"The Premonition: A Pandemic Story": https://amzn.to/3o7cdUf
1
Michael Lewis makes ordinary people stars. Like Billy Beane. And Michael Burry. And now Charity Dean.
The "New York Times" gave this book a positive review, the "Wall Street Journal" a negative one. The WSJ said been there, done that, it's in the past, so why bother sifting through the ashes? Well, when you read "The Premonition" you can see why. America is broken. As Lewis says, Trump exacerbated the poor coronavirus response, but he shared responsibility with our institutions, like the CDC.
I always respected the CDC. I lost some admiration during the covid crisis, but after this book I've lost almost all of my faith. You see the CDC does not lead. Because if you do, and you make a mistake, your head gets chopped off. Actually, this is what happened, and as a result the head of the organization is now appointed by the president, so the titular head changes regularly, the CDC has become politicized, but it's much worse than that.
What we've learned this century is we need government, not only for pandemics, but natural disasters and so much more. Something bad happens, and the same people who say we must lower taxes and shrink the government expect to be rescued and made whole by it. But so many holes have been punched in the government since Reagan that you must rescue yourself, if you can do so. As for Americans' expectation to be made whole after every bad event...this is fallacious, not only in fact but spirit. No one can lose their job, no one can lose anything in today's country, so very few sacrifice, they hold on to what they've got.
So Charity Dean decided to go into public service. After her medical residency she decided to become the chief health officer of Santa Barbara County as opposed to working in the private sector. Pay was lousy, but she could make a difference. She grew up in a sheltered religious environment in the Pacific Northwest and had been shaking off its restrictions ever since she went to college. You see they don't want you to be educated, for fear you'll learn and change your perspective. Hell, I thought my mother knew everything before I went to college, I soon learned that she did not, and she did not like this, and I come from a liberal, questioning background!
So Charity Dean throws over the arranged husband, proceeds in medicine, and then confronts a complacent medical landscape north of Los Angeles. And the truth is no one wants change, no one wants people to stand up to power, people want to be left alone to break the rules and injure others. Like the doctor who was not observing cleanliness procedures, turns out he was spreading hepatitis C, Dean shut him down. And after mudslides wiped out a ton of expensive homes in Montecito, she insisted on evacuating an old age home in a slide path. They'd survived the first round, but this time? If they evacuated the residents some people would die, if they didn't they all might die. Turns out Dean insisted they evacuate and some people did die and the mudslides never hit. Whew, imagine the blowback! But the truth is to survive we need big thinkers willing to go against conventional wisdom.
Like Richard Hatchett and Carter Mecher who come up with the pandemic plan. They came up with the idea of closing schools, of social distancing. And the truth is it works, assuming you do it early enough. But when it came time to make that call, nobody in government wanted to do it. Actually, they reached down to Charity Dean, the state's deputy public-health officer, to impose on the administration...that's one of the reasons California shut down early, to send the message to other states that they should do so too. But, this was a secret organization, people were going behind the president's back.
2
So what you learn is Charity Dean is an old school American, not one of the faux freedom ignoramuses, but one who is willing to stand up for truth, justice and the American Way. You remember that, don't you? It's mostly gone today, everybody is fearful of being kicked out of the tribe.
But the real lesson is how inefficient and unprepared government institutions are to deal with normal, expected experiences. And since our health care is private, hospitals are locked into lab contracts, so even if you want to provide testing for free, you can't, despite the labs delivering results so long after the fact that they're useless.
Meanwhile, science is key, not religion. It's the genome that allowed the virus to be tracked. Then the government wouldn't cough up enough money to run the test on all people, allowing the virus to spread willy-nilly, with no one really knowing where it was going.
It's scary.
But there are these unknown geniuses who make all the difference, who have been unsung before Michael Lewis writes about them in this book. Like the aforementioned Carter Mecher. His specialty is pulling the lens so far back that he can see the entire picture and draw conclusions. Sure, he's an MD, but it's his intellect that makes all the difference. You can't study to be this in a rigorous business school education, you must be a freethinker, willing to tinker with accepted facts that turn out not to be. And it also turns out that when you deliver, people start looking for you and ultimately depending upon you. And Carter wants no attention, no fame, he's the opposite of today's influencer culture, he just wants the job done.
Then there's the scientist who comes up with a way to model the spread of viruses who no one will listen to. You see if you're an outsider, you're literally shut out. He ultimately cracks the code via a personal relationship, knowing someone who knows someone...but most people would not have persisted this long. Furthermore, when the right people ultimately see his work they think it's genius and immediately track him down. Yes, those in charge can recognize genius, assuming you can reach them, and oftentimes these people are inundated with input and you can't, or systems have to be followed. You see the government systems here, the chain of command and...
Charity Dean gets passed over to be the chief health officer in California, instead they put in a...minority person. Who's got no clue re the pandemic and is most interested in making no waves and keeping her job, she thwarts Dean at every turn, until she is ultimately exposed and resigns. This is a very thorny issue. Yes, we want to expand opportunity for minorities, but at what cost? Do we install the best people or do we do the math and pick from column A or B because...
