We are coming up on 4th of July one more time. It was Memorial Day just yesterday and  now, it’s 4th of July. We are now going to celebrate 250-year birthday for this country. It’s just around the corner. And every time this holiday rolls around, we are reminded about the founders of this country and the promise made back 250 years ago about equality and freedom.

You know that reality is a little different. If we take a second and look around, it feels a long way from a celebration. I don’t know about you, but we are living in a moment where the country is split right down the middle. The White House, no matter who sits there, uh, has no respect anymore. We are flooded with fake news. Social media algorithms are just confusing the hell out of us. Do you feel sometimes, like me, that they are designed just to keep us angry and on edge? Artificial intelligence creating fake videos where you can’t even trust your own eyes anymore. Everything looks so real.

On top of that, we have retreated into our own little bubbles, our own little worlds. We live inside these perfect, perfect bubbles, surrounded only by the people who think exactly like we do, reading the same news that we do, and only tells us we are right. Yes, that’s how we are. We completely forget the bigger picture. We call ourselves “the land of the free and the home of the brave,” but, honestly, we aren’t always behaving that way.

So you have to ask yourself the questions that I ask myself: What is this story we are living in? What is this time in history right now? Is it a horror show? Is it a dark comedy? Or is it just another messy chapter in the history of this country? When everything feels like it is just changing and shifting all around… when you feel trapped in that bubble of yours like I do sometimes… and when the truth is hard to find and identify between fake news and reality, I always go back to the things that do not change. The things that are, are there to last.

I think about the classic music when Beethoven wrote the symphonies, or when Vivaldi composed The Four Seasons centuries ago, ah, the world was messy, it was chaotic. Wars were raging and people were also divided, as today. But music survived it all. I mean, look at The Beatles. It has been 60 years since they arrived, and their songs and music still entertain people, they sing along, and it brings people together. That music is going to be here in another hundred years because it was built on something real.

And now we also have artificial intelligence messing up our music. Many years ago, there was a company called Maxell. Maxell made cassettes, the same one that I used to record all my shows and all my radio programs. Maxell had an ad – it’s called the “Blown Away” ad. It features a guy sitting in a couch with jacket, leather jacket, and sunglasses. He was almost blowing away from a very, very strong wind, but it wasn’t wind, it was airwaves of the Maxell tape. A high-quality, high-fidelity tape. And the tagline says, “After 500 plays, our high-fidelity tape still delivers high fidelity.” Ah, they still make tapes, these guys.

There was another company that made tapes, uh, their competitor, Memorex. Memorex had a beautiful tagline: “Is it real, or is it Memorex?” And they featured Ella Fitzgerald. But today, we can’t even say that. Is it real, or is it AI? Who knows. Is it real news or fake news?

I’ll tell you, we have broken through some dark times before, and we will do it again because I truly and honestly believe that the basis of all humanity, of all humans, is good in its essence.

So, let’s get real. I got a great lineup, uh, tonight that I worked real hard to put together for your pure enjoyment.