KPOP DEMON HUNTERS
The biggest musical story of the year. Outsiders base an animated film on a niche musical style and triumph. Illustrating that the mainstream music business is out of touch with the public and what it wants. The mainstream still thinks it's the era of 80s MTV...where the obvious is hyped to success. There was nothing obvious about "KPop Demon Hunters." If you have children as young as three in the house, you know the phenomenon. Proving the power of Netflix and availability. Launching to everybody at the same time? Genius! Which the film business abhors, it wants people to pay a lot to be the first to see their product and most people choose not to. Furthermore, unlike a lot of hip-hop, a lot of one chord "hits," the songs from "KPop Demon Hunters" were singable, and the kids did (and still do!) This will be the biggest tour of 2026.
BAD BUNNY
You can't argue with success. Music transcends politics, if it's got a good beat and people want to listen to it you can't stop them. Also, by doing all those shows in Puerto Rico...Bad Bunny showed allegiance to his roots and proved that fans will come to you.
THE SPHERE
Cost of video production keeps going down and everything sells out. It's a unique experience you can't get anywhere else. Seemingly no one believed but Jim Dolan, who had a vision, put his money where his mouth was and ultimately succeeded, the Sphere is heading towards the black. And, as good as the visuals are, the sound is on a par.
NO ERAS TOUR
Hit records lift all boats, and so do hit tours. They get people talking about music, excited, they want to belong, which is even more important in today's multifarious world. In addition, the Eras Tour press was ubiquitous, getting everybody excited about Taylor Swift and belonging to her fan base and having a unique experience at the show...you had to be there. There was not an equivalent this year.
As for Ms. Swift... She tried to keep the ball rolling, via documentaries. Which garnered press at first, but not thereafter. Because a documentary is different from the live experience. And there was no record-breaking hook to hype on a continuous basis. As for Swift's new album "The Life of a Showgirl"...despite the Taylor Easter egg promotion, despite ramping up all the press, the album has fallen flat culturally. As for success re sales/streams/chart numbers... Those numbers don't resonate the way they used to. True fans know they're manipulated with vinyl and everybody's always claiming success online...so the cultural impact is more important than the statistics, and "The Life of a Showgirl" didn't have much...it didn't even generate a song that broke out of the Taylorsphere.
NO CHAPPELL ROAN
She broke via festival appearances, she had large mindshare, and no one came along to fill the hole this year. No breakthrough act.
DRAKE/KENDRICK LAMAR FEUD
Nothing equivalent transpired. Once again, like the Eras Tour and Chappell Roan, this feud and its tunes got people paying attention, there was not an equivalent attention-getting story in music this year.
NO SONG OF THE SUMMER
Because nothing has universal purchase, not because there were no great songs. Then again, the song of the summer is usually mindless, and in these troubled times, that does not resonate.
UNIVERSAL/DOWNTOWN
The biggest story in the music business, the end result is presently unknown. But if Universal is allowed to swallow Downtown it will put an incredible crimp in the indie world, because almost all indie lanes will be controlled by the majors. The majors will be privy to the data, and in the twenty first century, data is very important, but the real story is after twenty five years of disruption, if this deal goes through, the majors will be back in almost total control of recorded music distribution.
TICKETMASTER
Still the most hated company in America. None of the stain ever sticks to the acts. There is a government lawsuit hanging in the balance, but Live Nation, Ticketmaster's parent, got ahead of the game, it appointed Richard Grenell to its board, a Trump crony who has overseen the havoc at what is now known as the Trump Kennedy Center. If you kiss Trump's butt, things tend to go your way. Then again, all Kid Rock got for his support of Trump was a press conference and theoretical support of Bots Act enforcement, which so far we have not seen.
BOTS
Are here to stay. As is the secondary market. NFL game prices flex, depending on the opponent and the importance of the game. Super Bowl tickets are hugely expensive. But somehow music tickets must be cheap in order to theoretically satiate hard core fans. Until acts charge what the tickets are worth, we will continue to have this cat and mouse game between the primary ticketer and the secondary market.
VINYL
The boom ended. Revenues were only off 1%, but in an era where there is enough production, where rarity is not what it once was, there is not the same incentive to buy vinyl as a souvenir. As for buying multiple copies of the same album to boost the chart numbers of the act...the bloom is off the rose, you can only rip off the public so much. Vinyl will never die, but it appears to have peaked.
GEESE
The great white rock hope. But if you listen to the album... The singer has an affected voice and despite all the hosannas in the press, the word does not seem to be spreading. Indie rock is what oldster male writers are looking for. Youngsters? Not really.
POP CONTINUES TO DOMINATE
Ariana Grande? There's no there there.
SABRINA CARPENTER
The public did not believe that a former Disney star was now an edgy sexpot. She pushed the envelope to unbelievability.
BRAND NAMES STILL MATTER
Can you say "Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars"? It's nearly impossible to gain traction, so those who have it continue to maintain it, as long as they don't blow it with substandard product.
THE WEEKND
People still don't want to see musical stars in films. That's a passé concept, you've built an identity and then you want the audience to suspend disbelief and enjoy your two-dimensional acting in a substandard project?
BEYONCÉ'S TOUR
You can only go back to the well so many times. Sure, business was ultimately very good, but usually shows of this caliber are instant sellouts. High prices and a return too soon to the marketplace hurt this tour.
PRICES GOING DOWN
Yes, in some cases they have. Prices can go in both directions based on demand.
MORGAN WALLEN
The biggest star in country whose only competitor for U.S. domination is Taylor Swift. Yet, there's almost a news blackout amongst the liberal/left-leaning press.
COUNTRY
Is the new rock and roll and liked by many who swore off it in the past. Sure, there's a lot of pandering in the lyrics, but the acts have identities, the songs have hooks and...
OASIS
The story is not that they did huge business in the U.K., but that it carried over to North America. This is my point about the Eras Tour...people get excited by a big story and have to go to the show!
COLDPLAY
Sells out everywhere. Stadiums. Is it that they were the beneficiary of the last gasp of the old system, music television and terrestrial radio, or is their music just milquetoast enough to appeal to everyone?
SPOTIFY GAINS MARKET SHARE
That's where your friends are and there is innovation whereas its competitors are virtually moribund, music is an afterthought. But people still believe the company doesn't pay the artists, which of course is blatantly untrue. But someone's got to pay for the plight of the starving artist.
OSCARS GO TO YOUTUBE
And Grammys remain on CBS. Money isn't everything. There's no vision at the Grammys, however music does dominate YouTube and other streaming services...this power could be harnessed further, but...
NEW MUSIC IS A CLUB
And most people are not in it. And those in it are myopic. You've seen all the stories of the year's top 25 albums... Other than the writer, no one has heard all of them, never mind heard of them! The stars are losing market share and under them it's the Tower of Babel. New hit acts that appeal to many will lift all boats. But no one with any cash or power is willing to take the risk/put in the effort.
TIKTOK
Unpredictable. Can make the unknown a hit, but even more interesting, it can lift a hit of the past back into mainstream consciousness.
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Wednesday, 31 December 2025
Monday, 29 December 2025
The Live Business
We are not creating enough new hit acts.
Business is great at the top. Stadium shows had a stellar year. Despite constant complaints about ticket prices, the truth is people will pay the freight to see their favorite acts. But those might be the only shows they go to. As a matter of fact, the old habit of being an active concertgoer, attending multiple shows on a regular basis, seems to be fading. There are still oldsters who do this, having gotten into the habit growing up, and there are youngsters who are music fanatics going to club shows...but the acts these active youngsters are seeing frequently do not have mass appeal.
Business is off. You can read the statistics, but what you've got to know is in the middle there is a problem, even for arena acts...shows are no longer instant sell-outs.
Has the post-Covid surge died off? Yes, a bit. But the truth is we continue to live in an age of experiences, the one and done. You want to be there, there is strong basic desire and a bit of FOMO. People are still documenting their meals... Nothing has changed here.
Are people concerned about cash? Absolutely! And that affects grosses. However, when there is a burning desire to see an act people find the money...again and again and again. It's a one time unique experience. You have to be there!
Do you have to go see a band that is constantly on the road one more time? In many cases, no. There is a point of satiation. Smaller acts are on the road all year, they come back to markets frequently, people are tapped out, they've been there and done that.
And stars used to lay fallow, take a year or two off. Now many go back on the road...to go once is a thrill. Why go twice? Especially if there's not a slew of new music you want to hear. As for seeing the latest production... This is antithetical to a healthy music business. Then it becomes about the show. The music should be enough unto itself, the production must sit on top of it, not only not overwhelm it, but not be the main selling factor.
As for shows that didn't sell out... It's not because people don't have the money, they just don't want to go. Concerts are not like shoes or food, they are not necessary, you must feel it in your gut, you must want to go...it's an emotion first and foremost. And that emotion is connected to the music itself. And this is where the music industry has done a poor job, it has not fostered that emotional connection to the point where people want to lay down their cash to see an act.
Now the business changed about fifteen years ago. Used to be you worked your way up to arenas. Then Sam Smith started in arenas! Word spreads just that fast, people want to lay down their cash, and once again, it's the music that is selling tickets, not the production, not even showmanship, because no one has seen the act before! A similar situation applies to Olivia Dean.
And the interesting thing about Olivia Dean is she sits smack dab in the middle of a genre, soft R&B, that people are familiar with. You hear her music and become infatuated. Whereas most of what is purveyed by the labels, the Spotify Top 50, people don't care about.
Of course there are hard core K-pop fans. And fans of other bands. But universal acts are few and far between. And this is a failure of marketing. Not everybody is going to like everything, but more people could like one thing.
The labels can no longer break acts, and therefore they have become safe, conservative. They don't build any talent from scratch. They just sign what gets a reaction online or fits in with the pop and hip-hop genres. There is no excitement there.
It's a business. But the nation is not music crazy. It might be TikTok crazy. In the past two decades music has abdicated its power as the leading edge art form.
So whose responsibility is it? To develop new music that is exciting and different?
Well, promoters have picked up the slack a bit, promoting new acts, but their system is not as efficient as the one the major labels employed in the old days...terrestrial radio, print and television. With these avenues on life support, everybody seems to have thrown their hands in the air and abdicated power.
But there are still acts that appeal to broad swaths of the public, like Adele...how do we make more like her?
Well, in truth Adele broke big before terrestrial radio listening totally cratered, but...
If we want the live business to burgeon, to generate more revenue instead of less, we must create acts the public wants to see. Easy concept, hard to execute.
TV competition shows don't work... Some of these people can sing, but that is no longer enough, none of them become stars, because they don't write! And many of the pop stars don't write or do so as part of a committee. The public reacts to and resonates most with music that is written by those who sing it. Culture sells music.
And we have too many acts with poor singers. This was never a thing, it is now. Go to club shows...these acts have fans, but word can never spread because the lead singer just doesn't have the chops.
Sure, Chappell Roan broke through, aided by festival appearances, kudos, but who else? We used to have a rolling list of new hit acts. Universal doesn't even seem to be in this business anymore, merging Interscope and Capitol. The majors can coast on their catalogs, it doesn't look like we can depend upon them to move the needle, they're risk averse.
And concert promotion is a nuts and bolts business. You have to make money. And with people consuming less alcohol, the business is more challenging than ever.
Where are the acts people have to see, are dying to see?
There are a good number of superstars. But most of them have their roots in the old system, of radio and print and TV exposure. As for labels...their idea of artist development is to break a single album, whereas labels used to stick by acts for five LPs, growing their business.
So where are these new acts going to come from?
There will always be a music business, people will want to go to shows, but to grow...you've got to motivate the public, and you do this via new acts!
We need to promote quality acts that don't sound just like everybody else in the marketplace. Of course it's the public that must create this music and...with music absent from schools, it's those who went to music school in Britain and Sweden who are triumphing. It's not rocket science. You build from the roots up.
On top of this we have the issue of turning the public on to great new music, something that was not fixed with playlists, which remains a problem in the digital era. I've always said that Spotify could promote an act a week or a month...but the politics are a problem, labels whose acts are not chosen will complain.
Do we wait until something happens organically, or do we goose the system?
Once again, we need to have better systems to make people aware of quality new acts.
But we also have to inspire, find and promote quality new acts. Make people excited about music in general, not just one or two acts. We can start with tracks...the public is eager for great ones. Forget the career, the detritus of mediocre music, this is the service that radio once fulfilled. We actually need a gatekeeper, we're living in a Tower of Babble, and no one seems to want to take the reins.
Where are the opening acts trying to blow the headliner off the stage?
Well, opening acts have been so bad that most people don't even arrive to see them. It didn't used to be this way, the undercard was a core part of the show, not anymore.
So we can debate ticket prices all day long, talk about bots and fees and... That's for shows that everybody wants to go to. How about the shows that are struggling, how about quality new acts without traction...who is talking about those, who is championing those?
That is the question.
--
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Business is great at the top. Stadium shows had a stellar year. Despite constant complaints about ticket prices, the truth is people will pay the freight to see their favorite acts. But those might be the only shows they go to. As a matter of fact, the old habit of being an active concertgoer, attending multiple shows on a regular basis, seems to be fading. There are still oldsters who do this, having gotten into the habit growing up, and there are youngsters who are music fanatics going to club shows...but the acts these active youngsters are seeing frequently do not have mass appeal.
Business is off. You can read the statistics, but what you've got to know is in the middle there is a problem, even for arena acts...shows are no longer instant sell-outs.
Has the post-Covid surge died off? Yes, a bit. But the truth is we continue to live in an age of experiences, the one and done. You want to be there, there is strong basic desire and a bit of FOMO. People are still documenting their meals... Nothing has changed here.
Are people concerned about cash? Absolutely! And that affects grosses. However, when there is a burning desire to see an act people find the money...again and again and again. It's a one time unique experience. You have to be there!
Do you have to go see a band that is constantly on the road one more time? In many cases, no. There is a point of satiation. Smaller acts are on the road all year, they come back to markets frequently, people are tapped out, they've been there and done that.
And stars used to lay fallow, take a year or two off. Now many go back on the road...to go once is a thrill. Why go twice? Especially if there's not a slew of new music you want to hear. As for seeing the latest production... This is antithetical to a healthy music business. Then it becomes about the show. The music should be enough unto itself, the production must sit on top of it, not only not overwhelm it, but not be the main selling factor.
As for shows that didn't sell out... It's not because people don't have the money, they just don't want to go. Concerts are not like shoes or food, they are not necessary, you must feel it in your gut, you must want to go...it's an emotion first and foremost. And that emotion is connected to the music itself. And this is where the music industry has done a poor job, it has not fostered that emotional connection to the point where people want to lay down their cash to see an act.
Now the business changed about fifteen years ago. Used to be you worked your way up to arenas. Then Sam Smith started in arenas! Word spreads just that fast, people want to lay down their cash, and once again, it's the music that is selling tickets, not the production, not even showmanship, because no one has seen the act before! A similar situation applies to Olivia Dean.
And the interesting thing about Olivia Dean is she sits smack dab in the middle of a genre, soft R&B, that people are familiar with. You hear her music and become infatuated. Whereas most of what is purveyed by the labels, the Spotify Top 50, people don't care about.
Of course there are hard core K-pop fans. And fans of other bands. But universal acts are few and far between. And this is a failure of marketing. Not everybody is going to like everything, but more people could like one thing.
The labels can no longer break acts, and therefore they have become safe, conservative. They don't build any talent from scratch. They just sign what gets a reaction online or fits in with the pop and hip-hop genres. There is no excitement there.
It's a business. But the nation is not music crazy. It might be TikTok crazy. In the past two decades music has abdicated its power as the leading edge art form.
So whose responsibility is it? To develop new music that is exciting and different?
Well, promoters have picked up the slack a bit, promoting new acts, but their system is not as efficient as the one the major labels employed in the old days...terrestrial radio, print and television. With these avenues on life support, everybody seems to have thrown their hands in the air and abdicated power.
But there are still acts that appeal to broad swaths of the public, like Adele...how do we make more like her?
Well, in truth Adele broke big before terrestrial radio listening totally cratered, but...
