Tune in Saturday January 17th to Faction Talk, channel 103, at 4 PM East, 1 PM West.
Phone #: 844-686-5863
If you miss the episode, you can hear it on demand on the SiriusXM app. Search: Lefsetz
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Friday, 16 January 2026
Blue Lights-Season 3
There is an argument between a live-in couple that is so accurate, so true to life, that I literally jolted upright and stared straight into the screen, because I'd been there and done that, more than once.
Now if this were an American series on Netflix everybody would be talking about it.
Actually, I was evaluating this latest season of "Blue Lights" as I was watching it. Rather than seeing it as exotic, a BBC production set in Belfast, I tried to watch it as a native would...to see if the show was really better than all American productions or...
Now the truth is "Blue Lights" is not the best English show I've ever seen, not even the best in the cop genre, for that I'd probably go with "Line of Duty," but just when you're settling in, entering the third episode of six, it gets intense. That's when you know you've got a good show, when you can't divorce yourself from it, when you're involved, when you care about the actors and what happens.
So a few of the actors are too good-looking to be street cops. Maybe that's my American bias, where good looks are only second to wealth in terms of advantage, but Nathan Braniff as Tommy Foster...I'm straight and I can even see his appeal...he's got a magic, a charisma based on his looks that the average person does not possess. And maybe it's the perfect coif, but Siân Brooke as Grace Ellis...she seems like she should be at a society party, wielding great power as opposed to down on the street. As for the two other woman street cops, Katherine Devlin and Dearbháile McKinney...I think their good looks are on purpose, they're both babes playing against type, they're cops because they want to make a difference. And isn't it the people who want to make a difference who are always in the line of fire, the ones those with wealth and power look down upon if for no other reason than their remuneration is low and they're in the line of fire, like social workers, like cops...
Now this is not London, this is Belfast. And the actors are from Ireland, the accents will blow your mind, as well as the constant use of "wee"...you'll probably want to leave the subtitles on. And having been to Belfast...it's eerie. The war between the Catholics and the Protestants...there are certain places you just don't go. It's palpable, with walls and barbed wire and if you've never been there, you might not believe some of what happens in "Blue Lights," but you should.
So, this season focuses on drugs and their dealers and runners. And that's not a new topic, but it's well-executed here, and not everything that happens is predictable. But a running theme is the personal danger the peelers are in, and the choices they make.
The peelers... Cops in Britain are called that after Sir Robert Peel, who started the modern police force. And there's an inscription "NO PEEL" hammered into a door at Oxford's Christ Church in 1829. It's eerie, right there in Harry Potterville, as if it was etched the night before.
And everybody in Belfast hates the peelers. 9/11 flipped the script in the U.S. Firemen and policemen (and women) were now seen as heroes, and if you came of age in the sixties, this is confounding, for they were the enemy...as they still are in Belfast.
And it's a constant war between the public and the peelers, and the peelers aren't always in control...to a degree they're barely hanging on.
So, with the intensity, the acting (with no LOOK AT ME! elements) and the script... "Blue Lights" is no American show. It's a definite cut above. The fact that the media was consumed for months over the last iteration of "White Lotus"... That Hollywood production isn't in the LEAGUE of "Blue Lights."
But "Blue Lights" is on BritBox and it's foreign, if even in English, so it's too heavy a lift for most Americans. But irrelevant of press, truth shines through. "Adolescence" was the best TV series last year, it was recognized by the Golden Globes, however worthless that organization might be, but it still has not penetrated the national consciousness in America, and I don't suppose it ever will, although it's there for the watching.
Anyway...
Right before the argument between Stevie and Grace, Grace has a moment...
Grace has a scene, gives a speech, not a soliloquy, she's directing it at a perp, but it's lengthy with pauses and emotion and unlike Meryl Streep, you do not see her acting. It's pretty amazing.
And what Grace reveals in that interlude...
Stevie is unaware of. That's the basis of the fight.
Secrets in a relationship, you don't want any. Because they undercut the bedrock of the connection. So, when Stevie finds out that Grace has withheld... He's indignant, he can't get past it... And then, Grace says this is exactly why she didn't tell him, for fear of his reaction...and it ratchets up from there, to the point where the entire relationship hangs in the balance.
I mean if you don't have fights in relationships, that just means one person is not speaking their truth. But after you've been together for a while, in excess of a year or two, there's an underlying bond you count on, and if anything threatens that, it shakes you up, throws everything into question. You're talking, maybe not with your voices raised, but there is an intensity, and it starts to dawn on you, this could be it, this could be the trigger for the end of the relationship.
And the following morning when Grace walks into the kitchen, not quite lovey-dovey, but open and not arguing... Stevie still isn't over it. He throws her statements from the night before back at her. I'm getting anxious as I write this!
And that's the essence of art. The little things. The truths that resonate. That's what we're looking for, that's what we connect with. It's not about professionalism, not about the look, but the essence, which is too often absent from American TV. I watched "The Pitt," I am not in the medical field, but it was long and drawn out and not for one moment did I not think it was Noah Wyle. I mean this is the best you can do?
And then there's Bruno Mars. The talk this week is about his stadium dates and how many tickets he sold. And I've got nothing against Bruno per se, however, I listened to the new single and it's POP! There's always been pop, but it was looked at askance by those creating art...those on FM as opposed to AM, the classic rockers as opposed to the popsters.
It started to change back in the MTV eighties...to the pre-Beatle Top 40. All hits all the time. Everybody was trying to make a pop hit, and now pop dominates and everybody says to respect it...but this is like respecting the tech billionaires because they are rich. What we're looking for is honesty, truth, reality, not surface...like we get in this argument on "Blue Lights."
And I used to find this honesty in music much more than other media. Music made more money than movies, despite getting no respect, music paid for the Warner cable system. Makes me crazy the people who still respect the movies...that's not where the action is today, and it's certainly not in music, it's in streaming television.
And the public knows it.
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-iHeart: https://ihr.fm/2Gi5PFj
-Apple: https://apple.co/2ndmpvp
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Now if this were an American series on Netflix everybody would be talking about it.
Actually, I was evaluating this latest season of "Blue Lights" as I was watching it. Rather than seeing it as exotic, a BBC production set in Belfast, I tried to watch it as a native would...to see if the show was really better than all American productions or...
Now the truth is "Blue Lights" is not the best English show I've ever seen, not even the best in the cop genre, for that I'd probably go with "Line of Duty," but just when you're settling in, entering the third episode of six, it gets intense. That's when you know you've got a good show, when you can't divorce yourself from it, when you're involved, when you care about the actors and what happens.
So a few of the actors are too good-looking to be street cops. Maybe that's my American bias, where good looks are only second to wealth in terms of advantage, but Nathan Braniff as Tommy Foster...I'm straight and I can even see his appeal...he's got a magic, a charisma based on his looks that the average person does not possess. And maybe it's the perfect coif, but Siân Brooke as Grace Ellis...she seems like she should be at a society party, wielding great power as opposed to down on the street. As for the two other woman street cops, Katherine Devlin and Dearbháile McKinney...I think their good looks are on purpose, they're both babes playing against type, they're cops because they want to make a difference. And isn't it the people who want to make a difference who are always in the line of fire, the ones those with wealth and power look down upon if for no other reason than their remuneration is low and they're in the line of fire, like social workers, like cops...
Now this is not London, this is Belfast. And the actors are from Ireland, the accents will blow your mind, as well as the constant use of "wee"...you'll probably want to leave the subtitles on. And having been to Belfast...it's eerie. The war between the Catholics and the Protestants...there are certain places you just don't go. It's palpable, with walls and barbed wire and if you've never been there, you might not believe some of what happens in "Blue Lights," but you should.
So, this season focuses on drugs and their dealers and runners. And that's not a new topic, but it's well-executed here, and not everything that happens is predictable. But a running theme is the personal danger the peelers are in, and the choices they make.
The peelers... Cops in Britain are called that after Sir Robert Peel, who started the modern police force. And there's an inscription "NO PEEL" hammered into a door at Oxford's Christ Church in 1829. It's eerie, right there in Harry Potterville, as if it was etched the night before.
And everybody in Belfast hates the peelers. 9/11 flipped the script in the U.S. Firemen and policemen (and women) were now seen as heroes, and if you came of age in the sixties, this is confounding, for they were the enemy...as they still are in Belfast.
And it's a constant war between the public and the peelers, and the peelers aren't always in control...to a degree they're barely hanging on.
So, with the intensity, the acting (with no LOOK AT ME! elements) and the script... "Blue Lights" is no American show. It's a definite cut above. The fact that the media was consumed for months over the last iteration of "White Lotus"... That Hollywood production isn't in the LEAGUE of "Blue Lights."
But "Blue Lights" is on BritBox and it's foreign, if even in English, so it's too heavy a lift for most Americans. But irrelevant of press, truth shines through. "Adolescence" was the best TV series last year, it was recognized by the Golden Globes, however worthless that organization might be, but it still has not penetrated the national consciousness in America, and I don't suppose it ever will, although it's there for the watching.
Anyway...
Right before the argument between Stevie and Grace, Grace has a moment...
Grace has a scene, gives a speech, not a soliloquy, she's directing it at a perp, but it's lengthy with pauses and emotion and unlike Meryl Streep, you do not see her acting. It's pretty amazing.
And what Grace reveals in that interlude...
Stevie is unaware of. That's the basis of the fight.
Secrets in a relationship, you don't want any. Because they undercut the bedrock of the connection. So, when Stevie finds out that Grace has withheld... He's indignant, he can't get past it... And then, Grace says this is exactly why she didn't tell him, for fear of his reaction...and it ratchets up from there, to the point where the entire relationship hangs in the balance.
I mean if you don't have fights in relationships, that just means one person is not speaking their truth. But after you've been together for a while, in excess of a year or two, there's an underlying bond you count on, and if anything threatens that, it shakes you up, throws everything into question. You're talking, maybe not with your voices raised, but there is an intensity, and it starts to dawn on you, this could be it, this could be the trigger for the end of the relationship.
