Michael Simmons on Phil and Ted’s Sexy Boomer Show

[00:00:00] Ted: Welcome to Phil and Ted's Sexy Boomer Show. I'm Ted Bonnitt. And I'm Phil Proctor. Hey, Phil. Hi. How are ya?

[00:00:19] Uh, okay.

[00:00:21] I had a cold for a day. Oh. And, uh I'm still, you can still hear a little bit of, a little bit of the, uh, sinuses. Oh, that's something to look forward to. But other than that, you know, I'm

[00:00:32] feeling okay.

[00:00:34] Megaflopolis? Yeah, I saw Megaflopolis. We both did. Yeah, I liked it very much, by the way. I liked most of it. I was able to follow the story. Uh huh. I enjoyed the story. The sound design was beautiful.

[00:00:45] Phil: Uh, and, and, I mean, visually.

[00:00:48] Ted: Visually beautiful. It was a real trip.

[00:00:50] Phil: Yeah.

[00:00:50] Ted: No, I, I got it. I didn't think it was incoherent at all.

[00:00:53] No. I mean, it was sort of like New York in the 70s. Yes. That was the backdrop of New Rome was really New York 1970s. Having been there, that was really cool. Yeah. And I guess that was sort of Coppola's time. You identified

[00:01:06] Phil: immediately with that.

[00:01:07] Ted: Very much so. Yeah. Um. I wouldn't talk that one down folks, and I would see it on a screen while you still can.

[00:01:12] If, if you, yes, if you still can. If you can. Yeah. Because it's really quite beautiful. Speaking of quite beautiful Michael Simmons as we know him. Mikey. Mikey, that's me. So good to see you, man. Amen. Welcome. Now let me tell folks about you. Yes. You are a in journalist, a musician. A journalist, a musician, a musician, , and a friend Michael Simmons.

[00:01:36] Now you were what? A pedigree. What a pedigree. . You were an editor at the National Lampoon in the 1980s. Did

[00:01:43] Michael Simmons: your dad start that, by the way? Did he start the Lampoon? He did. Well, one of the people who started it, one of the people who started it,

[00:01:49] Ted: Matt, was your dad's man, Maddie Simmons. Yep. And he, he, amazing guy.

[00:01:54] What an interesting cat. I mean, he. He was right there starting, he started the Diners Club, the first credit card. Oh, he did? Yeah.

[00:02:02] Phil: The Debtors

[00:02:02] Ted: Club, we used to call it.

[00:02:04] Michael Simmons: He actually thought, uh, came to believe that credit cards were deleterious, that they were a disaster for the human race. And, uh, it wasn't a disaster for him personally.

[00:02:20] No,

[00:02:21] Ted: he also went on to start, uh, in the publishing business 21st century publications and he started in the national lampoon. He started the Weight Watchers

[00:02:31] Michael Simmons: magazine. It was a weird office at the time when Weight Watchers Magazine and the National Lampoon shared office space. It was a bizarre combination of types of people.

[00:02:47] You know, ranged from, uh, Harvard Lampoon graduates who with wicked senses of humor to, uh, diet freaks, you know. Yes!

[00:02:58] Ted: He also started, um, heavy metal magazine.

[00:03:02] Phil: Wow.

[00:03:04] Ted: What drugs was he on? What was he, what was driving him? I mean, what was his, what was his passion? Oh, no, his passion was to make money.

[00:03:12] Michael Simmons: So these, you know, he was motivated by what he thought was profitable.

[00:03:15] Ted: I mean, to be honest about it. Sure. Yeah, but they're all creative. National Lampoon. Did it come directly out of the Harvard Lampoon? I mean, was that the genesis of it?

[00:03:25] Michael Simmons: Yeah.

[00:03:25] Ted: So what did he do? Did he find. Well, what

[00:03:28] Michael Simmons: happened was He had this publishing company and his publishing company helped the Harvard Lampoon guys at the time in the late 60s publish some parodies.

[00:03:40] They published a parody of Time Magazine, a parody of Life Magazine. Oh, that's right. And, um, They were graduating from Harvard at the same time, these particular editors of the Harvard Lampoon. And they said, you know, this is fun, and it's profitable, why don't we do this all the time? And make it, uh, uh, National Magazine, Human Magazine, which America did not have at the time.

