not Rev. Wright, but himself.  He hears questions about his judgment and is too smart not to agree at some level.  The real explanation for his dalliances with the likes of Rev. Wright, Tony Rezco, Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn — that if you want to succeed in southside Chicago politics, you need to show up with such people — isn’t acceptable to the broad American public and he knows it.

It isn’t fair, really.  Bush, Gore, Kerry, Clinton, McCain, whoever you want to cite, they all cut deals with frauds, kooks and boodlers on their ways up the greazy pole, as did most of their legendary political predecessors.  This is the dark side of “all politics is local.”  Few politicians emerge from their home base without enemies and alliances that, later, they’ll wish they hadn’t made.   Harry Truman was a product of the corrupt Pendergast machine in Kansas City.  JFK’s ties with organized crime went back to his father’s years as a bootlegger, the source of much of the family fortune, and the connection obviously helped him secure Illinois’ electoral votes and thus the White House. Ronald Reagan’s relationship with MCA president Lew Wasserman was corrupt on both sides, to their mutual benefit and ultimately sparked Reagan’s political rise.  Al Gore and his father had a crucial relationship with oilman and Soviet tool Armand Hammer.  None of these men would have become president or vice-president without the help of their unsavory sponsors.

But, no matter.  Obama’s political life has caught up with him and he’s become the proverbial deer in headlights ever since.  He can’t go back to the gossamer appeals to hope.  But he lacks much else to recommend him. Other than not being Hillary and not being McCain, for those who dislike those two warhorses.

The Last Great Rock Band Performs

If you’ve seen the commercials for the University of Phoenix, you might have noticed the background music is this odd, distinctive clip of what sounds like a Phil Spectorish choir singing “hey-la, hey-la” over a fierce rock beat complete with flailing, Keith Moon-style drums. You’re hearing The New Pornographers. This is the most exciting moment from the most exciting song on the most exciting pop/rock album of the 2000s, in my opinion, Twin Cinema (2005).

As befits the waning power of formal structures that characterizes this era, the New Pornographers are more of a “project” than a band, although onstage Wednesday night at Henry Fonda Theater in Hollywood, they fit snugly in the pocket as if they’d been playing together nonstop for 10 years.  But looking at their history and personnel, you get the feeling they could vanish at any time, without rancor, just because the key members found something else to do.

So that’s one reason I made sure to go to their show this week promoting the new album Challengers. Neko Case’s solo career, which preceded her joining the NPs, has now achieved a level of esteem and is showing inklings of commercial viability, so she might not stick around. They already are forced to tour without her sometimes. In fact, her replacement, Kathleen Calder, is already a member of the band and on Wednesday night she helped fill out the big co-ed vocal sound that is the hallmark of this band.

What CDs Did To Pop Music

It was 25 years ago this month that the first commercially-available compact disc was manufactured, according to WSJ.com’s Jason Fry.  (Link is to subscription site.)  It was what turned out to be ABBA’s last album, “The Visitors.” 

It is ironic and suggestive that ABBA, known primarily as a singles group (What album does “Take a Chance on Me” come from?  I have no idea either.) would be the pioneer of a format that killed the LP.  The “concept album” as developed by Frank Sinatra and perfected by the classic rock bands of the 60s and 70s, started as a manufacturing spec but evolved into a musical form as prodigious and supple as the sonata.  And the CD crushed it.

The LP’s limitations imposed a helpful form on the musical design of albums. Each side could be about 20 minutes long — maybe 25. So the entire experience lasted only 45 minutes or less; there wasn’t much room for filler. Then, it was divided into two parts (or four parts for a double-LP). Typically that mean 4-5 songs on each side; two suites of 15 to 20 minutes, a brief enough period to hold the listener’s attention. You had to have a strong Side One Track One, a strong closer for Side One, a great track to kick off Side Two, and a great closing track. This imposed a discipline on performers and producers alike.

With CDs, this structure disappeared, and was replaced by an endless temptation for indulgence, as Fry also points out.  And that, he says, has had fatal consequences for the music industry.

Fourth of July Traveling Wilburys Party

The Traveling Wilburys were a lovely coda to the rock and roll era — a holiday from the angst and self-importance that crept into the music in the 1980s and hasn’t entirely left.  Five legendary performers (Roy Orbison, Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Tom Petty and Jeff Lynne) who melded into an egoless whole, creating a sound rich with humor, camaraderie and the joy of making music. 

The Traveling Wilburys were out of fashion when they arrived, and have remained so.  That’s why I love them. 

The impact of the Traveling Wilbury holiday on the careers of their members was uniformly positive.  Orbison was rediscovered by a new audience — hopefully feeling the love just before he died a few months after the first album came out.  Harrison proved he was more than “All Things Must Pass.”  Petty loosened up:  All his best music came out in the period of the Wilburys.  Lynne’s work here cast a retroactive glow on the underrated artistry of his work with ELO.  And Bob Dylan exposed his comic side, which has been a source of his late-career blossoming.

In connection with the long overdue re-release of their music, their videos are all up on YouTube.  Here they are.  Have a safe holiday.

“Handle With Care,” which started it all.  Amazing to hear a vocal passed from George Harrison, to Roy Orbison, to Bob Dylan, and on such a nice little song:

“End of the Line.”  This is most people’s favorite Wilburys tune:

“Inside Out.”  Bob Dylan sings lead.  You really get to hear the Jeff Lynne “sound” on this one:

“She’s My Baby.”  The kickoff track to their second album, entitled “Vol. 3.”  A punchy rocker.

Finally, the hilarious “Wilbury Twist.”  Here they were, in the late 80s, making fun of how old they were getting.  What would they sing about if the survivors got back together now?

(“Wilbury Twist,” was having trouble loading when I posted this. I’ll check again after the holiday.)

A Little Less Dangerous Music

Today is the 40th anniversary of the release of the greatest album cover of all time. 

 

According to “The Internet Beatles Album,” the cover to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club band started out like this:

The post, which is about five years old, has all kinds of data, particularly about the odd different versions of the album that were released in censorious countries like Malaysia, which didn’t like the drug references:

Also, you can see three parodies of the cover — by Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, the Rutles and the Simpsons, which did it twice. 