And the following morning when Grace walks into the kitchen, not quite lovey-dovey, but open and not arguing... Stevie still isn't over it. He throws her statements from the night before back at her. I'm getting anxious as I write this!
And that's the essence of art. The little things. The truths that resonate. That's what we're looking for, that's what we connect with. It's not about professionalism, not about the look, but the essence, which is too often absent from American TV. I watched "The Pitt," I am not in the medical field, but it was long and drawn out and not for one moment did I not think it was Noah Wyle. I mean this is the best you can do?
And then there's Bruno Mars. The talk this week is about his stadium dates and how many tickets he sold. And I've got nothing against Bruno per se, however, I listened to the new single and it's POP! There's always been pop, but it was looked at askance by those creating art...those on FM as opposed to AM, the classic rockers as opposed to the popsters.
It started to change back in the MTV eighties...to the pre-Beatle Top 40. All hits all the time. Everybody was trying to make a pop hit, and now pop dominates and everybody says to respect it...but this is like respecting the tech billionaires because they are rich. What we're looking for is honesty, truth, reality, not surface...like we get in this argument on "Blue Lights."
And I used to find this honesty in music much more than other media. Music made more money than movies, despite getting no respect, music paid for the Warner cable system. Makes me crazy the people who still respect the movies...that's not where the action is today, and it's certainly not in music, it's in streaming television.
And the public knows 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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Thursday, 15 January 2026
Alex Skolnick-This Week's Podcast
Guitarist Alex Skolnick got his start with Testament, but has broadened his interest to jazz with the Alex Skolnick Trio and has played with Trans-Siberian Orchestra, Metal Allegiance and...
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/alex-skolnick/id1316200737?i=1000745276889
https://open.spotify.com/episode/6ANaVQI2u0UeX3xx24RQwZ?si=dRcnN5UHRKCEjnLueg8k0g
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-30806836/episode/alex-skolnick-317549334/
https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9ff4fb19-54d4-41ae-ae7a-8a6f8d3dafa8/episodes/2c7259dc-cd5f-4fbb-9dae-8375b21f5ae8/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-alex-skolnick
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--
Listen to the podcast:
-iHeart: https://ihr.fm/2Gi5PFj
-Apple: https://apple.co/2ndmpvp
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https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/alex-skolnick/id1316200737?i=1000745276889
https://open.spotify.com/episode/6ANaVQI2u0UeX3xx24RQwZ?si=dRcnN5UHRKCEjnLueg8k0g
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-30806836/episode/alex-skolnick-317549334/
https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9ff4fb19-54d4-41ae-ae7a-8a6f8d3dafa8/episodes/2c7259dc-cd5f-4fbb-9dae-8375b21f5ae8/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-alex-skolnick
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Listen to the podcast:
-iHeart: https://ihr.fm/2Gi5PFj
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Suno Demos
I did this podcast yesterday with Kenny Greenberg...
If you don't live in Nashville you may not know Kenny, but... At this point he's Kenny Chesney's guitarist, amongst a ton of other credits. And I'm asking Kenny Greenberg about the difference between Nashville yesterday and today, since he's been there since the seventies.
Well, the publishers aren't handing out deals like they used to. It wasn't hard to get a publishing deal in the past, in addition, they'd pay for a band and demos and...
All that's gone.
So now, a lot of people are making their demos with Suno, AI.
Last week I got this e-mail from Jack Tempchin. You know Jack, he wrote "Peaceful Easy Feeling" and co-wrote "Already Gone" and many others. And unlike a lot of writers who had hits in the past, Jack is still writing, prodigiously. He goes down to the beach and makes up songs and...
This is what Jack said:
----
From: Jack Tempchin
Subject: Jack Tempchin's new album MAGIC MIRROR
Hi Bob
My songs performed by AI.
I sure would appreciate it if you have time to listen to it.
Thanks!!
Jack
Apple Music:
https://music.apple.com/us/album/the-magic-mirror/1865153708
Amazon Music:
https://music.amazon.com/albums/B0GD543MNM
Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/album/2H6VfAUCGSnGpbQmBkdjQr
Tidal:
https://tidal.com/album/485722599
Youtube Music:
https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_nYLmFkXPt7vLDfg-OEjVkRbHjjUNU_uRQ
----
From: Bob Lefsetz
Re: Jack Tempchin's new album MAGIC MIRROR
Listening…
Are you joking or is this really AI?
If so, what were the prompts?
----
From: Jack Tempchin
Re: Jack Tempchin's new album MAGIC MIRROR
It really is AI. Done with Suno!
I sang and played guitar, or most of the time just sang with no instrument into the SUNO app.
A lot of the time I don't use a prompt and see what SUNO creates.
On ONLY LOVE KNOWS I used a prompt. I just said "swing" and it created a big band Frank Sinatra arrangement.
On BACK IN THE 60'S I told it to do 60's acid rock with Wa Wa guitar. I sang the song into it acapella and I actually sang the WaWa guitar parts.
Two interesting facts.
It actually changes the mood of singing and playing during the song based on the Meaning of the lyrics. It hears what you are singing about and gets sad or happy with the vocal and arrangement in response to that. Pretty amazing.
The other thing is that SUNO has a "remix contest". People who enter the contest for the $1000 prizes all remix the song chosen for the contest. They chose my song ONLY LOVE KNOWS.
What that means is that they take my song, which was written by me and recorded by SUNO (I don't use SUNO to write or help write the songs) and they put that song back into SUNO with different prompts that they create. They make their own arrangement of the song.
So this something amazing. It is a way for people who are not musicians to interact with their favorite music in a way that has never been possible before! They make their own versions of the songs they love.
I did not realize that this is a huge thing that is happening all over the world.
Over 4000 people remixed my song. There are versions in every style from all over the world.
Bob, I can't thank you enough for listening to my album.
Jack
----
So with this in the back of my head...
Kenny Greenberg tells me that many people in Nashville are now making their demos with Suno.
He's in the studio with Chesney, and Chesney pulls up a demo and says he wants to cut the song. And he wants the sound of this particular instrument replicated exactly.
And then Greenberg tells Chensey IT'S A SUNO DEMO! And that those aren't real instruments. And the sound Chesney likes and wants re-created is a blend of a guitar and a keyboard and Greenberg will do his best to reproduce it, but it won't be exactly the same, because it can't be, because that's not a real instrument!
Now let me be clear, although Kenny Greenberg laments the fact that publishing companies are not ponying up money for real demos anymore, and he finds some of the sound of the Suno demos cheesy, he's not decrying AI. He believes it's here to stay, that it's a tool.
So that's the way it is today.
Consider this a message from the front.
--
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--
Listen to the podcast:
-iHeart: https://ihr.fm/2Gi5PFj
-Apple: https://apple.co/2ndmpvp
--
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If you don't live in Nashville you may not know Kenny, but... At this point he's Kenny Chesney's guitarist, amongst a ton of other credits. And I'm asking Kenny Greenberg about the difference between Nashville yesterday and today, since he's been there since the seventies.
Well, the publishers aren't handing out deals like they used to. It wasn't hard to get a publishing deal in the past, in addition, they'd pay for a band and demos and...
All that's gone.
So now, a lot of people are making their demos with Suno, AI.
Last week I got this e-mail from Jack Tempchin. You know Jack, he wrote "Peaceful Easy Feeling" and co-wrote "Already Gone" and many others. And unlike a lot of writers who had hits in the past, Jack is still writing, prodigiously. He goes down to the beach and makes up songs and...
This is what Jack said:
----
From: Jack Tempchin
Subject: Jack Tempchin's new album MAGIC MIRROR
Hi Bob
My songs performed by AI.
I sure would appreciate it if you have time to listen to it.
Thanks!!
Jack
Apple Music:
https://music.apple.com/us/album/the-magic-mirror/1865153708
Amazon Music:
https://music.amazon.com/albums/B0GD543MNM
Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/album/2H6VfAUCGSnGpbQmBkdjQr
Tidal:
https://tidal.com/album/485722599
Youtube Music:
https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_nYLmFkXPt7vLDfg-OEjVkRbHjjUNU_uRQ
----
From: Bob Lefsetz
Re: Jack Tempchin's new album MAGIC MIRROR
Listening…
Are you joking or is this really AI?
If so, what were the prompts?
----
From: Jack Tempchin
Re: Jack Tempchin's new album MAGIC MIRROR
It really is AI. Done with Suno!
I sang and played guitar, or most of the time just sang with no instrument into the SUNO app.
A lot of the time I don't use a prompt and see what SUNO creates.
On ONLY LOVE KNOWS I used a prompt. I just said "swing" and it created a big band Frank Sinatra arrangement.
On BACK IN THE 60'S I told it to do 60's acid rock with Wa Wa guitar. I sang the song into it acapella and I actually sang the WaWa guitar parts.
Two interesting facts.
It actually changes the mood of singing and playing during the song based on the Meaning of the lyrics. It hears what you are singing about and gets sad or happy with the vocal and arrangement in response to that. Pretty amazing.
The other thing is that SUNO has a "remix contest". People who enter the contest for the $1000 prizes all remix the song chosen for the contest. They chose my song ONLY LOVE KNOWS.
What that means is that they take my song, which was written by me and recorded by SUNO (I don't use SUNO to write or help write the songs) and they put that song back into SUNO with different prompts that they create. They make their own arrangement of the song.
So this something amazing. It is a way for people who are not musicians to interact with their favorite music in a way that has never been possible before! They make their own versions of the songs they love.
I did not realize that this is a huge thing that is happening all over the world.
Over 4000 people remixed my song. There are versions in every style from all over the world.
Bob, I can't thank you enough for listening to my album.
Jack
----
So with this in the back of my head...
Kenny Greenberg tells me that many people in Nashville are now making their demos with Suno.
He's in the studio with Chesney, and Chesney pulls up a demo and says he wants to cut the song. And he wants the sound of this particular instrument replicated exactly.
