The James Brown Commentary

“If you want success, figure out the price and pay it.”

That's one of the best pieces of advice Scott Adams ever heard.

In “How to fail at almost everything and still win big,” the Dilbert creator says trying is step one. Success, according to Adams stems from learning from your failures. 

He’s had a few:

He was a corporate misfit. 

His investments misfired. 

His inventions failed. 

His restaurants went belly up. 

He was also initially rejected as a cartoonist.

It was through  those failures, a lack of fear and embarrassment and that he learned to win. One of his biggest takeaways is that  luck comes from systems.

“Understand that goals are for losers and systems are for winners,” writes Adams. He goes on to say that  no system is bulletproof and its attributes are tailored for each of us through trial and error.

“Look for patterns in every part of life, from diet to exercise to any component of success,” continues Adams. “Try to find scientific backing for your observed patterns and use yourself as a laboratory to see if the patterns hold for you.”

Some of them won’t.

Which brings us back to failure: “Always remember that failure is your friend,” writes Adams. “It is the raw material of success. Invite it in. And don't let it leave until you pick it's pocket. That's a system.”

Reach me at [email protected] or [email protected]. Or leave me a message at 1-585-484-0339

Roughly 16,000 people voted in my county’s primary elections last week.  Monroe County has more than 700,000 people in it.  About half of them are voting age.

Just about every county in New York is dominated by one party or the other. Most seats in my county don't have races on both sides of the aisle. So those 16,000 or so people have decided who most of our leaders are.

I can't be the only one who sees this as a problem.  I of course have some ideas but for now I'll focus on one.

Off year elections suck. They're counterproductive. Let's end them.

At least three thoughtful, politically active people, I know plum forgot, that the primaries were happening. That's with countless flyers, door knocking and early voting. Add the fact that New York State foolishly moved our primaries from September, where they were traditionally to June a few years ago.

My answer: We should line up local, regional, and state elections nationwide. With the notable exception of presidential primaries which are their own beast.

Yes, I know we’d have to adapt some terms in office in the process which would be messy but I think the greater good is worth it. 

Habits matter. Let's build a new one.

But I'm not expecting any true reform any time soon.

Because that's like asking birds to swim.

It's dangerous for their health. 

If I learned anything while covering local news it's that incumbents don't like more democracy. It would take politicians deciding to give up an obvious advantage. The last thing they want is more competition.

Afterall, the fewer voters there are, the less people you have to convince to vote for you.

Reach me at [email protected] or [email protected]. Or leave me a message at 1-585-484-0339

A curious series of recent reports claim Disney, who owns Queen's music catalog, is considering selling it. Universal Music Group is said to offer the Mouse House one billion dollars for the music.  Axios reports that the deal is dead.

But everything about these stories are fascinating to me. 

First of all, I had no idea that Disney owns the rights to “Bohemian Rhapsody,” “We are the champions,” and of course “Fat Bottomed Girls”, you know they make your rocking world go round.

About a year before Freddie Mercury’s death in 1991, Queen left Capitol records for Disney's Hollywood Records. The band is still signed there to this day. As part of the deal, Disney bought the band’s catalog for $10 million. 

Inflation is a powerful drug, which is one reason why Queen’s catalog may be worth a billion dollars. That valuation is the latest in a wave of sales and potential sales of music rights mostly. 

The likes of Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Shakira, Bob Marley. Justin Bieber, and  many others  sold the rights to their catalogs for tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars. 

Why? 

It's a great investment and so far a win win.  With all the world's music in the palm of our hands we listen to more old music than new.

While the artist get piles of money, as Rolling Stone reports 14 times what they make in a year in exchange for losing some control of their legacies and of course tax relief.

Reach me at [email protected] or [email protected]. Or leave me a message at 1-585-484-0339

One of the oddities of living in a place for a long time is you get to see places change or not so much. Downtown Rochester, New York is one of those places. 

This corner and many near it were filled with creaking, decaying unkempt buildings.

But on this Friday afternoon amidst the gloom  and the umbrellas .I can’t help but notice some sprouting seedlings.