In this day of celebration, I’m not reading too many mentions of this version:

Not even Steve Martin could stay away from such a horrible project?  Although Martin’s “completely unhinged” performance, along with Billy Preston’s and Aerosmith’s were judged by the New York Times’ Janet Maslin as the highlights of the film.  

As for me:  I liked Sgt. Pepper better than any other Beatle album up to that point, although I that’s not saying anything, because I much preferred the Kinks, the Rolling Stones and, yes, even the Monkees, to the Beatles — when I was 10.  I only begrudgingly admitted enjoying songs like “Day Tripper” and “Paperback Writer.”  I was a young contrarian.  I read news stories about the Beatles’ imminent decline hungrily.

All those stories came out before Sgt. Pepper, however.  Time magazine did a big story about the new Beatles’ album announcing the maturity of rock as an art form on the same level as classical symphonies.  This got my father’s attention, so he brought the album home.  It absolutely blew my mind. I listened to it over and over again, staring at the cover.

Now I’m a Beatles fan who knows all their albums by heart.  My favorite shifts, but it’s seldom Sgt. Pepper.  I love Revolver, which was more pathbreaking both musically and socially.  I love the funkiness and mood swings of the White Album.  The second half of Abbey Road might be the most sustained minutes of brilliance in the band’s entire repertoire.

Sometimes I think Help! is the most perfect Beatles album. How can you argue with a record that introduced “Ticket to Ride,” “Yesterday,” “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away,” “I’ve Just Seen a Face” and their last and best cover version of an old-school rocker, “Dizzy Miss Lizzie?”  I love hearing the Beatles play together as a four-piece rock band.  From the artistic heights of their last several albums, it’s often forgotten how great a little combo they were; but I keep going back to their early albums and singles to hear that in-the-pocket groove they could get into, especially when they covered the 50’s rock n’roll, rockabilly and R&B they all loved (“Matchbox,” “Twist and Shout,” “Rock and Roll Music,” “Money {That’s What I Want},” “Roll Over Beethoven,” “Bad Boys,” “Long Tall Sally.”)

You certainly don’t hear the Beatles playing as a band on Sgt. Pepper.  And that’s what really so amazing about it.  They had four tracks to work with.  Four.  The layering of overdubbed instruments and sound effects must have been complicated as hell.  The result is, however, shimmeringly beautiful and amazingly light on its feet. It’s a real turn-up-the-volume kind of album, music that fills the air with a rich busyness behind its sing-a-long melodies.   It’s not an encouragement to take psychedelic drugs, as some believed back in the 60’s; it’s an approximation of the experience, one that works even for those who abstain.  The music opens inside your head like a multi-colored field of flowers.  

And, 40 years ago, starting on this day and for months thereafter, a global audience shared that experience. 

Far. Out.  ∞♥∞♥∞♥∞♥∞♥

Hollywood, Silicon Valley and Wall Street: Lining Up to Run America

Joel Kotkin sees a new power elite and a new political paradigm emerging from behind the ruins of George W. Bush’s failed administration.   The whole essay is worth reading. Here’s a taste:

How much things have changed in the past few decades! Hollywood once split its loyalties carefully among the parties; its only president came from its right. Now, as much as 80 percent of its largesse flows to the Democrats. The schism between Obama supporter David Geffen and those hanging tough with Clinton is important, not only because of how it reflects Hollywood’s endemic pettiness, but because much of the party, instead of regarding these wealthy prima donnas as deluded minstrels, now treats them as enlightened policy gurus.

Not long ago, Silicon Valley was a bastion of middle-of-the-road Republicans like former Congressman Ed Zschau. But as power once vested in industrial firms like Hewlett Packard has shifted to software and internet-based companies, high-tech politics have shifted both left and dark green. The rising powers of the 21st Century Valley, firms like Google and eBay, generally don’t worry about trifles like groundwater regulations or factory emissions since they don’t manufacture anything. Nor do they worry much about labor laws, because their own employees tend to be young, well-educated and well-compensated. This makes it easier to curry favor with enviro-friendly, left-leaning politicians like former Vice President Al Gore.

Perhaps most important of all have been the changes on Wall Street, whose power extends deeply into both Hollywood and Silicon Valley and which now stands as one of the predominant sources of funds for federal office-seekers and related political action committees. Long the bastion of the old Republican establishment and a backer of Bush in his two presidential runs, Wall Street in 2006 gave more money to the Democrats, and that trend seems to be accelerating along with the implosion of the Republicans.

(snip)

How did this corporate power shift occur so quickly and dramatically? To a large extent, the answer lies in the utter failure of George W. Bush and his administration. Bush came to office with the support of a Sun Belt elite that drew its wealth and power from the great economic surge west and south after World War II and for nearly a quarter-century dominated American political life

Donors from this group of businesses propelled the careers of such substantial figures as Arizona’s Barry Goldwater, and California’s Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. Arguably, their final triumph, helped by the demographic shift to the South and West, lay with Newt Gingrich’s 1994 congressional takeover.

Back in the late 1970s, founding fathers of the Sun Belt power grab, such as oilman Henry Salvatori and Litton Industries founder Tex Thornton, shared with me their conviction that the old Eastern establishment lacked the power and conviction to lead the country. They felt America needed to be guided by more vital, more clear-headed leaders. Economic malaise of the Jimmy Carter years, as well as the perception of America’s weakness both against the Soviet Union and terrorist states such as Iran, lent credibility to these beliefs among a large part of the public.

Like most successful elites, these leaders possessed a relatively coherent agenda. It centered on gaining a free hand over the nation’s natural resources, a low-tax economic policy and support for a strong national defense. The divisive moral agenda, particularly helpful in wooing working-class and Southern voters, was grafted on later but was never widely embraced by the right’s corporate funders.

