“Lost, Not Stolen” is a new 72‐page report from a group of prominent conservative legal and political figures that knocks down some of the more frequently heard claims from Donald Trump and allies that the 2020 election was stolen or illegitimate. Their “unequivocal” conclusion is that Trump lost; in fact, they find no credible evidence that fraud changed the outcome even in a single precinct, let alone in any state.
Most of the report consists of a state‐by‐state refutation of claims circulated about voting results in Arizona and Georgia (six claims apiece), Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Note that the last‐named of these states has already been the subject of a useful report from the right‐leaning Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, which I wrote about here, and that Republican authorities in states like Georgia have also carried out extensive audits and reviews regarding those states’ votes.
The new report’s signers include three prominent retired federal judges (Thomas Griffith, Mike McConnell, Michael Luttig), former Solicitor General Ted Olson, Republican election lawyer Ben Ginsberg, former senators John Danforth and Gordon Smith, and longtime Congressional staff chief David Hoppe. I should mention that I have known three of these figures at various times over decades (McConnell, Ted Olson, Hoppe) and admired each for their insight, analytical skills, and dedication to principle.
There is no defensible case that Trump won the 2020 election. “We urge our fellow conservatives to cease obsessing over the results of the 2020 election, and to focus instead on presenting candidates and ideas that offer a positive vision for overcoming our current difficulties and bringing greater peace, prosperity, and liberty to our nation.”
Cato adjunct scholar Ilya Somin has more on the report, and Price St. Clair at the Dispatch traces its origins over a year and a half of work. Let’s hope it finds a wide audience.
Whether or not Republicans believe Trump lost (because of Trump’s own fault), it’s imperative they act that way. Too much of the GOP fails to grasp that most voters — including the people Republicans need to vote for them in November and in November 2024 — do not believe the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. Continuing in Trump’s thrall is a good way to lose elections.
Today in 1963, two years and one day after the Beatles started as the house band for the Cavern Club in Liverpool, the Beatles performed there for the last time.
Three years later, the South African government banned Beatles records due to John Lennon’s infamous “bigger than Jesus” comment.
Five years later and one year removed from the Beatles, Paul McCartney formed Wings.
We know who is not the pro-business candidate for governor. That is the governor mentioned by M.D. Kittle in February:
Tech titan Intel Corp. chose Ohio over Wisconsin as the future home of its $20 billion semiconductor manufacturing complex —an economic boon for the Buckeye State that Intel promises will bring thousands of high-paying jobs.
Does Wisconsin’s big loss have something to do with its big government governor? In his three-plus years in office, Gov. Tony Evers is as advertised: an anti-business, tax-and-spend liberal who broke Wisconsin’s biggest economic development contract to score political points.
“One of his (Gov. Evers) first orders of business was taking down all of the ‘Open for Business” signs around the state,” a legislative aid for Republican leadership said, referring to Evers’ decision to remove the signs his predecessor, Republican Gov. Scott Walker had placed at Wisconsin’s state lines. Instead, Evers put up signs bearing his name.
He’s clobbered business early and often.
Despite unprecedented state surpluses, Evers has proposed more than $2 billion in tax hikes in his two biennial budget plans. He wanted to gut the popular manufacturing and agriculture tax credit that economic experts say has been a game-changer in job creation. Intel certainly would have been a leading recipient of the credits.
Scott Manley, executive vice president for Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, said Evers’ attack on manufacturers must raise red flags with companies like Intel.
“Instead of looking at a very low tax liability under the manufacturing and ag tax credit, you have a governor who wants to eliminate that tax credit and boost us up to one of the highest tax rates in the country,” Manley said. “That doesn’t help when you’re making a 30-, 40-year investment in a place. You’re definitely looking at taxes over the long term. Right now we have a governor who says, we want to tax you to the max.”
At the outset of the pandemic in 2020, Evers locked down much of the state, ordering thousands of businesses closed and sending hundreds of thousands of workers to the unemployment line. His administration then extended the stay-at-home order even as businesses pleaded that they were on the brink of permanently closing. When employers asked him to do the one thing in his power to ease a worker shortage crisis, he refused. Then he vetoed a bill that would have ended federal subsidies that kept unemployed workers out of the workforce.