A spotted a rarity: traffic. Not much, but more. 

It's rare downtown where you can hear birds sing. I saw several young women enjoying the sounds, walking their dogs on the muddy green across the way. The dogs had a conference as did their owners.

Other people hustled up and down the streets while buses whiz by. While people parallel park, poorly, beside brick buildings.

In this space, where I write this, I see people having lunch, watching tv, drinking midday, during impromptu business meetings and blind dates.

Quite the change, at least for now. 

This area is far from fixed but Cornel West once said, 'I'm never optimistic. The evidence always looks under-determined, but I am full of hope. '

After all, traffic isn't always a bad thing.

A few weeks back, I could not turn down my street here in Rochester, New York.  Initially, I didn’t know why. It’s a strange sensation that you have to give in to.

The road was blocked by police and paramedics. The scene was chaotic. I caught glimpses of neighbors with worried faces milling around watching the scene unfold. 

There is a vulnerability that comes with living that close to violence whether you and yours are involved or not. You wonder about your choices, your safety and what you can actually do about it all across a few seconds. 

I, like many others, simply continued about my day heading up the main thoroughfare past the store fronts, kids playing and gentrifiers, like myself, walking their dogs. 

I worked my way home down nearby streets. I came up the other end of my street to find my generally optimistic girlfriend disappointed and kinda worried. She learned from a neighbor that the corner of our street was the scene of a broad daylight shooting. 

The neighbors say 22 shots were fired at and from a car that smashed into a stop sign. To this day, the sign's metal lies twisted on the sidewalk near the welcome to the neighborhood sign.

I didn’t see the news or in the newspaper but residents in my city neighborhood won’t forget those 22 shots.

Long after the police and the paramedics and the tow trucks left and we’re left wondering what mayhem may follow.

I don’t know much about horse racing. Like most of you I only watch during the triple crown. I missed this year’s Belmont Stakes. I wish I didn’t because one of the most memorable moments I’ve ever seen happened then. 

Arcangelo won the race. With the victory, Jena Antonucci became the first female trainer to win in its 155-year history. 

But it wasn’t simply the win that caught my attention. It was her reaction to it.

As I relisten and rewatch to Jena, I can’t help but smile.

Love, passion and hard work on display.

Reach me at [email protected] or [email protected]. Or leave me a message at 1-585-484-0339

This is part of a conversation between Grammy winning orchestra conductor Jeff Tyzik and journalist and podcaster James Brown. Tyzik shares his intense travel schedule and how he managed to continue it during the COVID-19 pandemic. He also compares working in front of audiences large and small.

JAMES BROWN: At the height of your travel schedule, how often did you go out of town?

JEFF TYZIK: Well, before the Pandemic, I had two years where I was only home ten days a month for a seven or eight month period. So I was really booking it back then. Then the Pandemic hit, and actually, a lot of orchestras closed down during the Pandemic because there was going to be nobody in the theater. You couldn't have people that were all over the country. But orchestras decided they needed to stay relevant, and they wanted to do something. So within the guidelines of social distancing, which affected how many people could be on stage, orchestras got into streaming, so they were trying to still reach their subscriber base by saying, hey, you can now watch us on Friday Night Live. We're going to be doing a live concert.

And we were limited to the number of players we could have on stage because of social distancing rules. So I actually had to write a ton of music for a small orchestra because not a lot of music exists for that. So I'll never forget. So anyway, before I get to that, during the Pandemic, I was traveling and my wife and my manager both said, you're out of your mind because this is before testing, before vaccines.

So I was masking up and gloving up and all the stuff that we find out later, it really didn't make a difference anyway. And I was flying and I was going to Detroit and Dallas and places and we were doing these streaming concerts. So we were playing in a theater, a 2000 seat theater to nobody except cameras and there was no music. So I created a couple of concerts. One was a ragtime concert. And it was the music of Scott Joplin, Jelly Roll Morton, W.C. Handy, all this kind of early jazz which was kind of written for small orchestras. Anyway, that kind of was the nature of the music. So I put together a concert that was very successful.