And so many people in this book work for free. In a world where almost no one will work for free. Where everybody's complaining they're not getting paid enough to begin with, that they're being screwed by the system. But doctors will put themselves at covid risk to try and bridge the gap of testing, working nearly around the clock as volunteers. Never mind research delivering all this expertise so the wheels of progress can turn. You denigrate the elites at your peril.
3
So Michael Lewis has a writing style. Most people do not. It's just the facts ma'am, and the result is boring and unreadable. Lewis tries to personalize the story, go so deep that you can relate. However, just like with "Flash Boys," ultimately you have to go into detail about the science, and many people will be lost. In truth they can skip over these sections and get the gist, but the information is still there for those who want to take the time to comprehend it. In truth, nearly everything worth your time is difficult. But they keep telling us to make it bite-sized, dumb it down so everyone can understand it.
So should you read "The Premonition"?
Well, if you're a Michael Lewis fan, definitely.
If you're not?
Well, if you want to know what really happened over the last year and a half, how we got to here, this is the best book I've read about the coronavirus experience. But be forewarned, you'll also find some stuff that will make your hair stand on end. Like the federal government surreptitiously flying illegal immigrants from Texas to Southern California and dumping them on the streets, because California had enough infrastructure to take care of them. It's kind of like the recent report about the bugging of "Washington Post" reporters' phones...this is much worse than Watergate, our democracy hung in the balance and it still does.
But "The Premonition" is not a political book. It's really about a bunch of people not hobbled by political affiliation who are alert and trying to solve problems, in a world where most don't want to know, refuse to accept responsibility but are quick to blame.
"The Premonition" is not long, but it's not always easy, but you'll feel smart after you read it, and you'll also be inspired... The truth is oftentimes the crowd is wrong, generally accepted wisdom is not, and it's those who refuse to cower, who are willing to go against the grain, who ultimately blow the whistle on falsehood, who get things done. And if Michael Lewis doesn't write about them, chances are you'll never hear of them, but thank god there are still those out there who insist on doing the right thing.
4
There are some lines in the book that impacted me so much that I highlighted them on my Kindle, I want to include some of them below.
"'You can't write a strategy by committee.'"
This was Apple's superpower under Steve Jobs, they didn't just throw more engineers after the problem, they just threw the right ones. This is another reason popular music is in the doldrums, it's an assembly line churning out replicas of what came before when the truth is change comes from a limited number of individuals, maybe even one, who are willing to go against the grain.
"'Experience is making the same mistake over and over again, only with greater confidence."
Just because someone has been there and done that that does not mean they're not wrong. This is the essence of disruption. Why wouldn't people want to buy a fifteen dollar CD with just one good song on it? You have to keep your outlook open, you must change or be left behind.
"Because what do you do when you run out of options? You panic. Having something in front of you, a map, a plan, a list of treatments, even if it isn't completely right, is better than nothing.'"
"'We are reactive and tend to only intervene when things are getting bad,' wrote Carter. 'And what we underestimate is the speed that what's bad moves.'"
When you can see it, it's already too late.
"Why doesn't the United States have the institutions it needs to save itself?"
"Instead of changing her mind about her ambition, she guarded it. 'I learned to hold that card close, because no one believed it,' she said."
And Bob Dylan said this too. Oftentimes it's the introverts, those outside the mainstream, who are castigated when they get attention, who change the world. If they told everybody their dreams they would be laughed out of the room and never taken seriously again. You've got to believe. Then again, too many believe they're the savior when they're not.
"'There will be no standing ovation when you are proven right."
And no one likes an "I told you so." But the truth is society corrects itself and moves on, the past is in the rearview mirror and even if you blew the whistle, even changed the course of history, you probably won't be remembered, never mind get accolades. So, you've got to do what you do because it's RIGHT! Wow, what a concept.
"Even before she'd quit her job she'd had that odd thought, that the country didn't have the institutions that it needed to survive."
This is the essence of the book. Our belief in our nation, its government...you'll question them when you finish "The Premonition." But people just want things to roll on like they have been, without intervention, without any fixes, without any money. Turns out bureaucracy saves America. Sure, it lumbers, but it is necessary. But too many think we should throw the baby out with the bathwater. The truth is we need investment in procedures and enforcement of the rules and never have those been wavering more than today.
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Saturday, 8 May 2021
Peter Frampton Forgets The Words
https://spoti.fi/3tESEnD
This album is ASTOUNDING! This is the kind of album Jeff Beck used to make before he insisted on originals and stopped making albums on a regular basis. Yes, there are moments when Frampton uses the guitar sans effects so it almost sounds like a vocal, like Beck did on "Blow by Blow," yet despite getting some press this album is dead in the water, welcome to 2021 when you can make it, you can even get some publicity, but that does not mean that anybody will listen to it, even hear about it, even if they are fans! Really, if you're a rock fan, if you're a fan of these songs you should check it out, especially in a world where the barrier to entry is so low, it's not like you have to lay down fifteen bucks in a blind effort, just pull it up on your streaming service of choice, I know you subscribe to one.
