Arroe Collins Like It's Live

My wife and I binge watch a lot of streaming shows. We are total suckers when it comes to the word comedy. The description of the show claims it's a comedy therefore it must be. Only to learn it's seriously out of control on the drama. My wife leans over to me and says, "One man's comedy is another man's drama." I've not been able to let it go. So on this episode we De Frag the quote.

Gergen describes himself as a short-term pessimist but a long-term optimist. The next several years are likely to be rough in America, he believes, but the long-term outlook holds much greater promise. Our prospects for success, he argues, now rest heavily upon preparing rising generations for lives of service and leadership.



As a White House adviser to Presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Clinton, Gergen gathered invaluable lessons on leadership that he has shared for more than two decades with students at the Harvard Kennedy School. But he has long hoped to write a book that would spread those lessons more widely. In the past few yeas, that dream has taken on greater urgency, with growing threats to democracy at home and abroad.



Who would have believed,” Gergen writes, “that for the first time since the Civil War, we would begin tearing ourselves apart? Who would have imagined that our democracy — and long-standing democratic traditions across the world — might be on the brink of collapse? But here we are. It feels as if we are driving on the side of a cliff in the middle of the night with our lights out. We all know it, but we cant seem to stop it.”

Sharing his story in newer ways of experiencing great Rock.

The Last Victim, stars Prime Time Emmy Award® Winner Ron Perlman (Hellboy franchise, Beauty and the Beast), Ali Larter (Legally Blonde, Resident Evil franchise, Final Destination franchise), and Ralph Ineson (The Green Knight, The Witch, Chernobyl). Naveen A. Chathapuram's directorial debut is a stylish, white-knuckle neo-western set in rural americana, based on a story by Chathapuram and Doc Justin, and written by Ashley James Louis.

The Last Victim follows a group of modern-day outlaws (led by Ineson), pursued by an aging sheriff (Perlman), who deal with the fallout of a crime gone wrong in the harsh landscape of the American Southwest. When a young professor (Larter) and her husband cross paths with the gang, they are drawn into a chain of vengeance where morality is ambiguous and survival is the only priority.



With a deep understanding of the psychological and sociological underpinnings of people sidelined and disillusioned by the promise of the American Dream, Chathapuram crafts a unique vision of survival in the wilderness, exemplified by Larter's raw performance. Chathapuram previously produced Ca$h starring Sean Bean and Chris Hemsworth for Roadside Attractions, Night of the Living Dead: Darkest Dawn, and executive produced Netflix's Brown Nation.

For more than six decades, Robin Trower’s career has known no bounds. At the age of 76, the British guitarist can reflect on a journey in which he has planted flags across the musical sphere and played every role imaginable. He’s been the driving force behind Sixties icons Procol Harum. The transatlantic solo star who filled US stadiums with 1974’s Bridge Of Sighs. The collaborator and occasional supergroup member. The elder-statesman songwriter whose late period still crackles with invention.

Few would dispute that the title of Trower’s latest album – No More Worlds To Conquer – is a fair summary of the thumbprint he has left on the musical universe. But as he reminds us, it should not be misinterpreted as his mission being accomplished. “I definitely feel like I’m still reaching,” he considers, “with the guitar, and the songs, and everything else.”

On Waiting For The Rain To Fall, Trower’s playing is crystalline as a dew drop, while the aching finale, I Will Always Be Your Shelter, offers a solo whose masterful touch is compelling as anything in his catalogue. “That’s a real high point for the playing,” he nods. “And Waiting For The Rain To Fall, I think is influenced by Tamla Motown. It’s a bit left-of-centre for me to do a song like that. But I think it’s potent stuff. I’m hoping this album will surprise people.”

Once again, Trower also handles bass duties, but as a lifelong servant of the song over his own ego, he didn’t hesitate to enlist other musicians. “Chris Taggart is on drums,” he explains. “He’s a wonderful drummer, and he’s done the last three or four albums. And I started to realise, after I’d tried to sing these songs myself, that I wasn’t vocally up to it. Richard Watts has done a great job on vocals. He’s got a fantastic instrument – such a soulful singer – and he’s willing to get it exactly how I’m hearing it in my head. The other great thing about having Richard is that there’s quite a few songs on this album that I wouldn’t be able to play and sing live at the same time.”

Yet Trower also addresses the contemporary problems in front of him. “There’s three or four songs there that cover what I’m thinking about. The Razor’s Edge and Cloud Across The Sun, those are definitely about my dissatisfaction with the politicians of the day, pointing the finger at the ones that don’t keep their promises. But then, with Deadly Kiss, the lyric is someone talking to a friend who has become a junkie. There’s broken-hearted songs. There’s love songs. “

“It was difficult, but I’m glad I did it,” he considers. “This album is an evolution. I’m hoping that’s what is always happening with my music. There’s a huge step between Bridge Of Sighs and now. It’s like anything. The more you work on it, in theory, the better you should be at it. And I definitely feel like this album is one of the best things I’ve ever done.”