If we want the live business to burgeon, to generate more revenue instead of less, we must create acts the public wants to see. Easy concept, hard to execute.
TV competition shows don't work... Some of these people can sing, but that is no longer enough, none of them become stars, because they don't write! And many of the pop stars don't write or do so as part of a committee. The public reacts to and resonates most with music that is written by those who sing it. Culture sells music.
And we have too many acts with poor singers. This was never a thing, it is now. Go to club shows...these acts have fans, but word can never spread because the lead singer just doesn't have the chops.
Sure, Chappell Roan broke through, aided by festival appearances, kudos, but who else? We used to have a rolling list of new hit acts. Universal doesn't even seem to be in this business anymore, merging Interscope and Capitol. The majors can coast on their catalogs, it doesn't look like we can depend upon them to move the needle, they're risk averse.
And concert promotion is a nuts and bolts business. You have to make money. And with people consuming less alcohol, the business is more challenging than ever.
Where are the acts people have to see, are dying to see?
There are a good number of superstars. But most of them have their roots in the old system, of radio and print and TV exposure. As for labels...their idea of artist development is to break a single album, whereas labels used to stick by acts for five LPs, growing their business.
So where are these new acts going to come from?
There will always be a music business, people will want to go to shows, but to grow...you've got to motivate the public, and you do this via new acts!
We need to promote quality acts that don't sound just like everybody else in the marketplace. Of course it's the public that must create this music and...with music absent from schools, it's those who went to music school in Britain and Sweden who are triumphing. It's not rocket science. You build from the roots up.
On top of this we have the issue of turning the public on to great new music, something that was not fixed with playlists, which remains a problem in the digital era. I've always said that Spotify could promote an act a week or a month...but the politics are a problem, labels whose acts are not chosen will complain.
Do we wait until something happens organically, or do we goose the system?
Once again, we need to have better systems to make people aware of quality new acts.
But we also have to inspire, find and promote quality new acts. Make people excited about music in general, not just one or two acts. We can start with tracks...the public is eager for great ones. Forget the career, the detritus of mediocre music, this is the service that radio once fulfilled. We actually need a gatekeeper, we're living in a Tower of Babble, and no one seems to want to take the reins.
Where are the opening acts trying to blow the headliner off the stage?
Well, opening acts have been so bad that most people don't even arrive to see them. It didn't used to be this way, the undercard was a core part of the show, not anymore.
So we can debate ticket prices all day long, talk about bots and fees and... That's for shows that everybody wants to go to. How about the shows that are struggling, how about quality new acts without traction...who is talking about those, who is championing those?
That is the question.
--
Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/
--
Listen to the podcast:
-iHeart: https://ihr.fm/2Gi5PFj
-Apple: https://apple.co/2ndmpvp
--
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Sunday, 28 December 2025
Tips
WRITE SONGS
That's where all the money and action is. If you just want to be a player...you're at the mercy of the band leader and studio work has dropped off dramatically. Today many songs are simple with one chord throughout. Don't be beholden to what is popular now, classic song structure always triumphs. "Yesterday" was not that different from what was popular decades before the Beatles had success. Hacks imitate, original writers triumph. This is something that has hobbled Nashville, when you write by committee you kill the bolt of inspiration of great work that pushes the envelope. And, when you write your own material, people resonate with your work that much more, they know you are speaking directly from your heart.
CREATE CONSTANTLY
You get better the more you do it. Ask anyone who has had success, in hindsight they laugh at their earlier work.
PRACTICE
Know the basics... Whether it be how to play your guitar or drums or... Or if you're a singer/lyricist, you should be reading all the time. Inspiration comes when you've got the tools down, when it's reflexive as opposed to intellectualized.
POST
Everything you do should be posted online on all platforms. Probably it will be ignored, but you never know what will resonate with the public. Don't self-censor. And failure is no longer the stain it once was. Stiffs are ignored and hits are recognized. In other words, no matter how big an act you are, if you misfire it's no longer held against you, the work is just forgotten... You can come back with better work later. This means you can experiment.
MARKETING & PROMOTION
Do none until you have a buzz, a reaction. Not only professionals, but average people are overloaded and will give you one chance, usually not more. But when something is happening, when you've got multiple streams/views, that means that someone likes what you are doing and that's what professionals are looking for, someone who is building their audience all by their lonesome.
CREATION VS. MARKETING & PROMOTION
Yes, you should be on TikTok, your music should not only be on all platforms you must create interesting videos to promote it. However, do not fall into the modern trap of spending most of your time marketing as opposed to creating and playing. There are millions of great marketers, there are not millions of great musicians. You have to lead with the music.
DON'T COMPLAIN
There's no upside. If you're not making any money that means that your music is not causing a reaction. Focus on the reaction...if that happens, you'll end up making money. History is littered with people who didn't give up their day jobs until after their album went gold...let this be a lesson to you.
DON'T WAIT TO BE RESCUED
If you're banking on finding a deep pocket, a label or an investor, you're doing it wrong. That's positively last century. You have all the tools in your pocket. Furthermore, oftentimes the label can't do anything but pay you, they have proven again and again in the past few years that they don't know how to break an act, and as a result of this they are focusing more and more on fewer genres, trying for moonshots. Labels are very much like movie studios in this way. As for an indie label... The truth is you are your own label, you've got to do it yourself. And if you have success you'll get so much more money from streaming. Beware of hucksters telling you they can help you out, they talk a good game but rarely deliver. And know that anyone who wants to get involved with you only will do so because they want to make money. If you're not generating cash, they're not interested. And the moment you stop generating cash, or never break through, their interests go elsewhere. This is capitalism, this is human nature... There is no music league akin to sports. Everybody starts their journey wet behind the ears and learns through the process, especially when they get screwed. Never give up your copyrights, however if you can't give a little to get a little, don't expect anybody to want to be in business with you.
PLAY IN YOUR GENRE
Don't study the hit parade and try to imitate it, play what's in your soul. You might have to create a market for it, but if it's great, people will find it. However the conundrum of the modern internet era is everything is available, there for the listening/taking, but it almost always takes longer than it did in the past to gain traction/critical mass. If you're even thinking of going to graduate school, don't even start as a professional musician. Now, more than ever, it takes eons to break through and it's not like in the past, where when you do riches pour down. You might just end up with a business that keeps you afloat at best, with enough fans to tour and support you. If you're getting into music to get rich, there are many other avenues with better odds, go down those paths.
INFLUENCES
Yes, you should know records, but you need to read and socialize and...you are your influences. Which is why the barely pubescent acts almost always flame out, they haven't had enough life experience, they might have a hit but they can't follow it up because they've got nothing to say.
PEFORMANCE IS A SKILL
You develop it over time. No one is great right out of the box. If your act depends on live appearances, play everywhere you can, even for free...you need the experience to get good. And you can close people with a live performance, although finding a place to play for an act without traction is not easy.
READ DON PASSMAN'S BOOK
It's much better than sitting around with wannabes providing false information on how the business works.
START WITH PEOPLE AT YOUR OWN LEVEL
Sure, some bigwig might come along and be interested in what you're doing and want to be in business with you, but you're best off being involved with young hustlers your own age, who are at the same point in the music business or just slightly ahead. Most established people don't have the time or inclination to build something from zero, they want something that will pay in prodigious amounts quickly. They've been there and done that, developed acts that succeeded but mostly failed. You need the passion of someone who is just starting out. In addition, that big theoretical button that can be pushed for success no longer exists.
BE A STUDENT OF THE GAME BUT DON'T BE CRIPPLED BY THE GAME
Every big story, every big break is unique. Just because someone made it one way doesn't mean you should try to replicate the formula.
YOUR BIG BREAK WILL BE A SERIES OF LITTLE BREAKS
If you ever have a big break...it's almost never what you think it will be. So if you're planning on a TV appearance or newspaper article to break you through...I'm not saying not to do it, but don't expect this to be the one thing that will put you over the top, especially today when you're competing with so many messages.
PERSEVERANCE
If you're not willing to starve, music is not the business for you. If you want to get married, have a house and children, you don't have the time nor the ability to barely survive, which are almost always key elements of the road to success. Don't think of music as a conventional job, it's more akin to a lottery. No one cares how much you practiced, they just care if your music resonates with them. Period. Stop telling people you've put in 10,000 hours. Never mind that it's 10,000 hours of hard work, which few are willing to do. As a guitarist are you willing to try and read music, constantly batting your head against the wall with difficult stuff to play? I'm not saying you need to read in order to succeed, but I am saying if the process isn't frustrating, if you don't feel like sometimes you're banging your head against the wall, if you don't contemplate giving up...then you're just not doing it right, you're not working hard enough. Sure, you might play in a bar band six nights a week, and you'll gain some skills, but not all the ones you need to be a star or even a journeyman playing your own material. If the process of making it is not frustrating to you...the joke is on you. Put yourself in uncomfortable situations. And you're flying without a net. The success of every musical act is different, as is the path they take to get there. You're building it from scratch, it's solely about you, someone might be able to give you some help but you are in the driver's seat.
DON'T BE SOUR GRAPES
The truth is the public is dying for great new music, and if they find it they tell everybody they know about it. Don't blame the public if they don't get what you're doing. Maybe it's too far out there or too ahead of the game, maybe if you stay at it the audience will catch up with you... But the dirty little secret is most people and their music is just not great. People don't spread the word on good music, they spread the word on great music!
YOU'RE ONLY IN COMPETITION WITH YOURSELF
No one is taking your slot, your lane is unique to you and unlimited. Think about what you're doing, about your audience, not what another act is doing. This is a business of uniqueness, that's what rises above the morass. Which is why Berklee students don't dominate the charts. Sure, learn how to play. But do you have a vision, can you create something unique?
INSPIRATION IS EVERYTHING
The idea trumps the ability to execute it. You don't have to be the best player in order to break through, but you do have to have the best idea. Look at the Ramones...they started a whole movement based on precepts that weren't even considered by those in power in the business.
MORE INSPIRATION
Sure, there are artists who build songs over time, but most of the great tunes were concocted very quickly, on instinct. If you live your life, exercise, take a shower, you'll be surprised when an idea comes to you...and then rush to your instrument and notepad, don't squander the inspiration, it comes rarely, stay in the zone and lay it down, it will feel like you're channeling something, like the song is writing itself. If you've never had this feeling, then either you're doing it wrong or haven't done it enough. This is the story of the majority of legendary hits. Period. Sure, there are hits that were made by committee, but the bolt of lightning, from the heavens into your brain and fingers...those are the ones that are special, that evidence humanity, that connect with people. Keep going until you have this experience...and you only have this experience when your chops are in order...so when the idea comes you can lay it down just that fast, maybe in an hour, maybe in only fifteen minutes.
That's where all the money and action is. If you just want to be a player...you're at the mercy of the band leader and studio work has dropped off dramatically. Today many songs are simple with one chord throughout. Don't be beholden to what is popular now, classic song structure always triumphs. "Yesterday" was not that different from what was popular decades before the Beatles had success. Hacks imitate, original writers triumph. This is something that has hobbled Nashville, when you write by committee you kill the bolt of inspiration of great work that pushes the envelope. And, when you write your own material, people resonate with your work that much more, they know you are speaking directly from your heart.
CREATE CONSTANTLY
You get better the more you do it. Ask anyone who has had success, in hindsight they laugh at their earlier work.
PRACTICE
Know the basics... Whether it be how to play your guitar or drums or... Or if you're a singer/lyricist, you should be reading all the time. Inspiration comes when you've got the tools down, when it's reflexive as opposed to intellectualized.
POST
Everything you do should be posted online on all platforms. Probably it will be ignored, but you never know what will resonate with the public. Don't self-censor. And failure is no longer the stain it once was. Stiffs are ignored and hits are recognized. In other words, no matter how big an act you are, if you misfire it's no longer held against you, the work is just forgotten... You can come back with better work later. This means you can experiment.
MARKETING & PROMOTION
Do none until you have a buzz, a reaction. Not only professionals, but average people are overloaded and will give you one chance, usually not more. But when something is happening, when you've got multiple streams/views, that means that someone likes what you are doing and that's what professionals are looking for, someone who is building their audience all by their lonesome.
CREATION VS. MARKETING & PROMOTION
Yes, you should be on TikTok, your music should not only be on all platforms you must create interesting videos to promote it. However, do not fall into the modern trap of spending most of your time marketing as opposed to creating and playing. There are millions of great marketers, there are not millions of great musicians. You have to lead with the music.
DON'T COMPLAIN
There's no upside. If you're not making any money that means that your music is not causing a reaction. Focus on the reaction...if that happens, you'll end up making money. History is littered with people who didn't give up their day jobs until after their album went gold...let this be a lesson to you.
DON'T WAIT TO BE RESCUED
If you're banking on finding a deep pocket, a label or an investor, you're doing it wrong. That's positively last century. You have all the tools in your pocket. Furthermore, oftentimes the label can't do anything but pay you, they have proven again and again in the past few years that they don't know how to break an act, and as a result of this they are focusing more and more on fewer genres, trying for moonshots. Labels are very much like movie studios in this way. As for an indie label... The truth is you are your own label, you've got to do it yourself. And if you have success you'll get so much more money from streaming. Beware of hucksters telling you they can help you out, they talk a good game but rarely deliver. And know that anyone who wants to get involved with you only will do so because they want to make money. If you're not generating cash, they're not interested. And the moment you stop generating cash, or never break through, their interests go elsewhere. This is capitalism, this is human nature... There is no music league akin to sports. Everybody starts their journey wet behind the ears and learns through the process, especially when they get screwed. Never give up your copyrights, however if you can't give a little to get a little, don't expect anybody to want to be in business with you.
PLAY IN YOUR GENRE
Don't study the hit parade and try to imitate it, play what's in your soul. You might have to create a market for it, but if it's great, people will find it. However the conundrum of the modern internet era is everything is available, there for the listening/taking, but it almost always takes longer than it did in the past to gain traction/critical mass. If you're even thinking of going to graduate school, don't even start as a professional musician. Now, more than ever, it takes eons to break through and it's not like in the past, where when you do riches pour down. You might just end up with a business that keeps you afloat at best, with enough fans to tour and support you. If you're getting into music to get rich, there are many other avenues with better odds, go down those paths.
INFLUENCES
Yes, you should know records, but you need to read and socialize and...you are your influences. Which is why the barely pubescent acts almost always flame out, they haven't had enough life experience, they might have a hit but they can't follow it up because they've got nothing to say.
PEFORMANCE IS A SKILL
You develop it over time. No one is great right out of the box. If your act depends on live appearances, play everywhere you can, even for free...you need the experience to get good. And you can close people with a live performance, although finding a place to play for an act without traction is not easy.
READ DON PASSMAN'S BOOK
It's much better than sitting around with wannabes providing false information on how the business works.
START WITH PEOPLE AT YOUR OWN LEVEL
Sure, some bigwig might come along and be interested in what you're doing and want to be in business with you, but you're best off being involved with young hustlers your own age, who are at the same point in the music business or just slightly ahead. Most established people don't have the time or inclination to build something from zero, they want something that will pay in prodigious amounts quickly. They've been there and done that, developed acts that succeeded but mostly failed. You need the passion of someone who is just starting out. In addition, that big theoretical button that can be pushed for success no longer exists.
BE A STUDENT OF THE GAME BUT DON'T BE CRIPPLED BY THE GAME
Every big story, every big break is unique. Just because someone made it one way doesn't mean you should try to replicate the formula.
YOUR BIG BREAK WILL BE A SERIES OF LITTLE BREAKS
If you ever have a big break...it's almost never what you think it will be. So if you're planning on a TV appearance or newspaper article to break you through...I'm not saying not to do it, but don't expect this to be the one thing that will put you over the top, especially today when you're competing with so many messages.