[00:04:06] No, no. Well, it had Mad Magazine. Well, it had Mad, but Mad was for young For kids. For kids. This was for young adults, really.

[00:04:13] Ted: Right. And it was, the content was much more geared to an adult audience. Oh, yes.

[00:04:18] Phil: Well, there was nudity and, uh Words that we can't say. And bad taste.

[00:04:23] Ted: And bad taste.

[00:04:24] Michael Simmons: Lots of bad taste.

[00:04:25] What

[00:04:25] Ted: was the shot? We're going to shoot this dog if you don't buy this. Yeah. That's the most famous cover.

[00:04:30] Michael Simmons: The most famous cover was if you don't buy this magazine, we'll shoot this dog. And they had a photo of a dog with a gun to its head. Yeah. And the dog's eyes were facing the camera. gun. It was an incredible shot, how they got it.

[00:04:47] It took them hours to get the dog to look over the barrel of the gun. And of course, dog, animal lovers were appalled by, uh, good. Yeah. Now you ask, uh, Lola, Lily, what's your name? Ask, what's your name?

[00:05:06] Ted: What is your name? What name? Your dog. Oh, Luna. Oh, the

[00:05:10] Phil: dog has Luna.

[00:05:11] Ted: Yeah, my agent. I don't think Luna would like that.

[00:05:13] Now, you went on to edit The Lampoon in the 80s. In the 80s, yeah. Yeah, and that's how you guys met, because you guys did a radio? No, no,

[00:05:21] Phil: no, we did a record together. Yeah, record. I worked with Jeff Mandel. And we did some musical parodies as well, and wasn't Chevy Chase and John Belushi, were they all on the record?

[00:05:33] Not the one we were on. No. That was later? Later on, earlier ones. An earlier one? Yeah. Okay. And they toured with that one? Yeah. In fact, I was. company manager of a National Lampoon touring show that starred Belushi, Bill Murray, Harold Ramis, Joe Flaherty, Gilda Radner. I was 19 years old. I was in charge of all these maniacs traveling all around the US and Canada.

[00:06:02] Oh no! And you know, I had to keep John from smuggling pot over the Canadian border. Oh, yes.

[00:06:11] Ted: No. I saw the Lemmings show at the Village Gate in New York. And you were the doorman? Yes. Now, we might have, we might have met because I came to see that show. You threw him out. I tore

[00:06:22] Michael Simmons: your ticket. Yeah, you probably,

[00:06:23] Ted: yeah, and threw me out.

[00:06:24] Yeah, right. But, uh, that was when I saw all of these performers, you know, in this intimate club. And, like, what, a year later they were all on Saturday Night Live for the first time. Right, right. And that, but that was the genesis of it. It was a funny show. So you took my ticket. So we did meet in New York. I still

[00:06:41] Michael Simmons: have it somewhere.

[00:06:43] So, so did, did, uh Uh, Saturday Night Live, come, I'm going to go see the movie Saturday Night Live, soon. But did that cast, was that scene by Lorne Michaels, and he said, this is my cast? I mean. He used to come to the, the, the Lampoon show that I'm referring to, the touring show that was after Lemons. Yeah.

[00:07:04] That I was company manager for. We eventually returned to New York, and we settled. And it ran for, I don't remember, months. And Lorne Michaels came to every show for a period of weeks. And soon, sooner than later, hired most of the cast. The Saturday Night Live cast. At least three or four of the actors and writers were from the Lampoon, maybe more.

[00:07:38] And then later, more Lampoon vets. Michael O'Donoghue. Michael O'Donoghue and Beats.

[00:07:43] Ted: Yeah.

[00:07:44] Michael Simmons: Writers. Right, right. Uh, and then Chevy, uh, Belushi, Gilda.

[00:07:51] Ted: Lorraine.

[00:07:53] Michael Simmons: No, Lorraine wasn't in Lampoon.

[00:07:56] Ted: Interesting. Um, I heard, I've heard a dear friend of ours, uh, was involved in the very early Saturday Night Live episodes.

