We're here for Mancini night at the Proms. Well, to be specific, it's entitled "Ultra Lounge - Henry Mancini and Beyond." It's Hank's 100th birthday and there have been events all year long trying to raise awareness and consumption. The ultimate goal is to reach the younger generations, but just like with the major labels, there's no clear way to do that. I guess you just want to be in the world and try to get lucky, like Toto with Weezer's cover of "Africa." You never know when lightning will strike. Which is why you should never sell your assets. Are you following the Manilow/Hipgnosis story? Other than the fact that Merck promised all these services that never arrived, the return is what is fascinating. Barry got $7.5 million, and the records were bringing in about 500k a year. In other words, in fifteen years Hipgnosis would have made its money back and still own the asset! Barry? SCREWED! You have to understand these outfits don't give you the money on a whim. They run the numbers ad infinitum, that's what bankers specialize in. You think you're winning, but money is what they know, they can't write a hit, but they can run circles around you when it comes to income streams and cash.
So now I know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall, but I don't. But being in the building reminded me of the cover of "Sgt. Pepper." As in when you look at the people in the upper deck, they look like the people in the background on the front cover of the album. Hard to explain, so I won't. But I will say we don't have an equivalent building in the U.S. Think of an arena and then shrink it down to a third its size, that's the Albert Hall. Furthermore, this Mancini event was streamed live on BBC3 and will live online for the rest of the year. That's what you get for your annual payment. Seems so very civilized. Anybody who tells you the U.S. and the U.K. are the same hasn't been to both.
And speaking of having been...
We went to Stonehenge. I've seen all the sights in London, at least the biggies, and I'm a big museum-goer/tourist, lifestyle ain't enough for me to be in London. As for London attractions, the two few talk about are the Churchill War Rooms and the Imperial War Museum, truly great.
But anyway, we drove two and a half hours southwest. You get off at the Visitor Centre and then you get in a bus for about a two mile ride and towards the end, over the horizon, you see the stones and are...
Not that impressed. I guess I thought they'd be bigger.
But when you get up close and personal, walk in a circle around them, your feeling changes. You can see the notch on top of the rock that would keep the horizontal stone in place. And sure, you wonder about how they got all these stones in place, but more you're just overwhelmed at the whole thing, that it exists, and you do too, but not for long. Talk about feeling insignificant...
I was under the illusion that Rome may not have been built in a day, but Stonehenge only took a few years. Wrong. And it had something to do with the angles of sunrise and sunset. And I could go on, but you probably wouldn't care. And yes, you think of "Spinal Tap." And I won't say it's a reverential moment, like seeing the Mona Lisa or the Last Supper, I mean you're out in a field with sheep, but...there is absolutely something magical about Stonehenge, it's not like you hang out for hours, once you've seen it you've seen it, but you've got to see it once.
And from there we went to Oxford. And I never want to go back to school, but when you go into Christ Church College and see the dining hall referenced in seemingly every movie, never mind "Harry Potter," it's very cool. And there are so many references, over the ages. Like the door etched with the message for Peel not to come in. That's Robert Peel, of the Bobbies, of why they call the cops the "Peelers." And one famous person after another went there. It doesn't seem like you have to go to Oxford or Cambridge to succeed, but when you read the list of those who've graduated, it seems that way.
And we went to the famous pub, the Turf Tavern, where everybody from Thomas Hardy to Bill Clinton to Steven Hawking has partaken, but it's a bit of a tourist trap, in that the food is not great, but being there you do get a sense of history, the place has been there nearly a century. We think Harvard and Yale are for the ages, but they're no competition to Oxford.