PERSEVERANCE
If you're not willing to starve, music is not the business for you. If you want to get married, have a house and children, you don't have the time nor the ability to barely survive, which are almost always key elements of the road to success. Don't think of music as a conventional job, it's more akin to a lottery. No one cares how much you practiced, they just care if your music resonates with them. Period. Stop telling people you've put in 10,000 hours. Never mind that it's 10,000 hours of hard work, which few are willing to do. As a guitarist are you willing to try and read music, constantly batting your head against the wall with difficult stuff to play? I'm not saying you need to read in order to succeed, but I am saying if the process isn't frustrating, if you don't feel like sometimes you're banging your head against the wall, if you don't contemplate giving up...then you're just not doing it right, you're not working hard enough. Sure, you might play in a bar band six nights a week, and you'll gain some skills, but not all the ones you need to be a star or even a journeyman playing your own material. If the process of making it is not frustrating to you...the joke is on you. Put yourself in uncomfortable situations. And you're flying without a net. The success of every musical act is different, as is the path they take to get there. You're building it from scratch, it's solely about you, someone might be able to give you some help but you are in the driver's seat.
DON'T BE SOUR GRAPES
The truth is the public is dying for great new music, and if they find it they tell everybody they know about it. Don't blame the public if they don't get what you're doing. Maybe it's too far out there or too ahead of the game, maybe if you stay at it the audience will catch up with you... But the dirty little secret is most people and their music is just not great. People don't spread the word on good music, they spread the word on great music!
YOU'RE ONLY IN COMPETITION WITH YOURSELF
No one is taking your slot, your lane is unique to you and unlimited. Think about what you're doing, about your audience, not what another act is doing. This is a business of uniqueness, that's what rises above the morass. Which is why Berklee students don't dominate the charts. Sure, learn how to play. But do you have a vision, can you create something unique?
INSPIRATION IS EVERYTHING
The idea trumps the ability to execute it. You don't have to be the best player in order to break through, but you do have to have the best idea. Look at the Ramones...they started a whole movement based on precepts that weren't even considered by those in power in the business.
MORE INSPIRATION
Sure, there are artists who build songs over time, but most of the great tunes were concocted very quickly, on instinct. If you live your life, exercise, take a shower, you'll be surprised when an idea comes to you...and then rush to your instrument and notepad, don't squander the inspiration, it comes rarely, stay in the zone and lay it down, it will feel like you're channeling something, like the song is writing itself. If you've never had this feeling, then either you're doing it wrong or haven't done it enough. This is the story of the majority of legendary hits. Period. Sure, there are hits that were made by committee, but the bolt of lightning, from the heavens into your brain and fingers...those are the ones that are special, that evidence humanity, that connect with people. Keep going until you have this experience...and you only have this experience when your chops are in order...so when the idea comes you can lay it down just that fast, maybe in an hour, maybe in only fifteen minutes.
--
Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/
--
Listen to the podcast:
-iHeart: https://ihr.fm/2Gi5PFj
-Apple: https://apple.co/2ndmpvp
--
http://www.twitter.com/lefsetz
--
If you would like to subscribe to the LefsetzLetter,
http://www.lefsetz.com/lists/?p=subscribe&id=1
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TikTok
The reason you go on TikTok is to get the pulse of the nation, to be informed of what people think.
This is where the oldster/mainstream media/anti-technology perspective gets it wrong. If you're not on your phone consistently, if you're not surfing TikTok, you don't know what the majority of the public is thinking, and therefore, how can you market to them?
We keep hearing about IRL. That one must put down the phone and interact with those around them. I've got no problem with in person relations, but we are not going back to the 1860s, or even the 1960s. To insist on real life only is like decrying the car and continuing to use your horse and buggy.
Think of music. How is it marketed today? Online!
Of course we had word of mouth previously, but music didn't spread as wide previously. But there are put-downs of TikTok and Spotify and...this is how most of the active consumers find out about music and consume it. This is what is driving the sale of tickets. Terrestrial radio comes last, if at all. Find a youngster who listens to terrestrial radio and I'll give you a nickel, and at the end of the day all the requests will be fulfilled by the cash in my wallet...and I'll still have money left over.
Social media is not the devil. And today's social media is not that of yesteryear's. It used to be one to one, now it's one to many. Furthermore, unlike Instagram, TikTok is not a bragging platform. As for influencers trying to sell you something... People are trying to sell you things all day long, you're bombarded by sales messages. And despite all the press, the number of straight ahead sold out influencers on TikTok is de minimis. The story is just amplified because some of these people make bank.
And when people make money online this way, they don't make music.
Trends start on TikTok. And if you don't know the trends...
TikTok is where creativity lives. Want to be inspired? Just go through some TikTok clips. It's a cornucopia of expression and ideas. With modern technology everybody has the ability to record themselves and post the result. This is what the smartphone has wrought. It's broadened the playing field, reduced the barrier to entry to nothing.
Also, unlike on competing platforms, you can get pushed into people's feeds without having a history of success. In other words, if what you do is good people will see it. This is the problem the music industry has, how do you expose people to new music, how do you break an act?
Of course not all music on TikTok is good. And sure, labels have injected money into TikTok successes to no result, but you've got to separate the wheat from the chaff, it's a skill you must develop.
And do you know what one of the main types of video on TikTok is? Confessional. Women especially speaking about their relationships. But most A&R people are men, and this doesn't square with either their lives or their history. You want to sign up new Joni Mitchells, you want to sign up women who fit Taylor Swift's adolescent confessional niche in country.
The other thing you'll find out on TikTok is your feed is different from another's. Demonstrating that we're all in our own silos. But those silos run deep. We are looking for expertise in these silos. An example would be Billy Strings, whose success is based on his ability to play, whose career in arenas is a result of internet exposure and word of mouth.
If you are concerned with marketing, you must take the pulse of the public constantly. This is one of the reasons the Democrats lost in 2024, they didn't know how the public thought. And Andrew Cuomo lost all that money on television ads during the mayoral campaign while Mamdani created online viral moments.
What are people thinking? What are they interested in? What keeps popping up again and again? If you don't know the answers to these questions, you can't relate to the public at large. Which is fine if you want to live in a bubble, but if you are selling anything...
A starting musician could surf TikTok to inform them what people are listening to, what succeeds. As for those artists sitting on the sideline, refusing to post on social media, the joke is on you.
Oldsters are now explaining their songs on TikTok. Todd Rundgren gave a lengthy explanation of "Hello It's Me." I bought both the Nazz album and "Something/Anything?" which contain that tune when those records came out, I've spoken with Todd multiple times, I still learned stuff.
Yes, that's one kind of video that works on TikTok. An explanation of your past, of your history. You used to have to rely on the press to do this, your PR person had to persuade outlets. Now you don't need a PR person, you can go directly to your fans and talk about whatever you want for as long as you care.
And newbies know that a TikTok clip must have internal value beyond the music. That this is a canvas to be creative. If you say you play music and that's it, if you don't come up with new ideas and how to express them visually, you're marketing yourself with one hand behind your back.
The precepts have changed. And when one rails against TikTok it's no different from those who railed against MP3s and then streaming. Where did the market go? Not back to physical media.
You can choose to live in a bubble, but if you want to know what is going on with the people, if you want to be exposed to and learn from unfiltered messages, unlike in the press, you need to spend a lot of time online, and right now the platform that is king is TikTok.
If I were a company marketing to people I would insist that my team watch TikTok for at least twenty minutes every day. This is no different from those who watched MTV during the eighties to be hip to what worked, what the outlet would play.
As for record companies, I'd tell them to hire more women, because women rule disproportionately online. Too many men who pooh-pooh feelings and intimacies, who are baked in the rock or rap of the past, have decision making power, and they've got it all wrong.
And mindless can work, but what resonates most on TikTok is knowledge and depth. Think about marketing to that.
The same people whose parents told them their music was for troglodytes have contempt for what the younger generations are into today. But Perry Como never came back.
I harp on this point, the need to utilize TikTok, because it's so important.
Also, you must be on for a while for the algorithm to figure out what to serve you. To go on for a few minutes and say you don't get it is a mistake. You must invest yourself, make a little effort, then the payoff will begin.
If you're too busy to be on TikTok you're too busy to market to the public. And that's fine. But if you're selling...
--
Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/
--
Listen to the podcast:
-iHeart: https://ihr.fm/2Gi5PFj
-Apple: https://apple.co/2ndmpvp
--
http://www.twitter.com/lefsetz
--
If you would like to subscribe to the LefsetzLetter,
http://www.lefsetz.com/lists/?p=subscribe&id=1
If you do not want to receive any more LefsetzLetters, http://lefsetz.com/lists/?p=unsubscribe&uid=0eecea7b60b461717065cbde887c8e25
To change your email address http://lefsetz.com/lists/?p=preferences&uid=0eecea7b60b461717065cbde887c8e25
This is where the oldster/mainstream media/anti-technology perspective gets it wrong. If you're not on your phone consistently, if you're not surfing TikTok, you don't know what the majority of the public is thinking, and therefore, how can you market to them?
We keep hearing about IRL. That one must put down the phone and interact with those around them. I've got no problem with in person relations, but we are not going back to the 1860s, or even the 1960s. To insist on real life only is like decrying the car and continuing to use your horse and buggy.
Think of music. How is it marketed today? Online!
Of course we had word of mouth previously, but music didn't spread as wide previously. But there are put-downs of TikTok and Spotify and...this is how most of the active consumers find out about music and consume it. This is what is driving the sale of tickets. Terrestrial radio comes last, if at all. Find a youngster who listens to terrestrial radio and I'll give you a nickel, and at the end of the day all the requests will be fulfilled by the cash in my wallet...and I'll still have money left over.
Social media is not the devil. And today's social media is not that of yesteryear's. It used to be one to one, now it's one to many. Furthermore, unlike Instagram, TikTok is not a bragging platform. As for influencers trying to sell you something... People are trying to sell you things all day long, you're bombarded by sales messages. And despite all the press, the number of straight ahead sold out influencers on TikTok is de minimis. The story is just amplified because some of these people make bank.
And when people make money online this way, they don't make music.
Trends start on TikTok. And if you don't know the trends...
TikTok is where creativity lives. Want to be inspired? Just go through some TikTok clips. It's a cornucopia of expression and ideas. With modern technology everybody has the ability to record themselves and post the result. This is what the smartphone has wrought. It's broadened the playing field, reduced the barrier to entry to nothing.
Also, unlike on competing platforms, you can get pushed into people's feeds without having a history of success. In other words, if what you do is good people will see it. This is the problem the music industry has, how do you expose people to new music, how do you break an act?
Of course not all music on TikTok is good. And sure, labels have injected money into TikTok successes to no result, but you've got to separate the wheat from the chaff, it's a skill you must develop.
And do you know what one of the main types of video on TikTok is? Confessional. Women especially speaking about their relationships. But most A&R people are men, and this doesn't square with either their lives or their history. You want to sign up new Joni Mitchells, you want to sign up women who fit Taylor Swift's adolescent confessional niche in country.
The other thing you'll find out on TikTok is your feed is different from another's. Demonstrating that we're all in our own silos. But those silos run deep. We are looking for expertise in these silos. An example would be Billy Strings, whose success is based on his ability to play, whose career in arenas is a result of internet exposure and word of mouth.
If you are concerned with marketing, you must take the pulse of the public constantly. This is one of the reasons the Democrats lost in 2024, they didn't know how the public thought. And Andrew Cuomo lost all that money on television ads during the mayoral campaign while Mamdani created online viral moments.
What are people thinking? What are they interested in? What keeps popping up again and again? If you don't know the answers to these questions, you can't relate to the public at large. Which is fine if you want to live in a bubble, but if you are selling anything...
A starting musician could surf TikTok to inform them what people are listening to, what succeeds. As for those artists sitting on the sideline, refusing to post on social media, the joke is on you.
Oldsters are now explaining their songs on TikTok. Todd Rundgren gave a lengthy explanation of "Hello It's Me." I bought both the Nazz album and "Something/Anything?" which contain that tune when those records came out, I've spoken with Todd multiple times, I still learned stuff.
Yes, that's one kind of video that works on TikTok. An explanation of your past, of your history. You used to have to rely on the press to do this, your PR person had to persuade outlets. Now you don't need a PR person, you can go directly to your fans and talk about whatever you want for as long as you care.
And newbies know that a TikTok clip must have internal value beyond the music. That this is a canvas to be creative. If you say you play music and that's it, if you don't come up with new ideas and how to express them visually, you're marketing yourself with one hand behind your back.
The precepts have changed. And when one rails against TikTok it's no different from those who railed against MP3s and then streaming. Where did the market go? Not back to physical media.
You can choose to live in a bubble, but if you want to know what is going on with the people, if you want to be exposed to and learn from unfiltered messages, unlike in the press, you need to spend a lot of time online, and right now the platform that is king is TikTok.
If I were a company marketing to people I would insist that my team watch TikTok for at least twenty minutes every day. This is no different from those who watched MTV during the eighties to be hip to what worked, what the outlet would play.
As for record companies, I'd tell them to hire more women, because women rule disproportionately online. Too many men who pooh-pooh feelings and intimacies, who are baked in the rock or rap of the past, have decision making power, and they've got it all wrong.
And mindless can work, but what resonates most on TikTok is knowledge and depth. Think about marketing to that.
The same people whose parents told them their music was for troglodytes have contempt for what the younger generations are into today. But Perry Como never came back.
I harp on this point, the need to utilize TikTok, because it's so important.
Also, you must be on for a while for the algorithm to figure out what to serve you. To go on for a few minutes and say you don't get it is a mistake. You must invest yourself, make a little effort, then the payoff will begin.
If you're too busy to be on TikTok you're too busy to market to the public. And that's fine. But if you're selling...
--
Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/
--
Listen to the podcast:
-iHeart: https://ihr.fm/2Gi5PFj
-Apple: https://apple.co/2ndmpvp
--
http://www.twitter.com/lefsetz
--
If you would like to subscribe to the LefsetzLetter,
http://www.lefsetz.com/lists/?p=subscribe&id=1
If you do not want to receive any more LefsetzLetters, http://lefsetz.com/lists/?p=unsubscribe&uid=0eecea7b60b461717065cbde887c8e25
To change your email address http://lefsetz.com/lists/?p=preferences&uid=0eecea7b60b461717065cbde887c8e25
Saturday, 27 December 2025
One Battle After Another
And Hollywood wonders why this was a box office disappointment?
There have been reams of pages utilizing "One Battle After Another" as an illustration of a failure of the audience, that people just won't come out to see a great movie. Having now watched it on HBO...
I was hipped by Harold that it was a disappointment. He went to see it in the theatre. Something I choose not to do. Not only do I find the experience passé, how do you expect me to sit for two hours and forty two minutes without getting up to pee? If you want to make a series, do so, but don't give us these lengthy, extended films that are a chore to watch in one sitting.
Now I've recently thought that Leonardo DiCaprio was overrated. However he was good here. But Sean Penn? He's the new Meryl Streep, you can see the preparation, you can see the acting, the ultimate result being that the portrayal just doesn't ring true. The walk? Both bow-legged and stiff? Maybe if you're in your twenties... I mean he's signaling the rigidity of the character, but it ends up making viewers wince...this is why people decry Penn, he takes himself so seriously. I loved Willa's put-down of him, about the tight shirt and the lifts in his shoes, but it's hard not to square that with the real Penn.
But Benicio del Toro has never been better. Confident yet understated.
The acting in all was pretty good. But the plotting?
I didn't read Pynchon's "Vineland," although online research tells me the film is not faithful to the book. But the first issue the flick has is TONE! You want to take it seriously. Is this a commentary on immigration? I mean there are no laughs at first. Except maybe for when Teyana Taylor's Perfidia Beverly Hills first encounters Sean Penn's Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw. The plot seems so fantastical, an underground rebel organization akin to the Weathermen, one which we don't have today (don't tell me Antifa is equal, Antifa is not even an organization!), taking violent action. The inspiration for putting their lives on the line is not made clear. And then they're robbing banks... Is this like the Symbionese Liberation Army?
And then sixteen years go by and you start to wonder...is this like a Mexican drug lord movie, like "Sicario," or is it a family drama and...why should I care so much?
I know, I know, the reviews talk about the humor. And there is some, but it's not like I was laughing out loud, I smiled at most.
And then it's a chase movie.