[00:08:05] He cut all the shorts, all the film shorts. Uh, Keith Robinson. Oh, I know Keith. You know Keith? Yeah. I'm gonna actually have him on the show because he's got some stories to tell. Anyway, he went to see the Saturday Night Live movie. Oh yeah? What is it? Is it a documentary? No, it's a movie. Oh, I heard about this.

[00:08:24] Anyway, he said it was Totally right on. It was exactly the vibe. Oh, cool. It was like going back in time to the very, you know, to the genesis of that. He did, he cut the first promo for Saturday Night Live's first episode. Far out. So he knew, he was really, and the cast would come down and do all sorts of, um, pharmaceuticals.

[00:08:47] When they would cut all those short films. Yeah, and they had, it was truly a wild experience that first, he was there the first five seasons. But anyway, he, good news is he said, and he's a filmmaker, he's very good at what he does. And he said, no, it was right on. So it evidently, if you want to go see the Saturday Night Live movie about the first show.

[00:09:06] I'm intrigued. He said, he said, it's, it's nails it. Why don't you get him on the show next week when I'm in New York? Well, I, why, you don't want to meet him? Yeah, sure, I'd like to meet him, but, you know. No, you know, you know, Keith. I know, Keith. I may just do that. So, Lampoon, um, even in the 70s, was pushing boundaries.

[00:09:28] Michael Simmons: The right wing didn't like us, uh, we were eventually, uh, the Lampoon was almost killed off by, uh, the Reverend Donald Wildman, who had the moral majority, or whatever it was called. Christian, uh, right wing. They organized boycotts against us, uh.

[00:09:45] Ted: You in high times.

[00:09:47] Michael Simmons: Yeah,

[00:09:48] Ted: yeah. So to speak.

[00:09:57] Phil

[00:09:57] Michael Simmons: Proctor, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you. He's

[00:10:00] Ted: just getting warmed up, trust me. The LAPD

[00:10:08] Michael Simmons: came after me. Why? Because I wrote an article about, they were going into bars, And arresting bartenders and customers for, for the bartenders for serving intoxicated customers and for the customers for being intoxicated in public.

[00:10:26] And this started, uh, I found out about this when I was sitting in a bar, not me.

[00:10:32] Ted: I was going

[00:10:33] Michael Simmons: to say, knowing you. I know, I know it's hard for you to believe, but it wasn't me. Wow. But it was my, my girlfriend at the time. She, uh.

[00:10:47] Buzzed? Buzzed. And, um, And the bartender served her, but she wasn't driving or anything. I mean, nothing on her and the cops pulled her out and, and brought her down to the, uh, out of the bar into the police for public

[00:11:04] Ted: intoxication and a bar in a private establishment. That's private

[00:11:08] Michael Simmons: intoxication, shooting, fish, In a barrel.

[00:11:12] I almost said one of the seven words. In a barrel was filled with beer. Right. Wow. So they were Hard to believe in a bar. So did

[00:11:19] Ted: you, did you take that up as a cause and

[00:11:22] Michael Simmons: I wrote a, I wrote a piece about it. Yeah. And uh, in the L. A. Weekly. Yeah. I found out that they were doing it all over L. A. and I interviewed a bunch of bar owners and bartenders and customers and, you know, they were going into bars and they were pulling without announcing who they were or identifying who they were, these cops.

[00:11:39] Oh, plainclothesmen? Plainclothesmen. Yeah. Yeah. Plain clothes. Good green. Wow. From the vice squad, from the LAD vice squad. And they were pulling the, the bar's licenses off the wall. What? And, and the, and the bartenders had no idea what was going on. They just sl these hoodlums come.

[00:11:54] Phil: Yeah.

[00:11:55] Michael Simmons: Yeah. And, and anyway, so I wrote a piece about it in the LA Weekly and it became a cause celeb and, uh, and I won the LA Press Club award for that.

[00:12:04] Ted: Wow. Wow.