And then the Detroit Symphony wanted to have this group, Troop Vertigo, which is a circuit group, come and perform for streaming. And they do all these classical masterworks like the Dvořák Symphonic Dances and all these different pieces that are for full orchestra. So I had to take those pieces which are written for full orchestra and condense them so that they could be played by 24 people and still sound real, still sound right, which, I mean, it took hundreds of hours.

I ended up writing a lot of music during that time period. So we would do these concerts, we play this big piece. Piece would finish Dead Silence, nobody in the hall. And then you turn around and there's a camera out there and I'd have to talk to the camera. So then they started letting in, in a 2000ft hall, 50 people. And they would sit like 40ft apart, like all over the hall. And I'll tell you one thing, 50 people, when they're clapping can make a hell of a racket in the 2000 ft room.

So then we play and there would be 50 people and we would be still streaming. And I'll never forget that Buffalo asked me if I would come and help them out because the conductor that they normally use was quarantined and couldn't come. So I went there and did a few weeks. But one of them, some of the restrictions had been lifted and we actually had 250 people in the audience and the orchestra was crying because people were back in the room.

This kinetic energy that happens between the listener and the musicians it hadn't been there for months and months and all of a sudden there were people and it was like, it was unbelievable, the emotion on stage. So that was a pretty crazy time period. Anyway, since the pandemic after that I've cut back a bit, but before the pandemic, it's a long answer to a short question. I'm sorry, but yeah, I was out there that one year, man. I came home and I'd unpacking like five days later I'm gone again.

And then sometimes I'd be gone for two or three weeks at a time. So I'm a little over that, to be honest with you.

JAMES BROWN:  Yeah, I got you. I have a couple of different questions about your long answer there. You've played in front of a 2000 seat auditorium. I'm assuming you've played in larger places. How do you compare being in a packed crowd in front of a packed crowd, a sparsely filled crowd versus no one? What's the sensation in all three environments?

JEFF TYZIK: Well, when you're playing for no one, you're totally focused on the musicians in front of you and you're concentrating on doing what we need to do together to make this music come alive. And you're not distracted by anything else. You're not distracted by any person, by any visual that's going on. It's like you're in a recording studio and you're totally focused on the music. So you can create really great music that way. And the musicians communicate with each other as they do in a full house.

There's a new element, if you imagine here is the orchestra and here is the audience and here is the conductor. I'm in the middle between the orchestra and the audience. And the energy that flows between the orchestra and the audience is just unbelievable. Because even if people are not in a Pops concert, if somebody plays a jazz solo, people are going to applaud during the piece, that kind of thing. But if we're playing some big classical piece, people are going to applaud at the end, not take part. But you can still feel the energy in the room of the listeners. If you are tweaking the listeners, you can feel their emotion, their energy, even if they're not applauding or yelling or something.

So that experience takes it to a whole new level because humans are putting out this ethereal thing called sound and that is touching the spirit and the soul of the people in the room. And there is an energy coming back and I'm standing right in the middle of it. So that is electric. When it's a sparse house, I think there is a tendency when musicians walk out on stage, at first they are like, oh, it's a small crowd tonight for about two minutes.

And then everybody is like, you know what, it doesn't matter if there's one person out there, we're going to play our hearts out for that one person. And then you kind of get to that place where you might think initially you might feel, well, there's not going to be as much energy in the room, but it's kind of a hybrid, sort of between the huge crowd and the nobody. And then you work the energy, the energy is still palpable in that group of people, and sometimes a smaller crowd is even more effusive than a large crowd.

It's hard to pick on it. To me, look, to walk on stage is a privilege, it always has been. To get to walk into a room and create sound and touch the human spirit of whoever's in the room is a privilege to get to do that. So to me, it's always a special experience, but there are these elements that make them each unique.

Office-occupancy rates are stuck around 50%, even as more companies demand that workers come back to offices. That’s according to the Wall Street Journal. 

Workers and employers are at loggerheads over the idea, with workers complaining about everything from ubiquitous, loathsome, tech style, open concept layout of newish offices to quality of life concerns. While employers moan about the loss of so called office culture and productivity. 