And when we got back to London and I read the news I felt like Joni Mitchell in "Blue." I didn't run into Carey, I've never even been to Greece, never mind an island, and I'm not quite so lonely this very second, but I am traveling, looking for the key to set me free. And the funny thing is I found it. It's the perspective. I was reading the news and it sure looked bad, they certainly won't give peace a chance, that's just a dream some of us had in the sixties and seventies. I saw some doctor on X posting about the absurdity of using Ivermectin for Covid, and the responses... Not only that he was wrong, but that vaccines don't work at all, and they kill people, just made me want to shut off my phone completely, which I did, or at least put it down. All day long there are these petty battles online, you can get caught up in them to the point where you're no longer living, they seem like life, but there's a whole world out there, of people just getting on. We saw them as we Ubered out to Fulham to meet Richard at the River Cafe. The driver took us to the wrong River Cafe! As for the meal, I finished with a great cup of roasted almond ice cream. It reminded me of Good Humor's Toasted Almond ice cream bar, that was the number one seller back in the early sixties, when the truck rang its bell and you ran out of the house with your dime and...this was much better, memorable.
And then to the Royal Albert Hall...
The orchestra played a bunch of Mancini classics, Monica even sang "Moon River," but the funny thing is if you lived through the sixties, you knew every song, whether it be the themes from the "Dating Game" and "Mission Impossible" and even "Casino Royale," never mind "Alfie" and "The Look of Love." And I'm sitting there thinking how it was a different era, we all knew the hits, whereas you probably can't name two songs off the new Taylor Swift album. We were there then, and those days will never return.
Then again, on the bus back from the stones, some guy wanted to give up his seat for me, because I looked...old. Talk about disillusioning.
Then again, "The Pink Panther" is forever, I've yet to find a kid, anybody who doesn't know it. Twentysomethings and thirtysomethings may not know the Mancini catalog, but that's one number they do know, even if they don't know who wrote it.
So I'm going off to see Ralph for lunch. Tonight I'm going to the O2 to see Niall Horan, and tomorrow we take that big bird back to Los Angeles, and it will be like we've never been here, only a few days gone, as opposed to Led Zeppelin's "Ten Years Gone." But our entire identities were built on song. We were addicted to the radio. And going to a show was not expensive, the hardest part was just getting a ticket.
And that's a big brouhaha over here, about flex pricing on Oasis tickets. Seems the industry can never get it right, acts are afraid of charging what the tickets are worth, but they don't want to surrender the upside to the scalpers. And the fans? Each and every one of them believes they deserve to sit in the front row for under a hundred bucks. And nobody truly wants a solution, the bands hide behind Ticketmaster, the politicians grandstand and the public is delusional. And there you have it!
Oh, and then there's the X kerfuffle in Brazil. I'm digging that. Today the tide of the news has changed. Brazil is saying it's just the first government to stand up to Elon Musk, that right wing bully. He's got his army saying free speech is absolute, but nobody really wants that. That's how we got into this mess. Everybody has their own news, everybody is burdened by society, everybody wants it their way, and they don't want anybody in charge but themselves. That's no way to run a country, and Musk is trying to run the world! People have no idea of the power of the pen. "The New York Times" is a lousy business financially, but its worldwide impact is greater than any single politician.
But there's that dreaded "New York Times" again. Derided by the right and the left as biased while everybody is busy playing Wordle.
And you wonder why it's good to disconnect.
But you've got to be forced to.
And then you see there's a whole big world out there and you're only going to be here for a very short time, and that you and your efforts don't really mean that much and won't be remembered, so navigate to the best of your ability, don't work so hard you miss out on life, and if I told you I had the secret of life I'd be lying, but yesterday the silver rain was falling down upon the dirty ground in Paul McCartney's London Town. And I didn't get a tan standing in the English rain, but I could see how not everybody comes to the U.S. and stays there. There's something in the landscape over here. The history. That makes you feel part of something. Knocks down your ego a bit. Makes you realize you'd better enjoy the passage of time.
And there won't be a quiz about all the musical references above, but one thing is for sure, you can't be over here and not sing songs in your head, constantly.
I'm not on the next plane out of London, that will be tomorrow, and I have no idea if it will be on runway number five, but the amazing thing is you can get on a plane on in L.A. and be in a whole different world in a matter of hours. Amazing.
"Prom 57: Ultra Lounge - Henry Mancini and Beyond": rb.gy/khrm83
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