[00:12:05] Michael Simmons: So what else

[00:12:06] Ted: has this, okay, so amazing, man. Done. Whoa, he's a musician. Did I mention that? No, yes. Yeah, I said he was a musician. And a journalist. Yes, and a musician. and a musician. Right. You were, um, dubbed the father of country punk by Cream Magazine. Which is interesting. Um, you were in, uh, Kinky Freedman's and the Texas Jew Boys band for a long time.

[00:12:28] Yeah, years. Wow, what was that like?

[00:12:32] Michael Simmons: I mean, you played rhythm guitar? I can't say, or the FCC will pull the, uh, stations license. Um, you know, Kinky was one of a kind. We just lost him just recently. One of a kind, uh, one of the funniest, smartest men I've ever known. Not saying a lot, because I've known, worked at the National Amphitheater, and I knew a lot of smart, funny people.

[00:12:54] Yeah, I'll bet you did. You know, just speaking of the Lampoon, that was the smartest, funniest group of people I've ever encountered. What an extraordinary experience. Yeah, it was really, uh,

[00:13:12] unparalleled.

[00:13:13] Ted: The zeitgeist of what you were involved in, that comedy, that cutting edge cultural push you were doing with Lampoon and all that, what do you see now? You know, the truth is

[00:13:22] Michael Simmons: that I don't know. Um, it's scattered, for one thing. You know, there's occasional funny stuff. There's Saturday Night Live is hit or miss.

[00:13:33] Um

[00:13:34] Ted: The late night monologues are Probably right now the cutting edge of political commentary. You know, CNN

[00:13:40] Michael Simmons: is doing a funny, a funny show now. Oh, you

[00:13:43] Ted: mean intentionally?

[00:13:44] Michael Simmons: Yes, intentionally. Called

[00:13:46] Ted: something like, have I got news for you. Oh. It's very funny. Well, they're going to go behind a paywall soon, you know that.

[00:13:52] What does that mean? CNN's going to start charging. Like a 3 or 4 a month subscription fee to watch CNN. Wh why? Because of the turmoil in the media business. I mean, Hollywood is in a free fall in many ways. Terrible place. You know, all the models are, are All the financial models are out of the I don't know how the networks do it because I watch Colbert and Kimmel and Seth Meyers, all on YouTube.

[00:14:19] For 14 a month, I get commercial free YouTube. It's the best. It's also the most popular streaming service now. Netflix is second. And Netflix is doing very well too now. They're all kind of rejiggering their situation, but it's almost, you know, it's not our time, essentially, obviously. We come from an earlier time, but it's very hard to comprehend.

[00:14:41] Michael Simmons: I'll tell you something, one thing that I've learned as I've aged. I don't necessarily live in the present, and Nor do I live in the past or the future. I, I, I don't, time is different than it used to be. I do live to, to a certain degree in the past, and, and I look forward to the future, although I dread it in many respects, and I'm sure everyone can Identify with that.

[00:15:07] Figure out why. Yes, a level of anxiety. We all share. It's not like, it's not like, you know, there's no more Next Beatles album. Yeah. If you know what I'm saying.

[00:15:21] Ted: Or Fireside Theater. But there is the Next Taylor Swift record.

[00:15:25] Michael Simmons: Yeah, maybe, you know, it's, it's not my time. I'm too old. It's not my generation.

[00:15:30] Ted: Well, you're on the Sexy Boomer Show, so you're in the right place.

[00:15:35] But I hear you. I mean, do you, you, you've mentioned something on the ride over here, uh, that we're living in the 20 worst century. What do you mean?

[00:15:45] Michael Simmons: Well, I just, I think it's, it's, it's been horrific, uh, you know, I mean, a decade of Trump is, is, uh, it's, it's absurd. But we

[00:15:55] Ted: had Nixon in Vietnam.

[00:15:58] Michael Simmons: That was, that was different, isn't

[00:16:00] Ted: it?

[00:16:00] It was much worse or better?

[00:16:02] Michael Simmons: It was, it was better than Trump. Was it better because we were younger? No, Nixon wasn't. No, we were focused on, on, on, on, on ending the war in Vietnam. Right. Taking to the street is really the way that we got things done. In, in our time.