And then Greenberg tells Chensey IT'S A SUNO DEMO! And that those aren't real instruments. And the sound Chesney likes and wants re-created is a blend of a guitar and a keyboard and Greenberg will do his best to reproduce it, but it won't be exactly the same, because it can't be, because that's not a real instrument!
Now let me be clear, although Kenny Greenberg laments the fact that publishing companies are not ponying up money for real demos anymore, and he finds some of the sound of the Suno demos cheesy, he's not decrying AI. He believes it's here to stay, that it's a tool.
So that's the way it is today.
Consider this a message from the front.
--
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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Money
That's the only thing that unites Americans, that's the only thing that moves the needle. I'd say it's the economy stupid, but it's deeper than that, if you want meaningful change, people have to be suffering, it's got to be a matter of survival, if not outright starvation, it's got to be literally life or death before all people will get on the same page and effect meaningful change.
The problem with ICE and the immigration issue is it doesn't make sense mathematically. I'm here legally, they are not...why should I carry them, why should they get a free ride?
I don't want to discuss the particulars, the facts, because then you've already lost the battle. Yes, illegal immigrants pay taxes (oftentimes one way only...as in they don't reap the benefits, like Social Security), and yes, immigrants are disproportionately law-abiding, but they are here illegally. And you're never going to convince everybody that a crackdown is not justified.
Now I thought protests like No Kings were a joke. And isn't it interesting that the younger people did not participate proportionately. They're wiser than their elders, they see that Trump doesn't listen and change course, they're' disillusioned with government, both sides, right and left.
As for spontaneous reaction to the killing of Renee Good? I think that has an effect. When protest happens as a result of an event. The public was charged and Jonathan Ross pulled the trigger. But does what is happening in Minneapolis affect people in rural areas? In southern states where ICE is not focusing its efforts? No. Furthermore, people are reluctant to put themselves in the line of fire. For that...you can't only be protesting the mistreatment of others, it's got to be you, you've got to feel desperate. And what makes people desperate is the lack of cash, the inability to make ends meet.
Now the wheels are starting to turn. With the California billionaires tax. I'm not saying it should be passed, I'm not saying that Newsom is wrong in opposing it, I am saying that this represents the anger of the populace. Furthermore, it shows the true stripes of the billionaires, who are weeping like babies, threatening to end the game by taking the ball to their own court.
The billionaires still think we live in the last decade, or the one before. That we hold them up on a pedestal, that we revere them. But the tech giants... The public hates the social media companies. Not as much as Ticketmaster, but a lot. Elon Musk has been revealed to be myopic... He may be good at cars and rockets, but he's terrible when it comes to people. Not only did DOGE not save money, Musk got into a snit with Trump and ended up coming back to the man with his tail between his legs.
Furthermore, the billionaires have shown they have no backbone, kissing Trump's butt for money...as if a corporation's profits were everything, that it's only the Street that matters.
This is how we got into this mess. Biden and his cronies kept telling us the economy was good, with the lame term "Bidenomics," when anybody who went to the grocery store could see otherwise. It's not that people loved Trump, it's just that the Democrats were out of touch with the public's true feelings, mostly their economic feelings. And when Kamala lost...Democrats didn't own it, they called the nation racist, they said the system was flawed... This is not a recipe for victory, it's a recipe for alienation! I mean if you want a big tent with people on your side...
So when you look for a spark... It always happens when you don't expect it, that's the message of Renee Good and Minneapolis. That's what we learned with the Arab Spring.
But the man who lit the match for the Arab Spring was a college educated fruit vendor, despite his degree, he could not get a good job. Which is what many Americans are fearful of right now... They're already laying off coders... America is so afraid of AI and all we've got is the billionaires saying TRUST US! As they run up the economy building data centers that require more power than we've got in a race for...
Ironically, the only billionaire who looks somewhat reasonable is Jensen Huang of Nvidia, who says even if a billionaires tax is enacted, he's staying in California, that's where he lives, that's where he likes it, that's where the talent is located.
We keep reading about people moving from the Golden State... But the truth is it's no longer the middle of the last century, most people can't afford to move at all! And most know it, despite all the articles that are part of an offensive trying to demonize Democratic states. Then again, the Republicans are smarter than the Democrats, at least they're focusing on economics.
So the lesson here is Iran. It's not like it's been kumbaya over there since the shah lost power nearly fifty years ago. You've had a religious dictatorship and...we've only seen meaningful rebellion, THREATENING rebellion, when it became a raw economic issues. There was a currency crash. Inflation in excess of 40%. And this is when the people took to the streets. This is the only thing that will bring Americans of all stripes to the streets.
High prices... We hear about concert tickets. But let's start with the basics, grocery prices, automobile prices... Recent news tells us that only the wealthy can afford new cars, the rest of the public has to buy used, after all, in December the average transaction price was $50,326. And to reinforce the point, this is not an issue for the wealthy, but most people just don't have the money.
The problem with high concert ticket prices is not the fees, it's the demand! There are people willing to pay high prices, which creates a secondary market.
And if you're living on a fixed income, the economic situation is insane. You're not making any more, but the prices keep going up and up. Forget oldsters living on a pension, on Social Security, if you're earning a salary and can keep your job... Not only are you having trouble making ends meet, you're not getting a pay increase! Meanwhile, the wankers in government say you should be happy, because you've got a flat screen TV and a smartphone, that your standard of living is higher than that of people past. It's like telling people a hundred years ago to ignore the stock market crash...after all, they're traveling in automobiles as opposed to by horse!
I could ask who is channeling our anger, but it's worse than that... Nobody in power seems to know what is truly going on with the public, the Average Jane and Joes. We've got leaders who are tech-ignorant. There's a detachment between generations. But what is going to push it over the edge...
Is when everybody is suffering.
You can be horrified about Trump's threat to invoke the Insurrection Act in Minneapolis, but the truth is most people don't live in Minneapolis and just don't see and feel the danger. It's when they see and feel the danger that they react. And the government is doing a good job of chilling the public, making people afraid to go out and protest. What is going to motivate them to step outside the door? Money.
And how do the hoi polloi connect?
Via the excoriated internet, which was utilized in the Arab Spring. As for Iran, they shut it down. Yup, the winners of the world want their kids off smartphones. They don't want youngsters in front of screens. But they can afford child care. The truth is the internet links Americans together, it's doing the opposite of isolating us. So we're supposed to believe in the holier-than-thou leftists telling us to put the phone down?
As for leftists... They continue to let the Republicans define them... You don't want to be woke, you need to move to the center, it's the extreme that are bringing this nation down. It's got nothing to do with pronouns and trans women in sports... But Democrats are always on the back foot. Meantime, defending some minor group that the majority doesn't agree with. The bottom line is most Americans don't want trans women in sports. It's kinda like illegal immigration, it just doesn't feel right to most people.
But let's not debate trans rights, that's what those in power want us to do, to take us away from the major issues.
So until the focus is money, there will be no meaningful change. And if you want revolutionary change, the financial situation for the average person has to get worse.
Then again, it's pretty bad. After the November election there was all this talk about an affordability crisis... But the truth is it didn't happen suddenly, it was percolating, people were struggling, it's just that an election surfaced the issue, that's when the major news media and Trump started to take notice. What other pain points, especially economic ones, are there in plain sight that are not recognized by those in power?
The upper middle class wants to get rich, the rich want to stay rich, as for the rest of the people, the true majority, you're screwed. You can't get rich, the opportunity is not there, and those in power are not listening to you.
If I were a Democrat I would talk about money all the time, people are driven by their wallet.
Then again, I no longer believe in the system. A free and fair election in 2028? Give me a break.
What is it going to take for this country to crack?
Economic hardship. Money.
There, I've said 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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The problem with ICE and the immigration issue is it doesn't make sense mathematically. I'm here legally, they are not...why should I carry them, why should they get a free ride?
I don't want to discuss the particulars, the facts, because then you've already lost the battle. Yes, illegal immigrants pay taxes (oftentimes one way only...as in they don't reap the benefits, like Social Security), and yes, immigrants are disproportionately law-abiding, but they are here illegally. And you're never going to convince everybody that a crackdown is not justified.
Now I thought protests like No Kings were a joke. And isn't it interesting that the younger people did not participate proportionately. They're wiser than their elders, they see that Trump doesn't listen and change course, they're' disillusioned with government, both sides, right and left.
As for spontaneous reaction to the killing of Renee Good? I think that has an effect. When protest happens as a result of an event. The public was charged and Jonathan Ross pulled the trigger. But does what is happening in Minneapolis affect people in rural areas? In southern states where ICE is not focusing its efforts? No. Furthermore, people are reluctant to put themselves in the line of fire. For that...you can't only be protesting the mistreatment of others, it's got to be you, you've got to feel desperate. And what makes people desperate is the lack of cash, the inability to make ends meet.
Now the wheels are starting to turn. With the California billionaires tax. I'm not saying it should be passed, I'm not saying that Newsom is wrong in opposing it, I am saying that this represents the anger of the populace. Furthermore, it shows the true stripes of the billionaires, who are weeping like babies, threatening to end the game by taking the ball to their own court.
The billionaires still think we live in the last decade, or the one before. That we hold them up on a pedestal, that we revere them. But the tech giants... The public hates the social media companies. Not as much as Ticketmaster, but a lot. Elon Musk has been revealed to be myopic... He may be good at cars and rockets, but he's terrible when it comes to people. Not only did DOGE not save money, Musk got into a snit with Trump and ended up coming back to the man with his tail between his legs.
Furthermore, the billionaires have shown they have no backbone, kissing Trump's butt for money...as if a corporation's profits were everything, that it's only the Street that matters.
This is how we got into this mess. Biden and his cronies kept telling us the economy was good, with the lame term "Bidenomics," when anybody who went to the grocery store could see otherwise. It's not that people loved Trump, it's just that the Democrats were out of touch with the public's true feelings, mostly their economic feelings. And when Kamala lost...Democrats didn't own it, they called the nation racist, they said the system was flawed... This is not a recipe for victory, it's a recipe for alienation! I mean if you want a big tent with people on your side...