Wisconsin reportedly was a front-runner for the Intel project, The planned complex is expected to cover nearly 1,000 acres and employ 3,000 workers on average earning $135,000 a year. Intel is looking at a total long-term investment of $100 billion, with thousands more jobs.
According to Biz Times, Wisconsin offered 471 acres of land owned by the village of Mount Pleasant, next to Foxconn, and an additional 400 acres of privately-owned land.
But Ohio was the “entire package,” Intel’s Keyvan Esfanjani said.
“Ohio comes to the top, the talent pool, the infrastructure, the regulatory environment and the team,” Esfanjani told Statehouse News Bureau.
Sources say Intel was impressed with what Mount Pleasant-area officials had to offer.
“I think all the representatives from the Mount Pleasant area worked so hard to create a great environment,” said state Sen. Van Wanggaard (R-Racine). “I think we did everything we could to show them” the area was a “good fit.”
Intel was less than impressed with Evers and his economic development team, sources tell Empower Wisconsin.
Economic development officials and community leaders have complained about the lack of communication and urgency in the administration and Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. Biz Times reported Evers’ team offered an incentive package that was “in accordance with Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation guidelines.” Biz Times Editor Andrew Weiland estimated the package at approximately $2.2 billion, based on a $20 billion capital investment.
But there seemed to be a communication breakdown in between.
“It seems to me we would have heard a little more out of the governor’s office,” Wanggaard said. “I don’t know if they were excited about bringing this type of business to the Foxconn area because that would give you-know-who (former President Trump, a Republican) a win.”
Trump was a big player and an even bigger cheerleader for the Foxconn deal in Racine County.
Wanggaard said he hopes Evers, a Democrat, and his team kept politics out of negotiations.
Evers seemed to make clear he wasn’t going to do a Foxconn-style deal. Of course not. Evers campaigned against the economic development deal former Gov. Scott Walker helped broker with the technology giant. In fact, Evers’ first campaign ad in his 2018 race against Walker attacked the Foxconn deal.
That project has yet to pan out the way its proponents have hoped. Foxconn originally had planned a $10 billion campus employing as many as 13,000 people in the production of advanced liquid crystal display panels. The state incentives package was worth $2.85 billion. While Evers and critics of the deal claim Foxconn has taken Wisconsin taxpayers for a ride, the company only received tax credits based on the jobs it created and the capital it invested.
Foxconn Technology Group recently qualified for tax credits for the first time. The Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. verified the company had created 579 jobs and had made a capital investment of $266 million at its Mount Pleasant complex. Foxconn qualified for $2.2 million in job creation tax credit and more than $26 million in capital investment tax credits.
Despite the contract stipulations, Evers effectively tore up the agreement and renegotiated a new contract with Foxconn.
“When I ran to be governor, I made a promise to work with Foxconn to cut a better deal for our state—the last deal didn’t work for Wisconsin, and that doesn’t work for me,” Evers said in a press release at the time. “Today I’m delivering on that promise with an agreement that treats Foxconn like any other business…”
In changing the terms, Evers told Foxconn and the world that Wisconsin state contracts are no good, Manley said. That has a chilling effect on business development.
“Businesses are going to be very hesitant to make very large investments in a state where the current governor is unwilling to honor the agreement made by the prior governor,” Manley said. “If you want to be serious about attracting investment in the state, you have to be willing to honor your word.
“Evers campaigned on the idea that he was going to essentially tear up the Foxconn agreement. That has real-world consequences.”
The governor’s anti-business practices haven’t gone unnoticed.
Wisconsin last year dropped seven spots to 22nd in Chief Executive magazine’s annual Best & Worst States For Business rankings. The Badger State has fallen eight spots since Evers has been in office. Chief Executive each March hundreds of CEOs of U.S. companies.