I started with "Isn't It a Pity. Frampton played on "All Things Must Pass," people aren't quite sure whether he played the acoustic on the released version of this song, but he's got history and you can feel it in the grooves (the bits, don't get technical on me.)
And Frampton's "Isn't It a Pity" is dreamy, but its pace is slow, so I got it and switched tracks when in truth if you listen all the way through the guitar sound expands and...
The opening cut is "If You Want Me to Stay," you know the Sly Stone classic, which no one talks about but if you've ever heard it you've never forgotten it. And listening here you get right into the groove immediately, it feels so good, and sans vocal both this and "Isn't It a Pity" become unique, something different, taking nothing from the originals but inspiration.
Then there's "Avalon," the title track from Roxy Music's classic. A song you know by heart but have never heard on the radio, you own this album don't you, do younger generations own "Avalon"? The intro guitar is unique and appealing, so right yet different from the original. And as the track evolves, it's not rote, this album is not just an exercise, it's something more, from back when albums were not every three or four year marketing extravaganzas, when they were made by musicians, and that's what they were back in the sixties, musicians. And unfortunately Peter Frampton ultimately became a teen idol, but that did not affect his ability to play.
But the revelation here, the reason I'm writing this, is Frampton's cover of Stevie Wonder's classic "I Don't Know Why," the b-side of the single "My Cherie Amour," plowed under in history as a result of Stevie's "Music of My Mind" to "Songs in the Key of Life" tour-de-force. Yes, prior to the seventies Stevie Wonder made classic music, and here Frampton gets the funk just right, you cannot listen without nodding your head.
Now on Spotify no track on "Peter Frampton Forgets The Words" has a million streams. As a matter of fact, only one cut has over two hundred thousand streams, Peter's take on Radiohead's "Reckoner." Six of the ten tracks don't even have a hundred thousand streams, indicating almost no one has heard it.
But you should.
If this were still the sixties, people would know about this album, one of your friends would buy it and you'd go over to their house after school and they'd be playing it on a fall day and it would feel just right and you'd have to own it too.
Everybody's all caught up in the new and different, trying to impress their friends with their hipness and what they know. But that's not what Frampton is delivering here, no one is going to foam at the mouth thinking about it, but if you listen to it, you'll be stunned. This is the music you know, but it's not old, as a matter of fact it's positively alive and breathing, and in some cases kicking.
Word of mouth on this stuff starts slowly. And it hasn't started yet. But once you hear the album, you'll be talking about it, because you'll keep playing it, for the mood it puts you in, because it's not an assault but a companion without being background noise. "Peter Frampton Forgets The Words" could be the sleeper of the year, an award-winner as time goes by. But who cares about trophies, we're all just individuals. I'm writing this on Saturday afternoon, which is conventionally lazy, Sunday even more so... Immediately pull up "Peter Frampton Forgets The Words," you'll be stunned that it feels so right, that it's what you're looking for, even though you weren't even looking.
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This album is ASTOUNDING! This is the kind of album Jeff Beck used to make before he insisted on originals and stopped making albums on a regular basis. Yes, there are moments when Frampton uses the guitar sans effects so it almost sounds like a vocal, like Beck did on "Blow by Blow," yet despite getting some press this album is dead in the water, welcome to 2021 when you can make it, you can even get some publicity, but that does not mean that anybody will listen to it, even hear about it, even if they are fans! Really, if you're a rock fan, if you're a fan of these songs you should check it out, especially in a world where the barrier to entry is so low, it's not like you have to lay down fifteen bucks in a blind effort, just pull it up on your streaming service of choice, I know you subscribe to one.
I started with "Isn't It a Pity. Frampton played on "All Things Must Pass," people aren't quite sure whether he played the acoustic on the released version of this song, but he's got history and you can feel it in the grooves (the bits, don't get technical on me.)
And Frampton's "Isn't It a Pity" is dreamy, but its pace is slow, so I got it and switched tracks when in truth if you listen all the way through the guitar sound expands and...
The opening cut is "If You Want Me to Stay," you know the Sly Stone classic, which no one talks about but if you've ever heard it you've never forgotten it. And listening here you get right into the groove immediately, it feels so good, and sans vocal both this and "Isn't It a Pity" become unique, something different, taking nothing from the originals but inspiration.
Then there's "Avalon," the title track from Roxy Music's classic. A song you know by heart but have never heard on the radio, you own this album don't you, do younger generations own "Avalon"? The intro guitar is unique and appealing, so right yet different from the original. And as the track evolves, it's not rote, this album is not just an exercise, it's something more, from back when albums were not every three or four year marketing extravaganzas, when they were made by musicians, and that's what they were back in the sixties, musicians. And unfortunately Peter Frampton ultimately became a teen idol, but that did not affect his ability to play.
But the revelation here, the reason I'm writing this, is Frampton's cover of Stevie Wonder's classic "I Don't Know Why," the b-side of the single "My Cherie Amour," plowed under in history as a result of Stevie's "Music of My Mind" to "Songs in the Key of Life" tour-de-force. Yes, prior to the seventies Stevie Wonder made classic music, and here Frampton gets the funk just right, you cannot listen without nodding your head.