So when you look for a spark... It always happens when you don't expect it, that's the message of Renee Good and Minneapolis. That's what we learned with the Arab Spring.
But the man who lit the match for the Arab Spring was a college educated fruit vendor, despite his degree, he could not get a good job. Which is what many Americans are fearful of right now... They're already laying off coders... America is so afraid of AI and all we've got is the billionaires saying TRUST US! As they run up the economy building data centers that require more power than we've got in a race for...
Ironically, the only billionaire who looks somewhat reasonable is Jensen Huang of Nvidia, who says even if a billionaires tax is enacted, he's staying in California, that's where he lives, that's where he likes it, that's where the talent is located.
We keep reading about people moving from the Golden State... But the truth is it's no longer the middle of the last century, most people can't afford to move at all! And most know it, despite all the articles that are part of an offensive trying to demonize Democratic states. Then again, the Republicans are smarter than the Democrats, at least they're focusing on economics.
So the lesson here is Iran. It's not like it's been kumbaya over there since the shah lost power nearly fifty years ago. You've had a religious dictatorship and...we've only seen meaningful rebellion, THREATENING rebellion, when it became a raw economic issues. There was a currency crash. Inflation in excess of 40%. And this is when the people took to the streets. This is the only thing that will bring Americans of all stripes to the streets.
High prices... We hear about concert tickets. But let's start with the basics, grocery prices, automobile prices... Recent news tells us that only the wealthy can afford new cars, the rest of the public has to buy used, after all, in December the average transaction price was $50,326. And to reinforce the point, this is not an issue for the wealthy, but most people just don't have the money.
The problem with high concert ticket prices is not the fees, it's the demand! There are people willing to pay high prices, which creates a secondary market.
And if you're living on a fixed income, the economic situation is insane. You're not making any more, but the prices keep going up and up. Forget oldsters living on a pension, on Social Security, if you're earning a salary and can keep your job... Not only are you having trouble making ends meet, you're not getting a pay increase! Meanwhile, the wankers in government say you should be happy, because you've got a flat screen TV and a smartphone, that your standard of living is higher than that of people past. It's like telling people a hundred years ago to ignore the stock market crash...after all, they're traveling in automobiles as opposed to by horse!
I could ask who is channeling our anger, but it's worse than that... Nobody in power seems to know what is truly going on with the public, the Average Jane and Joes. We've got leaders who are tech-ignorant. There's a detachment between generations. But what is going to push it over the edge...
Is when everybody is suffering.
You can be horrified about Trump's threat to invoke the Insurrection Act in Minneapolis, but the truth is most people don't live in Minneapolis and just don't see and feel the danger. It's when they see and feel the danger that they react. And the government is doing a good job of chilling the public, making people afraid to go out and protest. What is going to motivate them to step outside the door? Money.
And how do the hoi polloi connect?
Via the excoriated internet, which was utilized in the Arab Spring. As for Iran, they shut it down. Yup, the winners of the world want their kids off smartphones. They don't want youngsters in front of screens. But they can afford child care. The truth is the internet links Americans together, it's doing the opposite of isolating us. So we're supposed to believe in the holier-than-thou leftists telling us to put the phone down?
As for leftists... They continue to let the Republicans define them... You don't want to be woke, you need to move to the center, it's the extreme that are bringing this nation down. It's got nothing to do with pronouns and trans women in sports... But Democrats are always on the back foot. Meantime, defending some minor group that the majority doesn't agree with. The bottom line is most Americans don't want trans women in sports. It's kinda like illegal immigration, it just doesn't feel right to most people.
But let's not debate trans rights, that's what those in power want us to do, to take us away from the major issues.
So until the focus is money, there will be no meaningful change. And if you want revolutionary change, the financial situation for the average person has to get worse.
Then again, it's pretty bad. After the November election there was all this talk about an affordability crisis... But the truth is it didn't happen suddenly, it was percolating, people were struggling, it's just that an election surfaced the issue, that's when the major news media and Trump started to take notice. What other pain points, especially economic ones, are there in plain sight that are not recognized by those in power?
The upper middle class wants to get rich, the rich want to stay rich, as for the rest of the people, the true majority, you're screwed. You can't get rich, the opportunity is not there, and those in power are not listening to you.
If I were a Democrat I would talk about money all the time, people are driven by their wallet.
Then again, I no longer believe in the system. A free and fair election in 2028? Give me a break.
What is it going to take for this country to crack?
Economic hardship. Money.
There, I've said 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
--
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
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Tuesday, 13 January 2026
Been Undone
You have to hear this in hi-res.
I was listening on Spotify and it sounded like the music was filtered through steel wool, but when I pulled it up in Amazon, in what they call ULTRA HD, all the detritus was cleared away and the music was pure.
Then again, I wasn't listening on earbuds, but through my Genelecs...studio quality for studio quality music.
Now this used to be the paradigm, we bought the vinyl (prerecorded cassettes were inferior, having been replicated at high speed) and played it back on the stereos we worked all summer, for years to buy. We spoke of specs, THD (total harmonic distortion), talked about the merit of certain matchups...amp and speaker...speaker and cartridge...and when we dropped the needle we weren't doing the dishes, talking on the phone, we sat or stood in the sweet spot and experienced the music washing over us. And it wasn't always revelatory, but it was a pact between the act and the listener, they would do their very best, not only in writing and playing, but in recording, and then serve it up to us for evaluation.
That's not how the oldsters do it anymore. Most of them don't even bother to make new music.
As for the youngsters...when they're not busy thinking about their brand extensions, leaving the creativity in the hands of others, they're selling hedonism, not the intellectualism of Peter Gabriel.
So at this point, is Peter Gabriel the last man standing?
He wouldn't do a podcast with me because I criticized his dripping out of his last album track by track, a formula he's repeating with this LP. The problem is the landscape keeps changing... Track by track worked fifteen years ago, maybe ten, but not anymore in a world where it's nearly impossible to gain someone's attention, never mind keep it. Believe me, if I had more tracks I'd be listening to them right now.
As for "Come Undone"... I knew he was putting out this album on maybe a monthly basis, having to do with the moon or something, I could Google and get it exactly right, but the point is the press registered...at least on some level...the details? The point being I didn't know "Come Undone" had been released.
But it has.
And it came up in Jeff Pollack's weekly playlist of five. And to tell you the truth, at first I wasn't enamored. It's not that "Come Undone" was bad, it just reminded me too much of the experimental sounds of the initial solo career. And the sotto voce vocal was not riveting. It wasn't quite "Moribund the Burgermeister," but I wanted to be taken away, I wanted to like it, and at first I didn't, it was kind of blah.
And Spotify told me the song was nearly eight minutes long and I laughed to myself...he's still doing it the same way, he's not compromising, he's still being Peter Gabriel.
And while I was watching a non-sound video on the 2027 K2 skis, something changed, there was an intensity, a driving beat, very different from the fake 808, the song had started subtly, but it was building, and I was becoming enamored.
So Peter Gabriel is in his own business and his own business only. This is not the way it used to be, it used to be all about radio and retail...get it on the radio so people buy it, create numbers that got people's attention, do your best to start a juggernaut.
But can a guy with roots in prog rock who's over 70 create a juggernaut today? Can anybody create a juggernaut today? And those who do, like the Weeknd and Bruno Mars...they may be in the same business, but they're in a completely different stratosphere when it comes to music.
It's hard to create in a vacuum, sans feedback, most people need context, need to see the route to success, and without that they lose the drive. Never mind if you've been to the mountaintop, looked around and realized your achievement didn't solve all your problems, most people can't get up the gumption to climb again.
You're listening to "Come Undone" and you realize this wasn't written and done in a day. It's layered. The individual sounds are important. Getting the vision down is important.
For me the song comes alive just before the six minute mark, with the industrial sounds and then Peter's full-strength emoting, he's giving it his all, the faders are pushed up and it might not appeal to you.
Or it just might.
That's what we're looking for, something that appeals to us. Me-too is good to dance to, but to listen we're looking for something unique, more than a pretty voice, more than the ability to play...we're looking for exploration, a statement.
"Time to let go, just listen and feel
Just listen and feel"
P.S. It's not as simple as paying for hi-res from the service of your choice, you've got to have a DAC (digital to analog converter). That will get you full resolution, in many cases in excess of CD quality, but all stereo mavens know that as good as the source material is, the end result is colored most by the speakers... You must have enough power for full sound, to avoid distortion, and your speakers must be able to replicate the bottom...not the fake one from the car next to you at the stoplight with the pounding bass, but one with accuracy.
P.P.S. Most creators are no longer concerned with audio quality, because it costs too much, and most people don't have systems that can reproduce it anyway. But sound is sound, and you want to hear it replicated as accurately as possible. And you want to be able to turn it up loud enough so you can feel it, so it squeezes out all other thoughts.
P.P.P.S. By the end of the song, you'll either be intrigued or you won't... I will say, the more you play "Come Undone," the more you get into it. However, let's be clear, this is definitely an album track, "Come Undone" is not "Sledgehammer" or "Shock the Monkey," but that's another problem with the modern marketplace, everybody's trying for hits all the time.
P.P.P.P.S. There's nothing rote about "Come Undone." What you've got is an artist, delivering his work, you can either accept it or not, but it's clear it's uncompromised.
--
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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I was listening on Spotify and it sounded like the music was filtered through steel wool, but when I pulled it up in Amazon, in what they call ULTRA HD, all the detritus was cleared away and the music was pure.
Then again, I wasn't listening on earbuds, but through my Genelecs...studio quality for studio quality music.