Under Walker, Wisconsin rose from 41st in the ranking in 2010, the year before Walker took office, to No. 10 in 2017.
“Businesses need certainty, they need the rule of law. They need contracts to be honored,” WMC’s Manley said, adding that states that break deals get a “bad reputation” among site locators and businesses poised to relocate or expand.
But is the pro-business candidate the business owner, or not?
Several top Republican donors and business leaders, including retired Bradley Foundation President Mike Grebe and major GOP donor/businessman Fred Young, are challenging the national Club for Growth for its deceptive ad against Rebecca Kleefisch, saying that Tim Michels lacks Kleefisch’s “unwavering conviction” to conservative principles.
The donors noted: “Here are the facts: Tim Michels has a detailed history of supporting questionable economic policies with his company. Michels led or was a member of three different organizations which tried to raise Wisconsin’s gas tax. Michels was president of a group that lobbied against a bill banning illegal immigrants from working on projects paid by taxpayer-funded contracts. Furthermore, Michels Corporation was part of a group whose sole focus was opposing right to work and prevailing wage repeal. His company even fired an employee for refusing to pay union dues. These are not the free-market, competition-driven principles that The Club for Growth has historically championed.”
[Note: Wisconsin Right Now was the first in Wisconsin media to break the story that Michels Corp fired an employee for refusing to pay union dues. We were also the first to break the stories on the organizations/gas tax issue and the illegal immigrant bill.]
It’s impossible to trace who is funding the national Club for Growth ads (although a source close to conservative donor Richard Uihlen says he’s not funding them). They’re clearly designed to destroy Kleefisch in the Aug. 9 gubernatorial primary.
Michels is the other leading contender. Wispolitics is reporting that the Club for Growth made a $1.3 million ad buy in the race. Their first ad attacked Kleefisch for her work on a women’s suffrage group; her work making trade job videos for a group that pushed Walker’s reforms; and her overseas trade missions to find new markets for Wisconsin farmers.
Here is the donors’ letter in full:
“Dear Club for Growth Leadership,
As you may be aware, we represent a collection of Wisconsin supporters and financial backers to The Club for Growth. We have supported The Club because of its strong stance on the principles of freedom, lower taxes, reducing government waste, regulatory reform, and expanding school choice. We’ve been proud of the efforts by The Club to elect conservative candidates across the nation who share these principles. That is, until now.
To say we are deeply concerned and disappointed in The Club’s decision to launch negative and false attacks ads against former Lt. Governor Rebecca Kleefisch would be an understatement. It’s also a decision that has led us to question whether to provide any future support. Under the administration of Scott Walker and Rebecca Kleefisch, Wisconsin led the nation in conservative reforms and experienced one of the most prosperous eras in our state’s history.
Rebecca Kleefisch not only exemplifies these conservative principles, she is the only candidate for governor who has never wavered in her conviction and defense of the principles even when faced with the strongest of opposition. To suggest that former Lt. Governor Kleefisch is anything other than a proven conservative reformer is not only a lie, but a disservice to Wisconsin’s conservative movement as a whole. This is why we are so surprised by The Club’s decision to attack Rebecca. Based on various conversations we have had with The Club, it is our understanding the organization is acutely aware, and previously never in question, of Rebecca’s conservative credentials.
Furthermore, it has become increasingly evident throughout this campaign that her opponent Tim Michels does not have the same breadth of experience and unwavering conviction to these conservative principles. Repeated gaffes by the Michels campaign have also demonstrated it lacks the competency and talent demanded to win a competitive statewide race in Wisconsin.
Without doubt, Michels’ campaign is in need of outside help. Sadly, however, it appears The Club for Growth has cast aside its proud record of adherence to conservative ideals and integrity in an attempt to save Michels’ campaign by tearing down Rebecca Kleefisch.