But all the critics have waxed rhapsodic. Maybe this is why they no longer have pull. If an adult went to the theatre to see this based only on reviews, if they didn't consider themselves a cineaste, they'd be angry, they'd want their money back, and they would not journey to the theatre soon thereafter, if at all.
This is not what the public wants. This faux intellectualism. It's not as bad as Paul Thomas Anderson's "The Master," then again, his previous film, "Licorice Pizza," had tone and not much more...but at least the tone was consistent.
Do I think "One Battle After Another" would be best seen on a big screen? Sure. The cinematography was rich. But I watched it on an iPad and I didn't feel that I was missing anything. Then again, the intelligentsia will say that's why I didn't love it. Hogwash.
Let's say that theatrical is for event movies only. It is no longer a broad-based business. If anything, what is purveyed by Netflix and the other streamers is superior. And now you've got Tinseltown's knickers in a twist regarding Netflix's acquisition of Warner Bros. The two main fears being that Netflix will make fewer films and those they do produce won't be distributed theatrically.
This reminds me of nothing so much as Napster. You had the record labels and old farts saying that the CD was superior, that no one would want anything better, need anything better. But now computers and cars don't even come with a CD drive, on demand streaming is king, and vinyl is mostly a souvenir, don't let the press persuade you otherwise.
Why can't Hollywood do what Spotify did and get ahead of the market?
Oh, that's right, that's what Netflix did. It switched its formula from rental to streaming and there was public outcry, people loved their DVDs! Ask them today if they even have a DVD player! And then all the studios licensed their product, building Netflix's business, and Netflix started production itself. This is Clayton Christensen's Innovator's Dilemma write large. If you don't disrupt yourself, someone else will!
When I think back on 2025, the best production I saw was "Adolescence." Notice that despite all the ink spilled about "White Lotus," no one is talking about that anymore, it was formulaic when "Adolescence" was not. And we can talk all about the one extended shot technique, but that was secondary to the plot and the performances. I still think about "Adolescence," it raised issues in our culture today. Am I going to think about "One Battle After Another" tomorrow? No!
Sometimes the wisdom of the crowd is right. Not always, but if you're in the business of commerce/money as opposed to pure art, you should look at what the people say.
And don't crap on the public too much. People do not want retreads, they always want something new, they're open to something new, the fact that the purveyors don't give it to them is something else.
There might be an audience for superhero movies, there might be an audience for the Spotify Top 50, but most people don't even bother, they're not even shrugging their shoulders, they just don't care, these productions don't speak to them.
And did you read in the "Wall Street Journal" today about the lack of melody in today's popular music? Once the mainstream goes on something you know there's a problem:
"Has America Lost Its Melody? - Something changed in popular music around 2005. I suspect it reflects a change in the country."
Free link: https://www.wsj.com/opinion/has-america-lost-its-melody-0ec9fc31?st=1yjWtD&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
This is how Lou Pearlman ate the labels' lunch with Backstreet Boys and NSYNC! The majors weren't selling this stuff, there was no competition. All the A&R people were too hip. Just like they're too hip to sign something today that's pure melody, laden with hooks...it just doesn't get them off.
The record labels lost touch with the public years ago. That's why the business is stale. And theatrical films are almost laughable.
Do I think they spent a lot of money on "One Battle After Another"? Do I think everybody involved gave it their best? Yes. But I also think it was the emperor's new clothes...didn't anybody see that this production didn't appeal to enough people to make a profit? That the movie is flawed in tone and ultimately indescribable? Is it action, romance, comedy...so much is thrown in that the audience can't ultimately be engaged, never mind that there is nothing to take from the flick.
And if you think "One Battle After Another" is an allegory about today's political scene... Yeah, right. And today's revolutionaries don't even fight with violence, they fight with technology, computers, the internet...but everybody involved in this picture is an old fart invested in old ways. Hell, I'd like to see a movie about Ukraine's homemade drones and how they're attacking Russia's vulnerabilities, that's modern warfare... Not some nincompoops out of the sixties who look so out of date they're laughable. And I'm not laughing with the filmmakers, but at them.
First and foremost it has to be an enjoyable experience. No one cares about the look and the performances if the story isn't great. Same deal with music... Without a good song, it doesn't matter how good the playing is.
The film industry needs the equivalent of the Ramones and the punk bands of the seventies, revolting against the overproduced rock of the day.
Oh wait! We've got that, on TikTok and YouTube. Instead of criticizing these platforms, creators have to study them, to see what is so attractive about these videos.
And I'll bet most of the reviewers saying how great "One Battle After Another" is, and those at the studio too, don't even have a TikTok account, they're out of touch with the public. The public is ravenous, if it finds anything good it will embrace it and spread the word.
"One Battle After Another" is not it.
--
Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/
--
Listen to the podcast:
-iHeart: https://ihr.fm/2Gi5PFj
-Apple: https://apple.co/2ndmpvp
--
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There have been reams of pages utilizing "One Battle After Another" as an illustration of a failure of the audience, that people just won't come out to see a great movie. Having now watched it on HBO...
I was hipped by Harold that it was a disappointment. He went to see it in the theatre. Something I choose not to do. Not only do I find the experience passé, how do you expect me to sit for two hours and forty two minutes without getting up to pee? If you want to make a series, do so, but don't give us these lengthy, extended films that are a chore to watch in one sitting.
Now I've recently thought that Leonardo DiCaprio was overrated. However he was good here. But Sean Penn? He's the new Meryl Streep, you can see the preparation, you can see the acting, the ultimate result being that the portrayal just doesn't ring true. The walk? Both bow-legged and stiff? Maybe if you're in your twenties... I mean he's signaling the rigidity of the character, but it ends up making viewers wince...this is why people decry Penn, he takes himself so seriously. I loved Willa's put-down of him, about the tight shirt and the lifts in his shoes, but it's hard not to square that with the real Penn.
But Benicio del Toro has never been better. Confident yet understated.
The acting in all was pretty good. But the plotting?
I didn't read Pynchon's "Vineland," although online research tells me the film is not faithful to the book. But the first issue the flick has is TONE! You want to take it seriously. Is this a commentary on immigration? I mean there are no laughs at first. Except maybe for when Teyana Taylor's Perfidia Beverly Hills first encounters Sean Penn's Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw. The plot seems so fantastical, an underground rebel organization akin to the Weathermen, one which we don't have today (don't tell me Antifa is equal, Antifa is not even an organization!), taking violent action. The inspiration for putting their lives on the line is not made clear. And then they're robbing banks... Is this like the Symbionese Liberation Army?
And then sixteen years go by and you start to wonder...is this like a Mexican drug lord movie, like "Sicario," or is it a family drama and...why should I care so much?
I know, I know, the reviews talk about the humor. And there is some, but it's not like I was laughing out loud, I smiled at most.
And then it's a chase movie.
But all the critics have waxed rhapsodic. Maybe this is why they no longer have pull. If an adult went to the theatre to see this based only on reviews, if they didn't consider themselves a cineaste, they'd be angry, they'd want their money back, and they would not journey to the theatre soon thereafter, if at all.
This is not what the public wants. This faux intellectualism. It's not as bad as Paul Thomas Anderson's "The Master," then again, his previous film, "Licorice Pizza," had tone and not much more...but at least the tone was consistent.
Do I think "One Battle After Another" would be best seen on a big screen? Sure. The cinematography was rich. But I watched it on an iPad and I didn't feel that I was missing anything. Then again, the intelligentsia will say that's why I didn't love it. Hogwash.
Let's say that theatrical is for event movies only. It is no longer a broad-based business. If anything, what is purveyed by Netflix and the other streamers is superior. And now you've got Tinseltown's knickers in a twist regarding Netflix's acquisition of Warner Bros. The two main fears being that Netflix will make fewer films and those they do produce won't be distributed theatrically.
This reminds me of nothing so much as Napster. You had the record labels and old farts saying that the CD was superior, that no one would want anything better, need anything better. But now computers and cars don't even come with a CD drive, on demand streaming is king, and vinyl is mostly a souvenir, don't let the press persuade you otherwise.
Why can't Hollywood do what Spotify did and get ahead of the market?
Oh, that's right, that's what Netflix did. It switched its formula from rental to streaming and there was public outcry, people loved their DVDs! Ask them today if they even have a DVD player! And then all the studios licensed their product, building Netflix's business, and Netflix started production itself. This is Clayton Christensen's Innovator's Dilemma write large. If you don't disrupt yourself, someone else will!
When I think back on 2025, the best production I saw was "Adolescence." Notice that despite all the ink spilled about "White Lotus," no one is talking about that anymore, it was formulaic when "Adolescence" was not. And we can talk all about the one extended shot technique, but that was secondary to the plot and the performances. I still think about "Adolescence," it raised issues in our culture today. Am I going to think about "One Battle After Another" tomorrow? No!
Sometimes the wisdom of the crowd is right. Not always, but if you're in the business of commerce/money as opposed to pure art, you should look at what the people say.
And don't crap on the public too much. People do not want retreads, they always want something new, they're open to something new, the fact that the purveyors don't give it to them is something else.
There might be an audience for superhero movies, there might be an audience for the Spotify Top 50, but most people don't even bother, they're not even shrugging their shoulders, they just don't care, these productions don't speak to them.
And did you read in the "Wall Street Journal" today about the lack of melody in today's popular music? Once the mainstream goes on something you know there's a problem:
"Has America Lost Its Melody? - Something changed in popular music around 2005. I suspect it reflects a change in the country."
Free link: https://www.wsj.com/opinion/has-america-lost-its-melody-0ec9fc31?st=1yjWtD&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
This is how Lou Pearlman ate the labels' lunch with Backstreet Boys and NSYNC! The majors weren't selling this stuff, there was no competition. All the A&R people were too hip. Just like they're too hip to sign something today that's pure melody, laden with hooks...it just doesn't get them off.
The record labels lost touch with the public years ago. That's why the business is stale. And theatrical films are almost laughable.
Do I think they spent a lot of money on "One Battle After Another"? Do I think everybody involved gave it their best? Yes. But I also think it was the emperor's new clothes...didn't anybody see that this production didn't appeal to enough people to make a profit? That the movie is flawed in tone and ultimately indescribable? Is it action, romance, comedy...so much is thrown in that the audience can't ultimately be engaged, never mind that there is nothing to take from the flick.
And if you think "One Battle After Another" is an allegory about today's political scene... Yeah, right. And today's revolutionaries don't even fight with violence, they fight with technology, computers, the internet...but everybody involved in this picture is an old fart invested in old ways. Hell, I'd like to see a movie about Ukraine's homemade drones and how they're attacking Russia's vulnerabilities, that's modern warfare... Not some nincompoops out of the sixties who look so out of date they're laughable. And I'm not laughing with the filmmakers, but at them.
First and foremost it has to be an enjoyable experience. No one cares about the look and the performances if the story isn't great. Same deal with music... Without a good song, it doesn't matter how good the playing is.
The film industry needs the equivalent of the Ramones and the punk bands of the seventies, revolting against the overproduced rock of the day.
Oh wait! We've got that, on TikTok and YouTube. Instead of criticizing these platforms, creators have to study them, to see what is so attractive about these videos.
And I'll bet most of the reviewers saying how great "One Battle After Another" is, and those at the studio too, don't even have a TikTok account, they're out of touch with the public. The public is ravenous, if it finds anything good it will embrace it and spread the word.
"One Battle After Another" is not it.
--
Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/
--
Listen to the podcast:
-iHeart: https://ihr.fm/2Gi5PFj
-Apple: https://apple.co/2ndmpvp
--
http://www.twitter.com/lefsetz
--
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Friday, 26 December 2025
"New" Songs-SiriusXM This Week
For the new year.
Tune in Saturday December 27th to Faction Talk, channel 103, at 4 PM East, 1 PM West.
If you miss the episode, you can hear it on demand on the SiriusXM app. Search: Lefsetz
--
Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/
--
Listen to the podcast:
-iHeart: https://ihr.fm/2Gi5PFj
-Apple: https://apple.co/2ndmpvp
--
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--
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To change your email address http://lefsetz.com/lists/?p=preferences&uid=0eecea7b60b461717065cbde887c8e25
Tune in Saturday December 27th to Faction Talk, channel 103, at 4 PM East, 1 PM West.
If you miss the episode, you can hear it on demand on the SiriusXM app. Search: Lefsetz
--
Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/
--
Listen to the podcast:
-iHeart: https://ihr.fm/2Gi5PFj
-Apple: https://apple.co/2ndmpvp
--
http://www.twitter.com/lefsetz
--
If you would like to subscribe to the LefsetzLetter,
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The Seymour Hersh Documentary
Netflix trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CxEnECKs9U
Wow.
I was going to write about another Netflix documentary, "Breakdown: 1975," but when the ending reflected the attitudes of today...I lost the inspiration.
You see there's no snow in Colorado. Just the stuff they made back in November. Since then, not only has it been too warm to make more snow, it hasn't snowed for three weeks. The news has been pretty widely disseminated, but don't conflate what is going on in California to what is happening in the Centennial State. As of this writing, Mammoth has gotten 67" already from the Golden State storm you've been reading about, and it's still snowing! And that's not completely atypical for California, where they have these insane dumps and then days and days of sunshine. In Colorado it's an accumulation of a few inches here and a few more there and you end up with three hundred plus inches at the end of the season. But not this year.
Now my policy is to go out each and every day. But on Monday...
It's more crowded here than I've ever seen it. Bombers and beginners. The slopes are frightening, a straight-liner missed me by mere inches. But later in the day, just before I was done, I was just above the entrances to chairs 3&4, below the SLOW banners, and I saw this snowboarder about ten to fifteen feet away and I yelled out DON'T HIT ME! She was barely moving, I was completely stopped. And then she ran right into me.
I haven't been out since.
Of course she skied away. And when I got up from my fall, my butt hurting and my knee a little bit too, I raced down to confront her. She just smiled and said she was skiing, she didn't apologize at all.
And there you have it in Vail, Christmas 2025. It's supposed to snow one inch tomorrow, and then six the day after and...I'll go back out, but really, that's not enough to make a truly significant difference.
So I've been reading and last night we finished "Pluribus" (am I the only one who doesn't get it?) and today I decided to fire up Netflix and watch the 1975 documentary.
And this smorgasbord of images is great, however it always bothers me when they interview those who were not alive back then to testify... But everybody's afraid if they only feature old farts, youngsters won't watch. And for a minute there, I thought every American needed to watch "Breakdown: 1975," to see the way it once was, when movies were necessary viewing, at the theatre, but... The film fudged the dates, it just wasn't 1975, and then said the era was over with "Jaws," which was untrue, and then featured right wing blowback and the gas emptied from my tank.
So I decided to watch the Seymour Hersh documentary, "Cover-Up." Once again, WOW!
Now thinking about it, what struck me most about this doc was when Hersh referred to himself as an outsider. That's it in a nutshell. Now, more than ever, society doesn't like outsiders. And people don't want to be outsiders, they don't want to be out there alone, never mind victimized by online abuse, so they take a side and stick to it. Seemingly everybody in America, from musicians to corporate executives...they hold their head down and don't make waves because they don't want to suffer the consequences, even if they're right.
And Hersh has been right many times.
Of course he's also been wrong. But that's the nature of the game, if you're never wrong, you're playing it to close to the vest, you're holding back too much. I guess you could say the same thing about musicians, when you get inspired and what you've created is too far out for the record company, if you're afraid of alienating fans, that's what you should include, that's what you should release, because that's what changes the world, not what is expected.
So you get Hersh's story... His upbringing, his acceptance at the University of Chicago almost by accident. And I hate to piss people off, but that college experience helps form him, makes him who he is, because in that elite hothouse there are smart, educated people who challenge him, who want to wrestle with ideas, who inform and teach him too.
And then he becomes a reporter.
His "cases" are legendary. There's the My Lai Massacre.
No one wanted to believe it. And then Calley was released from jail soon after conviction...just like the January 6th protesters. Didn't matter what you did, if you supported the war... And Hersh posits that the story hadn't leaked despite so many knowing about it because it was de rigueur, it happened all the time.