Now this used to be the paradigm, we bought the vinyl (prerecorded cassettes were inferior, having been replicated at high speed) and played it back on the stereos we worked all summer, for years to buy. We spoke of specs, THD (total harmonic distortion), talked about the merit of certain matchups...amp and speaker...speaker and cartridge...and when we dropped the needle we weren't doing the dishes, talking on the phone, we sat or stood in the sweet spot and experienced the music washing over us. And it wasn't always revelatory, but it was a pact between the act and the listener, they would do their very best, not only in writing and playing, but in recording, and then serve it up to us for evaluation.
That's not how the oldsters do it anymore. Most of them don't even bother to make new music.
As for the youngsters...when they're not busy thinking about their brand extensions, leaving the creativity in the hands of others, they're selling hedonism, not the intellectualism of Peter Gabriel.
So at this point, is Peter Gabriel the last man standing?
He wouldn't do a podcast with me because I criticized his dripping out of his last album track by track, a formula he's repeating with this LP. The problem is the landscape keeps changing... Track by track worked fifteen years ago, maybe ten, but not anymore in a world where it's nearly impossible to gain someone's attention, never mind keep it. Believe me, if I had more tracks I'd be listening to them right now.
As for "Come Undone"... I knew he was putting out this album on maybe a monthly basis, having to do with the moon or something, I could Google and get it exactly right, but the point is the press registered...at least on some level...the details? The point being I didn't know "Come Undone" had been released.
But it has.
And it came up in Jeff Pollack's weekly playlist of five. And to tell you the truth, at first I wasn't enamored. It's not that "Come Undone" was bad, it just reminded me too much of the experimental sounds of the initial solo career. And the sotto voce vocal was not riveting. It wasn't quite "Moribund the Burgermeister," but I wanted to be taken away, I wanted to like it, and at first I didn't, it was kind of blah.
And Spotify told me the song was nearly eight minutes long and I laughed to myself...he's still doing it the same way, he's not compromising, he's still being Peter Gabriel.
And while I was watching a non-sound video on the 2027 K2 skis, something changed, there was an intensity, a driving beat, very different from the fake 808, the song had started subtly, but it was building, and I was becoming enamored.
So Peter Gabriel is in his own business and his own business only. This is not the way it used to be, it used to be all about radio and retail...get it on the radio so people buy it, create numbers that got people's attention, do your best to start a juggernaut.
But can a guy with roots in prog rock who's over 70 create a juggernaut today? Can anybody create a juggernaut today? And those who do, like the Weeknd and Bruno Mars...they may be in the same business, but they're in a completely different stratosphere when it comes to music.
It's hard to create in a vacuum, sans feedback, most people need context, need to see the route to success, and without that they lose the drive. Never mind if you've been to the mountaintop, looked around and realized your achievement didn't solve all your problems, most people can't get up the gumption to climb again.
You're listening to "Come Undone" and you realize this wasn't written and done in a day. It's layered. The individual sounds are important. Getting the vision down is important.
For me the song comes alive just before the six minute mark, with the industrial sounds and then Peter's full-strength emoting, he's giving it his all, the faders are pushed up and it might not appeal to you.
Or it just might.
That's what we're looking for, something that appeals to us. Me-too is good to dance to, but to listen we're looking for something unique, more than a pretty voice, more than the ability to play...we're looking for exploration, a statement.
"Time to let go, just listen and feel
Just listen and feel"
P.S. It's not as simple as paying for hi-res from the service of your choice, you've got to have a DAC (digital to analog converter). That will get you full resolution, in many cases in excess of CD quality, but all stereo mavens know that as good as the source material is, the end result is colored most by the speakers... You must have enough power for full sound, to avoid distortion, and your speakers must be able to replicate the bottom...not the fake one from the car next to you at the stoplight with the pounding bass, but one with accuracy.
P.P.S. Most creators are no longer concerned with audio quality, because it costs too much, and most people don't have systems that can reproduce it anyway. But sound is sound, and you want to hear it replicated as accurately as possible. And you want to be able to turn it up loud enough so you can feel it, so it squeezes out all other thoughts.
P.P.P.S. By the end of the song, you'll either be intrigued or you won't... I will say, the more you play "Come Undone," the more you get into it. However, let's be clear, this is definitely an album track, "Come Undone" is not "Sledgehammer" or "Shock the Monkey," but that's another problem with the modern marketplace, everybody's trying for hits all the time.
P.P.P.P.S. There's nothing rote about "Come Undone." What you've got is an artist, delivering his work, you can either accept it or not, but it's clear it's uncompromised.
--
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
Monday, 12 January 2026
Singles vs. a Body of Work
I was driving in my car earlier today and I ended up on the 10s Spot, SiriusXM's station that features music from the 2010s.
That wasn't my intention. Actually, I was switching from the news band to one of the music bands, I wanted to dial in John Mayer's channel, but I must have hit something by accident, and I ended up on this station. And they were playing Halsey.
And I heard the thump. Is that the defining feature of today's hit music? The bass, the beat, the 808? You even get it in country. Never has an era of music been confined to such a narrow paradigm.
The Halsey track was okay, but then they played "Rude Boy" by Rihanna. I seem to be the only red-blooded male who doesn't have a thing for Rihanna, as a matter of fact, most of her career slid right by me, because by the time she had hits... MTV & VH1 were no longer a factor, you didn't have to hear the Top 40 hits if you didn't want to. So "Rude Boy"...I recognized it as one of the songs Rihanna played at the Super Bowl. And if you were a fan, if you listened to Top 40, you were thrilled and sang along, the rest of us were nonplussed.
So I'm driving down Santa Monica Boulevard thinking about how we got here.
Well, during the MTV eighties, and the fumes of music television thereafter, it was about the single, but the single was promoting the album. A label might put out a single for a minute, to gain traction in the marketplace, but as soon as the track hit, they'd delete it, forcing the consumer to buy the entire album if they wanted to hear the hit.
This was concomitant with the rise of the CD era... Suddenly you were paying twice as much and oftentimes you found out that the song you liked was the only good one on the album.
But other times you dove deeper, and got into the rest of the act's work on the album, maybe then went and bought albums from the catalog.
Whereas today, it's about the hit and the hit only. There might ultimately be an album, but all you've got to look at is the streaming numbers on Spotify, the hit has been played disproportionately, oftentimes the album tracks' streams are de minimis.
But who would want more from the Top 40 artists, whose songs are oftentimes written by committee, whose productions go through layers of mixing and... These are commercial products. This is the business the major labels are in, this is the business that gets all the press, but never has it been such a sideshow.
Now Top 40 ruled for years before the late sixties. FM radio made album rock burgeon. Along with "Sgt. Pepper" (maybe it started with "Rubber Soul" or "Revolver"). The act was making a full-length statement, that you wanted to hear. And FM started off free-format, not only would they play the obscure, they'd play entire album sides...it changed the culture of music, suddenly rock was a serious art form that deserved respect, that ultimately the entire nation, the entire world, cottoned to.
Now FM became formulated, thanks to Lee Abrams, there was a tight format, but it was understood that it was still all about the album, the track on the radio was just the sample, excised from an opus you needed to consume.
And then MTV took this formula into the stratosphere.
Now when Napster came along, suddenly you could pick and choose the songs you wanted, and only the songs you wanted. Which was the business model of iTunes and then Spotify, et al. At first the labels hated this, because they were baked into the old model, they thought they could only make money via albums...Daniel Ek proved to them that this was untrue. As for the acts...they were pissed, because they didn't want their full-length opus messed with, you were supposed to listen to it the way they wanted you to. Remember when acts were concerned about leaks, of not only albums, but work tapes and live tracks? That's fallen by the wayside, your deepest desire is that people will find you at all, listen to you at all, and it's your hard core fans who are keeping you alive, and you want to superserve them.
And then there were acts who said they were going to give it one last shot and then they were no longer going to make albums, like Sheryl Crow. But the problem was that no matter how much hype there was, you could not get the public to consume an entire album by someone from the prior century, it was nearly impossible. Then those acts stopped making new music at all...why put in all that effort if no one would hear it?
So today we've got the Top 40. Which is akin to the heyday of MTV, but the acts have no depth, the album isn't where it's at, it's only the single that counts, that people are interested in (of course there are exceptions, but don't nitpick).
There are acts doing it the old way, not on major labels, oftentimes complaining they're not being paid by streaming outlets and... Do they deserve to be paid? Is their music such that masses of people want to listen to it?
Oftentimes no.
So what we've got here is a sphere of Top 40 vapidity, and too many acts that don't deserve attention on the other extreme. And the business won't be healthy until it starts promoting those acts who are creating bodies of work that are worth listening to.
The major labels don't want to do this, the lift is too hard, never mind the amount of time it takes to break through. They just keep repeating the formula of dreck. To the point where music has never gotten this little respect in my lifetime. It's seen as ditties, entertainment, warring camps of fans, there's no there there.
But music used to be the bleeding edge, that's where you went to find out what was really going on.
In the old days, with so much less music, great would surface. Not anymore. And even if it does, it may take years to shine through. Such that the thinkers who can create this music that deserves attention don't. They oftentimes don't even start. They go into tech or finance, where the odds of success are much, much higher. And even if you do play the game and gain success you get no respect. The intelligentsia laugh at you, whereas the intelligentsia used to have to take notice... Everybody watched MTV, EVERYBODY! Those were universal hits.
Today's hits are niche.
We can talk about distribution platforms, a changing market, but we can also say that we're not inspiring artists, and that those who are inspired are not given a leg up, are not promoted because they don't sound like what's on Top 40, as if most people want to pay attention to today's Top 40, which is really the Spotify Top 50.
It starts with the artists. How do we encourage them, how do we get them to take their work seriously, how do we get them to say no to opportunities that will hurt their image?
Today music is dominated by the lowest common denominator who have no options, they're going nowhere fast, the model is the Kardashians, not the Beatles, never mind the Moody Blues, Led Zeppelin, Jethro Tull, the Eagles...
But after we inspire the acts, we much change the focus, to those who are creating a body of work worth paying attention to.