[00:16:21] Ted: That's right. We did stop the war. Yeah, we, we took to the streets.

[00:16:24] Michael Simmons: But now people do it all from the privacy of their own bubbles. You know, online. And you can protest online, but it isn't the same

[00:16:34] Ted: thing. I mean, I'm asking these questions because I ask myself these questions all the time. Is it really worse now? I mean, certainly have climate crisis control. We have wealth concentration.

[00:16:44] We have information concentration. That's probably one of the most dangerous things is how, how, uh, contracted information has become. Oh, good heavens.

[00:16:54] Michael Simmons: It is, but it's also diffused because of the internet. There's more, uh, Outlets yes for information and it's it's we don't have a shared culture. That's right Oh, and we have a fractured culture Even if we disagreed politically and there was plenty of disagreement in the 60s and 70s as I as you guys know sure but It doesn't feel like we're sharing a culture any longer,

[00:17:24] Phil: right?

[00:17:25] Michael Simmons: Everybody's in their own podcast. Everybody's on their own Frequency. One man, one channel. You know, really,

[00:17:34] Ted: when you go back in time, it was far more constricted. There were three networks. But that created a collective consciousness, a water cooler conversation. Yeah, like Walter Cronkite. Or much less collective entertainment experiences.

[00:17:45] Look at the movie theaters. Yeah. I mean, they're empty. That creates opportunity for bad actors to manipulate the culture wars. And I think Trump represents, like, the worst manifestation. Of

[00:18:00] Michael Simmons: that kind of

[00:18:00] Ted: confirmation bias like fox television.

[00:18:04] Michael Simmons: Yeah, but remember hitler also used the radio To

[00:18:06] Ted: propaganda. Yes And my grandmother who lived through the economy stupid She said I remember asking when I was a kid like how did a guy like hitler come to power?

[00:18:14] How'd that happen? And she said simple, you know, the economy was terrible and he promised all the mother's jobs for their sons She he just didn't specify what the job was. They lost everything. They were in berlin I just wonder about That things are so concentrated now and so filtered into individual channels.

[00:18:35] Michael Simmons: We're all more alienated than we used to be. As, as alienating as the 60s was, or as, as, you know, uh, as much disagreement as there was. Um We were united in our disagreement. We were, we had, we were arguing about the same thing. We're not even arguing about the same things anymore.

[00:18:54] Ted: No, and, and there's an epidemic of loneliness.

[00:18:56] Yes.

[00:18:56] Michael Simmons: Oh, absolutely. Because people are isolated. It's alienation. I mean, this is the most alienated, in my lifetime, this is the most alienated period in history.

[00:19:05] Phil: Yeah.

[00:19:06] Michael Simmons: That I've experienced. You were in the culture, Michael, uh, writing about it, right? Like a rat think from the inside, right? Well, I also, I covered a lot of, uh, I covered the That's a responsibility though, isn't it?

[00:19:21] To write about the culture you're a part of. Well, it was a passion, too. I was passionate about the counterculture. I mean, you know, what's called the counterculture from our era. Was it over the counterculture or under the counterculture? You know, another way of putting it is that I'm an old hippie. Yep.

[00:19:45] And, uh And you got old hips, too. Oh, God, do I. Uh, and, uh, And proud of it. I mean, uh, I'm proud to be an old hippie. And, uh, why am I saying this? Well,

[00:19:59] Ted: you know, interestingly, you have, uh, Being in the culture. You have something called the Craz list.

[00:20:05] Michael Simmons: Okay, the Craz list is an email list that started when, uh, Our friend Paul Krasner, who was, uh, crucial to the counterculture when he edited a magazine called The Realist.

[00:20:20] It was sort of the first underground magazine of sorts, and it was, uh, it was part humor magazine, part, uh, investigative, yeah, politics and investigative journalism, and, uh, a lot of humor, obviously, a lot of wit. Did you write for The Realist? No, no, I never did, unfortunately. And anyway, Paul got sick and he was dying and his family asked me, they were inundated.