Bush’s disastrous tenure has pretty much destroyed his backers’ credibility on all three issues. High energy prices and shifting climate-change politics have decimated the traditional agenda of oil and gas companies. An uneven and poorly shared economic expansion has convinced many middle-class erstwhile conservatives that Bush’s low tax, pro-business policies do not really work for them. Finally, the catastrophe in Iraq has undermined support for the overt, aggressive national defense policy long supported by Sun Belt conservatives and their defense industry allies.

(snip)

Once they recover from their post-Bush euphoria, however, traditional liberals should realize that the ongoing power shift does not necessarily signify the rise of a populist agenda. The wealthiest fifth of Americans are now equally likely to be Democrats or Republicans, a shocking shift from the nearly 70 percent Republican cast of this same quintile just two decades ago. The “party of the people” increasingly now must appeal as much to the affluent as the working-class voter.

I’ve been struggling for a “big picture” that explains the changes in politics in the past couple of years that goes beyond the tactical novelties like the netroots and YouTube.  Kotkin’s is pretty coherent. 

A possible flaw, however, is that his analysis completely omits 9/11, the jihad against the West, the “war on terror.”  Or, is he implying that 9/11 is no longer pertinent, the war on terror is quiescent, and that whole policy arena doesn’t cut politically anymore?  That would come as a huge, rude surprise to the blogospheric right, who think the war on terror is the only issue.  But maybe that’s the case.

The Elder Statesmen

I don’t know when I started paying attention to the news or mass culture; maybe around 1961 or ‘62?  Not that many of the folks who populated my consciousness back then are still around today, but two of the survivors have much been in the news lately, for different reasons:  Tony Bennett and Fidel Castro.

“I Left My Heart in San Francisco” must have been coming out of every Edsel’s radio when I was a little kid; for years it was the only song of Bennett’s that I knew existed, and it was one of the first contributors to this Illinois-boy’s impression of California as a magical place.  When he sang ”Those little cable cars/Go halfway to the stars,” I could see them–because they also showed up on Rice-a-Roni commercials.

Yesterday was Tony Bennett’s 80th birthday.  The New York Times’ Stephen Holden wrote a nice profile that drew the distinction between Bennett and his career-long musical parallel:

After the death of Frank Sinatra in 1998, Mr. Bennett immediately became the leading caretaker of the literate American song tradition that runs from Kern to Ellington to Rodgers. You couldn’t ask for a more reverent keeper of the flame.

Careers that last as long and have been as distinguished as Mr. Bennett’s have something to tell us about collective cultural experience over decades. It has been said that Sinatra’s journey from skinny, starry-eyed “Frankie,” strewing hearts and flowers, to the imperious, volatile Chairman of the Board roughly parallels an American loss of innocence. As Sinatra entered his noir period in the mid-1950’s, his romantic faith gave way to a soul-searching existentialism that yielded the most psychologically complex popular music ever recorded. Following a similar arc, the country grew from a nation of hungry dreamers fleeing the Depression and fighting “the good war” into an arrogant empire drunk on power and angry at the failure of the American dream to bring utopia.

Mr. Bennett is something else altogether. A native New Yorker and man of the people, he never strayed far from his working-class roots in Astoria, Queens, where he was born Anthony Benedetto. Although he came out of the same tradition of Mediterranean balladry as Sinatra, he retained the innocence and joie de vivre of his youth. Disappointment is not in his vocabulary. We don’t go to him for psychological complexity, but for refreshment and reassurance that life is good.

Believing in the power of art to ennoble ordinary lives, he sings what he feels with a rare mixture of humility and pride: humility in the face of the daunting popular-song tradition he treasures and pride that he is recognized as its custodian. Gratitude and joy, gruffness and beauty balance each other perfectly in singing that has grown more rhythmically acute with each passing year. 

Compare their Saturday Night Live parodies.  Phil Hartman’s Sinatra was belligerent, demanding and opinionated, admonishing a rapper to tone down the “blue” language, and threatening Billy Idol by saying “I got chunks of guys like you in my stool.”  Meanwhile, SNL’s faux Tony Bennett, portrayed by Alec Baldwin, hosts a talk show where he sings “I like everything that’s great!” and tells a grumpy Dick Cheney that his bleak vision of a world at war is “fantastic!”  

I recall seeing Tony Bennett throughout the sixties on TV variety shows, doing Broadway tunes and then, when the rock era began to dominate, doing pretty good versions of songs like Stevie Wonder’s ”For Once in My Life.”  His choices of late sixties “kids’” material were idiosyncratic but perfect for him:  “Come Saturday Morning,” the theme from the obscure Liza Minnelli movie “The Sterile Cuckoo,” or the Beatles’ “Something” and “The Long and Winding Road.”  But the sixties and seventies temporarily eclipsed Bennett — which then led him to team up with the jazz great Bill Evans on two gorgeous records, and to appear on the cult comedy show SCTV. 

Still, Tony Bennett’s best years artistically and commercially were ahead of him.  For the past 20 years since his return to prominence (via MTV of all places), he has been an icon not just for his generation but for every generation. He’s still doing concerts.  It feels like he’ll never be gone, and that’s a blessing of our times.

Meanwhile, 90 miles south of Florida, the other elder of the Cold War generation lies in a hospital bed, or perhaps a morgue, waiting to return to power, or perhaps waiting for his funeral. 

Fidel Castro was the first non-imaginary bogeyman of my youth. From my five-year-old’s point of view, it was Castro who wanted to blow up the United States with a nuclear bomb.  I didn’t understand his client relationship with the Soviet Union.  All I knew was, there’s this man, his country is next to ours, he’s got a big beard and a cigar, and he hates us, and he has a nuclear bomb, and he’s going to shoot it toward us. Duck and cover!

I’m sure JFK, LBJ, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush and Clinton all envisioned they would leave office with Fidel out of power. I’m sure that was true, too, of Krushchev, Brezhnev, Gorbachev, Tito, Franco, De Gaulle, Trudeau, and every other world leader of the past four decades who Castro has outlasted and, in many cases, outlived.  