We need to realign the vision of the labels, the press, we have to stop celebrating the penumbra and go for the nougat, the essence. Enough with the fashion and the brand extensions, how do we make music number one?
There are examples, most notably Rosalía with "Lux," but experimental, limit-testing music used to be the standard, the goal, the mainstream, by time we hit the seventies Top 40 was a sideshow.
But to the casual listener, and it's the casual listeners who need to be corralled to lift the status of music, the Top 40 is tripe, they're listening to oldies (keeping the major labels' coffers full). The music business has successfully marginalized itself. And no one will take responsibility, especially the major labels, which will tell you they're businesses, first and foremost.
But excitement about quality new music lifts all boats.
But right now we're sunk.
--
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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That wasn't my intention. Actually, I was switching from the news band to one of the music bands, I wanted to dial in John Mayer's channel, but I must have hit something by accident, and I ended up on this station. And they were playing Halsey.
And I heard the thump. Is that the defining feature of today's hit music? The bass, the beat, the 808? You even get it in country. Never has an era of music been confined to such a narrow paradigm.
The Halsey track was okay, but then they played "Rude Boy" by Rihanna. I seem to be the only red-blooded male who doesn't have a thing for Rihanna, as a matter of fact, most of her career slid right by me, because by the time she had hits... MTV & VH1 were no longer a factor, you didn't have to hear the Top 40 hits if you didn't want to. So "Rude Boy"...I recognized it as one of the songs Rihanna played at the Super Bowl. And if you were a fan, if you listened to Top 40, you were thrilled and sang along, the rest of us were nonplussed.
So I'm driving down Santa Monica Boulevard thinking about how we got here.
Well, during the MTV eighties, and the fumes of music television thereafter, it was about the single, but the single was promoting the album. A label might put out a single for a minute, to gain traction in the marketplace, but as soon as the track hit, they'd delete it, forcing the consumer to buy the entire album if they wanted to hear the hit.
This was concomitant with the rise of the CD era... Suddenly you were paying twice as much and oftentimes you found out that the song you liked was the only good one on the album.
But other times you dove deeper, and got into the rest of the act's work on the album, maybe then went and bought albums from the catalog.
Whereas today, it's about the hit and the hit only. There might ultimately be an album, but all you've got to look at is the streaming numbers on Spotify, the hit has been played disproportionately, oftentimes the album tracks' streams are de minimis.
But who would want more from the Top 40 artists, whose songs are oftentimes written by committee, whose productions go through layers of mixing and... These are commercial products. This is the business the major labels are in, this is the business that gets all the press, but never has it been such a sideshow.
Now Top 40 ruled for years before the late sixties. FM radio made album rock burgeon. Along with "Sgt. Pepper" (maybe it started with "Rubber Soul" or "Revolver"). The act was making a full-length statement, that you wanted to hear. And FM started off free-format, not only would they play the obscure, they'd play entire album sides...it changed the culture of music, suddenly rock was a serious art form that deserved respect, that ultimately the entire nation, the entire world, cottoned to.
Now FM became formulated, thanks to Lee Abrams, there was a tight format, but it was understood that it was still all about the album, the track on the radio was just the sample, excised from an opus you needed to consume.
And then MTV took this formula into the stratosphere.
Now when Napster came along, suddenly you could pick and choose the songs you wanted, and only the songs you wanted. Which was the business model of iTunes and then Spotify, et al. At first the labels hated this, because they were baked into the old model, they thought they could only make money via albums...Daniel Ek proved to them that this was untrue. As for the acts...they were pissed, because they didn't want their full-length opus messed with, you were supposed to listen to it the way they wanted you to. Remember when acts were concerned about leaks, of not only albums, but work tapes and live tracks? That's fallen by the wayside, your deepest desire is that people will find you at all, listen to you at all, and it's your hard core fans who are keeping you alive, and you want to superserve them.
And then there were acts who said they were going to give it one last shot and then they were no longer going to make albums, like Sheryl Crow. But the problem was that no matter how much hype there was, you could not get the public to consume an entire album by someone from the prior century, it was nearly impossible. Then those acts stopped making new music at all...why put in all that effort if no one would hear it?
So today we've got the Top 40. Which is akin to the heyday of MTV, but the acts have no depth, the album isn't where it's at, it's only the single that counts, that people are interested in (of course there are exceptions, but don't nitpick).
There are acts doing it the old way, not on major labels, oftentimes complaining they're not being paid by streaming outlets and... Do they deserve to be paid? Is their music such that masses of people want to listen to it?
Oftentimes no.
So what we've got here is a sphere of Top 40 vapidity, and too many acts that don't deserve attention on the other extreme. And the business won't be healthy until it starts promoting those acts who are creating bodies of work that are worth listening to.
The major labels don't want to do this, the lift is too hard, never mind the amount of time it takes to break through. They just keep repeating the formula of dreck. To the point where music has never gotten this little respect in my lifetime. It's seen as ditties, entertainment, warring camps of fans, there's no there there.
But music used to be the bleeding edge, that's where you went to find out what was really going on.
In the old days, with so much less music, great would surface. Not anymore. And even if it does, it may take years to shine through. Such that the thinkers who can create this music that deserves attention don't. They oftentimes don't even start. They go into tech or finance, where the odds of success are much, much higher. And even if you do play the game and gain success you get no respect. The intelligentsia laugh at you, whereas the intelligentsia used to have to take notice... Everybody watched MTV, EVERYBODY! Those were universal hits.
Today's hits are niche.
We can talk about distribution platforms, a changing market, but we can also say that we're not inspiring artists, and that those who are inspired are not given a leg up, are not promoted because they don't sound like what's on Top 40, as if most people want to pay attention to today's Top 40, which is really the Spotify Top 50.
It starts with the artists. How do we encourage them, how do we get them to take their work seriously, how do we get them to say no to opportunities that will hurt their image?
Today music is dominated by the lowest common denominator who have no options, they're going nowhere fast, the model is the Kardashians, not the Beatles, never mind the Moody Blues, Led Zeppelin, Jethro Tull, the Eagles...
But after we inspire the acts, we much change the focus, to those who are creating a body of work worth paying attention to.
We need to realign the vision of the labels, the press, we have to stop celebrating the penumbra and go for the nougat, the essence. Enough with the fashion and the brand extensions, how do we make music number one?
There are examples, most notably Rosalía with "Lux," but experimental, limit-testing music used to be the standard, the goal, the mainstream, by time we hit the seventies Top 40 was a sideshow.
But to the casual listener, and it's the casual listeners who need to be corralled to lift the status of music, the Top 40 is tripe, they're listening to oldies (keeping the major labels' coffers full). The music business has successfully marginalized itself. And no one will take responsibility, especially the major labels, which will tell you they're businesses, first and foremost.
But excitement about quality new music lifts all boats.
But right now we're sunk.
--
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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1929
"1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History--and How It Shattered a Nation": https://tinyurl.com/2xd8bm3y
You don't want to read this book.
I'm only bothering to write about it because it's been on the best seller list for months.
Books are not like music, you don't get to experience it before you buy it, so with the accolades and sales many people are purchasing this book, and I won't say as few are completing it as Stephen Hawking's "A Brief History of Time," but I think most people never make it to the end.
The bottom line is first and foremost a book must be readable. Information is not enough, you must have a narrative, you must pull the reader in. But "1929" is a pastiche of facts, of research, it reads like a college thesis, and you know how many people read those when they're done...ZERO!
I've got no problem with Aaron Ross Sorkin. Then again, when you spread yourself this thin... Ryan Seacrest might be doing many things, but he's got as much gravitas as a box of Cheerios. It's mindless. Whereas Sorkin is on CNBC, helped create "Billions" and is a writer for the "New York Times." As for taking the time to write a book? When? With not only these gigs, but three children to boot!
So you're scratching your head saying he writes for the "New York Times," how bad can he be?
Well newspaper writing is different from book writing. Newspaper writing is about information laid out clearly and concisely. Furthermore, in a paper like the "Times," opinion is relegated to a different page, so there's no attitude, no real perspective, just the facts.
If you want someone to take the time to read a book...
The dirty little secret is most books don't sell. Maybe a couple of thousand copies at best. And in a country of 300+ million, that's bupkes. But we're subjected to hype about these tomes for months, and reviews and... Kara Swisher talked about her lame book for months, as if anybody cared, and it came out and face-planted...it wasn't good, I tried to read it. But she gets a pass from the others in the information industrial complex.
As for the book business... If you want to talk about people with a lot of self-respect, it's not down and dirty like the music business. And those who work in it hate that lowbrow stuff is keeping the lights on.
So "1929" was billed as a deep dive into the crash, with lessons for today.
Well, at first I could see the parallels, but those died pretty quickly. It was a different time with different regulations, or lack thereof. Are there still crooks in finance? Yes, but they're not really doing it the same way. (Although you did see that Jamie Dimon made $770 million last year...and this is heinous, no one deserves that much, especially when people are hurting, having a tough time making ends meet, never mind getting health care.)
What I wanted was drama. What it felt like when the market actually crashed. And at that point, Sorkin is writing about the market day by day, I'm waiting for the shoe to drop, but it never does narratively, you feel like the market went down and then down further and...whatever is happening on Wall Street is detached from the rest of the country in "1929."
At the end of this book, Sorkin thanks Erik Larson for advice. I've read all the Larson books, the best one is still the one I read first, "Devil in the White City." But as good a researcher as Larson is, and decent with narrative too, his books are flat, there's no arc, just endless information. As for Sorkin's "1929," it's a pale imitation of Larson.
Only when you get to the end of the book does Sorkin say he wanted to flesh out the personalities. Well, the focus of the book kept on switching from the people to the market and...you can't do everything, focus on one or the other, or write about one person, or the crash itself, a secret of writing is you sometimes have to leave the best stuff out, because it doesn't fit with the narrative. But Sorkin throws in the words of a preacher from Massachusetts at the end...someone without profile who had no connection with the players, why?
Because Sorkin was determined to see all his research in print.