[00:20:46] He had so many friends, he was friends with everybody in the counterculture 70s. He used to perform with Birdman, you know. Did he? Oh, that's right. Yeah, they used to do. And what's his name? The other guy, um Yes, yes. Peter, Paul and Harry. Yes. Oh, that's right. Yeah, they had a trio. Really? Yeah, called Peter, Paul and Harry.

[00:21:07] I forgot that. That's right. Yeah. Wow. Anyway, so Paul, uh, they asked me to keep Paul's friends. updated about his health. And so I collect, I went into my phone book and I collected all the emails, uh, of Paul's friends, which consisted of, uh, you know, the stars of the sixties. After Paul died, we just kept doing it and it evolved into a list for information to be shared from all of these Lights.

[00:21:38] Great stories. Yeah. Great storytelling. Great, uh, you know, people sharing what they're up to, what their latest project is, uh, both of you guys are on the list. Yep. Um, and that's, that's, and so it got dubbed the Krasner List after Paul, and then it got shortened to the Kras List, and thus is the Kras List.

[00:22:03] Ted: It's sort of a vital, uh, Lifelines to an entirely different generation.

[00:22:08] Michael Simmons: Yeah, it's a bunch of old farts, but

[00:22:11] Ted: Would you say they're cranky about things the way things are right now or philosophical?

[00:22:17] Michael Simmons: Both and they're also you know, there's a lot of wit it's funny too.

[00:22:23] Ted: Yeah.

[00:22:23] Michael Simmons: Um It's a combination of, uh, of

[00:22:27] Ted: approaches.

[00:22:28] Sounds like an idea for a magazine.

[00:22:30] Michael Simmons: It is a magazine in and of itself. But, you know, the magazine industry is practically non existent. Yeah. Because, thank you, Mr. Internet.

[00:22:42] Ted: I miss magazines. Oh, you can get them for a pretty expensive price. The Economist is 180 a year. You're kidding me. No, it's going up to 350 a year.

[00:22:51] Michael Simmons: Well, I write for a British music magazine called Mojo. And, um, I think in the US, I think it's 16 an issue. It's a print magazine? Yeah. Print magazine. Wow. And, uh, I think it's 16 bucks an issue, something like that.

[00:23:08] Ted: Wow, I don't know how, I don't even understand those economics. It's the trees, um, They're demanding more and more.

[00:23:16] Now you also wrote liner notes for some big names in the music business, Bob Dylan. I wrote four

[00:23:20] Michael Simmons: for Dylan, yeah. The first one was, I had written, um, An article about Dylan in 1970. And Dylan's management released, um, uh, what they called the, in the bootleg series, which is Bob's own bootlegs when he bootlegs himself, a box set of 1970s.

[00:23:46] Dylan music that had never been released. So since I had already written about that year, they liked what I'd written and they said, would you write the liner notes? Cool. Nice. And I did, and I ended up writing three more sets, so four total.

[00:23:59] Ted: Did you ever get to meet the man?

[00:24:00] Michael Simmons: No.

[00:24:01] Ted: No. Of course not. He's

[00:24:02] Michael Simmons: not approachable.

[00:24:03] Ted: He's not. Well, maybe if you were interested in buying some metal work. Ah, that's right. He's big into that. Yeah, yeah, he is. He's huge. He does good stuff. Yeah. He's an

[00:24:15] Michael Simmons: unbelievably creative human being.

[00:24:17] Ted: Yep, beautiful painter. Um, and also others like Phil Oakes?

[00:24:23] Michael Simmons: Phil Oakes, uh Chris

[00:24:25] Ted: Christopherson?

[00:24:26] Michael Simmons: Yeah, Kinky.

[00:24:27] Ted: Moe's Allison?

[00:24:28] Michael Simmons: Yeah.

[00:24:29] Ted: Wow, Michael Bloomfield?

[00:24:30] Michael Simmons: Yeah.

[00:24:31] Ted: How do you, now did that because of the That

[00:24:35] Michael Simmons: was because I'd written a lot for Mojo Magazine, uh, which is a music magazine, you know, a music history magazine. So Mojo's been around

[00:24:45] Phil: for

[00:24:45] Michael Simmons: a while then. 30 years, 25, 30 years, something like that. Um, my friend Al Cooper, musician, um, had read my work in Mojo, and he was going to produce a Bloomfield box set, Michael Bloomfield box set, and Michael Bloomfield was a famous blues rock guitarist for those out there who don't know, and uh, he asked me to write the liner notes, and it was the most fun liner notes I ever wrote.