In life, Fidel’s Cuba stopped being much of a threat to us, really, years ago — certainly after the fall of the USSR, which threw his country deeper into poverty and curtailed his global revolutionary ambitions.  But he hung on, for 17 more years so far, and maybe longer.  And now, he’s much more threatening to peace in death.  Not that I want him to stay in power — I think his regime is evil, murderous and corrupt and has held his people back.  If I were the son of a Cuban refugee in Florida, I’m sure I’d be joining the festivities around his pending demise. 

But, like Saddam Hussein’s, Fidel Castro’s life and seemingly endless regime put the history of his country on “pause.” His continuation brought a kind of stability.  His death will bring instability as competing forces push for position, with Bush-Cheney presiding over it. I’m uneasy. Will the people of Cuba get freedom, or will they get endless insurgency, or will they get a combination of the two, as in Iraq. Are we competent enough to manage our role effectively? Will the politics of South Florida be the tail wagging the dog?

At my age, you get used to letting go.  You get used to understanding you can’t rely on anything to stay the same.  I’d like to think Tony Bennett will keep putting out great CDs, and that I might see him again in concert. I don’t like to think Castro will run Cuba forever, but I don’t trust the future after Castro to be peaceful or orderly, so I’m not in a hurry to see him go.  Replacing an evil dictatorship with “democracy” once the dictator is toppled doesn’t seem quite as obvious or simple as it used to, in theory, appear.  

As long as these two icons are still around, I still feel like I live in the world of my childhood, with its familiar terrors and familiar pleasures.  New pleasures surely await us, but also new terrors that we’d rather not think about.       

‘Greatest Generation’ Backlash

Whatever halo of countercultural glory shined over the late Dr. Timothy Leary dims to near blackness with the publication of the new biography by Robert Greenfield. According to reviews (here , here, and here), the world-famous avatar of expanded consciousness, who plotted with novelist Aldous Huxley on how to bring peace to the world through sharing their LSD stash with Kennedy and Krushchev, is revealed as a cold, selfish, drunken desperado who betrayed or sold out pretty much everyone everyone who helped him, including his own children.

In his review, the New Yorker’s Louis Menand, a favorite writer of mine, takes an incidental swipe at Leary’s highly praised age group, not all of whom fought in WWII:

Leary belonged to what we reverently refer to as the Greatest Generation, that cohort of Americans who eluded most of the deprivations of the Depression, grew fat in the affluence of the postwar years, and then preached hedonism and truancy to the baby-boom generation, which has taken the blame ever since. Great Ones, we salute you!

This is a new book idea for Tom Brokaw to add to his series: “Nobody’s Perfect: Misfits of the Greatest Generation.”

Menand sees Leary as having achieved his greatest influence through use of marketing messages that were immediately copied by Madison Avenue:

Leary’s immortal message to (his) audience—“Turn on, tune in, and drop out”—was quickly picked up on and widely pastiched. Greenfield cites a commercial for Squirt: “Turn on to flavor, tune in to sparkle, and drop out of the cola rut.” This is not very surprising, for a couple of reasons. One is that in the mid-nineteen-sixties the language of commercial culture was drug vernacular. Almost everything advertised itself as the moral, legal, and sensory equivalent of a drug experience, from pop music to evangelism. (Billy Graham: “Turn on Christ, tune in to the Bible, and drop out of sin.”) All sorts of products claimed to turn you on, get you high, blow your mind. But the other reason Leary’s phrase was adopted as an advertising slogan is that it was designed to be an advertising slogan. The inspiration came from a fellow pop visionary, Marshall McLuhan. In 1966, McLuhan and Leary had lunch at the Plaza Hotel in New York City; there, in Leary’s account, the media-wise McLuhan offered the following counsel:

“The key to your work is advertising. You’re promoting a product. The new and improved accelerated brain. You must use the most current tactics for arousing consumer interest. Associate LSD with all the good things that the brain can produce—beauty, fun, philosophic wonder, religious revelation, increased intelligence, mystical romance. Word of mouth from satisfied consumers will help, but get your rock and roll friends to write jingles about the brain.”

But Leary hardly needed this advice. Long before 1966, he made a point of giving then-legal LSD to intellectuals, writers, professors and other “influentials” who spread the word among kindred spirits, and then to their fans and followers. Musicians in particular proselytized by example, through the acknowledged influence of LSD on their work.

No different from putting a brand-name cigarette in an actor’s fingers, a bottle of beer in front of a ballplayer, or a designer outfit on a red-carpet regular. PR 101.

Dangerous Music*

This summer marks the 40th anniversary of what is probably the most dangerous LP recorded during the classic rock era, the Beatles’ Revolver. With the whole world watching, the most popular group of musicians in history documented their complete rejection of everything conventional, in favor of drugs, exotic religious beliefs, chance-based musical and literary effects, and a kind of sleepy dissipation.

I’m no Jerry Falwell; I’m a huge fan of this wondrous album. But if you consider what came after, you have to credit Revolver with being the most influential cultural document of the 1960s. I can’t think of a book, a movie or any other pop music that so completely changed how millions of people in America and Europe looked at their world.

Revolver popularized what had previously been the underground philosophy and lifestyle of Beat Generation writers and existentialist philosophers — that the world was absurd, that consciousness was to be doubted, and that only sensual pleasure could be trusted. The anti-heroic sensibility. The rejected one who rejects all.

What could be more “Beat” than “I’m Only Sleeping?”

Everybody seems to think I’m lazy
I don’t mind, I think they’re crazy
Running everywhere at such a speed
Till they find there’s no need

Please, don’t spoil my day, I’m miles away
And after all I’m only sleeping

Keeping an eye on the world going by my window
Taking my time

Lying there and staring at the ceiling
Waiting for a sleepy feeling…

The June 2006 issue of Mojo, a British pop music magazine, is dedicated to the Beatles and Revolver. The stories aren’t online, so you’ll have to search for it on dead tree — Borders usually carries it.  Geoff Emerick, who engineered the album, has recently published his autobiography, which contains descriptions of the innovative recording techniques that gave Revolver its psychedelic sheen.