Now on Spotify no track on "Peter Frampton Forgets The Words" has a million streams. As a matter of fact, only one cut has over two hundred thousand streams, Peter's take on Radiohead's "Reckoner." Six of the ten tracks don't even have a hundred thousand streams, indicating almost no one has heard it.
But you should.
If this were still the sixties, people would know about this album, one of your friends would buy it and you'd go over to their house after school and they'd be playing it on a fall day and it would feel just right and you'd have to own it too.
Everybody's all caught up in the new and different, trying to impress their friends with their hipness and what they know. But that's not what Frampton is delivering here, no one is going to foam at the mouth thinking about it, but if you listen to it, you'll be stunned. This is the music you know, but it's not old, as a matter of fact it's positively alive and breathing, and in some cases kicking.
Word of mouth on this stuff starts slowly. And it hasn't started yet. But once you hear the album, you'll be talking about it, because you'll keep playing it, for the mood it puts you in, because it's not an assault but a companion without being background noise. "Peter Frampton Forgets The Words" could be the sleeper of the year, an award-winner as time goes by. But who cares about trophies, we're all just individuals. I'm writing this on Saturday afternoon, which is conventionally lazy, Sunday even more so... Immediately pull up "Peter Frampton Forgets The Words," you'll be stunned that it feels so right, that it's what you're looking for, even though you weren't even looking.
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Tower Of Babel Society
"Elon Musk is being brought in to save SNL's sagging ratings. He could sink the show in other ways. - In the entertainment and business worlds, there is an argument in favor of the unorthodox host — as well as plenty of warnings": https://wapo.st/3nXWs1Q
Trump united us.
Elon Musk is crazy, unsocialized like many scientists. He's often spouting inanities, but he has changed this world markedly. GM couldn't get the world to go electric, but Tesla has, it's nearly remarkable. Furthermore, the government is moribund when it comes to space, but entrepreneur Elon single-handedly moved the ball forward, albeit with an injection of government cash, and government incentives at Tesla, but I don't want to get into a debate of Musk whatsoever, this is really about SNL.
I'm gonna check out Elon's appearance on SNL, not that I expect him to be good. His delivery is kind of slow, his speech doesn't speed up, and it's kind of flat, all of which argue against comedy gold. But for train-wreck value, I'll take a peek, almost definitely not in real time, maybe on the DVR, most probably online.
But that's not what interested me in this article. It's the ratings drop.
Prior to the presidential election, SNL was averaging 9 million viewers. Which is quite substantial, especially when compared with other network fare. But after Trump was gone, the audience slipped to 4 million, LESS THAN HALF!
It's not like the show itself radically changed. As a matter of fact, it's employing the same formula it used back in the seventies, opening skit, monologue, musical performance, news... But the world changed around the show. The concept itself was no longer new, and therefore it was no longer a cultural phenomenon. You can only maintain your status as a cultural phenomenon if you change. If you stay the same, you can run on fumes at best. David Bowie and Madonna changed, they had long careers, almost everybody else didn't. Even MTV switched it up. Adding a game show and "The Real World." But much of the old audience hates change, if you try to crawl out of the box the naysayers will go full throttle, most people cannot combat this, they cave, even Springsteen brought the E Street Band back.
So the truth is during the insanity of the Trump presidency, people tuned in to SNL to see its spin. Whether it be Alec Baldwin as Trump or Larry David as Bernie Sanders... We were all exasperated at the behavior of Trump and SNL provided the joke and the water cooler, we could connect, we felt that we belonged. But that paradigm no longer applies.
Mass appeal events are cratering all around us but no one cares to look at the causes, no one cares to look at where we're going, they just keep lamenting what we've lost.
Like awards shows. Not only were ratings declining, but this year they cratered, essentially by half. But little of the analysis was about the audience as opposed to the institution or the show. Turned out when you give people options, they take them. Everybody scattered to their own little niche, which they were happy to inhabit. The truth is the wants and desires of human beings are vast, and if choice is limited they can be corralled, but if it's opened wide they run free.
Therefore, everything mass has lost a huge chunk of its audience, EVERYTHING! The only thing everybody is aware of and has an opinion on is Trump. But now that he's no longer president and is off Twitter and Facebook, most people are doing their best to ignore him. Or as Bret Stephens said on Bill Maher's "Real Time," it was like a jackhammer was blasting outside his window for four years and now that it's gone it's a relief, he can think, he can sleep...and Bret Stephens is a right-winger!
And this devolution of mass has implications in all walks of life, especially entertainment. Turns out there is no mass entertainment, it doesn't exist, even though they keep telling us it does.
"'Gutfeld!' beats Jimmy Fallon's 'Tonight Show' throughout April
- The Fox News program has also scored more viewers than Trevor Noah, Seth Meyers, and James Corden": https://fxn.ws/3baLUHm
Jimmy Fallon? America's fair-haired boy, who knows politics should not be discussed at work, yet now goes there, safely, because someone else paved the way?
Turns out Fallon only drew 1.395 million viewers. Whereas Colbert leads the pack with 1.991 with the other Jimmy, Mr. Kimmel, in between at 1.579. And let's never forget that it was Lorne Michaels who groomed Fallon and ultimately delivered this time slot.