[00:25:15] How do you go about

[00:25:17] Ted: doing

[00:25:18] Michael Simmons: liner notes?

[00:25:21] Ted: Wow, that's kind of a daunting prospect to be asked to write liner notes for great artists like that. How do you, where do you go with that?

[00:25:30] Michael Simmons: Is

[00:25:37] Ted: there much business in liner notes work these days?

[00:25:43] I mean, there's not a lot of physical media being sold anymore.

[00:25:47] Michael Simmons: So where

[00:25:47] Ted: would the liner notes even go?

[00:25:49] Michael Simmons: They still do box sets and things like that. Yeah. The Lennon box set has a Not Insane button in it. I gave John Lennon his Not Insane button many years ago. Really? Yeah, Papoon for President Not Insane.

[00:26:04] Ted: How do you think the future will look back at this time that you helped record and distill?

[00:26:10] Michael Simmons: Oh, I have no idea. Uh, I mean, on my most optimistic days, I think that the era we're talking about, the 60s and 70s, will be considered a renaissance.

[00:26:27] Phil: Yeah.

[00:26:28] Michael Simmons: Um, I think it already is considered a renaissance by many people.

[00:26:34] It was, uh, there was a sense of freedom and, uh, ability. There was flowers in their hair. Phil's work was part of that for the fire science. Sure, absolutely.

[00:26:42] Ted: I mean, and that all blossomed because we were at peak of empire. We were the undisputed winner of the world, of the great world war. And we had the spoils.

[00:26:52] And that afforded a sense of material and financial luxury. We had a strong middle class because of a union movement that was eventually busted. One of the things I'm realizing in retrospect about how much wealth there was, we're at a point in our lives where we're trying to get rid of our stuff, and we think, oh, well, we'll just sell this stuff.

[00:27:12] You know, books. You can't give away books anymore. You can't give away anything. Because we have this unparalleled prosperity that I don't think any other generation's going to have. We had so much stuff along and we can't get rid of the stuff anymore and that kind of

[00:27:26] Michael Simmons: reflects Definitely my problem. No, it's ruined my my apartment.

[00:27:31] Yeah, right I've got piles of junk everywhere. Well, listen you you're you you talk about Phil Oaks a tragic story actually and Mike Oaks his brother who's still a friend of yours And he had an archives, uh, that he used to, of music, that he used to, uh, lease to movies. He monetized it. He monetized it. And magazines and Stuff from the Record companies.

[00:27:55] 50's, 60's, 70's. Yeah. And he, he sold all of his stuff. He did. He managed to do it. Sold it to Getty Images. Yeah, and my friend Roger Steffens Finally, yes, he sold

[00:28:07] Ted: his reggae collection. He was a he was a guest on our show Which is a great one to listen to on our podcast What a guy and he finally sold his he sold his Collection and it's going to be on display at a museum.

[00:28:19] Yes in Kingston. I believe finally. Yeah, so he finally God decades So I guess you know, it's like so the 60s and 70s just in everybody's attic right now. That's my garage. Yeah You

[00:28:30] Michael Simmons: It's the 60s is in people's hearts and addicts. Yes.

[00:28:36] Ted: I know this is a real tough question for you. But where are we going? And how do we get here with Trump?

[00:28:41] How do you make sense of what's going on? Why a guy like Trump, who has clearly proven to be who he is, And has been convicted for it is still in a neck and neck race with what appears to be a rational opponent.

[00:28:54] Michael Simmons: You know, I'm not a politician, so I don't have to watch what I say. So basically, I'll say what I really think, which is, I think, a certain percentage of the population are idiots.

[00:29:04] I mean, I don't know how else to explain it.

[00:29:08] Ted: What do you think they were?