And if you ever thought Henry Kissinger was a hero instead of a war criminal... Wow a third time. He had a cozy relationship with the "New York Times," they printed what he dictated while he was responsible for so much heinous stuff that people were unaware of. (At least until Hersh arrived.)
There's Watergate...
You'll watch "Cover-Up" and be disillusioned with the government. But the weird thing is today, the administration is doing all this stuff openly that they used to hide.
But the generations have changed. Boomers were taught to question authority. If you do that today, you can't get a job at the bank, and then you can't join the country club and...
When you're outside looking in and it doesn't add up, oftentimes you're right, which is why this Bari Weiss/"60 Minutes" thing is so important. If we can't depend on the news to bring us the truth...
Then again, today most people get their information online and are convinced of inane conspiracy theories that end up overshadowing the real ones. Even Abu Ghraib...we all saw the images. Today, the news site you click on, the one that aligns with your views, may not even post a story that doesn't comport with the orthodoxy... Fox News got the message, when it started challenging Trump it was losing viewers to even more right wing outlets, so it got with the program.
Everybody gets with the program, but not Sy Hersh.
And this documentary is a bit different from most. It's not a linear retelling of Hersh's life. You ultimately get some details of his growing up, but what you've really got here is his greatest hits, and his reluctance to do this movie at all.
So "Cover-Up" is the documentary all Americans need to see. And since it's on Netflix, many more people will see it than if it debuted in the theatre. You only get publicity once, and if people can't partake immediately, they forget about a movie when it's finally available for streaming, it's not only no longer new, there's a tsunami of additional product and...
Netflix is smart. "Cover-Up" came out today, when most people are on vacation and have the time to watch it. "Cover-Up" cuts to the heart of not only the government, but life in these United States. On one hand it will leave you numb, on the other suspicious of the government. And you should be suspicious of the government, and corporations too...Hersh gets into Gulf & Western and in the process it's revealed that the editor he reports to, who doesn't want to run Hersh's business stories in the "New York Times," has crossed the line too. And what does the editor say when confronted with his behavior? That his lawyer said it was okay. And then Hersh responds that that's what he hears every day from those he's investigating.
I can't recommend "Cover-Up" enough. Not because it's the best documentary I've ever seen, but because it raises issues that are not being raised elsewhere, and it illustrates you can make it, have a career, challenging conventional wisdom. Just don't expect to be honored by the company or be invited for drinks at the bar...
But if you have the cojones...
--
Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/
--
Listen to the podcast:
-iHeart: https://ihr.fm/2Gi5PFj
-Apple: https://apple.co/2ndmpvp
--
http://www.twitter.com/lefsetz
--
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Wow.
I was going to write about another Netflix documentary, "Breakdown: 1975," but when the ending reflected the attitudes of today...I lost the inspiration.
You see there's no snow in Colorado. Just the stuff they made back in November. Since then, not only has it been too warm to make more snow, it hasn't snowed for three weeks. The news has been pretty widely disseminated, but don't conflate what is going on in California to what is happening in the Centennial State. As of this writing, Mammoth has gotten 67" already from the Golden State storm you've been reading about, and it's still snowing! And that's not completely atypical for California, where they have these insane dumps and then days and days of sunshine. In Colorado it's an accumulation of a few inches here and a few more there and you end up with three hundred plus inches at the end of the season. But not this year.
Now my policy is to go out each and every day. But on Monday...
It's more crowded here than I've ever seen it. Bombers and beginners. The slopes are frightening, a straight-liner missed me by mere inches. But later in the day, just before I was done, I was just above the entrances to chairs 3&4, below the SLOW banners, and I saw this snowboarder about ten to fifteen feet away and I yelled out DON'T HIT ME! She was barely moving, I was completely stopped. And then she ran right into me.
I haven't been out since.
Of course she skied away. And when I got up from my fall, my butt hurting and my knee a little bit too, I raced down to confront her. She just smiled and said she was skiing, she didn't apologize at all.
And there you have it in Vail, Christmas 2025. It's supposed to snow one inch tomorrow, and then six the day after and...I'll go back out, but really, that's not enough to make a truly significant difference.
So I've been reading and last night we finished "Pluribus" (am I the only one who doesn't get it?) and today I decided to fire up Netflix and watch the 1975 documentary.
And this smorgasbord of images is great, however it always bothers me when they interview those who were not alive back then to testify... But everybody's afraid if they only feature old farts, youngsters won't watch. And for a minute there, I thought every American needed to watch "Breakdown: 1975," to see the way it once was, when movies were necessary viewing, at the theatre, but... The film fudged the dates, it just wasn't 1975, and then said the era was over with "Jaws," which was untrue, and then featured right wing blowback and the gas emptied from my tank.
So I decided to watch the Seymour Hersh documentary, "Cover-Up." Once again, WOW!
Now thinking about it, what struck me most about this doc was when Hersh referred to himself as an outsider. That's it in a nutshell. Now, more than ever, society doesn't like outsiders. And people don't want to be outsiders, they don't want to be out there alone, never mind victimized by online abuse, so they take a side and stick to it. Seemingly everybody in America, from musicians to corporate executives...they hold their head down and don't make waves because they don't want to suffer the consequences, even if they're right.
And Hersh has been right many times.
Of course he's also been wrong. But that's the nature of the game, if you're never wrong, you're playing it to close to the vest, you're holding back too much. I guess you could say the same thing about musicians, when you get inspired and what you've created is too far out for the record company, if you're afraid of alienating fans, that's what you should include, that's what you should release, because that's what changes the world, not what is expected.
So you get Hersh's story... His upbringing, his acceptance at the University of Chicago almost by accident. And I hate to piss people off, but that college experience helps form him, makes him who he is, because in that elite hothouse there are smart, educated people who challenge him, who want to wrestle with ideas, who inform and teach him too.
And then he becomes a reporter.
His "cases" are legendary. There's the My Lai Massacre.
No one wanted to believe it. And then Calley was released from jail soon after conviction...just like the January 6th protesters. Didn't matter what you did, if you supported the war... And Hersh posits that the story hadn't leaked despite so many knowing about it because it was de rigueur, it happened all the time.
And if you ever thought Henry Kissinger was a hero instead of a war criminal... Wow a third time. He had a cozy relationship with the "New York Times," they printed what he dictated while he was responsible for so much heinous stuff that people were unaware of. (At least until Hersh arrived.)
There's Watergate...
You'll watch "Cover-Up" and be disillusioned with the government. But the weird thing is today, the administration is doing all this stuff openly that they used to hide.
But the generations have changed. Boomers were taught to question authority. If you do that today, you can't get a job at the bank, and then you can't join the country club and...
When you're outside looking in and it doesn't add up, oftentimes you're right, which is why this Bari Weiss/"60 Minutes" thing is so important. If we can't depend on the news to bring us the truth...
Then again, today most people get their information online and are convinced of inane conspiracy theories that end up overshadowing the real ones. Even Abu Ghraib...we all saw the images. Today, the news site you click on, the one that aligns with your views, may not even post a story that doesn't comport with the orthodoxy... Fox News got the message, when it started challenging Trump it was losing viewers to even more right wing outlets, so it got with the program.
Everybody gets with the program, but not Sy Hersh.
And this documentary is a bit different from most. It's not a linear retelling of Hersh's life. You ultimately get some details of his growing up, but what you've really got here is his greatest hits, and his reluctance to do this movie at all.
So "Cover-Up" is the documentary all Americans need to see. And since it's on Netflix, many more people will see it than if it debuted in the theatre. You only get publicity once, and if people can't partake immediately, they forget about a movie when it's finally available for streaming, it's not only no longer new, there's a tsunami of additional product and...
Netflix is smart. "Cover-Up" came out today, when most people are on vacation and have the time to watch it. "Cover-Up" cuts to the heart of not only the government, but life in these United States. On one hand it will leave you numb, on the other suspicious of the government. And you should be suspicious of the government, and corporations too...Hersh gets into Gulf & Western and in the process it's revealed that the editor he reports to, who doesn't want to run Hersh's business stories in the "New York Times," has crossed the line too. And what does the editor say when confronted with his behavior? That his lawyer said it was okay. And then Hersh responds that that's what he hears every day from those he's investigating.
I can't recommend "Cover-Up" enough. Not because it's the best documentary I've ever seen, but because it raises issues that are not being raised elsewhere, and it illustrates you can make it, have a career, challenging conventional wisdom. Just don't expect to be honored by the company or be invited for drinks at the bar...
But if you have the cojones...
--
Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/
--
Listen to the podcast:
-iHeart: https://ihr.fm/2Gi5PFj
-Apple: https://apple.co/2ndmpvp
--
http://www.twitter.com/lefsetz
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Thursday, 25 December 2025
Jerry Kasenetz
I feel vindicated! According to the obituary in the "New York Times," Pete Townshend considered "Yummy Yummy Yummy" one of his favorite songs when it came out. And I loved it too! I even bought the single! And singles were made to be played over and over, until the vinyl turned grey, and mine did... I even took it along with me to Providence when we went to visit our cousins on some holiday, I was the only boy there, I sat in the corner of the room alone and listened...
You've got to know, everybody hated bubblegum music.
Scratch that... Bubblegum music had a huge audience amongst the young and brain dead, who had not shifted to album rock, which had its biggest triumph with "Sgt. Pepper," which had no singles at all, in the same year that the 1910 Fruitgum Company released...
"Simon Says." I hated that song! It was stupid!
1967 was not only the year of "Sgt. Pepper," it was also the year of "Disraeli Gears" and "Are You Experienced," both of which you had to own to hear, at least until the summer of '68, when "Sunshine of Your Love" crossed over, "Purple Haze" never did.
1967 was the year of FM rock's birth. First in San Francisco, then in New York. And believe me, I was a listener, I owned all those albums, but if you lived anywhere else you were a victim of AM Top 40 radio. Most people didn't even own an FM radio... That band was seen as traveling short distances and featuring classical music. As for cars...good luck finding one with an FM receiver back in '67.
So the hipsters not only knew the albums of the burgeoning album rock scene, but the Top 40 too. Upon which they placed judgment. And there were a lot of great tracks in '67, like "Dance to the Music" and "Respect" and "Soul Man" and...nobody bought the albums of these acts (don't write me and tell me you own one, the bottom line is the album phenomenon started with white rock, period). Stuff that those in the know could listen to and enjoy. But "Simon Says"? That was going backwards! That was a return to the pre-Beatle era. That was the kind of commercial dreck labels put out today, commerce as opposed to art.
And the following year's "1, 2, 3, Red Light" was just as bad, if not worse.
Bubblegum music was foisted upon the public by the team of Kasenetz & Katz. They were the stars, the bands were faceless, they usually didn't really exist, although concoctions were formed to go on the road and hoover up money.
But back in '67... "Rolling Stone" launched that year and didn't gain mainstream traction for almost half a decade thereafter. Meaning...there wasn't much information about these two producers and their productions, all we had were the records. It was not like today, where you can go deep down the rabbit hole on the internet.
But it was more than straight bubblegum. Kasenetz & Katz had their first hit with the Music Explosion's cover of "Little Bit O' Soul" earlier in the year of 1967, before anybody had even heard of bubblegum, never mind "Simon Says." And "Little Bit O' Soul" was seen as credible, it was infectious without being saccharine, it got respect. It fit into the Texas oeuvre of Doug Sahm and...even though the band was from Ohio.
And after the run of bubblegum was just about done, in 1969, Kasenetz & Katz had a hit with Crazy Elephant's "Gimme Gimme Good Lovin'." Which had the rough-throated vocals of FM rock matched with an undeniable hook of a chorus and a driving beat. These were not saccharine, clean-cut boys who'd barely crossed the line over to puberty, these were definitely men, there was a sexual undertone, and an organ solo and a guitar solo... If only today's acts could write a song so infectious. Yes, that's what Kasenetz & Katz specialized in, infection...you heard their songs and you could not get them out of your head.
Now I didn't know until the internet filled in the gaps that 10cc worked with the producers, even participated in the records before they were called 10cc...they used the money to build Strawberry Studios in Manchester.
But Kasenetz & Katz's epoch faded except for one last gasp with Ram Jam's version of "Black Betty," which was big in the heartland, not so much on the coasts.
But their benefactor, Neil Bogart, really hit his stride in the seventies. After parting ways with Buddah and forming Casablanca he stumbled with his initial release, a Johnny Carson compilation, but then struck gold with KISS and Donna Summer and more.
What Bogart did best was promote. As for the money and where it went... Well, Polygram ultimately swallowed the label. And although Bogart started over with Boardwalk, the times were different. The full force promotion of yesteryear no longer worked. Bogart could will a hit. Well, not exactly will it, but create such a field of distraction and excitement that people paid attention, and hits ensued.
It was a different era.
Well, not completely different from today, which is cottage industry. Kasenetz & Katz came from nowhere, they established a foothold with the help of Bogart and more. Today, you've got all the tools at home, you don't need a major label deal, you can post and get views and listens and make money and most people have never even heard of you or your music. But back in '67, it was different. There was a threshold. Either you had a record deal or you did not. And either you were on AM radio or you were a sideshow... FM came along to rescue the sideshow, make it the main show, but before that...
"Yummy Yummy Yummy"...
I constantly have acts and their retinue tell me to give a record a few spins, to live with it.
Nothing like that was a hit back in the days of sixties Top 40. If you didn't get it on the first listen, didn't die to hear it again on the radio, didn't need to go to the store to buy the record to hear it whenever you wanted to...you weren't in the game, no one was interested, not the stations or the public.
And unlike today, records didn't last a long time. They were hits and then they were done, replaced by new hits...not that you ever forgot the old ones. You played them to death until you could listen no more, but they were indelibly imprinted upon your brain.
As for "Yummy Yummy Yummy"...it had a driving beat. And then a nasal vocal that did sound straight out of the bubblegum canon, but then there was a change...
"Ooh love to hold ya, ooh love to kiss ya
Ooh love, I love it so"
The singer took it up a notch, lost his nasality, and then there was a chorus of backup vocalists, making the whole thing sweet.
And then the driving beat once again, with stabs of emphasis.
And the second time through the verse the backup vocals were littered throughout, everybody was having a good time. There was exuberance!
And then came the nonsense lyrics...
"Ba, da, ba, da, da, da, da
Ba, da, da, da, da, da"
And then the modulation up! And even more emphatic vocals.
And an outro with the "Ba, da, ba" backup vocals and the lead singer testifying on top...and when it fades out all you can do is take it from the top once again.
And if you don't get it...
You're too hip for the room. You're the same person who believes "Metal Machine Music" is a masterpiece, who listens to music with your head as opposed to your heart, who is worried about what others think about your taste while simultaneously bullying them into believing your word is gospel.
In other words, you need to take "Yummy Yummy Yummy" on the surface. Shut off your brain and just let the music...
Infect you.
Kasenetz & Katz infected the entire world.
Legendarily, those behind the scenes make most of the money, the acts that front the songs end up famous with the name and oftentimes little else. Then again, Kasenetz & Katz were not only the producers, in many cases they were essentially the act.
Leaving the question... How did they do financially?
Now the truth is bubblegum music has never faded away, those songs are still played, so there's publishing money, assuming they took an interest, and it being the sixties they probably did.
And assuming they continued to get paid by the record company... You complain about streaming royalties? Good luck getting paid at all by indie labels in the past.
Now did they sell their interests?
I don't know... Maybe some deep research will tell me, but all I know is those records were hits over half a century ago and they're still part of the fabric of society today. So whoever owned the rights/income stream has done very well. What seemed as disposable, transitory back then, turned out not to be. Which is why I always tell acts not to sell their songs, their babies. Certainly when they're young.
So a piece of music history died this week. You may not have known Jerry Kasenetz's name, but if you're a student of the game, he and his partner Jeffry Katz are LEGENDS!
And I still smile when I hear the Music Explosion, Crazy Elephant and Ohio Express hits. They're part of my life. AND I AIN'T APOLOGIZING FOR IT!
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You've got to know, everybody hated bubblegum music.