Fallon is a man out of time.
Like so many in the entertainment business.
Now let's not go deep into the numbers, the demographics, clips on YouTube, let's just say Gutfeld's show, which was universally panned by critics, which narrowcasts, is beating Fallon, who broadcasts! Turns out you get more people when you go for the niche!
So everybody thinking their career is about world domination, that you've got to be fearful of pissing off a potential customer, is just plain wrong. As a matter of fact, you'll probably do better if you do piss of some potential customers! Turns out your edge will appeal to a large enough crew to give you a substantial artistic and economic footprint.
And the way to go into the mass business is to be a clearinghouse, to be a distributor servicing all the niches. This is what Netflix does. It delivers for the brainy as well as the brain dead. Superheroes and foreign dramas. Low and highbrow documentaries. Netflix knows it's in the mass. Netflix also knows that it's not about any individual show, just making sure people subscribe for the package and don't disconnect.
Which means if you're a musical act, the album is just part of the package. If it's not generating that much income, even if it doesn't have that big a reach, it may not matter, as long as you tour and participate on social media and release enough new product to satiate those who do care. You're not playing to radio, you're not playing to the looky-loos, you're playing to the hard core, who will stand by you, you don't want to alienate them, and you hope they spread the word and you get lucky. But if you try to jam it, try to make everybody pay attention, the audience is turned-off, if they're aware at all, today you can shoot up a school and it can be off the news in a matter of days!
So, major record labels pursue limited genres leaving the landscape open to competitors in every other genre. To their detriment. Same deal with movie studios, they make mass appeal movies to play around the world and it turns out most people don't care and tune out, don't even bother to go to the theatre at all. Sure, the press tells an opposite story, the press is a tool of the entertainment industry, but the truth is the hoi polloi, the average consumer, is totally disconnected from the press. The regular folk get their news and opinions online, oftentimes from individuals as opposed to mass outlets. And you wonder why everybody in America is on a different planet.
This is what the Republicans don't understand. They believe if they fire up their base it's enough to win. But that is patently untrue. You need a big tent to win today. The Democrats need AOC and Joe Manchin. You've got to get along if you want to build a coalition to succeed.
So the Republicans are now trying to tilt the table, rig the game, with voting restrictions. They don't realize that most people have lost respect for the game itself, and the more you mess with it the more you lose control. Like with vaccine reluctance, many people no longer trust the government, full stop. Just like lawyers got a bad name after Watergate. Everybody's looking out for themselves.
And it turns out we don't have a cohesive government anyway, this is what Covid-19 proved, it's not only Trump, the government systems couldn't get it together to enact a comprehensive plan that the public would adhere to, therefore the United States ended up with an untoward number of deaths and ultimately sacrificed the confidence of the populace even more!
We've become Balkanized, it's amazing the United States even works. Which is one reason authoritarianism is gaining traction around the world, many people want someone to make sense of an unsensible world.
But the most interesting disconnect is between those with the communication power, who had a perch in the old world, and the public. Hell, the news missed the rise and appeal of Trump completely. They thought there was no way he could win. They had no idea what people were actually thinking.
Same deal with the Democrats and Bernie Sanders back in 2016.
But it's not 2016 anymore.
Everyone in America is out for themselves, thinking about themselves, which is why no one else is. Everybody believes they're entitled to an opinion and it's just as valid as anybody else's. Anybody with a profile proffers an opinion and zillions of people come out online excoriating it. Gal Gadot, a Hollywood hero, comes out with an inane "Imagine" and there's a backlash, it hurts her profile. How can this happen to a movie star! VERY EASILY!
And sure, Trump is still in our peripheral vision, we're keeping track of him, if for no other reason than the GOP's desire to depose Liz Cheney, but we wonder is it a sideshow we can ignore or is it a harbinger of future control of all of us which we will abhor?
Yes, people are afraid they'll have to go back to a three network world. That they'll have no choice. That it'll be like communism. But the truth is communism isn't even like communism anymore. You can be rich in China. And Russia is just authoritarian, there are elections but you can't get rid of Putin.
And the more you sit at home and watch the shenanigans, the more you're both enraged and prone to lay back and let it all sail by.
And now with Trump gone, most people believe the imminent threat has disappeared so they're going back to their lives and it turns out, all those lives are different. They don't need to tune in to the old stalwarts, they don't have to follow the news 24/7, they can relax and do their best to satiate themselves.
This is what the internet has provided, a world without boredom, where you can find like-minded people in every nook and cranny, where you can even make a living just appealing to the nook and cranny. The country is no longer top down, but bottom up.
But no one in power seems to realize this. They're no different from ancient rockers who believe Spotify is the devil, forgetting that they can make the music for free and distribute it online for almost nothing and tour at inflated ticket prices while they stay in touch with their audience online. But that does not mean people will care anyway, if you want to be alive you must prevent yourself from dying, you must innovate.
And for two decades the innovation all came from Silicon Valley, first in hardware and then in software. But the truth is these tools have now been harnessed by the public, to the point where those who own the platforms can't even control their usage. The public has run away with the conversation, and it's all about conversation, opinions, no one debates how Facebook works, the pipes, it's about what you can do with it.