Here are the facts: Tim Michels has a detailed history of supporting questionable economic policies with his company. Michels led or was a member of three different organizations which tried to raise Wisconsin’s gas tax. Michels was president of a group that lobbied against a bill banning illegal immigrants from working on projects paid by taxpayer-funded contracts. Furthermore, Michels Corporation was part of a group whose sole focus was opposing right to work and prevailing wage repeal. His company even fired an employee for refusing to pay union dues. These are not the free-market, competition-driven principles that The Club for Growth has historically championed.
In contrast, Rebecca Kleefisch has never backed down from these principles. Protesters swarmed the Capitol to try and stop Rebecca and Governor Scott Walker from enacting reform to balance the budget, but Rebecca didn’t waver. She didn’t back down when roadbuilders ran ads trying to scare the Walker/Kleefisch administration into raising the gas tax. She stood on principle. When protesters again showed up at the State Capitol to protest right to work legislation, Rebecca Kleefisch proudly stood alongside Scott Walker when he signed the worker freedom bill into law.
To us, there is no question about who conservatives should vote for on Tuesday, August 9th — and that’s Rebecca Kleefisch. We cannot risk voting for a gubernatorial candidate who won’t even commit in writing to vetoing any net tax increases or forced unionization policies.”
If reducing inflation were as simple as passing a law, Congress would have done it already. Democrats are claiming that a new deal between Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer and West Virginia senator Joe Manchin is the ticket back to price stability. That’s nonsense, and it won’t save Democrats’ reputation among voters.
Democrats aren’t calling this bill Build Back Better, and they shouldn’t because it isn’t. Build Back Better was an absurdly large progressive wishlist that would have cost trillions of dollars and included countless new welfare programs and industry subsidies for Democratic interest groups. That bill died, as it deserved to, because even after a year of haggling and horse-trading, it never had a majority of senators in favor of its provisions.
What we have instead is what Democrats are calling the Inflation Reduction Act, which is composed of a few random parts of Build Back Better that Manchin agrees with. For revenue, it includes a 15 percent corporate minimum tax, prescription-drug pricing reforms, and more IRS tax-code enforcement. On the expense side, there are $369 billion in green-energy programs and subsidies, plus a $64 billion extension of the Affordable Care Act.
It’s a delicious bit of Washington-speak that the Inflation Reduction Act, which will not reduce inflation, contains an extension of the Affordable Care Act, which did not make care more affordable. The Manchin–Schumer deal also hides the true cost of the Obamacare expansion by letting the subsidies expire in 2025. Last year, Manchin said temporary expansions of budget items intended to be permanent in the Build Back Better bill were “budget gimmicks” and “shell games.”
This bill would add new spending on government boondoggles at a time when plenty of other government boondoggles are already on their way out the door. The bipartisan infrastructure law, we were told, also contained green-energy programs that would help fight climate change, and it will be rolled out over the next nine and a half years. That “once-in-a-generation investment,” it turns out, wasn’t enough (surprise!), which is why we need more “historic investment” now. Something tells us that this time won’t be enough, either, and in a few months, progressives will again be hectoring Congress to “save the planet” from the “climate emergency,” which conveniently involves shoveling more taxpayer money to Democratic special interests.
The revenue provisions aren’t any better. Increasing taxes on corporations as the economy contracts is not exactly a recipe for economic growth, or for correcting supply-chain issues. At a time when Americans are being squeezed by inflation, Democrats apparently want them to also be squeezed by the IRS. The tax-enforcement provisions would effectively double the size of the agency, giving it more manpower to audit taxpayers. That’s what “closing the tax gap” will mean in practice: more audits. Hooray.
Democrats claim this bill would reduce the deficit by $300 billion, a “historic deficit reduction to fight inflation.” At least they have included more realistic estimates of their revenue provisions this time around, rather than the sham overestimates they were using to justify Build Back Better. They say IRS enforcement, for example, will raise $124 billion, which is far more realistic than the $400 billion to $1 trillion some Democrats were claiming it would raise last year.