The most amazing thing, the true lesson for me, was that so many of these people ended up broke, they were gamblers, they never saved for a rainy day. And most of their names have been forgotten. And you will read a bit about the individuals, but you'll tell yourself there's got to be a better book about this out there, and I'm sure there is, probably one of those Sorkin credits as a jumping off point.
Writing is hard. And I'll also say, writers are born, not made. As a matter of fact, the more you teach someone how to write the more you risk squeezing the creativity out of them. We don't need me-too, we need unique.
So I finished this book, even though at times my eyes glazed over and I had to reread passages, but not only was it disappointing, I just couldn't get over the fact that this was the book everybody was hailing, everybody was talking about, that was selling.
It doesn't deserve 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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--
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You don't want to read this book.
I'm only bothering to write about it because it's been on the best seller list for months.
Books are not like music, you don't get to experience it before you buy it, so with the accolades and sales many people are purchasing this book, and I won't say as few are completing it as Stephen Hawking's "A Brief History of Time," but I think most people never make it to the end.
The bottom line is first and foremost a book must be readable. Information is not enough, you must have a narrative, you must pull the reader in. But "1929" is a pastiche of facts, of research, it reads like a college thesis, and you know how many people read those when they're done...ZERO!
I've got no problem with Aaron Ross Sorkin. Then again, when you spread yourself this thin... Ryan Seacrest might be doing many things, but he's got as much gravitas as a box of Cheerios. It's mindless. Whereas Sorkin is on CNBC, helped create "Billions" and is a writer for the "New York Times." As for taking the time to write a book? When? With not only these gigs, but three children to boot!
So you're scratching your head saying he writes for the "New York Times," how bad can he be?
Well newspaper writing is different from book writing. Newspaper writing is about information laid out clearly and concisely. Furthermore, in a paper like the "Times," opinion is relegated to a different page, so there's no attitude, no real perspective, just the facts.
If you want someone to take the time to read a book...
The dirty little secret is most books don't sell. Maybe a couple of thousand copies at best. And in a country of 300+ million, that's bupkes. But we're subjected to hype about these tomes for months, and reviews and... Kara Swisher talked about her lame book for months, as if anybody cared, and it came out and face-planted...it wasn't good, I tried to read it. But she gets a pass from the others in the information industrial complex.
As for the book business... If you want to talk about people with a lot of self-respect, it's not down and dirty like the music business. And those who work in it hate that lowbrow stuff is keeping the lights on.
So "1929" was billed as a deep dive into the crash, with lessons for today.
Well, at first I could see the parallels, but those died pretty quickly. It was a different time with different regulations, or lack thereof. Are there still crooks in finance? Yes, but they're not really doing it the same way. (Although you did see that Jamie Dimon made $770 million last year...and this is heinous, no one deserves that much, especially when people are hurting, having a tough time making ends meet, never mind getting health care.)
What I wanted was drama. What it felt like when the market actually crashed. And at that point, Sorkin is writing about the market day by day, I'm waiting for the shoe to drop, but it never does narratively, you feel like the market went down and then down further and...whatever is happening on Wall Street is detached from the rest of the country in "1929."
At the end of this book, Sorkin thanks Erik Larson for advice. I've read all the Larson books, the best one is still the one I read first, "Devil in the White City." But as good a researcher as Larson is, and decent with narrative too, his books are flat, there's no arc, just endless information. As for Sorkin's "1929," it's a pale imitation of Larson.
Only when you get to the end of the book does Sorkin say he wanted to flesh out the personalities. Well, the focus of the book kept on switching from the people to the market and...you can't do everything, focus on one or the other, or write about one person, or the crash itself, a secret of writing is you sometimes have to leave the best stuff out, because it doesn't fit with the narrative. But Sorkin throws in the words of a preacher from Massachusetts at the end...someone without profile who had no connection with the players, why?
Because Sorkin was determined to see all his research in print.
The most amazing thing, the true lesson for me, was that so many of these people ended up broke, they were gamblers, they never saved for a rainy day. And most of their names have been forgotten. And you will read a bit about the individuals, but you'll tell yourself there's got to be a better book about this out there, and I'm sure there is, probably one of those Sorkin credits as a jumping off point.
Writing is hard. And I'll also say, writers are born, not made. As a matter of fact, the more you teach someone how to write the more you risk squeezing the creativity out of them. We don't need me-too, we need unique.
So I finished this book, even though at times my eyes glazed over and I had to reread passages, but not only was it disappointing, I just couldn't get over the fact that this was the book everybody was hailing, everybody was talking about, that was selling.
It doesn't deserve 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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Sunday, 11 January 2026
Bob Weir
1
He was the cute one.
The history of the Grateful Dead is presently well-known, but at the turn of the decade, from '69 to '70, that was not the case. The Dead were a fringe band from San Francisco which had a deal with a major label but had no radio hits, never mind a Top 40 hit, unlike Jefferson Airplane, another act that was seen as a collective, living together in a house. Eventually news squeaked out about the Warlocks, but unless you were living in San Francisco, the Dead were an enigma.
They finally got press with their 1969 double album "Live/Dead," but that didn't move the needle significantly. Whatever audience the Dead had was built on the road. And since the band had to survive, they worked.
And then came "Workingman's Dead" and "Uncle John's Band," which was perfect for the summer of 1970, it sat right alongside the CSNY hits. And it was a double whammy, in the fall came "American Beauty," the true breakthrough, much more accessible than anything the band had released previously, and this is when their touring footprint increased and they garnered new fans. It was really three tracks: "Friend of the Devil" and "Ripple" and "Sugar Magnolia." Easily digestible, as opposed to the space rock that preceded them, this is when new fans came aboard, casual listeners. And when they went to see the band they expected something conventional, short songs as opposed to extended jams, which turned out to be a bonus.
Not that the audience was completely ignorant. Let's be clear, the Dead were not an AM thing, they existed on FM and turntables. But that's where the passion was, that's where the action was, that's where the exploration was, that's where the envelope was being pushed. The listeners of FM were always eager to have their horizons expanded. They might have known about the long Dead shows, but it was the short songs that were the entry point.
And live, it might have been Jerry Garcia's band, but Bob Weir was the frontman.
The rest of the band did not look like people you knew, the suburbanites who cottoned to the Dead were used to more freshly-scrubbed acts. Sure, some might be rough around the edges, but the Dead looked like they rolled right off the bus, maybe without a shower. They were not physically appealing.
Except for Bob Weir. He was younger than the rest, and he had that shoulder-length hair. How did he end up in this band? It was as if the act recruited from summer camp...how did he get a chance, how did he get included, how did he stay in the group?
But he was definitely a member, as delineated in "Truckin'." They were all drinkin' and druggin' and although the one-two punch of the 1970 albums brought them closer to the mainstream, right thereafter they steered away. The Dead were sui generis. Maybe influenced by what had come before, blues, jug band music, but no one sounded like the Grateful Dead, no one even went down the jam band path until that scene flowered in the nineties.
But to have a band this big, women must be interested. And women were, and Weir has to get credit for that. Otherwise, the Dead would have been Rush, a cadre of male acolytes, but very few females.
Bob was a member of the band, overshadowed on wax until his solo album "Ace" came out in 1972.
By this point people were hungry for everything Dead affiliated, there'd been an album released from the era before Warner Bros. And earlier in the year, Jerry had released "Garcia," his first solo album. It started with the infectious "Deal" and contained "Sugaree," which became a standard, but it was definitely a side project, a ramble down the road of Garcia's personal interests.
That was January. "Ace" was released in May. And it delivered what "Garcia" did not, in your face upbeat playability, with one bonafide standard, "Playing in the Band," and "One More Saturday Night," which became a staple of the Dead's live shows, and "Cassidy."
This was a surprise. From a distance it almost seemed like a rivalry. But "Ace" lifted Bob Weir's cred dramatically, he and Jerry were now clearly the leaders of the band...if not quite equals, Bob was now right there alongside him.
2
I could recite the rest of the Dead's history. From their own label to the hit with Clive Davis to the eighties when Gen-X glommed on and cities didn't want the Dead in their buildings because of the penumbra they brought with them, the hangers-on.
And then Jerry Garcia died. In 1995. Before his time, at age 53. It wasn't surprising his body gave out, after all the abuse he'd put it through, but Jerry was seen as the heart and soul of the Dead and the rest of the members decided not to operate under that moniker. Not that they didn't play, they just called it something else, like the Other Ones, whose double album "The Strange Remain," with Bruce Hornsby in the group, is my favorite late "Dead" work.
Weir, Lesh and Hart were in that band, but there were also solo projects. The legend continued. And the man carrying the flag forward was Weir. Sure, Phil had his fans, and would do solo work, but it was Weir who'd written and sung those songs, Weir with the personality. Sometimes they played together, and sometimes not. And I won't say that anybody could replace Jerry, but sans Bob, there would be no continued Dead mania, and there was.
There were highlights, like "Fare Thee Well," and then came Dead & Company, pure heresy to many fans who'd come on board from the sixties to the eighties, but the dirty little secret was that Dead & Company were tight in ways that the original Dead were sloppy. If you went, you know.
But you can't go no more.
Now the thing about the Dead is as important as the music was and still is, it's a culture, far surpassing any act of its stature. You belong to a family. And just like with a family, everybody has a different take on the history, there are arguments. If I write anything about the Dead I hear from Deadheads correcting and insulting me, as if I have no right to write. When the funny thing is almost all of them came aboard in the eighties and I first saw the band in '71. Bought my first album in '69. But that is not enough. However I see it is wrong. But I do see it, and this is my take.
3
Joe Walsh once said he was too old to die young. That the paper wouldn't be filled with laments about being cut down before his time. 78? Every boomer expects to live longer, but that's a full ride. Sure, Weir wanted more, we wanted him to have more, but it's over. Sure, there was shock hearing about Bob's death, but there was an underlying weirdness, that the dream had died, that it was all over. Without Jerry we had the Dead. Without Phil we had the Dead. Without Bob, there is no Dead. Period.
