You’ve Got To Roll With The Flow

How much money went out the door when the Bonnaroo festival threw in the wet towel this week? These days you never know if the plans you have are going to be what you will actually do!

Radio people, music people and news people never know what is going to happen in the next week, day, hour, minute and, yes, even second. A guitar string breaks, power fails, computer crashes … you’ve go to roll with the flow. If you cannot live like that, you better change careers!

Now we add the virus variable. Look at the NFL. They are dodging players testing positive every day. Lineups change. Plans are wrecked. Hurricane Ida washed out a festival and cut the electricity to a million plus. Flying by the seat of your pants is just another day at the office, or the tour bus.

Look at Paramount Pictures this week. Big push for the new “Top Gun” for the last few weeks then, boom, the movie moves again from a November 19th release to Memorial Day 2022.

Huge chance for that potential billion-dollar property. They have to hope for greener pastures. That money borrowed to make that film is just mounting up interest. Still, they roll with the flow.

The Saints moved to Dallas and the LSU football team to Houston to run from Ida. Rolling with the flow is a way of life in 2021.

Now we enter the last four months of the year, a time when retail sales used to pick up. There are album releases, Oscar potential movies come out, big weather changes, but Covid has wrecked all that normal. How do we make flying by the deal of our pants routine? It’s hard. It takes a different kind of leadership, a different kind of soldier to follow that style.

We are living in times that are ultra stressful. Radio is questioning its very existence. The audience has radically changed in parts of the country. Any research in radio or TV about commercials? How can anyone listen to four- to five-minute commercial breaks when you can too easily go somewhere else?

How can you buy music when all anyone wants you to do is rent it? Concerts and gatherings with this Covid co-pilot, how do we do this safely gather and not step on the audience’s perceived right to get sick? Require proof of vaccination? Living with polarizing politics where compromise seems impossible. Wearing KN95 masks that are effective but make it hard to breathe. I don’t know … we just do, and keep moving!

I’m ready to watch a good football game this weekend with a stadium filled with brave souls. I miss the Jerry Lewis telethon. I’m ready to not look at my fellow man like he’s the grim reaper.

I’m just rolling with the flow. In case you were thinking this is a good song title, too late. It was the B-side of a T.G. Sheppard hit in 1974. Billy Sherrill thought it would be a good one for Charlie Rich, changed a line or two, and in 1977 it went #1 and crossed over to AC too. It’s still a great song, and more reason why Rich should be in the Country Music Hall of Fame! For the work, not the controversy.

“Can't take it with you when you’re gone
But I want enough to get there on
And I ain't ever growin’ old
So, I keep on rollin’ with the flow (Keep on rollin’ with the flow)”