According to Mojo, in 1966, while the group wrote and recorded Revolver, John, George and Ringo used LSD constantly. Paul eventually caught up, but at this particular point, he was still back on marijuana–and trying to learn what he could from members of London’s avant-garde art scene, who introduced him to “free jazz” musicians like Albert Ayler and Ornette Coleman, atonal electronic music composers like Karlheinz Stockhausen and Luciano Berio, and the Beat author William Burroughs, who pioneered the “cut-up” technique, in which snips of text would be thrown to the floor then picked up and reassembled randomly.

These influences are present in the music on Revolver, but not on every cut. The tunes on songs like “For No One” “Got to Get You Into My Life” or “Taxman” are classic pop. But the album is imbued with the spirit of refusal and deconstruction. Why should words make sense? Why should music be planned? Why should I get out of bed?

Teenage fans bought this album and played “Tomorrow Never Knows,” with its overlapping tape loops and Buddhist-inspired lyrics; or “Eleanor Rigby” with its dry-eyed despair at the meaninglessness of ordinary life and thought…what? “Okay, that was fun. Now onto law school?” Certainly some did, but others apparently thought the ideas embodied in this music made more sense than what they were hearing from parents, teachers and political leaders.

The revolutionary movements of the 1960s were about letting go of the world, and the rules by which we live in the world. That’s the kind of revolution the Beatles sang about–and how incredibly influential they were!

Movies like “The Big Chill” or “Running on Empty,” try to tell you that the drama of the 1960s featured young idealists who wanted to create a new world based on social justice, but fell short because they grew up, went “straight,” and abandoned their ideals.

Listen again to Revolver, and you hear something entirely different and contrary to that myth. The revolutions of the 1960s were not so much about politics as they were about states of mind — the elevation of subjective truth above traditional wisdom. And, looking at the world around us, I’d have to say that revolution was a success — and it continues.

You’ve heard the quote, “You’re entitled to your own opinion, but you’re not entitled to your own facts?” There’s a reason Gen. Barry McCaffery felt compelled to say that. For many in our society, subjective truth is now the higher truth. When did that idea begin to reach popular culture? I would argue Revolver was a major source.

The Los Angeles connection: One of the key Revolver songs, “She Said She Said,” was inspired, said John Lennon, by a comment made to him at a party in LA:

“That was written after an acid trip in L.A. during a break in the Beatles tour where we were having fun with the Byrds and lots of girls. Peter Fonda came in when we were on acid and he kept coming up to me and sitting next to me and whispering, ‘I know what it’s like to be dead.’ He was describing an acid trip he’d been on. We didn’t want to hear about that. We were on an acid trip and the sun was shining and the girls were dancing, and the whole thing was beautiful and Sixties, and this guy– who I really didn’t know– he hadn’t made ‘Easy Rider‘ or anything… kept coming over, wearing shades, saying, ‘I know what it’s like to be dead,’ and we kept leaving him because he was so boring! And I used it for the song, but I changed it to ’she’ instead of ‘he.’ It was scary… I don’t want to know what it’s like to be dead!”

*Edited and slightly expanded, 6/9/06

Standing on the Shoulders that Stood on the Shoulders of Giants

I've been listening avidly to a CD from 2004, A.C. Newman's The Slow Wonder. Newman writes about 75 percent of the songs on the New Pornographers' disks, including vehicles like "Bones of an Idol" and "Laws Have Changed" for that wondrous chanteuse, Neko Case. Newman's style is unmistakable, but he never repeats himself. That, to me, is the sign of a timeless pop talent.

Listening to Newman, you can pick up some of his influences, especially Brian Wilson, Phil Spector, Burt Bacharach and Paul McCartney. Like his mentors' best music, Newman's songs are light and enjoyable on the surface, but the melodies are laid over a structure of complex harmonies, driving beats and odd arrangements that recall Wilson's masterpiece, Pet Sounds.

The difference is that each of Newman's major influences were, themselves, the products of the music that came before them. Brian Wilson listened to Chuck Berry and the Four Freshman. Newman was born two years after Pet Sounds came out. McCartney listened to English music-hall tunes and Little Richard. Newman was born the year "Hey Jude" was released. Bacharach worshipped Dizzy Gillespie and studied under French orchestral composer Darius Milhaud. These writers built some of the greatest pop music ever heard by synthesizing distinct, even incongruent strains of authentic, music never intended for wide audiences.

American/British pop music is omniverous. Over the years it has absorbed all sorts of folk traditions, adopting sounds second- and third-hand, then going abroad to find more untainted sources to borrow. By now, if there is a unique sound anywhere in the world that hasn't been incorporated into a pop or dance tune, extremely shy people must be making it. That makes today an extremely challenging time for pop music writers. The rise of a talent like A.C. Newman proves there is room for originality, but he will never have the luxury of melding his style with something no one's heard before.

This is all a long prologue to writing a few words about my son. One of my readers asked me to go back to a topic I've written about once – my 15-year-old son's artistic pursuits. So here goes.

Since he was very young, this boy has gone from obsession to obsession, and these obsessions have been the source — the only source, really — of his creativity. The interesting problem for me, as a parent, is what happens when my son is not obsessed.

He started with a pen, drawing with what I thought was prodigious skill during his first 12 or 13 years. But he refused to take an art lesson. He knew what he wanted to draw–Disney characters, and sometimes characters of his own. He figured out how to draw them, and worked very hard at it. "You need art lessons. You need to learn shading," I'd admonish him. A few days later, he'd show me another drawing, this one with shading. "Your drawings are two-dimensional, we should get you an art class to learn to show dimension." Within days, he had figured out dimension. Anything to avoid art lessons.

Eventually he moved his drawings into the computer. He learned how to use Flash and then other animation programs. He still takes digital animation classes in school, where he is a source of frustration to his teacher, as he gives himself more difficult assignments than she gives him–and then can't finish them.

Over the past year, his interests shifted to drama, particularly musical theater. He got cast in one musical, then another, and now he's in another. Animation, the dream of his young life, took second place. Then third place. For years, he's had a little electric piano in his room. He had taken piano lessons years ago, but I stopped them when it was apparent he would never practice. I was never sure he even learned to read music.