So this is where we're headed. A Tower of Babel society where everybody speaks a different language and people can't communicate. Look at politics for a prime example. Why should it be any different in entertainment?
--
Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/
--
Listen to the podcast:
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-Apple: https://apple.co/2ndmpvp
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Trump united us.
Elon Musk is crazy, unsocialized like many scientists. He's often spouting inanities, but he has changed this world markedly. GM couldn't get the world to go electric, but Tesla has, it's nearly remarkable. Furthermore, the government is moribund when it comes to space, but entrepreneur Elon single-handedly moved the ball forward, albeit with an injection of government cash, and government incentives at Tesla, but I don't want to get into a debate of Musk whatsoever, this is really about SNL.
I'm gonna check out Elon's appearance on SNL, not that I expect him to be good. His delivery is kind of slow, his speech doesn't speed up, and it's kind of flat, all of which argue against comedy gold. But for train-wreck value, I'll take a peek, almost definitely not in real time, maybe on the DVR, most probably online.
But that's not what interested me in this article. It's the ratings drop.
Prior to the presidential election, SNL was averaging 9 million viewers. Which is quite substantial, especially when compared with other network fare. But after Trump was gone, the audience slipped to 4 million, LESS THAN HALF!
It's not like the show itself radically changed. As a matter of fact, it's employing the same formula it used back in the seventies, opening skit, monologue, musical performance, news... But the world changed around the show. The concept itself was no longer new, and therefore it was no longer a cultural phenomenon. You can only maintain your status as a cultural phenomenon if you change. If you stay the same, you can run on fumes at best. David Bowie and Madonna changed, they had long careers, almost everybody else didn't. Even MTV switched it up. Adding a game show and "The Real World." But much of the old audience hates change, if you try to crawl out of the box the naysayers will go full throttle, most people cannot combat this, they cave, even Springsteen brought the E Street Band back.
So the truth is during the insanity of the Trump presidency, people tuned in to SNL to see its spin. Whether it be Alec Baldwin as Trump or Larry David as Bernie Sanders... We were all exasperated at the behavior of Trump and SNL provided the joke and the water cooler, we could connect, we felt that we belonged. But that paradigm no longer applies.
Mass appeal events are cratering all around us but no one cares to look at the causes, no one cares to look at where we're going, they just keep lamenting what we've lost.
Like awards shows. Not only were ratings declining, but this year they cratered, essentially by half. But little of the analysis was about the audience as opposed to the institution or the show. Turned out when you give people options, they take them. Everybody scattered to their own little niche, which they were happy to inhabit. The truth is the wants and desires of human beings are vast, and if choice is limited they can be corralled, but if it's opened wide they run free.
Therefore, everything mass has lost a huge chunk of its audience, EVERYTHING! The only thing everybody is aware of and has an opinion on is Trump. But now that he's no longer president and is off Twitter and Facebook, most people are doing their best to ignore him. Or as Bret Stephens said on Bill Maher's "Real Time," it was like a jackhammer was blasting outside his window for four years and now that it's gone it's a relief, he can think, he can sleep...and Bret Stephens is a right-winger!
And this devolution of mass has implications in all walks of life, especially entertainment. Turns out there is no mass entertainment, it doesn't exist, even though they keep telling us it does.
"'Gutfeld!' beats Jimmy Fallon's 'Tonight Show' throughout April
- The Fox News program has also scored more viewers than Trevor Noah, Seth Meyers, and James Corden": https://fxn.ws/3baLUHm
Jimmy Fallon? America's fair-haired boy, who knows politics should not be discussed at work, yet now goes there, safely, because someone else paved the way?
Turns out Fallon only drew 1.395 million viewers. Whereas Colbert leads the pack with 1.991 with the other Jimmy, Mr. Kimmel, in between at 1.579. And let's never forget that it was Lorne Michaels who groomed Fallon and ultimately delivered this time slot.
Fallon is a man out of time.
Like so many in the entertainment business.
Now let's not go deep into the numbers, the demographics, clips on YouTube, let's just say Gutfeld's show, which was universally panned by critics, which narrowcasts, is beating Fallon, who broadcasts! Turns out you get more people when you go for the niche!
So everybody thinking their career is about world domination, that you've got to be fearful of pissing off a potential customer, is just plain wrong. As a matter of fact, you'll probably do better if you do piss of some potential customers! Turns out your edge will appeal to a large enough crew to give you a substantial artistic and economic footprint.
And the way to go into the mass business is to be a clearinghouse, to be a distributor servicing all the niches. This is what Netflix does. It delivers for the brainy as well as the brain dead. Superheroes and foreign dramas. Low and highbrow documentaries. Netflix knows it's in the mass. Netflix also knows that it's not about any individual show, just making sure people subscribe for the package and don't disconnect.
Which means if you're a musical act, the album is just part of the package. If it's not generating that much income, even if it doesn't have that big a reach, it may not matter, as long as you tour and participate on social media and release enough new product to satiate those who do care. You're not playing to radio, you're not playing to the looky-loos, you're playing to the hard core, who will stand by you, you don't want to alienate them, and you hope they spread the word and you get lucky. But if you try to jam it, try to make everybody pay attention, the audience is turned-off, if they're aware at all, today you can shoot up a school and it can be off the news in a matter of days!
