Made For Each Other

Some records just aren't made for vinyl, I think.

This is the first record I ever heard on a CD player, and the experience still stuns me. That drum break is everything -- the song's high point.

It's funny, I remember that this was used in Miami Vice more than I remember the episode itself. This was the pilot episode, and, Google tells me, the 32nd anniversary of its debut is this Friday, September 16, 2016.

Perhaps the reason I associate this song so closely with Miami Vice is that it was also used in the fourth episode of that inaugural season. I wish I hadn't had to sell those DVDs.

In any case, Phil Collins and Miami Vice seemed made for each other back then.

No, this post isn't going anywhere, but I don't need it to -- not today.

Then again, maybe it is. Maybe the point is that some things are just made for each other, and we shouldn't try to pretend otherwise. It's good when things match up, go together, and stay together. People, too, but now I am digressing -- although that's a subject I'm inclined to stick with whenever I get the chance.

Anyway, this is Phil Collins, with a song that still sounds momentous and full of foreboding, "In the Air Tonight".

Live Aid took place 31 years ago today, yet I think we'll be singing this song even as we go crashing to our doom, however that comes about.

"You talk and talk and you talk some more," Phil Collins sings, and it's true. It's the rallying cry of those in Appalachia, who swear that, if you get a flat tire in those hills and an expert happens along, they won't stoop to help you; they'll write a white paper about it.

It's the rallying cry, too, of sly, populist experts like Michael Gove, who proclaimed that "we" had had enough of experts. The working class responded to the dog whistle, and voted Yes on Brexit by a majority, however slight.

You talk and talk, and you talk some more.

When talk doesn't work, it's time for action, but how do you know what action to take if you don't talk about it first?

You could talk to the real experts -- the working class folks who get it in the neck on a daily basis. You could ask what they need, but asking what they think gets ever so much higher ratings. You could commit for the long haul -- like, until you're too sick to work -- to a non-profit organization that provides practical help, instead of running from pillar to post, from this cause to that, trying to convince everyone how compassionate you are. You could Google the organizations that act as watchdogs over the larger charities, and refuse to send a penny to those who pay their executive officers six-figure salaries.

You could stick with one person, one group, one cause, admit that we still have a "Long, Long Way To Go," and be okay with that, knowing that we all have a long, long way to go in some measure.

This is Phil Collins and Sting with Branford Marsalis at the original Live Aid. You know the song.

Pining For the Old Days

These days, niche marketing is all the rage. Social media makes all other media -- newspapers, radio, television -- endlessly customizable.

I like having those options. Even though I'm a baby boomer, I tended to like isolated tracks rather than complete albums long before iTunes happened. If iTunes had existed back then, I would have been in heaven and saved a lot of money on music besides. How that impacts artists is another story entirely, but I digress.

The 1980s were about the last time that everyone was on the same page in terms of what we watched, read, and listened to. Platinum albums were more common than they are today, but the far bigger loss is the sense of community. We all have less in common now, because niche marketing encourages us toward individual, rather than collective, expression.

As much as I love being able to buy one song from the CD, one episode from the TV show; as much as I love being able to read the news and editorials I want rather than those that the profit-obsessed editors of my local newspapers want me to read, I miss the communal experience we all had watching videos like this. Somehow, knowing the same songs, the same shows, made us seem more connected, and that's the worst, most dangerous thing about both niche marketing and the Internet -- the utter lack of real human connection. It is almost impossible to genuinely connect with someone these days. That makes me sad.

So, here I am doing something I almost never do -- pining for the old days. Funny, Phil Collins and Marilyn Martin are doing the same, all the while lamenting "Separate Lives".