Scratch that... Bubblegum music had a huge audience amongst the young and brain dead, who had not shifted to album rock, which had its biggest triumph with "Sgt. Pepper," which had no singles at all, in the same year that the 1910 Fruitgum Company released...
"Simon Says." I hated that song! It was stupid!
1967 was not only the year of "Sgt. Pepper," it was also the year of "Disraeli Gears" and "Are You Experienced," both of which you had to own to hear, at least until the summer of '68, when "Sunshine of Your Love" crossed over, "Purple Haze" never did.
1967 was the year of FM rock's birth. First in San Francisco, then in New York. And believe me, I was a listener, I owned all those albums, but if you lived anywhere else you were a victim of AM Top 40 radio. Most people didn't even own an FM radio... That band was seen as traveling short distances and featuring classical music. As for cars...good luck finding one with an FM receiver back in '67.
So the hipsters not only knew the albums of the burgeoning album rock scene, but the Top 40 too. Upon which they placed judgment. And there were a lot of great tracks in '67, like "Dance to the Music" and "Respect" and "Soul Man" and...nobody bought the albums of these acts (don't write me and tell me you own one, the bottom line is the album phenomenon started with white rock, period). Stuff that those in the know could listen to and enjoy. But "Simon Says"? That was going backwards! That was a return to the pre-Beatle era. That was the kind of commercial dreck labels put out today, commerce as opposed to art.
And the following year's "1, 2, 3, Red Light" was just as bad, if not worse.
Bubblegum music was foisted upon the public by the team of Kasenetz & Katz. They were the stars, the bands were faceless, they usually didn't really exist, although concoctions were formed to go on the road and hoover up money.
But back in '67... "Rolling Stone" launched that year and didn't gain mainstream traction for almost half a decade thereafter. Meaning...there wasn't much information about these two producers and their productions, all we had were the records. It was not like today, where you can go deep down the rabbit hole on the internet.
But it was more than straight bubblegum. Kasenetz & Katz had their first hit with the Music Explosion's cover of "Little Bit O' Soul" earlier in the year of 1967, before anybody had even heard of bubblegum, never mind "Simon Says." And "Little Bit O' Soul" was seen as credible, it was infectious without being saccharine, it got respect. It fit into the Texas oeuvre of Doug Sahm and...even though the band was from Ohio.
And after the run of bubblegum was just about done, in 1969, Kasenetz & Katz had a hit with Crazy Elephant's "Gimme Gimme Good Lovin'." Which had the rough-throated vocals of FM rock matched with an undeniable hook of a chorus and a driving beat. These were not saccharine, clean-cut boys who'd barely crossed the line over to puberty, these were definitely men, there was a sexual undertone, and an organ solo and a guitar solo... If only today's acts could write a song so infectious. Yes, that's what Kasenetz & Katz specialized in, infection...you heard their songs and you could not get them out of your head.
Now I didn't know until the internet filled in the gaps that 10cc worked with the producers, even participated in the records before they were called 10cc...they used the money to build Strawberry Studios in Manchester.
But Kasenetz & Katz's epoch faded except for one last gasp with Ram Jam's version of "Black Betty," which was big in the heartland, not so much on the coasts.
But their benefactor, Neil Bogart, really hit his stride in the seventies. After parting ways with Buddah and forming Casablanca he stumbled with his initial release, a Johnny Carson compilation, but then struck gold with KISS and Donna Summer and more.
What Bogart did best was promote. As for the money and where it went... Well, Polygram ultimately swallowed the label. And although Bogart started over with Boardwalk, the times were different. The full force promotion of yesteryear no longer worked. Bogart could will a hit. Well, not exactly will it, but create such a field of distraction and excitement that people paid attention, and hits ensued.
It was a different era.
Well, not completely different from today, which is cottage industry. Kasenetz & Katz came from nowhere, they established a foothold with the help of Bogart and more. Today, you've got all the tools at home, you don't need a major label deal, you can post and get views and listens and make money and most people have never even heard of you or your music. But back in '67, it was different. There was a threshold. Either you had a record deal or you did not. And either you were on AM radio or you were a sideshow... FM came along to rescue the sideshow, make it the main show, but before that...
"Yummy Yummy Yummy"...
I constantly have acts and their retinue tell me to give a record a few spins, to live with it.
Nothing like that was a hit back in the days of sixties Top 40. If you didn't get it on the first listen, didn't die to hear it again on the radio, didn't need to go to the store to buy the record to hear it whenever you wanted to...you weren't in the game, no one was interested, not the stations or the public.
And unlike today, records didn't last a long time. They were hits and then they were done, replaced by new hits...not that you ever forgot the old ones. You played them to death until you could listen no more, but they were indelibly imprinted upon your brain.
As for "Yummy Yummy Yummy"...it had a driving beat. And then a nasal vocal that did sound straight out of the bubblegum canon, but then there was a change...
"Ooh love to hold ya, ooh love to kiss ya
Ooh love, I love it so"
The singer took it up a notch, lost his nasality, and then there was a chorus of backup vocalists, making the whole thing sweet.
And then the driving beat once again, with stabs of emphasis.
And the second time through the verse the backup vocals were littered throughout, everybody was having a good time. There was exuberance!
And then came the nonsense lyrics...
"Ba, da, ba, da, da, da, da
Ba, da, da, da, da, da"
And then the modulation up! And even more emphatic vocals.
And an outro with the "Ba, da, ba" backup vocals and the lead singer testifying on top...and when it fades out all you can do is take it from the top once again.
And if you don't get it...
You're too hip for the room. You're the same person who believes "Metal Machine Music" is a masterpiece, who listens to music with your head as opposed to your heart, who is worried about what others think about your taste while simultaneously bullying them into believing your word is gospel.
In other words, you need to take "Yummy Yummy Yummy" on the surface. Shut off your brain and just let the music...
Infect you.
Kasenetz & Katz infected the entire world.
Legendarily, those behind the scenes make most of the money, the acts that front the songs end up famous with the name and oftentimes little else. Then again, Kasenetz & Katz were not only the producers, in many cases they were essentially the act.
Leaving the question... How did they do financially?
Now the truth is bubblegum music has never faded away, those songs are still played, so there's publishing money, assuming they took an interest, and it being the sixties they probably did.
And assuming they continued to get paid by the record company... You complain about streaming royalties? Good luck getting paid at all by indie labels in the past.
Now did they sell their interests?
I don't know... Maybe some deep research will tell me, but all I know is those records were hits over half a century ago and they're still part of the fabric of society today. So whoever owned the rights/income stream has done very well. What seemed as disposable, transitory back then, turned out not to be. Which is why I always tell acts not to sell their songs, their babies. Certainly when they're young.
So a piece of music history died this week. You may not have known Jerry Kasenetz's name, but if you're a student of the game, he and his partner Jeffry Katz are LEGENDS!
And I still smile when I hear the Music Explosion, Crazy Elephant and Ohio Express hits. They're part of my life. AND I AIN'T APOLOGIZING FOR IT!
--
Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/
--
Listen to the podcast:
-iHeart: https://ihr.fm/2Gi5PFj
-Apple: https://apple.co/2ndmpvp
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Damian Kulash-This Week's Podcast
Mr. OK Go.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/damian-kulash/id1316200737?i=1000742674669
https://open.spotify.com/episode/7C0tIvWDq9h5PJhRSYHcBe?si=ntI6nPhjQOefhODCqXh0VQ
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-30806836/episode/damian-kulash-314670701/
https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9ff4fb19-54d4-41ae-ae7a-8a6f8d3dafa8/episodes/500badd5-c4b7-429e-810a-14fd9cbbf833/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-damian-kulash
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--
Listen to the podcast:
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https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/damian-kulash/id1316200737?i=1000742674669
https://open.spotify.com/episode/7C0tIvWDq9h5PJhRSYHcBe?si=ntI6nPhjQOefhODCqXh0VQ
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-30806836/episode/damian-kulash-314670701/
https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9ff4fb19-54d4-41ae-ae7a-8a6f8d3dafa8/episodes/500badd5-c4b7-429e-810a-14fd9cbbf833/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-damian-kulash
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Wednesday, 24 December 2025
Bleak House
Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Yljq4z-uU0
I didn't read it either...
But I did read "Tale of Two Cities" in high school...you know, it was the best of times and the worst of times (kind of like today, although I think we're leaning towards "worst"). And "Great Expectations" with Pip. But that's it. As for reading Dickens in college... It was part of a course that required you to read books up to a thousand pages at the pace of one a week and if I actually did all the reading...I'd have no time to do anything else.
There have been all these stories recently how even in college students no longer read entire books. But the dirty little secret is always what college you go to. If you go to a classic liberal arts college, believe me, you will. As for studying business at a multi-university...I don't know. Then again, my classic New England upbringing leaves me with a different view of college from most people today. College was not a place you went to to get a job, but to enrich your life.
Now I could go on a rant here about education... You do know that despite hating on teachers' unions the goal of many is to starve public schools, to replace them with parochial schools... But I feel like I'm living in bizarroland. I just grew up in the middle class suburbs. Where education was treasured. And I won't say necessarily rigorous, not for everybody, but I assumed this model continued to dominate, now I know that is not the case. And just one more thing here...although I don't understand sending your kids away to prep school, I will say they get a much better education there. I was stunned at how well read my prep school compatriots were at Middlebury.
Not that I feel totally warm about Middlebury... I've mellowed, but it took me ten years to get over that place. It was a hothouse of conservatism where the students jockeyed for position and...the real world was not like that, god...if you just showed up every day you ended up ascending the job ladder quickly.
Anyway, I hope the title of this spiel doesn't turn you off, because this 2005 BBC production of "Bleak House" is definitely worth your while.
Now before this we watched "Eddington," which had a big buzz when it was released over the summer, there were articles and conversation but I'm not going to to go to the theatre... Once again, for many reasons, but...I find I can't slow down enough to enjoy the picture, if nothing else. I can't go from working steadily to calming down on demand.
Anyway, RottenTomatoes rates "Eddington" at 69/65 and I'd say that's exactly right. Which is why I'd refrained from watching it previously, my threshold is 80, but the film continues to pop up in my reading so we delved in.
"Eddington" rang my bell at first, it's a perfect depiction of the maelstrom we presently live in, with beliefs on the left and the right, arguments between the young and the old, but they throw in everything, including the kitchen sink, it's overplotted, and you end up disappointed at the end.
Which is why I found myself on Metacritic researching TV series. Once again, I like the character development in series, the greater depth, even though the educated classes, Hollywood royalty, still think movies are the sh*t.
So I'm looking at the best TV series of all time on Metacritic, and not far from the top I find a 2005 remake of "Bleak House." And wanting to watch something good, we dove in.
Now you can watch "Bleak House" on multiple platforms. We watched it on Amazon... As for the ads, there's a thirty second one before every episode and that's all, so you don't have to pay the $2.99 to get rid of them. I can afford $2.99, but I find it an insult. Just give me one overall price, stop pecking me to death like an overaggressive duck. If you want to see where you can see "Bleak House," just go to justwatch.com Ah, here's the page:
https://www.justwatch.com/us/search?q=bleak%20house%202005
So this 2005 series is not the only edition of "Bleak House," but this is the one that was rated so well on Metacritic. It stars Gillian Anderson.
Now as I said previously, science fiction is not my thing, so I never watched "The X-Files," I wasn't really familiar with Anderson's work. But she was so good in "The Fall," I became a fan. And you should watch "The Fall": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fall_(TV_series)
And Anderson is great in "Bleak House," but she's far from the only draw. It's a cornucopia of great U.K. actors. You've seen Anna Maxwell Martin in so many productions...you may not recognize the name, but you'll know her instantly by her face. Charles Dance as Mr. Tulkinghorn is an intense villain, without becoming two-dimensional. It even features a young Carey Mulligan. This is not an American series with stars showing off, oftentimes sans acting skills. This is a primer in great acting.
Anyway, the plot is...
There's a legal case regarding a will that's been going on for years, but everybody whose put their faith in a payout has had their life ruined by this focus.
And then there's the heritage of Anna Maxwell Martin's Esther Summerson.
But, there is tons of plot, tons of twists and turns. You see a huge issue that would be resolved in the very last episode in an American series and then you're stunned when the truth comes out much earlier...where is the story going to go?
Meanwhile, it's all set in mid-century England, the 1800s, and you've got vast income inequality, the idle rich living in luxury and the poor living in squalor. Actually, it's not that different from today, even though we've pulled back from the extremes.
So there are issues of money, but also passion and honor and...
Don't be scared off by it being Dickens... You'd be interested no matter who wrote it
The avarice. Everybody's trying to get ahead, whether it be the drunken landlord Krook or the invalid carried by chair Smallweed.
Do you let young lovers live their impassioned lives impulsively or does the elder try to slow their lives down, having learned how life plays out over his years.
And can you restrict your passion, your love for another, even if society frowns on it?
And then there's the power wielded over those who have no standing.
The surprises are plentiful.
My only regret is one of my favorite actors, John Lynch...
Well, I don't want to give anything away, I'll just say I wish he was featured more in the series.
You may not be hooked immediately, but within two or three episodes you will be, you'll be drawn to the TV because you want to know what happens. And you'll be surprised by what happens.
And on one hand you'll be taken away from today...but so many of the same issues are in play in the twenty first century.
"Bleak House" was written as a twenty episode serial over a year and a half. Which means Dickens had to keep the reader interested, on the edge of their seat, wanting to know what happened.
Don't let a knee-jerk aversion to Dickens prevent you from watching this series. It's a BBC tour-de-force.
And much better than all the vaunted American productions of 2025.
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I didn't read it either...
But I did read "Tale of Two Cities" in high school...you know, it was the best of times and the worst of times (kind of like today, although I think we're leaning towards "worst"). And "Great Expectations" with Pip. But that's it. As for reading Dickens in college... It was part of a course that required you to read books up to a thousand pages at the pace of one a week and if I actually did all the reading...I'd have no time to do anything else.
There have been all these stories recently how even in college students no longer read entire books. But the dirty little secret is always what college you go to. If you go to a classic liberal arts college, believe me, you will. As for studying business at a multi-university...I don't know. Then again, my classic New England upbringing leaves me with a different view of college from most people today. College was not a place you went to to get a job, but to enrich your life.
Now I could go on a rant here about education... You do know that despite hating on teachers' unions the goal of many is to starve public schools, to replace them with parochial schools... But I feel like I'm living in bizarroland. I just grew up in the middle class suburbs. Where education was treasured. And I won't say necessarily rigorous, not for everybody, but I assumed this model continued to dominate, now I know that is not the case. And just one more thing here...although I don't understand sending your kids away to prep school, I will say they get a much better education there. I was stunned at how well read my prep school compatriots were at Middlebury.
Not that I feel totally warm about Middlebury... I've mellowed, but it took me ten years to get over that place. It was a hothouse of conservatism where the students jockeyed for position and...the real world was not like that, god...if you just showed up every day you ended up ascending the job ladder quickly.
Anyway, I hope the title of this spiel doesn't turn you off, because this 2005 BBC production of "Bleak House" is definitely worth your while.
Now before this we watched "Eddington," which had a big buzz when it was released over the summer, there were articles and conversation but I'm not going to to go to the theatre... Once again, for many reasons, but...I find I can't slow down enough to enjoy the picture, if nothing else. I can't go from working steadily to calming down on demand.
Anyway, RottenTomatoes rates "Eddington" at 69/65 and I'd say that's exactly right. Which is why I'd refrained from watching it previously, my threshold is 80, but the film continues to pop up in my reading so we delved in.
"Eddington" rang my bell at first, it's a perfect depiction of the maelstrom we presently live in, with beliefs on the left and the right, arguments between the young and the old, but they throw in everything, including the kitchen sink, it's overplotted, and you end up disappointed at the end.
Which is why I found myself on Metacritic researching TV series. Once again, I like the character development in series, the greater depth, even though the educated classes, Hollywood royalty, still think movies are the sh*t.
So I'm looking at the best TV series of all time on Metacritic, and not far from the top I find a 2005 remake of "Bleak House." And wanting to watch something good, we dove in.