Now, he's trying to write his own musicals. Strange stories about murder and neglected children, with ominous, dissonant songs that he's writing on a keyboard I didn't realize he knew how to play; digging into an old rhyming dictionary to help with the lyrics; using his animation programs' audio features to record multi-tracked vocal harmonies. My wife and I frequently will be sitting in bed late at night, suddenly aware of these spooky sounds — like bees stuck in molasses — coming from next door. It's the artist at work.

My son's latest inspiration is Stephen Sondheim, lyricist for West Side Story, and composer/lyricist of a string of challenging, highly original shows like Sunday in the Park with George, A Little Night Music, and Into the Woods. Sondheim — like Brian Wilson, like Burt Bacharach, is a writer who created something by blending traditions. He was taught first by Oscar Hammerstein II, composer of classic shows like Oklahoma!, Carousel and South Pacific, then by Milton Babbit, whose claim to fame is a body of atonal and electronic works in the 12-tone style pioneered by Arnold Schoenberg. Many of Sondheim's musicals express the duality of his influences. He is steeped in the emotions, the staginess, the razz-ma-tazz of Broadway, but ofttimes his songs are dark, bleak and tuneless. Sweeney Todd, his greatest work, is about a murderous, avenging barber and the woman who bakes pies out of the resulting corpses. There are beautiful love songs in this show, but the melodies reflect the madness and blood-lust of the hero and heroine.

My son has memorized many of Sondheim's songs, and sings along with them on his mp3 player while he's doing his homework. He's familiar with other recent shows by newer composers, like Urinetown, Avenue Q, Rent, Wicked, and of course the Disney movie musicals — but he asked me the other day whether Carousel was any good. To my son, the shows that comment on, satirize, steal or upend the canon of musicals from Broadway's golden age are the canon. The classics — he admires the ones he's heard, but he feels no urgency about learning from them.

Just as A.C. Newman, asked about the influences on the New Pornographers, said this (emphasis mine):

“Various unintentional influences have crept into our work, some of which are quickly removed: The Moody Blues, Tubeway Army, Wings, always Wings, never The Beatles, Eno of course, you can’t play ebow without sounding like Eno, Modern English, middle period post-Gabriel Genesis, The Stranglers, the vocal inflections on “Dreadlock Holiday” remain a steady influence, we’re still trying to find a way to insert some dub/white reggae in the mix, just as an intellectual exercise, to see if we can do it without being dropped from the label. I know it sounds awful but it will all work out.”

To music fans of my generation, anyone who prefers Wings to the Beatles is demonstrably insane (and Newman is at least half-joking). But then, I wasn't born in 1968. Likewise, it makes perfect sense for my son to see Stephen Sondheim as Square One, and to hear his once-controversial music not as the end of musical evolution, but as the starting point. To an artist with fresh eyes and ears, any point can be a starting point.

When my son takes his creations out into the world, he'll face stiff competition from people who gave themselves over to their teachers more, who know more, and who have made the sacrifices needed to develop basic techniques that he skipped over. He knows that, but so far, he hasn't changed course. The obsessed might be maddening at times, but they've got a kind of integrity, and from where I sit, a few feet from his bedroom door, it's amazing to watch it play out.

Another Exit

Call it symmetry, or call it a good news angle for the PR trades, but the same week my PR career hits an iceberg, another PR guy calls it quits — for the best reasons.

San Francisco's Blake Barbera started his blog, wet feet pr, in March 2005 to document the start of what seemed likely to become a highly successful PR career. In his first post, Barbera said this:

…I recognize that a majority of the PR blogs are written by PR professionals. I also recognize that there are a lot of blog readers that are at the entry level stages of their PR career. I am one of them. I am the guy on the team who scans blogs for trends, company coverage, or just basic insights. I put two and two together and created a blog that is written by the entry level PR guy for the entry level PR guy/girl (got to be politically correct).

(snip)

So, are you ready to get your feet wet? Ready to climb up the PR ladder? I am, so I hope you are too. Just remember, you can't get your feet wet unless you stick your toes in. Lets go!

In the intervening 14 months, Barbera documented personal milestones like his first press hit, his first news release, and various lessons learned along the way. To pick one of many examples, last December he described an in-house exercise called "Media Blitz Day" in which points were awarded to players for getting a reporter on the phone (1 point), for getting some kind of "next steps" indication from that reporter (2 points), and for getting the reporter to agree to a date and time for a briefing (3 points).

(T)he game gets you out of the routine of email contact only, allows you to update your target list as necessary, and gives you some insider information that may be of use to you when approaching that specific reporter in the future. While it is always good to know what your reporters are writing, practicing this exercise is one way to help you keep tabs on them. In addition, it's nice to approach your target list once in a while when you don't have something to pitch them on, but rather just to say hello.

But then, somewhat unexpectedly, this week Barbera announced: "Wet Feet PR retires."

After nearly two years of working in PR and another year spent writing this blog, I have decided to move on from it all. I’m not sure how else to put it, but I’m following what my gut feeling is telling me and it’s leading me in a completely different direction that the one PR has been taking me down. This decision I have made involved many nights of deep thinking and was not easy, especially after investing so much time and energy into this profession. I had every intention of staying in PR for the long haul and I gave it everything I could, but somewhere in-between it all I became more aware of what I wanted out of my life and what I wanted to achieve. With that said, I’m taking a risk – starting from scratch – and pursuing an entirely different career path. To be honest, I don’t think that there is a better time in life for me to make a move like this than now.

So what’s next? Well, I’m off to pursue work with at-risk youth. From there I plan to continue to play a role in the field of Corrections, either as a Probation Officer or as a Psychologist. The decision to pursue a career in this field came from personal experiences that I went through in my younger years – in which I have now come to realize that working with people in the same situation I was once in, and helping them see that they can lead a better life, would be a profession I know I would enjoy. This is a very exciting step for me and I hope to have your support.