So, major record labels pursue limited genres leaving the landscape open to competitors in every other genre. To their detriment. Same deal with movie studios, they make mass appeal movies to play around the world and it turns out most people don't care and tune out, don't even bother to go to the theatre at all. Sure, the press tells an opposite story, the press is a tool of the entertainment industry, but the truth is the hoi polloi, the average consumer, is totally disconnected from the press. The regular folk get their news and opinions online, oftentimes from individuals as opposed to mass outlets. And you wonder why everybody in America is on a different planet.
This is what the Republicans don't understand. They believe if they fire up their base it's enough to win. But that is patently untrue. You need a big tent to win today. The Democrats need AOC and Joe Manchin. You've got to get along if you want to build a coalition to succeed.
So the Republicans are now trying to tilt the table, rig the game, with voting restrictions. They don't realize that most people have lost respect for the game itself, and the more you mess with it the more you lose control. Like with vaccine reluctance, many people no longer trust the government, full stop. Just like lawyers got a bad name after Watergate. Everybody's looking out for themselves.
And it turns out we don't have a cohesive government anyway, this is what Covid-19 proved, it's not only Trump, the government systems couldn't get it together to enact a comprehensive plan that the public would adhere to, therefore the United States ended up with an untoward number of deaths and ultimately sacrificed the confidence of the populace even more!
We've become Balkanized, it's amazing the United States even works. Which is one reason authoritarianism is gaining traction around the world, many people want someone to make sense of an unsensible world.
But the most interesting disconnect is between those with the communication power, who had a perch in the old world, and the public. Hell, the news missed the rise and appeal of Trump completely. They thought there was no way he could win. They had no idea what people were actually thinking.
Same deal with the Democrats and Bernie Sanders back in 2016.
But it's not 2016 anymore.
Everyone in America is out for themselves, thinking about themselves, which is why no one else is. Everybody believes they're entitled to an opinion and it's just as valid as anybody else's. Anybody with a profile proffers an opinion and zillions of people come out online excoriating it. Gal Gadot, a Hollywood hero, comes out with an inane "Imagine" and there's a backlash, it hurts her profile. How can this happen to a movie star! VERY EASILY!
And sure, Trump is still in our peripheral vision, we're keeping track of him, if for no other reason than the GOP's desire to depose Liz Cheney, but we wonder is it a sideshow we can ignore or is it a harbinger of future control of all of us which we will abhor?
Yes, people are afraid they'll have to go back to a three network world. That they'll have no choice. That it'll be like communism. But the truth is communism isn't even like communism anymore. You can be rich in China. And Russia is just authoritarian, there are elections but you can't get rid of Putin.
And the more you sit at home and watch the shenanigans, the more you're both enraged and prone to lay back and let it all sail by.
And now with Trump gone, most people believe the imminent threat has disappeared so they're going back to their lives and it turns out, all those lives are different. They don't need to tune in to the old stalwarts, they don't have to follow the news 24/7, they can relax and do their best to satiate themselves.
This is what the internet has provided, a world without boredom, where you can find like-minded people in every nook and cranny, where you can even make a living just appealing to the nook and cranny. The country is no longer top down, but bottom up.
But no one in power seems to realize this. They're no different from ancient rockers who believe Spotify is the devil, forgetting that they can make the music for free and distribute it online for almost nothing and tour at inflated ticket prices while they stay in touch with their audience online. But that does not mean people will care anyway, if you want to be alive you must prevent yourself from dying, you must innovate.
And for two decades the innovation all came from Silicon Valley, first in hardware and then in software. But the truth is these tools have now been harnessed by the public, to the point where those who own the platforms can't even control their usage. The public has run away with the conversation, and it's all about conversation, opinions, no one debates how Facebook works, the pipes, it's about what you can do with it.
So this is where we're headed. A Tower of Babel society where everybody speaks a different language and people can't communicate. Look at politics for a prime example. Why should it be any different in entertainment?
--
Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/
--
Listen to the podcast:
-iHeart: https://ihr.fm/2Gi5PFj
-Apple: https://apple.co/2ndmpvp
--
http://www.twitter.com/lefsetz
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Friday, 7 May 2021
Gone Away
Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3bsN2Xl
YouTube: https://bit.ly/3uwA7uJ
1
I listened to this song seventy five minutes straight last night. And I would have listened even longer if there wasn't a podcast I wanted to hear, which turned out to be a waste, because talking heads lie and musicians, when they're in the groove, do not.
I was listening to the new Offspring album, "Let the Bad Times Roll." I was surprised how good it was. Today you put out an album and then it immediately disappears into the ether, which is why so many new acts put out singles, on a regular basis, trying to maintain mindshare. Put out an album and even fans may not be aware you've done so.
Not that I'm that big an Offspring fan. But I've got to give them credit, for persisting and existing, which is the hardest thing to do in today's marketplace. It's one thing to have a hit, quite another to have another and quite another to be able to draw an audience not only for years, but for decades.