Both have valid concerns and it's no surprise that neither side is listening to the other because well Americans aren’t good at that these days.

At stake here is the billions of dollars of investment in offices and adjacent businesses and in some cases whole downtowns that are likely circling the drain. 

Among the most pointed and utterly fascinating responses in the Wall Street Journal’s article was from Merrick Wright of Miami who said quote 

“It is not my responsibility to save downtown by going back to the office. The average worker should not be in charge of something that just costs us time and money.” 

Yes, Merrick is right. On all accounts.

These investments by and large are not yours or mine or Merrick’s. We will not see direct profit from them but there are several questions that must be posed about Merrick's conclusion. If it is not our responsibility to save downtowns, whose is it? And frankly, if these areas aren’t saved what happens next? Because I honestly don’t know. 

But what I do know is whether we save our downtowns ourselves, or not, we all have to live with the consequences.

Reach me at [email protected] or [email protected]. Or leave me a message at 1-585-484-0339

Joe Mazzulla didn't win it all.

He came close. 

The first year Boston Celtics head coach forced a decisive game seven in the Eastern Conference Finals and came up short.

The Miami Heat beat them in a blowout on the way to the NBA Finals.

My lasting memory of Mazzulla this season won't be on the hardcourt. It will be behind microphones during his press conferences.

When asked whether he noticed Prince William and Princess Kate courtside he said:

REPORTER: Did you get a chance to meet with the royal family? And if not, how was it like having them there in the building? 

MAZZULLA: Jesus, Mary and Joseph?

REPORTER: The Prince and Princess of Wales? 

MAZZULLA: Oh, no, I did not. I did not. I'm only familiar with one royal family. I don't know too much about that one.

In the playoffs as his Celtics got behind early, before climbing their way back into the series against the Heat, Mazzulla said this shaped his world view. 

REPORTER: Is there something you're doing over the last 48 hours to keep yourself away from just being consumed with this. Are you watching different movies? 

MAZZULLA: Honestly, I met three girls under the age of 21 with terminal cancer. And I thought I was helping them by talking to them and they were helping me. And so having an understanding about what life is really all about, and watching a girl dying, and smiling and enjoying her life. That's what it's really all about and having that faith. You know, the other thing is you always hear people, you know, give glory to God and say thank you when they're holding a trophy, but you never really hear it in times like this. And so for me, it's an opportunity to just sit right where I'm at and just be faithful. That's what it's about.

Perspective, whether it's yours or not, is a powerful thing.

Correction

In a previous version of this piece I confused Prince William and Kate Middleton for Prince Harry and Megan Markle.

Previously on the commentary

Reach me at [email protected] or [email protected]. Or leave me a message at 1-585-484-0339

In another profoundly weird turn of events, wildfires raging across Canada turned my part of New York State into a BBQ. Or at least it smells like one.  Think a BBQ in the front yard and the back yard of every house, on every street, in every neighborhood without the meat or veggies or corn on the cobb. A boring BBQ for sure.

The smell comes from Canada.

There are fires in about 10 provinces with the worst being in Quebec, where lightning is believed to have caused several fires about 500 miles north and east of me. High winds drifted the smoke south and a golden charcoal haze has engulfed our world. 

New York issued air quality warnings and locally people are canceling things left because health officials say we should avoid time outside. 

Like a fool, I didn't. 

I woke up Thursday with bloodshot droopy eyes. I looked like I was beat up by the tag team of Smog and my old nemesis pollen. Those b******s got me good.

A friend says the world looks like Days of Heaven. That's a 1970s movie about Director Terrance Mallick had every scene shot at dawn or dusk. 

I was thinking more Christopher Nolan's Interstellar. My favorite scenes in that movie are the small ones when people turned over dusty plates at dinner and cancelled a   baseball game early as a storm rolled in. 

I should have done the same.

I blame Canada, and of course myself.

Previously on the commentary

Reach me at [email protected] or [email protected]. Or leave me a message at 1-585-484-0339