But it’s hard to believe the Democrats have found religion on deficit reduction, given their actions earlier this congress and the actions they want to pursue going forward. The American Rescue Plan, passed by these very same Democratic senators and representatives, is partially responsible for the inflationary pressures our economy is facing and added $1.9 trillion in new debt. That debt was entirely unnecessary, and the rising interest rates that have followed the rising inflation have made financing that debt less affordable. Democrats are also still toying with student-loan forgiveness, when even just extending the pause that’s already in place would be deficit-increasing and inflationary. And we all know many of them wanted to spend way more than this and Manchin and Schumer negotiated it down.
Negotiations are likely incomplete. Arizona senator Kyrsten Sinema has yet to indicate her position on it, and she opposed similar corporate-tax provisions in the past. Other potential holdouts include Democrats from states with high property and income taxes, most prominent among them New Jersey senator Bob Menendez. That’s because this agreement does not include restoration of the SALT deduction, which Menendez believes is the greatest thing since sliced gabagool. If restoration of the SALT deduction does get included, then Manchin will likely be out, and Democrats can’t have a single defector.
Regardless, even if it does pass, this cynical plan to throw together a few legislative proposals Democrats have wanted for years and call it “inflation reduction” will not work, even as a piece of deceptive labeling. Voters want to see inflation actually come down, not their member of Congress vote for the words “inflation reduction.
Up until three weeks ago, a recession was defined as a contraction in the economy lasting two consecutive quarters and inflation was defined as too much money chasing too few goods.
Economists, Presidents, Federal Reserve Chairmen, academics, and legislative leaders have held for decades that you do not raise taxes in a recession, and you don’t throw new spending on top of runaway inflation. It is not a partisan thing – Obama knew it and said so.
Three weeks ago, Sen. Joe Manchin reiterated his understanding of those two principles when he refused to go along with the third attempt to force “Build Back Better” through Congress before the Democrats lose their majority in the House this fall. The spending is inflationary and tax increases recessionary.
This week, three things happened that are not unrelated.
First, the administration sent out its economic advisors in an absurd media campaign to re-define “recession”; the day before the official GDP print was announced, Wikipedia changed its definition and locked that page. Twitter was bot-swarmed to give the impression of unanimity.
Second, the Biden coms team touted the recent slight easing of retail gasoline prices, implying that inflation was subsiding, the corner had been turned.
Third, Joe Manchin reversed himself and signed onto the same tax and spend bill he had opposed for nearly a year, cynically renamed and rebranded as an anti-inflation bill to give him cover – Build Back Blather.
It now seems pretty clear what the subject of those “intense” behind the scenes negotiations were: scripting the flip to save some Democrat Senate seats in peril. No surprise there.
You can change words, but not numbers. The energy industry relies on economic forecasts to plan future production, distribution, and inventory levels of crude oil and refined gasoline.
They do so because there is a tight correlation between the “P” in GDP and the consumption of gasoline – we drive to work, to shop, to meet medical appointments, to dine out, to vacation, to attend concerts and shows and theme parks, to go boating and trail-riding. We spend money at our destinations.
The same correlation works in reverse; gasoline consumption is a reliable indicator of a growing or shrinking economy, a proxy. The U.S. Energy Administration publishes weekly data on price, production, and consumption of refined gasolines in all blends by region – it’s a two-minute Google search.
From November of 2020 to July of 2021, the average daily consumption of gasoline rose by 12%, a clear indication of economic growth in the continued recovery from the pandemic lockdown crash that was confirmed by two consecutive quarterly GDP prints.
From November of 2021 to July of 2022, the average daily consumption of gasoline fell by 8%, a clear indication of economic contraction that was confirmed by two consecutive quarterly GDP prints.
And there you go. The industry sector hardest hit (so far) in this recession is overnight lodging…duh.
Anyone can gargle words and spit a lie into the sink. Yesterday’s flash poll found 65% of us aren’t buying recession-not-recession scam. As layoffs continue at 250k per week, the 35% might come around, but maybe not until their number is called – you just never know about these things.
I wrote Thursday that the Presteblog Misery Index — inflation plus U6 unemployment minus economic growth — is now at 17. There are those who claim that inflation is understated, and would be higher by the measure that was changed in 1990. The rationale then was that, for instance, cars are more expensive but better equipped and perform better (gas mileage, reliability, etc.), so direct comparisons are difficult with some products.
