He's the bassist's bassist. He's toured with Phil Collins and Jackson Brown among many others and chances are, you have heard his work if you have listened to any classic rock. More than likely, his work is lurking in your record collection. Leland Sklar has worked on some 2,000 albums in his career.
During the pandemic, he can be found on YouTube talking about some of the songs he's worked on and tells stories about the artists who have hired him. Also, Leland has a book out with absolutely delightful premise. He talks about it with Ric in this episode.
When one looks at all the different social media platforms out there, you would see they are all fairly different in approach to one another. Ranging from sort of useful to downright bogus, there is a little something out there for everybody.
However, if you were to look at all these platforms with one particular filter, you find only one as being the single most toxic of them all. Here's the thing, it's probably not the one you are thinking of. In this episode, Ric takes a look at how one platform practically fosters the notion of being able to say anything you want by hiding behind your keyboard.
Not one of these people would say what they say on the platform to anyone's face without the fear of having to endure an old fashioned Memphis ass beating.
Plus, Ric's new YouTube show, Drinking With Dead People debuts at midnight.
NEXT WEEK: Just what is the role of television news these days?
Admittedly, I'm a little late to the party that is ASMR. Probably since it appears to be a bunch of nonsense. What is it? According to the research I have done, the concept is fairly simple. Listen to some mundane sound effect and your brain triggers some sort of internal orgasmic experience.
It lost it's luster to me when certain corporations picked up on this to sell products. Not to mention the fact that for me at least, it doesn't do anything.
Aside from being the title of a great book, this episode is in reference to what seems to be happening among the internet famous. They are falling apart in a very public way. Frankly, I am amused. But the reality is they are having a real crisis because the pressures of show business being what they are. They are complaining about the difficulties of creating valid content on a weekly basis and their incessant quest for more likes and validation from their public. Not to mention the negative responses from people which the internet famous call "hurtful". Tough shit, bitch.
There are some pretty remarkable things out here on the internet. Take YouTube, for example. There is veritable cornucopia of "entertaining" people just on that one site. Notice how I wrote "entertaining" there? It's in quotes. I did that because these people consider themselves to be "entertainers". Sadly, they are not.
Like anything else out there in the world, there is no real shortcut to success. It takes an incredible amount of hard work and effort to become something. Show business is no exception. You have to use your natural abilities along with proper training to do anything well.
But I have a question. Since when did a video of a guy microwaving a piece of bread become so damn popular?
With every social media platform, there are vast differences between the posts. That is kind of by design. The king of this of course, is Facebook. The wide variety of posts people make there are amusing and sometimes dangerous, in a comical way. What is also amusing (to me at least) is how some of the "news" people post. It's old. Although designed to keep everyone up to date with the goings on in the world, it's as if any major news is pretty old about the time it makes it to Facebook.
Cameras are everywhere. Your assumption of privacy goes away when you are in public. To fight criminal activity, cameras are everywhere. In some places, they are in neighborhoods. You are being watched everywhere you go and in some exceptional cases, even at home.
In this episode, I get into the whole idea of how we have incorporated cameras into everything. Which begs the question, how much of your privacy are you willing to sacrifice for your safety?
Also, in an interesting twist of fate, this episode marks the first episode we video taped and put on to YouTube. Yes, this show now has a YouTube channel (welcome to the party, pal. I know). But there is a difference between the above show and the video version.
The audio version, as has always been here, is the full show. Nothing different. The video version has been edited to remove the featured song we have been putting in here of late. This is because of YouTube's weirdness when it comes to music. Long story, but the scanning software utilized by YouTube will hijack the channel in an effort to monetize it for an artists distribution company even though we would have permission to feature that artist.
As a result, we decided it would be best to leave the song solely in the realm of the audio only version of the show.
The trade off? The two live read commercials in the audio only version have been taken out of the video version. Make sense?
If you would like to subscribe to the video version, you can do so by going HERE and clicking the Subscribe button.
Wanna watch it? Here you go.
NEXT WEEK: Don't Be So Dramatic. Plus music from Nutbush Superstar.