Sure, John Mayer can lay down the licks. Hornsby can tickle the ivories. But that would be more like a tribute band.
There's not going to be a 65th anniversary show. And no more Sphere shows either, no more pilgrimages to Las Vegas to revel in the history of the music and this band.
It's over. That's that.
When on some level we thought the Dead were forever.
The interesting thing is the Dead never flagged, and that's extremely unusual. Most acts are hit dependent, the Dead never were. After "Workingman's Dead" and "American Beauty," with "Europe '72" as the cherry on top, the Dead could always sell tickets. Just as many as before. There was never a dip in their business. Bob Weir has been in the public eye for nearly sixty years. He never went on hiatus, retreated to the mountains for a decade, or to a monastery like Leonard Cohen. He was always here, playing that music.
And he aged in public. From that long brown hair to short to a white mop top and moustache, looking like a Gold Rush miner. Sure, he got his teeth fixed, but otherwise it was still the same Bob underneath. And no one with this amount of fame is a regular person, but Weir never evidenced an edge, he was always open and friendly. He'd come from a family band and treated you like family.
So it's like the death of a loved one. Kinda like your mother or father. Someone you knew your whole life, who you never lost touch with, who you checked in with on a regular basis, who remained true to themselves, who you could count on.
So the absence hurts. Not in an Elvis way, or a Garcia way, there was shock, but Weir's death hit me as the end of an era. Sure, classic rockers have been dying with increased regularity over the last decade, but somehow the Dead always carried on. Usually with Bob out front. But that's gone.
So it makes me think of my own mortality. When I first saw the Dead Bob was 23, I was in college. I'm never going back to any school, and the people I studied with are in their seventies, unlike Weir, many retired. They've left whatever mark and now they're running on fumes. Off the radar screen. But Weir? He was still up front and center.
So...
That's it. A complete career arc. A lot of us saw it from start to finish, and we can't say that we were ripped-off, Weir gave it his all, he was the last frontman standing, and every band needs a frontperson.
What happens to the Dead's music hereafter?
I don't know, predicting the future is a fool's errand. Sure, there will be tribute acts, but how long will that last? And the truth is the Dead were always a live experience, the records were just a jumping off point. You had to be there.
And many of us were.
But never again.
--
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He was the cute one.
The history of the Grateful Dead is presently well-known, but at the turn of the decade, from '69 to '70, that was not the case. The Dead were a fringe band from San Francisco which had a deal with a major label but had no radio hits, never mind a Top 40 hit, unlike Jefferson Airplane, another act that was seen as a collective, living together in a house. Eventually news squeaked out about the Warlocks, but unless you were living in San Francisco, the Dead were an enigma.
They finally got press with their 1969 double album "Live/Dead," but that didn't move the needle significantly. Whatever audience the Dead had was built on the road. And since the band had to survive, they worked.
And then came "Workingman's Dead" and "Uncle John's Band," which was perfect for the summer of 1970, it sat right alongside the CSNY hits. And it was a double whammy, in the fall came "American Beauty," the true breakthrough, much more accessible than anything the band had released previously, and this is when their touring footprint increased and they garnered new fans. It was really three tracks: "Friend of the Devil" and "Ripple" and "Sugar Magnolia." Easily digestible, as opposed to the space rock that preceded them, this is when new fans came aboard, casual listeners. And when they went to see the band they expected something conventional, short songs as opposed to extended jams, which turned out to be a bonus.
Not that the audience was completely ignorant. Let's be clear, the Dead were not an AM thing, they existed on FM and turntables. But that's where the passion was, that's where the action was, that's where the exploration was, that's where the envelope was being pushed. The listeners of FM were always eager to have their horizons expanded. They might have known about the long Dead shows, but it was the short songs that were the entry point.
And live, it might have been Jerry Garcia's band, but Bob Weir was the frontman.
The rest of the band did not look like people you knew, the suburbanites who cottoned to the Dead were used to more freshly-scrubbed acts. Sure, some might be rough around the edges, but the Dead looked like they rolled right off the bus, maybe without a shower. They were not physically appealing.
Except for Bob Weir. He was younger than the rest, and he had that shoulder-length hair. How did he end up in this band? It was as if the act recruited from summer camp...how did he get a chance, how did he get included, how did he stay in the group?
But he was definitely a member, as delineated in "Truckin'." They were all drinkin' and druggin' and although the one-two punch of the 1970 albums brought them closer to the mainstream, right thereafter they steered away. The Dead were sui generis. Maybe influenced by what had come before, blues, jug band music, but no one sounded like the Grateful Dead, no one even went down the jam band path until that scene flowered in the nineties.
But to have a band this big, women must be interested. And women were, and Weir has to get credit for that. Otherwise, the Dead would have been Rush, a cadre of male acolytes, but very few females.
Bob was a member of the band, overshadowed on wax until his solo album "Ace" came out in 1972.
By this point people were hungry for everything Dead affiliated, there'd been an album released from the era before Warner Bros. And earlier in the year, Jerry had released "Garcia," his first solo album. It started with the infectious "Deal" and contained "Sugaree," which became a standard, but it was definitely a side project, a ramble down the road of Garcia's personal interests.
That was January. "Ace" was released in May. And it delivered what "Garcia" did not, in your face upbeat playability, with one bonafide standard, "Playing in the Band," and "One More Saturday Night," which became a staple of the Dead's live shows, and "Cassidy."
This was a surprise. From a distance it almost seemed like a rivalry. But "Ace" lifted Bob Weir's cred dramatically, he and Jerry were now clearly the leaders of the band...if not quite equals, Bob was now right there alongside him.
2
I could recite the rest of the Dead's history. From their own label to the hit with Clive Davis to the eighties when Gen-X glommed on and cities didn't want the Dead in their buildings because of the penumbra they brought with them, the hangers-on.
And then Jerry Garcia died. In 1995. Before his time, at age 53. It wasn't surprising his body gave out, after all the abuse he'd put it through, but Jerry was seen as the heart and soul of the Dead and the rest of the members decided not to operate under that moniker. Not that they didn't play, they just called it something else, like the Other Ones, whose double album "The Strange Remain," with Bruce Hornsby in the group, is my favorite late "Dead" work.
Weir, Lesh and Hart were in that band, but there were also solo projects. The legend continued. And the man carrying the flag forward was Weir. Sure, Phil had his fans, and would do solo work, but it was Weir who'd written and sung those songs, Weir with the personality. Sometimes they played together, and sometimes not. And I won't say that anybody could replace Jerry, but sans Bob, there would be no continued Dead mania, and there was.
There were highlights, like "Fare Thee Well," and then came Dead & Company, pure heresy to many fans who'd come on board from the sixties to the eighties, but the dirty little secret was that Dead & Company were tight in ways that the original Dead were sloppy. If you went, you know.
But you can't go no more.
Now the thing about the Dead is as important as the music was and still is, it's a culture, far surpassing any act of its stature. You belong to a family. And just like with a family, everybody has a different take on the history, there are arguments. If I write anything about the Dead I hear from Deadheads correcting and insulting me, as if I have no right to write. When the funny thing is almost all of them came aboard in the eighties and I first saw the band in '71. Bought my first album in '69. But that is not enough. However I see it is wrong. But I do see it, and this is my take.
3
Joe Walsh once said he was too old to die young. That the paper wouldn't be filled with laments about being cut down before his time. 78? Every boomer expects to live longer, but that's a full ride. Sure, Weir wanted more, we wanted him to have more, but it's over. Sure, there was shock hearing about Bob's death, but there was an underlying weirdness, that the dream had died, that it was all over. Without Jerry we had the Dead. Without Phil we had the Dead. Without Bob, there is no Dead. Period.
Sure, John Mayer can lay down the licks. Hornsby can tickle the ivories. But that would be more like a tribute band.
There's not going to be a 65th anniversary show. And no more Sphere shows either, no more pilgrimages to Las Vegas to revel in the history of the music and this band.
It's over. That's that.
When on some level we thought the Dead were forever.
The interesting thing is the Dead never flagged, and that's extremely unusual. Most acts are hit dependent, the Dead never were. After "Workingman's Dead" and "American Beauty," with "Europe '72" as the cherry on top, the Dead could always sell tickets. Just as many as before. There was never a dip in their business. Bob Weir has been in the public eye for nearly sixty years. He never went on hiatus, retreated to the mountains for a decade, or to a monastery like Leonard Cohen. He was always here, playing that music.
And he aged in public. From that long brown hair to short to a white mop top and moustache, looking like a Gold Rush miner. Sure, he got his teeth fixed, but otherwise it was still the same Bob underneath. And no one with this amount of fame is a regular person, but Weir never evidenced an edge, he was always open and friendly. He'd come from a family band and treated you like family.
So it's like the death of a loved one. Kinda like your mother or father. Someone you knew your whole life, who you never lost touch with, who you checked in with on a regular basis, who remained true to themselves, who you could count on.
So the absence hurts. Not in an Elvis way, or a Garcia way, there was shock, but Weir's death hit me as the end of an era. Sure, classic rockers have been dying with increased regularity over the last decade, but somehow the Dead always carried on. Usually with Bob out front. But that's gone.
So it makes me think of my own mortality. When I first saw the Dead Bob was 23, I was in college. I'm never going back to any school, and the people I studied with are in their seventies, unlike Weir, many retired. They've left whatever mark and now they're running on fumes. Off the radar screen. But Weir? He was still up front and center.
So...
That's it. A complete career arc. A lot of us saw it from start to finish, and we can't say that we were ripped-off, Weir gave it his all, he was the last frontman standing, and every band needs a frontperson.
What happens to the Dead's music hereafter?
I don't know, predicting the future is a fool's errand. Sure, there will be tribute acts, but how long will that last? And the truth is the Dead were always a live experience, the records were just a jumping off point. You had to be there.
And many of us were.
But never again.
--
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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