Now you can watch "Bleak House" on multiple platforms. We watched it on Amazon... As for the ads, there's a thirty second one before every episode and that's all, so you don't have to pay the $2.99 to get rid of them. I can afford $2.99, but I find it an insult. Just give me one overall price, stop pecking me to death like an overaggressive duck. If you want to see where you can see "Bleak House," just go to justwatch.com Ah, here's the page:
https://www.justwatch.com/us/search?q=bleak%20house%202005
So this 2005 series is not the only edition of "Bleak House," but this is the one that was rated so well on Metacritic. It stars Gillian Anderson.
Now as I said previously, science fiction is not my thing, so I never watched "The X-Files," I wasn't really familiar with Anderson's work. But she was so good in "The Fall," I became a fan. And you should watch "The Fall": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fall_(TV_series)
And Anderson is great in "Bleak House," but she's far from the only draw. It's a cornucopia of great U.K. actors. You've seen Anna Maxwell Martin in so many productions...you may not recognize the name, but you'll know her instantly by her face. Charles Dance as Mr. Tulkinghorn is an intense villain, without becoming two-dimensional. It even features a young Carey Mulligan. This is not an American series with stars showing off, oftentimes sans acting skills. This is a primer in great acting.
Anyway, the plot is...
There's a legal case regarding a will that's been going on for years, but everybody whose put their faith in a payout has had their life ruined by this focus.
And then there's the heritage of Anna Maxwell Martin's Esther Summerson.
But, there is tons of plot, tons of twists and turns. You see a huge issue that would be resolved in the very last episode in an American series and then you're stunned when the truth comes out much earlier...where is the story going to go?
Meanwhile, it's all set in mid-century England, the 1800s, and you've got vast income inequality, the idle rich living in luxury and the poor living in squalor. Actually, it's not that different from today, even though we've pulled back from the extremes.
So there are issues of money, but also passion and honor and...
Don't be scared off by it being Dickens... You'd be interested no matter who wrote it
The avarice. Everybody's trying to get ahead, whether it be the drunken landlord Krook or the invalid carried by chair Smallweed.
Do you let young lovers live their impassioned lives impulsively or does the elder try to slow their lives down, having learned how life plays out over his years.
And can you restrict your passion, your love for another, even if society frowns on it?
And then there's the power wielded over those who have no standing.
The surprises are plentiful.
My only regret is one of my favorite actors, John Lynch...
Well, I don't want to give anything away, I'll just say I wish he was featured more in the series.
You may not be hooked immediately, but within two or three episodes you will be, you'll be drawn to the TV because you want to know what happens. And you'll be surprised by what happens.
And on one hand you'll be taken away from today...but so many of the same issues are in play in the twenty first century.
"Bleak House" was written as a twenty episode serial over a year and a half. Which means Dickens had to keep the reader interested, on the edge of their seat, wanting to know what happened.
Don't let a knee-jerk aversion to Dickens prevent you from watching this series. It's a BBC tour-de-force.
And much better than all the vaunted American productions of 2025.
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Buckeye
https://tinyurl.com/2mtd3e2e
If you're looking for a respite from this mixed up, muddled up, shook up world...
I recommend this book.
Which I was hesitant about in the beginning, because it's a "Read with Jenna Pick." Not that I knew this when I reserved it on Libby a few months back after reading a review in the "New York Times," but oftentimes the books Jenna recommends are relatively lowbrow and unsatisfying, I won't quite say time-killers, but I'm looking for soul-fulfillment in my reading more than just warm feelings.
But not long after I started I stopped. And then read and stopped again. Because, you see, one of the characters was clairvoyant.
Maybe that's not the exactly right word. Becky can connect with people from the past. A spiritualist? I don't know, but I've got no time for this stuff...I'm rooted in reality. And for that reason I've got absolutely no interest in fantasy and rarely am entranced by science fiction. I know, I know, you like "Dark" and so many streaming shows...but they're not my thing.
So I'm going to read a 451 page book that turns on a character communing with the other side?
I don't think so.
But giving "Buckeye" one more go I got hooked. Turns out that the spiritualist element ends up being a relatively minor theme in this saga about America. Which starts just prior to the Second World War and then plays out through the lives of the earliest baby boomers.
Based in Ohio...in sleepy Bonhomie, you ultimately see the town flourish in the boom of the fifties and sixties. If you lived through this era, you recognize the optimism, and then the looming Vietnam War. That's one thing young 'uns never had to worry about...getting drafted. Never mind fighting and dying or coming back with no acceptance, no kudos. The government was disconnected from the public just like today, but instead of fearing you were going to get shipped overseas to fight, now you're worried about being deported.
Now not everybody is born to set the world on fire. Today's "news" is littered with people trying to become rich and famous. The opportunity is vast, even though the odds are low. But just living your life was enough back in the late forties and fifties. You wanted a marriage, kids, a job, good times.. Being average was not a sentence, but what most people wanted and were happy with.
So we've got the war. Actually three wars... II, Korea and Vietnam. And the men who go and either come back or don't. And the women wait for their return.
And the depiction of the World War II era...
One of the hottest recent books is Kristin Hannah's "The Women"...which is phenomenal when it deals with war, but is nearly two-dimensional when the main character returns to the U.S. This is not "Buckeye"... "Buckeye" focuses less on what happens overseas, although it does a good job, but when the focus returns to the U.S., it's far superior to "The Women."
So if you liked "The Women"...
"Buckeye" is a saga. It doesn't start where it ends up. Kind of like the new John Irving book "Queen Esther," an orphanage figures into the beginning but the plot does not remain there...(I loved the Irving book at first, but it gets twisted up...you're on your own with "Queen Esther.")
So you've got the orphan who...
"Buckeye" ends up a family drama. With everything from work to passion to internal despair...just like regular life, just like your life.
In a world dominated by "news"...there's more real life, more truth in "Buckeye" than what you'll find online.
I don't want to overhype it, but I love this kind of book...that takes me into another space, separated from everyday reality, yet makes me contemplate life all the while.
As I look at Amazon right now, it says "Buckeye" is:
"ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, NPR, People, Minnesota Star Tribune, Chicago Public Library"
But no one has ever mentioned it to me.
Yet it is a best seller.
So if this is the kind of book that appeals to you, one that is not hard to read but tells the story of life...
"Buckeye" is perfect for this period of holiday limbo, you will lose yourself in it.
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If you're looking for a respite from this mixed up, muddled up, shook up world...
I recommend this book.
Which I was hesitant about in the beginning, because it's a "Read with Jenna Pick." Not that I knew this when I reserved it on Libby a few months back after reading a review in the "New York Times," but oftentimes the books Jenna recommends are relatively lowbrow and unsatisfying, I won't quite say time-killers, but I'm looking for soul-fulfillment in my reading more than just warm feelings.
But not long after I started I stopped. And then read and stopped again. Because, you see, one of the characters was clairvoyant.
Maybe that's not the exactly right word. Becky can connect with people from the past. A spiritualist? I don't know, but I've got no time for this stuff...I'm rooted in reality. And for that reason I've got absolutely no interest in fantasy and rarely am entranced by science fiction. I know, I know, you like "Dark" and so many streaming shows...but they're not my thing.
So I'm going to read a 451 page book that turns on a character communing with the other side?
I don't think so.
But giving "Buckeye" one more go I got hooked. Turns out that the spiritualist element ends up being a relatively minor theme in this saga about America. Which starts just prior to the Second World War and then plays out through the lives of the earliest baby boomers.
Based in Ohio...in sleepy Bonhomie, you ultimately see the town flourish in the boom of the fifties and sixties. If you lived through this era, you recognize the optimism, and then the looming Vietnam War. That's one thing young 'uns never had to worry about...getting drafted. Never mind fighting and dying or coming back with no acceptance, no kudos. The government was disconnected from the public just like today, but instead of fearing you were going to get shipped overseas to fight, now you're worried about being deported.
Now not everybody is born to set the world on fire. Today's "news" is littered with people trying to become rich and famous. The opportunity is vast, even though the odds are low. But just living your life was enough back in the late forties and fifties. You wanted a marriage, kids, a job, good times.. Being average was not a sentence, but what most people wanted and were happy with.
So we've got the war. Actually three wars... II, Korea and Vietnam. And the men who go and either come back or don't. And the women wait for their return.
And the depiction of the World War II era...
One of the hottest recent books is Kristin Hannah's "The Women"...which is phenomenal when it deals with war, but is nearly two-dimensional when the main character returns to the U.S. This is not "Buckeye"... "Buckeye" focuses less on what happens overseas, although it does a good job, but when the focus returns to the U.S., it's far superior to "The Women."
So if you liked "The Women"...
"Buckeye" is a saga. It doesn't start where it ends up. Kind of like the new John Irving book "Queen Esther," an orphanage figures into the beginning but the plot does not remain there...(I loved the Irving book at first, but it gets twisted up...you're on your own with "Queen Esther.")
So you've got the orphan who...
"Buckeye" ends up a family drama. With everything from work to passion to internal despair...just like regular life, just like your life.
In a world dominated by "news"...there's more real life, more truth in "Buckeye" than what you'll find online.
I don't want to overhype it, but I love this kind of book...that takes me into another space, separated from everyday reality, yet makes me contemplate life all the while.
As I look at Amazon right now, it says "Buckeye" is:
"ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, NPR, People, Minnesota Star Tribune, Chicago Public Library"
But no one has ever mentioned it to me.
Yet it is a best seller.
So if this is the kind of book that appeals to you, one that is not hard to read but tells the story of life...
"Buckeye" is perfect for this period of holiday limbo, you will lose yourself in it.
--
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--
Listen to the podcast:
-iHeart: https://ihr.fm/2Gi5PFj
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Monday, 22 December 2025
The 60 Minutes Video
"BREAKING: Here's the 60 Minutes Segment Trump and CBS News Executives Don't Want You to See - Hours before it was set to air last night, CBS News executives pulled the segment, but Canada's Global TV app received it prior to broadcast."
https://www.thereset.news/p/breaking-heres-the-60-minutes-segment?brid=B5tlw2JeGMed9O2l7reARA
This reminds me of the record companies and Napster. By suing the file trading company, by trying to keep the record business in the past, the labels amplified the story to the point where not only everybody in America knew about Napster, they wanted to try it! People secured broadband just to download files! And once you used Napster, there was no way you could go back to the overpriced CD for one good track model.
Now the labels could have looked into the future, tried to get ahead of the public. This is what Spotify did. People had never used streaming, they didn't believe it would work, but when they tried it, they adored it... AND SPOTIFY SINGLE-HANDEDLY SAVED THE RECORD BUSINESS!
But you can't say that, because Spotify and Daniel Ek are the devil, don't you know? They're keeping people whose music the public doesn't want to stream in quantity from making beaucoup bucks. MEANWHILE, those artists whose music is streamed prodigiously are making more money than ever before (assuming a bad record deal doesn't have their label siphoning off most of the revenue).
It probably never occurred to Bari Weiss that this video might be leaked. I mean it existed... And the funny thing is, after suing people who leaked albums early, the artists and labels figured out that getting noticed at all was the problem. We had unannounced drops. The story wasn't the hype, but the underlying material...is it good enough that people want to pull it, listen to it?
Now I stopped watching "60 Minutes" years ago, and if there wasn't this brouhaha, I probably wouldn't have watched this segment either.
But Bari Weiss poured gasoline on a smoldering fire and now the conflagration is burning worldwide and I watched the video... And it looks bad, really bad. But if Bari Weiss hadn't tried to bury it, most people would have never seen it, after all, Trump is flooding the zone and no outlet has universal mindshare.
This is just another straw on the camel's back. This "60 Minutes" piece is not going to cause a revolution unto itself. But like the renaming of the Kennedy Center, it will stick in your craw. It just doesn't feel right, so much doesn't feel right.
Now everybody is expendable. Elise Stefanik just realized this and rumor has it that Kristi Noem is on her way out. The only person who needs to survive is Trump.
And it's not only his cabinet, but the citizenry at large. Doesn't matter if you're MAGA or an extreme lefty... Trump is out for himself, look at all the money is family has made since he's been in office.
It's a matter of more and more people waking up.
And you never know when they will.
It's not like prices suddenly jumped, they were high and going higher, but "affordability" rose to the surface, it's the number one issue in America today. And it is a problem...just go to the grocery store.
So what is going to bubble up to the surface next?
I don't know.
But if you're playing a team sport, if you're defending Trump to the death, the joke is on you, you just haven't realized it yet.
As for Bari Weiss and her billion dollar cronies, they don't understand the power of the public, they don't understand they can't enforce their will upon people willy-nilly. Furthermore, they are vulnerable. These techies, they're not heroes, they're ZEROES!
Bari Weiss was too stupid to know that the video would out. Because she's so busy sucking at the tit of the monied class that she doesn't fully comprehend the internet, which is denigrated by seemingly every publication run by Boomers and Gen-X'ers.
It's laughable. The internet is here, as are smartphones. And if you're putting down the phone that just means you've got less information, and he or she with the most information wins, always.
Say you're not on TikTok. Rail against social media. Decry youngsters staring at their phones... But the joke is on you, the internet addicted are plugged-in, they're much better informed than you, they know how the world turns.
But you know better.
Everybody knows better when in fact they know very little. If you were on TikTok you'd know this, the man on the street interviews are horrifying.
It's all of a piece...news, music, streaming TV... After all, Apple not only distributes music, it commissions television shows... And Paramount and Netflix are duking it out for Warner Bros. You can't separate politics from media and vice versa. This is the world we now live in.
As for music... It used to have something to say... But where are the artists today? Alone and afraid, hoarding their dollars.
Oh, I'm not going to play nice. Decorum is for losers. If you just want to read stuff you agree with...
The joke is on you.
But right now, the joke is on THE ENTIRE UNITED STATES!
P.S. Don't e-mail me that the video is no longer at the above site (right now it's still available). CBS will do its best to kill distribution, the video has already been taken down in places...but it will never die.
P.P.S. Don't self-satisfiedly complain that an article I'm linking to is behind a paywall. If you can't afford $12.99 a month for Apple News+... The old saw that information wants to be free... You've got to pay for it, and if you don't, you're out of the loop. You pay for Netflix, why not the news?
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https://www.thereset.news/p/breaking-heres-the-60-minutes-segment?brid=B5tlw2JeGMed9O2l7reARA
This reminds me of the record companies and Napster. By suing the file trading company, by trying to keep the record business in the past, the labels amplified the story to the point where not only everybody in America knew about Napster, they wanted to try it! People secured broadband just to download files! And once you used Napster, there was no way you could go back to the overpriced CD for one good track model.
Now the labels could have looked into the future, tried to get ahead of the public. This is what Spotify did. People had never used streaming, they didn't believe it would work, but when they tried it, they adored it... AND SPOTIFY SINGLE-HANDEDLY SAVED THE RECORD BUSINESS!
But you can't say that, because Spotify and Daniel Ek are the devil, don't you know? They're keeping people whose music the public doesn't want to stream in quantity from making beaucoup bucks. MEANWHILE, those artists whose music is streamed prodigiously are making more money than ever before (assuming a bad record deal doesn't have their label siphoning off most of the revenue).
It probably never occurred to Bari Weiss that this video might be leaked. I mean it existed... And the funny thing is, after suing people who leaked albums early, the artists and labels figured out that getting noticed at all was the problem. We had unannounced drops. The story wasn't the hype, but the underlying material...is it good enough that people want to pull it, listen to it?
Now I stopped watching "60 Minutes" years ago, and if there wasn't this brouhaha, I probably wouldn't have watched this segment either.
But Bari Weiss poured gasoline on a smoldering fire and now the conflagration is burning worldwide and I watched the video... And it looks bad, really bad. But if Bari Weiss hadn't tried to bury it, most people would have never seen it, after all, Trump is flooding the zone and no outlet has universal mindshare.
This is just another straw on the camel's back. This "60 Minutes" piece is not going to cause a revolution unto itself. But like the renaming of the Kennedy Center, it will stick in your craw. It just doesn't feel right, so much doesn't feel right.