Nerenz adds that “business people look at economic data differently than economists do. They have to make forward-looking decisions with consequences, rather than backward looking analysis with no consequences.”
Today in 1964, a Rolling Stones concert in Ireland was stopped due to a riot, 12 minutes after the concert began.
Today in 1966, Alabamans burned Beatles products in protest of John Lennon’s remark that the Beatles were “bigger than Jesus.” The irony was that several years earlier, Lennon met Paul McCartney at a church dinner.
Other than my mother (who was a singer, but never recorded any records, unlike my father’s band, which released a couple of them), birthdays today include Kent Lavoie, better known as Lobo:
Bob Welch, who before his solo career was in Fleetwood Mac before they became big:
Karl Greene of Herman’s Hermits:
Hugh McDowell played cello for Electric Light Orchestra:
You’ve heard that 70 percent of music streamed/purchased today is older music with bands like The Police and Creedence Clearwater being some of the most popular.
Just this morning a guy in his 20’s shared with me that he and his girlfriend went to a hip-hop show in Los Angeles last weekend and in the middle of it, she turned to him and said, “Do you want to go see a rock band, like with real musicians?” As he reviewed my exercises to rehab my fractured ankle, I asked him how old she was. He shared, “25.”
I found it interesting that a couple in their mid-twenties were bored with hip hop and the lack of musicians present on stage and opted instead to go to a club where real musicians played rock.
In two recent articles about the demise of great modern music Forget the Apocalypse, Let’s Talk About What Happened to Music by Umair Haque and Why Music Has Lost Its Charms by Howard Tullman, both writers claim that older music is far superior to anything new. Not just because the sound of analogue is better than compressed digital, but because (they say) today’s music doesn’t have the soul of the 60s and 70s.
Haque writes that “Modern music sucks.” He’s talking about pop music. Tell us something we don’t know. Mechanical and soulless, pop and hip-hop are largely created by computers rather than real musicians and real instruments. The articles mentioned above wax on about the richness of the 60s and 70s music, claiming that Stevie Wonder, Jackson Browne, Otis Redding and the Eagles still have the corner market on storytelling/songwriting in music.
Don’t get me wrong, I love all of those artists and bands, but these two article writers are missing the point.
There’s an overwhelming amount of outstanding new music that doesn’t suck. You just have to know where to look.
Just because commercial radio is pandering to fans of pop, hip-hop and pop-country, it doesn’t mean there’s a dearth of great music that rivals the greats of the 60s and 70s. There’s plenty of it with insightful and top-quality songwriting, exquisite musicianship and vocals, and music that’s created and performed by real musicians.
Are most people just not aware of Blackberry Smoke, Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, Larkin Poe, Samantha Fish, Marcus King, Beth Hart, Eric Gales, Rival Sons, Dirty Honey, Gary Clark Jr, Keb’ Mo’, and Kenny Wayne Shepherd? Or are they not bothering to try something new, perhaps unfamiliar, prioritizing their music libraries that feature James Taylor, Carol King, Joni Mitchel, The Who, Jethro Tull, The Beatles and others, over the discovery of new music?
It’s really not fair to the newer rock, blues and roots musicians of today. And I’m not talking about rehashings of Robert Johnson or Van Halen. I’m talking about innovative, soulful, young artists and bands who are releasing a truckload of music on their own without the backing of major record labels. Some have their own labels and others are on indie labels. Some go it alone.
The major record labels no longer have imagination or foresight and instead focus on what’s already working now for pop, hip-hop, rap, and certain pop-country artists. They’re all looking for the new Taylor Swift, the new whatever, because they’re out to make money and are mostly concerned with streaming numbers, algorithms and money made from anything but the music itself.
Give me a break.
To the 70 percent of music consumers who’d rather listen to The Police or Creedence Clearwater than trying out some of the newer bands, you must be in the dark about blues/rock, rock and roots music that’s currently being released by highly talented artists. If you weren’t, you’d be flocking to their concerts, diving into their new releases, singles, videos, and buying their merch.