And:

My words for the next generation of young PR professionals are this: PR is a very fun and rewarding career and there couldn’t be a better time to be in this profession than now. As Eric Eggerston noted to me a while back – you (younger PR people) should be aware of the huge bubble of managers who are nearing retirement age. Within the next 10 years a bunch of management positions that have been hoarded by aging baby boomers are going to come open. While picking a middle-aged person with lots of experience is the obvious choice to fill these positions, other companies are going to be looking through their ranks of up and comers. You can either think of yourselves as a rank amateur, with very little to offer the company, or you can think of yourself as a future leader who just needs to get a nice wide range of experience and accomplishments under their belt over the next 5-8 years in order to be ready to grab a senior position.

If I had to pick only two things I liked about working in PR, mentoring younger, entry-level professionals would be one of them. Since I didn't start out in PR, I was always fascinated by the kids who did so, and tried to do whatever I could to keep them inspired while introducing them to the realities of the business and helping them sharpen their skills. A guy like Blake would be just the kind of guy I'd have felt privileged to manage. And I'm sure he would have made me look good — another thing managers look for in younger staff!

From listening the recent trial, you'd think PR was all about billing. The fact is, most PR people are like I was: Completely focused on clients, issues, strategies, expanding your contacts and knowledge base. Upper management was where the focus shifted to profits, projections and what Wall Street needed to know about your business. My story is a cautionary tale, to be sure, that at every level, you need to pay more attention to the billing process, no matter how confusing your particular company's system might be. But absorbing the excitement of the young man or woman for whom everything is new — and channeling that excitement into results for clients — was what made me want to come to work each morning.

I'm sure Blake's colleagues and clients will miss him, but I have no doubt he will bring his thoroughly professional attitude into the field he's now chosen. In the meantime, his blog is still up, and I recommend that everyone in PR, young or, uh, "aging baby boomers" should read it.

Blogger with a Guitar

Palm smacks to the forehead: Of course! Neil Young, blogger.

Hasn't Neil always been a blogger? Haven't all his albums been spontaneous reflections of whatever's going through his head and happening in his life at the moment? The rap on Neil was that his recording techniques were often slipshod, that he had no filter, he released too many albums with too many bad songs drowning out the great ones. But that's been his aesthetic since 1970. Write it, record it, put it out.

I remember Rolling Stone's review of "After the Gold Rush," complaining Young hadn't spent enough time on it. From that 1970 review:

Neil Young devotees will probably spend the nest few weeks trying desperately to convince themselves that After the Gold Rush is good music. But they'll be kidding themselves. For despite the fact that the album contains some potentially first rate material, none of the songs here rise above the uniformly dull surface. In my listening, the problem appears to be that most of this music was simply not ready to be recorded at the time of the session. It needed time to mature. On the album the band never really gets behind the songs and Young himself has trouble singing many of them. Set before the buying public before it was done, this pie is only half-baked.

Time has proven their judgment on that classic album to be wrong, but a good many of his subsequent albums, which he approached in the same haphazard way, are terrible. So what?, Neil seemed to say. I can always write another one, and maybe it'll be better. He's hit the mark enough times that you're compelled to at least check out anything he does.

Neil Young also freely, merrily contradicts himself — especially about politics. He's about the only baby-boom era classic rocker who had the nerve to release a few songs over the years with almost jingoistic right-wing messages. He hates the Iraq war now, but in the post 9/11 "Let's Roll," he waved the bloody shirt.

You've got to turn on evil,
When it's coming after you,
You've gota face it down,
And when it tries to hide,
You've gota go in after it,
And never be denied,
Time is runnin' out,
Let's roll.

Long ago, Young embraced Ronald Reagan for a time. But he's also tacked way to the left many more times, as he does with the new music on "Living With War."

"Living With War" is an audio blog. If you delve into his web site you'll learn he wrote and recorded all its songs in just the past few weeks. At this writing you can't buy it, and you can't download it, but you can listen to it as an audio stream, so long as you're willing to hear it from the beginning. You can't skip tracks. Eventually it will appear in CD racks, but by that time it will be a souvenir. Its impact is being felt right now. Bloggers all over the world are invited to link to it. He wants his fans to hear it now, while its themes are still hot.

This is a real Marshall McLuhan moment. Up to now, the Internet has been seen as just another channel to present music. But "Living With War" is music for the Internet. I don't know if it's the first example, but given Neil's fame and huge international fan base, I predict it will have immense influence.

Two Days in Orange County

My son is part of a high school theater festival at Fullerton College today and tomorrow, so we’re staying in a motel to avoid two additional trips on the 91. Fullerton has a cute downtown area that is entirely wi-fi: Paradise. But old habits die hard, so I’m working from a high-ceilinged Starbucks at the corner of Chapman and Harbor, at least until my wi-fi-enabled motel room is ready.

Eating breakfast at Denny’s, I perused the Orange County Register, which I used to like, but now seems less zesty. I remember it as more of a Mulligan stew — hard-right, Brylcreem’d editorials and op-eds, alongside sunbaked New Age lifestyle pieces. Today’s edition seemed bland. But maybe that’s because, over time, the hard right and New Age began to resemble one another and became dominant strands in our culture — two sides of the same individualistic mentality. Not that there’s anything wrong with that!

Here are a few things I would not have known if I hadn’t read this morning’s Register. (By the way, registration is required to see these stories online, but it’s free):

Music critic Ben Wener freely admits that he lusted after Robert Hilburn’s position as LA Times music critic. From reading today’s column, I think he could have been a good choice. Lamenting that moving to a new condo prevented him from covering the hot new band of the moment, the Arctic Monkeys, Wener shows he’s one newspaperman who sees the writing on the wall:

Here’s the thing, though: I really don’t think you care.

See, we’ve seen these demographic reports lately that say the majority of folks reading doorstep rags are typically over 40, largely uninterested in music writing and still consumed with all the usual baby boomer heroes El Hilburn has been discussing for decades.

Which is why recently I’ve written about 10 inches on the most exciting band right now – and four times as much on Kool & the Gang. I don’t get e-mail when I babble enthusiastically about fresh talent; I get dozens when I write an essay praising the Kinks.

So why should I care that I missed Arctic Monkeys, right? I shouldn’t let it eat at me, lead me to think I’m falling down on the job. If I believe surveys, you have no interest anyway, and I’d only be banging my head against a wall to convince you to listen.

