I just had the best chocolate souffle of my life. McGuinness recommended the restaurant, Chapter One, it has a Michelin star, not that that was the reason we went there.
I’m all wired up. After said souffle, and some additional chocolate, which doesn’t sit so well with the aged, and I’m one of them, I journeyed to do hype for my Geldof appearance with Tom Dunne at Newstalk radio, I thought it was a fish out of water story, you know, Californian in Ireland, pick out your favorite Irish tracks, put you on the spot kind of thing, but instead it turned out Tom was a fan and wanted to know about ME! No one ever asks me about me, so I riffed with my greatest hits and gave away a few secrets.
First it must be entertaining. That’s the first rule of show business, ignored by so many.
Kinda like all those articles forwarded to me all day long. Maybe a good topic, but dreadful writing, and therefore I don’t read, I CAN’T READ!
And I was hotter when I walked in the door of the hotel room, but I was giving Felice a post mortem and the inspiration started to drift away. Ah, being an artist, you’ve got to strike when the iron is hot, capture the moment, the zeitgeist, otherwise you miss the mark. I know, I know, some people do it the other way, but not me! “Satisfaction” came to Keith Richards in a dream! If I hear one more person tell me writing is rewriting I’m gonna puke. That means they go over it so many times it no longer resembles normal speech, they’re trying to impress cognoscenti who don’t care. Remember this, who were the biggest acts of the last twenty years? Adele, *NSYNC and Backstreet Boys. All with good vocals and singable songs. That’s the music business for you, so up its own ass that it takes an outsider like Lou Pearlman to teach it some lessons. We’ve gotten so far from the garden we don’t even know how to grow things anymore. All we keep hearing is disinformation, you don’t get it, it’s not for you, you’ve got to listen to it a dozen times, IT’S MUSIC, when done right it resonates, with almost everybody, when done wrong…oh, we specialize in doing it wrong.
So today we went up the country. Or down the country. To the mountains, to the moors, to see peat. Pretty cool actually. Although I must say I got sleepy on the ride home, the Irish music blasting through the speakers, the tour done. The coach was driven by John who also narrated. He grew up in a family of nine, after dropping out of school at 13 he drove “articulated” trucks all over the U.K. and Europe until he found this gig, his favorite of all time. Made me wonder, how does everybody survive. How you choose a path without realizing it. Like those people in college who needed to get good grades to get into a good graduate school, I couldn’t do that anymore. But at least I’m in a field where education is irrelevant, in music it’s who you are, it’s unquantifiable, it’s a free-for-all, which is why it never gets any respect, which is fine with me.
So this was where they filmed “Braveheart.” The driver kept on going on about this flick “P.S. I Love You,” which neither Felice nor myself had ever viewed, but that’s modern society, where there are no points of reference.
And the tour guides at the prison and the Little Museum of Dublin, they were good, but what is it like doing the same thing every day? That’s the funny thing about life, you can choose to be happy or choose to be rich, and usually those are not the same thing/path. I keep vacillating, I know what rich is, but I want to be happy. Right now happy is winning, but I vacillate. Then again, tech and finance are interesting from the outside, but on the inside, they’re drudgery, I can never imagine doing them all day, and right now I’m at the peak of my career, but I endured so many hardships, not that anybody believes that, but that’s America, where the goal is to prove you’re poorer than the next. If that’s your goal, you’re missing the plot.
And Chapter One was not cheap. Actually, it’s the extras that made it expensive. And of the four courses, the two in the middle were nothing to write home about. But the starter and the dessert, whew!
I began with “Japanese tapioca, St. Tola, Ballyhoura mushroom, leek.”
Don’t ask me to explain it, but the texture was incredible. Like eating soft-boiled ball bearings floating in gelatin. And uber tasty.
As for that souffle…
It was billed as “64% chocolate souffle, tobacco & lime ice cream.”
And I can’t tell you I could truly taste the tobacco. But this is the first souffle I’ve ever had that wasn’t runny. Sure, the inside was molten lava, but the exterior was firm, I ate the whole damn thing, as you do when you’re on vacation.
As for Paul McGuinness, he’s in the South of France producing season two of “Riviera,” he just told me you can see season one on Sundance Now. But the point is, McGuinness parted ways with U2 and continues to be successful, he’s doing something new whereas U2 retreated into the past. That’s what a successful manager does, no act ever made it without a good one. They usher projects to fruition, they make it happen, and they don’t teach that in school.
And they’re uncontrollable, they can never work for the man, THEY ARE THE MAN!
That’s what made the music business great, the outsiders.
That’s why tech is hobbled, you can start it, but either the FANG brothers will buy you or compete with you and put you out of business, unlike Fleetwood Mac you cannot go your own way. And it’s tough to go your own way in music, the labels are all run by people with no skin in the game, they’re managers, not entrepreneurs, and they wield their catalogs to carve out their pound of flesh, maybe two pounds. And some people sit at home and cry that the game is rigged and the odds are stacked against them. But you can win, it’s getting better for you. Terrestrial radio is fading, you can sign directly to Spotify. Assuming you want to jump off the cliff and do it your own way, without whining.
Maybe something is coming.
Then again, maybe not.
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