[00:29:10] Michael Simmons: Yes, I think the last, I think 40 years of right wing propaganda. I think the internet and cell phones have dumbed things down. Social media has dumbed things down. And isolated people. I

[00:29:25] Ted: mean, what's the antidote? Don't vote for Trump.

[00:29:28] Horrendous climate change? Reality? Smacking people in the face and knocking the phones out of their hands. People isolate all these ideas in their heads. As we saw in Megalopolis, Empires fall when people stop believing in them. Cynicism was ushered in with Nixon. You know, the, uh, the presidency I am not a crook.

[00:29:47] The presidency was diminished as early as then, in modern times, and then

[00:29:52] Michael Simmons: Well, it's been a process. If you, if you look at the chronology of history You know, when we were very young, there was the Kennedy assassination, which was the inkling that all is not well in, uh, Copenhagen. And defined our

[00:30:06] Ted: generation in many ways.

[00:30:08] Michael Simmons: Yeah, yeah, and then there was Watergate and Nixon, and that was further alienating, and then there was Reagan, and then there was Trump, so you can see how it, it kept getting worse and worse and worse. It's so strange too, because they, they all marketed themselves on the idea that you can't trust government.

[00:30:27] Government and then they got into governance and you can't trust government, self fulfilling problems. It was self fulfilling problems. Well, the

[00:30:35] Ted: outsider concept has always worked for every politician. Well, that's

[00:30:40] Michael Simmons: all he's playing, which is Trump is certainly

[00:30:43] Ted: a rotten fruit byproduct of, I think the Reagan era that started.

[00:30:49] It's become so corrupted. It's rancid at this point. Right. So my. My optimistic side is saying, have we pushed it to the very limit now? And our, the youth who are not burdened by our history are, but are burdened by the outcomes of not our generation, but technology and the industrial age. I mean, you know, the price, the bills coming due on their watch in a big way.

[00:31:13] It's got to change fundamental. Precepts of how we function as a society. I don't think the fragmentation, the luxury of going off in your own world is going to be possible when you have a storm like Milton coming in Washington. You want a

[00:31:28] Michael Simmons: cooperative democracy? It's going to

[00:31:30] Ted: force almost like a reckoning, I think.

[00:31:32] I don't know. Remember the whole

[00:31:33] Michael Simmons: pact of democracy. I'm probably misspeaking it but, Is that you are giving to the, to the greater good, because you are going to benefit from that. And that's kind of broken down.

[00:31:48] Ted: That's been lost by consumerism. I mean, we used to pride ourselves on being a consumerist society, but if you look up the word consumer, it's not a pretty term.

[00:31:57] You know, it's a terrible term. I mean, it kind of really speaks for where we're at.

[00:32:01] Michael Simmons: I'll tell you something. You know, one talks about the 60s and hippies and counterculture and all that. Yeah. We were against all that stuff. I mean, we were warning about that. This stuff was fire sign theater, all of our records, that

[00:32:16] Ted: message.

[00:32:17] That was a whole idea was we had break the brainwash in the sixties. We had this wealth, you know, this unprecedented wealth of empire post war. And there was really an honest attempt to create a more idealized. Um, life on the planet. As a society, we're still progressing. We were still pushing the frontier, which is the sign of all healthy empires.

[00:32:38] We were going to the moon, you know, and we were pushing new ideas, which gave the first shot of the whole Earth from the moon that the astronauts took, started the whole Earth movement. There was a progressive thing going. The message of the whole Earth

[00:32:50] Michael Simmons: movement was, we're all in this together. And the thing is that it's now, uh, every man for himself.

[00:32:58] Absolutely. And, uh, I don't think that, I think, I agree with you, Ted, that it's not sustainable. That, uh, things like Milton are going to force people to cooperate.

[00:33:12] Ted: Well, on that note, I feel hopeful, because we are as resilient as cockroaches. We will survive. Yeah. And we're out of time. You shouldn't have connected those two things together.

[00:33:22] Cockroach isn't running out of time.

[00:33:26] Michael Simmons: Anyway, Michael

[00:33:27] Ted: Simmons. Thank you, Michael Simmons. Thank you so much for coming. Thank you guys. History's

[00:33:32] Michael Simmons: sitting here in the chair.