Now everybody is expendable. Elise Stefanik just realized this and rumor has it that Kristi Noem is on her way out. The only person who needs to survive is Trump.
And it's not only his cabinet, but the citizenry at large. Doesn't matter if you're MAGA or an extreme lefty... Trump is out for himself, look at all the money is family has made since he's been in office.
It's a matter of more and more people waking up.
And you never know when they will.
It's not like prices suddenly jumped, they were high and going higher, but "affordability" rose to the surface, it's the number one issue in America today. And it is a problem...just go to the grocery store.
So what is going to bubble up to the surface next?
I don't know.
But if you're playing a team sport, if you're defending Trump to the death, the joke is on you, you just haven't realized it yet.
As for Bari Weiss and her billion dollar cronies, they don't understand the power of the public, they don't understand they can't enforce their will upon people willy-nilly. Furthermore, they are vulnerable. These techies, they're not heroes, they're ZEROES!
Bari Weiss was too stupid to know that the video would out. Because she's so busy sucking at the tit of the monied class that she doesn't fully comprehend the internet, which is denigrated by seemingly every publication run by Boomers and Gen-X'ers.
It's laughable. The internet is here, as are smartphones. And if you're putting down the phone that just means you've got less information, and he or she with the most information wins, always.
Say you're not on TikTok. Rail against social media. Decry youngsters staring at their phones... But the joke is on you, the internet addicted are plugged-in, they're much better informed than you, they know how the world turns.
But you know better.
Everybody knows better when in fact they know very little. If you were on TikTok you'd know this, the man on the street interviews are horrifying.
It's all of a piece...news, music, streaming TV... After all, Apple not only distributes music, it commissions television shows... And Paramount and Netflix are duking it out for Warner Bros. You can't separate politics from media and vice versa. This is the world we now live in.
As for music... It used to have something to say... But where are the artists today? Alone and afraid, hoarding their dollars.
Oh, I'm not going to play nice. Decorum is for losers. If you just want to read stuff you agree with...
The joke is on you.
But right now, the joke is on THE ENTIRE UNITED STATES!
P.S. Don't e-mail me that the video is no longer at the above site (right now it's still available). CBS will do its best to kill distribution, the video has already been taken down in places...but it will never die.
P.P.S. Don't self-satisfiedly complain that an article I'm linking to is behind a paywall. If you can't afford $12.99 a month for Apple News+... The old saw that information wants to be free... You've got to pay for it, and if you don't, you're out of the loop. You pay for Netflix, why not the news?
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60 Minutes/Bari Weiss
Everybody can't do everything.
My inbox is littered with people saying not to use their name. As if the average citizen in New Jersey has to worry about Trump's revenge. (Then again, maybe they do...)
They call this a "chilling effect." Bedrock in Constitutional law. Something might look benign on the surface, but have the unintended result of stifling speech or action by Americans.
Americans are ShuttingTFU for fear of retribution by Trump.
Actually, our nation is so fractured that many people refrain from making statements if they don't comport with conventional wisdom, even if they believe they are correct. You don't want to support Israel instead of Palestine...(Did you see Chappelle's statements over the weekend, reinforcing the divide between Blacks and Jews?) You've got the woke left, the anti-DEI right...we can't even have a debate in America anymore.
Even about music...
W. David Marx has a new book "Blank Space," which refers to the hole in culture that we've experienced in the recycled twenty first century. He references "poptimism"... You know, the junk that dominates Top 40 that true fans of music used to decry. Now, that stuff is considered good, criticize Taylor Swift or BTS at your peril. Their minions will attack you. And the main reason you can't say anything negative is because of the MONEY! If it makes a lot, it's good. Period.
And you wonder why so many have checked-out of popular music, don't listen at all...
As for "musicians," did you see yesterday's "New York Times" article talking about the influence of Britney Spears?
"Gen Z's Pop Breakouts Danced in Britney Spears's Footsteps in 2025 - Sabrina Carpenter, Tate McRae and Addison Rae's music is influenced by the superstar who shot to fame before they were born. They've learned lessons from her hard times, too."
I'm not going to dignify this article with a link, never mind a free one. It's the end of music when Britney Spears is seen as a paragon of excellence, someone whose legacy is worth referencing, never mind exalting. Britney Spears had one great song, "...Baby One More Time," a certified smash that I went out and purchased just to be able to hear on demand. But that record had little to do with Spears, it was written, and co-produced with Rami Yacoub, by Max Martin, who is the biggest star of the past thirty years... Can you say "Quit Playing Games (with My Heart)"? While the top line artists have recycled themselves and the past, Martin has evolved, no producer since the Beatles has had this long a run making different styles of music than Martin. Sans Martin, Taylor Swift is a country artist. It was Martin who brought her into the mainstream with "1989," who is propping Swift up on her latest album... Martin is the star machinery behind the popular song.
And you can't get a modern musical star to make a statement, take a side, for fear of alienating some potential audience member. This ain't art. The job of art is to challenge convention, surprise people, make them uncomfortable. Today's artists just give listeners more of the same, and we read about their vapid lives in massaged publicity efforts.
And we've got the wannabes... Just because it's now easy to create and post music online that does not mean you deserve to be a professional musician. And I can't even say that! I'm pissing on people's dreams! Truly, I hear from people all day long that musicians should be guaranteed a living, that the system is stacked against them... Hogwash, if you're good, you're surviving. BETTER than you did in the old days. More people are making more money in music than ever before. But if you don't say that everyone deserves a chance, that Ticketmaster is screwing the artists and the public, you're a pariah.
Which brings us to Bari Weiss.
You might have seen John Oliver's takedown, but the article you need to read that got much less fanfare was recently in "New York":
"L.A. Woman - Bari Weiss left New York five years ago under a cloud of infamy. Her exile in Hollywood paved the way for a triumphant return."
https://apple.news/ABwYAe3IBTL6_rbA9v9zPkQ
This is the music business article you should read. This will tell you more about how to become a success than any of the fawning tripe you read in "Rolling Stone" and elsewhere. You see first and foremost Weiss is a businessperson. Who charmed contacts to become a star and ultimately a multi-millionaire and head of CBS News. These are the skills that make someone successful in the U.S. today.
Do you have access to household names? Do you know how to charm them?
This is what you learn in college, this is what elite breeding and education yield. You've got to be able to speak their language, manipulate them, otherwise you're just a pawn in their game, truly.
As for becoming a star... Bill Maher says in this article that he made Weiss one, and I've got to say he probably did. He gave her all that exposure.
And now she's head of CBS News. Which is like Andy Lack becoming head of Sony Music. Remember the rootkit controversy? Maybe not... But Andy Lack came from news to get the trains to run on time at Sony, and then he nearly ruined the company with this fiasco and more. Just like Bari Weiss is doing at CBS News.
You know... The reporters at "60 Minutes" are amateurs, no match for the insight and skill of Bari Weiss...
This is like saying your middle schooler is ready for the NBA!
Like no one in TV news knows anything.
And unlike the wimpy, brain-dead, fearful musicians (people hate when I criticize musicians...but why should they be off limits, can't I implore them to lift themselves and the music up?), the "60 Minutes" producer responsible for this pulled story barked back... Saying she reached out to the Trump administration and that it hadn't responded, that the story was screened five times and was cleared by both CBS attorneys and Standards and Practices. Furthermore, it was ADVERTISED! Was Weiss now giving Trump a KILL SWITCH?
But Bari Weiss said the story wasn't complete, that it wasn't ready...
Because it nailed the Trump administration, and CBS is part of Paramount and Paramount wants to own Warner Bros. Period.
Have you been following this story? "60 Minutes" settled with Trump on a specious claim so that the Ellisons could buy Paramount. But now Trump is wavering, he's been attacking "60 Minutes" again... The game is to get Trump to put the kibosh on Netflix's acquisition of Warner so that Paramount will get it. Period.
Don't think otherwise.
As for the news... Who can you trust?
That's where we've arrived. Our institutions have crumbled. Not only because of Trump, but the string-pullers referenced in the Bari Weiss article linked above.
Meanwhile, there's so much news, from oil tankers in Venezuela to killing the offshore wind industry to sending a special envoy to Greenland that this "60 Minutes" story is now being buried under the tsunami of everyday B.S.
As for Weiss... Like a pre-internet dolt, she has gone on record today defending her position, believing her elite status is such that she's entitled to do things her way...
That's America. The rich and powerful don't even live in the same world as the hoi polloi, they fly private, live behind gates and have contempt for those who are not in their circle. Weiss is too stupid to know that by doubling-down she's undercutting not only her own reputation, but that of CBS. If anything was required here it was a mea culpa... But Weiss believes she's bigger than the game, bigger than the institution, just like when she cried foul at the "New York Times." How come Bari Weiss knows so much and we know so little?
Now most of the rich and powerful refrain from publicity unless it is manipulated by a team, they don't want you to know how evil they are, and how they've arranged their finances so they pay few taxes to boot. But Bari Weiss is bigger than the system, she knows better.
And you and me?
WE'RE SCREWED!
--
Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/
--
Listen to the podcast:
-iHeart: https://ihr.fm/2Gi5PFj
-Apple: https://apple.co/2ndmpvp
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My inbox is littered with people saying not to use their name. As if the average citizen in New Jersey has to worry about Trump's revenge. (Then again, maybe they do...)
They call this a "chilling effect." Bedrock in Constitutional law. Something might look benign on the surface, but have the unintended result of stifling speech or action by Americans.
Americans are ShuttingTFU for fear of retribution by Trump.
Actually, our nation is so fractured that many people refrain from making statements if they don't comport with conventional wisdom, even if they believe they are correct. You don't want to support Israel instead of Palestine...(Did you see Chappelle's statements over the weekend, reinforcing the divide between Blacks and Jews?) You've got the woke left, the anti-DEI right...we can't even have a debate in America anymore.
Even about music...
W. David Marx has a new book "Blank Space," which refers to the hole in culture that we've experienced in the recycled twenty first century. He references "poptimism"... You know, the junk that dominates Top 40 that true fans of music used to decry. Now, that stuff is considered good, criticize Taylor Swift or BTS at your peril. Their minions will attack you. And the main reason you can't say anything negative is because of the MONEY! If it makes a lot, it's good. Period.
And you wonder why so many have checked-out of popular music, don't listen at all...
As for "musicians," did you see yesterday's "New York Times" article talking about the influence of Britney Spears?
"Gen Z's Pop Breakouts Danced in Britney Spears's Footsteps in 2025 - Sabrina Carpenter, Tate McRae and Addison Rae's music is influenced by the superstar who shot to fame before they were born. They've learned lessons from her hard times, too."
I'm not going to dignify this article with a link, never mind a free one. It's the end of music when Britney Spears is seen as a paragon of excellence, someone whose legacy is worth referencing, never mind exalting. Britney Spears had one great song, "...Baby One More Time," a certified smash that I went out and purchased just to be able to hear on demand. But that record had little to do with Spears, it was written, and co-produced with Rami Yacoub, by Max Martin, who is the biggest star of the past thirty years... Can you say "Quit Playing Games (with My Heart)"? While the top line artists have recycled themselves and the past, Martin has evolved, no producer since the Beatles has had this long a run making different styles of music than Martin. Sans Martin, Taylor Swift is a country artist. It was Martin who brought her into the mainstream with "1989," who is propping Swift up on her latest album... Martin is the star machinery behind the popular song.
And you can't get a modern musical star to make a statement, take a side, for fear of alienating some potential audience member. This ain't art. The job of art is to challenge convention, surprise people, make them uncomfortable. Today's artists just give listeners more of the same, and we read about their vapid lives in massaged publicity efforts.
And we've got the wannabes... Just because it's now easy to create and post music online that does not mean you deserve to be a professional musician. And I can't even say that! I'm pissing on people's dreams! Truly, I hear from people all day long that musicians should be guaranteed a living, that the system is stacked against them... Hogwash, if you're good, you're surviving. BETTER than you did in the old days. More people are making more money in music than ever before. But if you don't say that everyone deserves a chance, that Ticketmaster is screwing the artists and the public, you're a pariah.
Which brings us to Bari Weiss.
You might have seen John Oliver's takedown, but the article you need to read that got much less fanfare was recently in "New York":
"L.A. Woman - Bari Weiss left New York five years ago under a cloud of infamy. Her exile in Hollywood paved the way for a triumphant return."
https://apple.news/ABwYAe3IBTL6_rbA9v9zPkQ
This is the music business article you should read. This will tell you more about how to become a success than any of the fawning tripe you read in "Rolling Stone" and elsewhere. You see first and foremost Weiss is a businessperson. Who charmed contacts to become a star and ultimately a multi-millionaire and head of CBS News. These are the skills that make someone successful in the U.S. today.
Do you have access to household names? Do you know how to charm them?
This is what you learn in college, this is what elite breeding and education yield. You've got to be able to speak their language, manipulate them, otherwise you're just a pawn in their game, truly.
As for becoming a star... Bill Maher says in this article that he made Weiss one, and I've got to say he probably did. He gave her all that exposure.
And now she's head of CBS News. Which is like Andy Lack becoming head of Sony Music. Remember the rootkit controversy? Maybe not... But Andy Lack came from news to get the trains to run on time at Sony, and then he nearly ruined the company with this fiasco and more. Just like Bari Weiss is doing at CBS News.
You know... The reporters at "60 Minutes" are amateurs, no match for the insight and skill of Bari Weiss...
This is like saying your middle schooler is ready for the NBA!
Like no one in TV news knows anything.
And unlike the wimpy, brain-dead, fearful musicians (people hate when I criticize musicians...but why should they be off limits, can't I implore them to lift themselves and the music up?), the "60 Minutes" producer responsible for this pulled story barked back... Saying she reached out to the Trump administration and that it hadn't responded, that the story was screened five times and was cleared by both CBS attorneys and Standards and Practices. Furthermore, it was ADVERTISED! Was Weiss now giving Trump a KILL SWITCH?
But Bari Weiss said the story wasn't complete, that it wasn't ready...
Because it nailed the Trump administration, and CBS is part of Paramount and Paramount wants to own Warner Bros. Period.
Have you been following this story? "60 Minutes" settled with Trump on a specious claim so that the Ellisons could buy Paramount. But now Trump is wavering, he's been attacking "60 Minutes" again... The game is to get Trump to put the kibosh on Netflix's acquisition of Warner so that Paramount will get it. Period.
Don't think otherwise.
As for the news... Who can you trust?
That's where we've arrived. Our institutions have crumbled. Not only because of Trump, but the string-pullers referenced in the Bari Weiss article linked above.
Meanwhile, there's so much news, from oil tankers in Venezuela to killing the offshore wind industry to sending a special envoy to Greenland that this "60 Minutes" story is now being buried under the tsunami of everyday B.S.
As for Weiss... Like a pre-internet dolt, she has gone on record today defending her position, believing her elite status is such that she's entitled to do things her way...
That's America. The rich and powerful don't even live in the same world as the hoi polloi, they fly private, live behind gates and have contempt for those who are not in their circle. Weiss is too stupid to know that by doubling-down she's undercutting not only her own reputation, but that of CBS. If anything was required here it was a mea culpa... But Weiss believes she's bigger than the game, bigger than the institution, just like when she cried foul at the "New York Times." How come Bari Weiss knows so much and we know so little?
Now most of the rich and powerful refrain from publicity unless it is manipulated by a team, they don't want you to know how evil they are, and how they've arranged their finances so they pay few taxes to boot. But Bari Weiss is bigger than the system, she knows better.
And you and me?
WE'RE SCREWED!
--
Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/
--
Listen to the podcast:
-iHeart: https://ihr.fm/2Gi5PFj
-Apple: https://apple.co/2ndmpvp
--
http://www.twitter.com/lefsetz
--
If you would like to subscribe to the LefsetzLetter,
http://www.lefsetz.com/lists/?p=subscribe&id=1
If you do not want to receive any more LefsetzLetters, http://lefsetz.com/lists/?p=unsubscribe&uid=0eecea7b60b461717065cbde887c8e25
To change your email address http://lefsetz.com/lists/?p=preferences&uid=0eecea7b60b461717065cbde887c8e25
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