On a more serious note: The SEC’s head of contingency planning thinks the U.S. stock markets should operate normally, even if an avian flu pandemic breaks out. From a Reuters story that appeared in the Register’s print edition:

“We really believe that with proper planning, the markets can stay open, even with the most severe pandemic,” said Alton Harvey, who heads contingency planning for the Securities and Exchange Commission.

“We think this is doable,” he told a conference organized by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Because we have to — we have no choice — we will work it out. The markets will trade.”

(snip)

Stephen Malphrus of the Federal Reserve Board agreed. The Federal Open Market Committee, which sets U.S. economic and interest rate policy can meet by telephone if necessary, he said. “The financial sector is generally out in the lead,” Malphrus said. “I would think it would be prudent to have a first draft of a plan … certainly by this summer.”

Phew! Good to know that 100 million severely ill and dying people won’t disrupt bankers’ meeting schedules!

Back to lotus-land: Did you know there was a spa glut?

When Maureen Vipperman took over The Spa at Laguna Cliffs Marriott Resort in Dana Point last year, she quickly added unique treatments to ensure the spa stood out among the 150 in Orange County.

She introduced the Thai-Su, a blend of Eastern-inspired Thai and Shiatsu massages. She added a microdermabrasion facial. She also started accepting discounted spa gift certificates sold at Costco.

“Right now, the fact that there are so many of us to choose from is a big challenge,” Vipperman said. “Trying to distinguish ourselves from the rest has been an ongoing task for many resort/destination spas.”

Other spas around the country are rolling out frequent-flier-style loyalty programs, calling former visitors at home to check on their weight-loss progress and offering discounts to guests who rebook their next visit while they’re still at the spa.

The efforts come on the heels of the industry’s swift growth, which has left consumers with a dizzying array of spa options.

Lastly, back to a more serious topic. At yesterday’s huge Conference on Aging in Anaheim, one expert delivered a plea for understanding on behalf of a heretofore stigmatized group: “Grumpy Old Men.”

“What I’m really talking about are men who are drinking. Men who are isolated. Men at senior centers who are aggressive, who are really angry, who are cynical, who are sarcastic,” said Patrick Arbore, an educator and an expert in suicide and grief-related services for the elderly.

“That’s how they’re masking their pain.”

(snip)

(H)e cited some grim statistics: Men are more than four times more likely to commit suicide than women, and the suicide rate for men 85 and older is more than six times higher than the general population.

What’s wrong, according to Arbore, is that men have been conditioned that it’s not manly to express any emotion except anger, or to cry or feel vulnerable, or to accept and express feelings of helplessness, frailty, sensitivity and empathy.

“It’s not that men are bad or dangerous creatures, but some men are so closed off from their real selves, they’re acting out,” he said.

So, if you see Bob Dole coming down the sidewalk, don’t cross the street to avoid him. Bob Dole needs a hug!

The Marketers Still Want Me!

As I watched my 15-year-old son approach adulthood, and as I spent time talking to friends and former employees still in their 20’s and 30’s, I believed that, slowly but surely, the world was passing me by.

Especially the world of consumer marketing. So often have I read that advertisers only want to peddle their wares on media aimed at the 18- to 49-year-old demographic–a land where I once dwelled but departed with fond memories a few months ago–I figured nobody wanted my money anymore.

So I would spend the years of my dotage seeing ads for products I don’t need, don’t want, and don’t even understand. I would grow increasingly cranky as stores filled with foods that would send me immediately to the emergency room; clothing that would never fit me made from synthetics fabrics that give me a rash; and iPods with screens so small my fading eyesight would only register colorful swirls, like the light shows they used to play behind Grateful Dead concerts–only much, much smaller.

I was wrong. From Forbes.com, the following review of a book that dispels that myth:

In his new book The 50-Plus Market ($40, Kogan Page, 2006), Dick Stroud refers to this slightly older group as the “Charmed Generation,” the last to hail from an era of reliable defined-benefit pensions, low debt and low-cost home ownership. Retiring to relative comfort, they figure to be steady spenders for many years to come. For businesses, capturing these people is not only advantageous but imperative, Stroud argues, since the group that’s coming in behind them is so saddled with debt and future commitments.

Only 5% of all worldwide advertising budgets are geared to consumers 50 and over, while 80% is poured into the 18-34 segment–a shrinking market. That’s like Eastman Kodak putting 80% of its marketing and research and development budgets into traditional film and standing by while competitors cash in on the explosion in digital photography. The argument that the money on youth marketing is well spent because you’re “hooking ‘em for life”? Forget it, he says, there’s no such thing. People of all ages try new brands all the time. A person will always leave your brand if he perceives a better value elsewhere.

Wellll…I don’t know how “charmed” I am exactly…. but the point seems valid. The reviewer continues:

Marketing strategy, (Stroud) argues, is being driven more by stereotypes than by evidence.

“Marketing theory isn’t affected by age bias, but marketers themselves are,” Stroud writes, blaming the bias on a marketing industry population that skews under 35 on the lack of an institutional commitment to break out of a comfort zone.

That includes technology, where studies show that two-thirds of Americans over 55 are now online. Few companies are selling to them effectively through the Web, though, since most Web sites are built by young people for young people. Older customers are there and ready to buy, Stroud argues. Make the design and sales process a little simpler, and you’ll get them.

I used to be concerned, when I worked at a PR agency, that as I got older, I would get out of touch. I saw examples all around me of executives even older than me, using expressions that dated back to the 1940s in pitches aimed at a bunch of 20-somethings. “We can do everything, from soup to nuts,” was the title of one of our PowerPoint slides. I wasn’t convinced that was the best title for the slide. Did these people really think the two extremes are “soup” and “nuts,” and that everything the would-be clients want falls in between? Doubtful.

But by trying to stay ahead of the times, PR and marketing people have, in fact, fallen behind the times. Young is the new old. Old is the new young. And even though I’m in my 50s, smart marketers will still try to hunt me down. I better buy some new shoes so I can outrun ‘em. Maybe something endorsed by Joe Montana.

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