Take Larkin Poe for example. Two young roots/rock multi-instrumentalists, vocalists and songwriters who have created a unique sound and have followed their vision, stayed committed to it. This sister duo, in my opinion, goes neck and neck with most popular rock or roots/rock artists/bands of the 60s or 70s. Talk about soulful. Have a listen here and tell me you aren’t captivated by their vocals, talents on guitars, lap steel and their song.
There’s hundreds of outstanding current blues/blues-rock, rock and roots musicians releasing music today that have the soul, songwriting talents, and musical gifts of those who rose to fame in previous decades. They’re just different. And your music libraries should be packed with their music, right alongside some of your favorites from the past.
Take 22-year-old Grammy winner Christone “Kingfish” Ingram. He’s not just blues but a blend of blues-rock, roots, jazz, and funky grooves. His superb guitar cops are blended with some of the richest, most soulful vocals you’ll hear today. Just because you didn’t see him perform on the 2022 Grammy Awards TV broadcast on CBS doesn’t mean sh*t. Listen Here
How about Fantastic Negrito, an innovator if I ever saw one. He’s a multi Grammy winner too.
Speaking of risk, it seems to be challenging for a lot of people to try new rock, blues-rock and roots music. Perhaps they can’t get beyond their love and appreciation for music from the 60s and 70s. Maybe some grew up in that time period and the music is familiar and brings back good memories. But according to the stats, 46 percent of listeners of older music are between 35 and 44, 62 percent are between 45 and 54. And I get the love of Hendrix, The Who, Linda Ronstadt, Fleetwood Mac, and more.
But there’s more to love.
For many, it seems, it’s difficult to disengage from revering the past greats when you’re looking for new, soulful, beautifully done modern rock, blues and roots music. There’s similar musical elements in the newer music as in the older and maybe they’re compared.
Regardless of what side of the fence you’re on regarding Joe Bonamassa, his music isn’t just about virtuoso guitar playing at top speed. He’s a highly talented songwriter but you have to listen to an album like Redemptionor his latest release Time Clocks to find out.
I can tell you from personal experience from running Rock & Blues Muse and an associated online group of 9,000 that many people come to us to discover new, great music with heart and soul, with similar qualities of older music but with a fresh, individual spin.
Spotify’s algorithms cannot replace a respected friend or family member’s enthusiasm for a new single or album that makes you feel something.
It can’t share music with information about the artist/band and doesn’t come with a real human being’s personal recommendation.
Tell me where I’m wrong here.
Perhaps part of why certain music fans are stuck in the trenches of older music and its magical quality, is the nature of the time it was released and the personal associations with the decade’s sense of freedom and breaking of norms and rules that went along with it. Maybe good values too.
I’ve got good news for you. That culture of soulful, new music is alive and well today. Right now. At your fingertips. It’s a much smaller culture, a narrower market, but it’s there. And it’s not just on SiriusXM Bluesville either.
The artists and bands who are creating this music are touring, performing, recording, putting on thrilling live shows, albeit in smaller venues than in previous times. But they’re there.
You just have to look and have an open mind. These artists are not retreads either of artists like The Allman Brothers Band, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, The Doors, The Rolling Stones, Aerosmith, Joni Mitchell, CSNY and more.
My opinions don’t mean that articles mentioned above are wrong. They have viable and credible information about what’s happening in the music industry, valid views about the soullessness of pop, hip-hop and rap with inane lyrics about booties, guns, and videos featuring female artists humping the floors and dancing as if on stripper poles.
I’m suggesting that they’re missing something–the new modern blues, blues-rock, rock and roots music revolution with real music and real musicians. Maybe revolution is too strong of a word but there’s no secret door to which only a select few have the key. It’s right under your nose. And it’s fresh. This isn’t the blues of yesteryear. There’s a whole new world of blues, blues/rock and roots music that embodies several genres.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 