So after my hike, I stopped at the 76 station in Bel-Air. I know gas is more expensive there, but when it's eleven o'clock at night safety becomes a factor, I've had friends who've been mugged at gas stations and my life is worth more than five dollars.
And when I pulled away from the station and was sitting at the light I was stunned that the music was still playing, normally it cuts off in this spot, the satellite can't see through the trees, and it's quite a long interval before the light goes green, so I know.
And after merging back onto the 405 I was cycling through the tracks on the Offspring album and just after I passed the point where Sepulveda cuts underneath the freeway, I heard a piano. Wait a minute, is this a ballad? This was something they did in the late eighties, in the hair band era, most people wouldn't listen to the act's normal music so they cut a track or two to appeal to the masses, the most egregious example being Extreme's "More Than Words," the rest of the LP sounded nothing like it, and not long after that huge hit the act broke up, it turned out that's what people were interested, and that's not the music Extreme normally made.
And an acoustic piano sounds so different from a raucous guitar, especially late at night when you're cruising in your car alone.
"Maybe in another life
I could find you there
Pulled away before your time
I can't deal it's so unfair"
Wait, Dexter's not changing his vocal tone, this is akin to one of those Green Day ballads.
"And it feels and it feels like
Heaven is so far away"
This is not the only ballad about death made by a rock band, the previous best example being Slaughter's "Fly to the Angels." And on that initial LP there's an electric and acoustic take and it's the acoustic take that resonates.
And then the song evolves and there are STRINGS!
In the early seventies strings got a bad name, they were seen as schmaltz. Needless to say they're not a feature of hip-hop tracks, but the truth is strings add majesty, they set your mind free, I'm listening to "Gone Away" and I'm immediately reminded of this take of "Message to My Girl" that I got on Napster twenty years ago, with Split Enz backed up by an orchestra. That's a song that never was a radio hit, but is known by all fans, you see the greats ultimately resurface and sustain.
And I'm now parked in front of the house and I can't turn "Gone Away" off, I'm loving the mood, and I'm getting the feeling...THIS IS A HIT! I don't mean a successful record but a ubiquitous record, that cuts across all audiences, which everybody embraces. But how come it's not a hit already? How come I haven't heard about it already?
So I rush into the house and do research and that's when I find out it's an old song, in fact it went to number one on the Hot Mainstream Rock Tracks chart, but that was back in 1997.
After listening a few times while I was stretching I turned off my phone and settled into the couch and got back to my book, but as soon as I woke up the next day I fired up Spotify and checked out the original.
It sounded nothing like this version. It was the same song, but it was loud and in your face, with a strumming electric guitar and pounding snare. It was good, but this acoustic piano version was TRANSCENDENT!
So now I'm intrigued, I do further research and I find out Five Finger Death Punch did an acoustic take of "Gone Away" and I'm thinking this is like Jack Ingram's quiet version of Hinder's "Lips of Angel," but it's not, the Five Finger Death Punch take starts off with an acoustic piano but not long thereafter it slips into bombast, this is ultimately nothing like the acoustic take of "Gone Away" on Offspring's "Let the Bad Times Roll," it's ultimately bludgeoning, befitting the expectations of Five Finger Death Punch's audience, which is not the mainstream. But research tells me Five Finger Death Punch's take was the inspiration for Offspring's acoustic version, who knows the truth, the web is not always right.
So it's back to Google, and I immediately find a live version of "Gone Away" by Offspring that starts with the acoustic piano, that's akin to the ultimate recorded take, and the audio is not perfect but the vibe, the prickly-skin tension is. Especially at a rockin' concert when the band slows down and plays an intimate number the audience is extremely receptive, this is the highlight of the show. You can hear the audience scream when Dexter takes a short break in the middle. And this live take is very similar to the one on the new album, but it was cut in 2018 and I never heard/saw it, because in the modern world being great is not good enough, there are gems hiding in plain sight it's just that we don't have the roads to take us there, we need an infrastructure plan for the music business. And, not long after the three minute mark, this live take evolves into the original studio take from "Ixnay on the Hombre."
Music... First and foremost it's not a business, it's a feeling. And it's elusive. Oh, a lot can go in your ears but little transforms your body, takes you to a whole new place, where nothing else matters, where it's just you and the music. And when you're in this space you don't want it to end, which is why I didn't turn off "Gone Away" on my hike last night, listening to it from the moment I left my house until over an hour later.
"Pulled away before your time
I can't deal it's so unfair"
Passing before your time. It hurts for those left. Unbearably, the feeling might fade, but it never goes completely away. Which is why "Gone Away" would resonate with such a wide audience.
But when I listened last night I was not paying attention to the lyrics, just the music.
Elton John built a whole career with his piano, and we've got some pop stars employing the instrument these days, but the end result is not raw, so much is layered on top that you end up with just another pop record, but "Gone Away" is not another pop record.
"I reach to the sky and call out your name"
When it works, and it was working last night, you lift your arms in the air, you start to conduct the orchestra, your mind pinballs around your past, listening to music at different points in your life, even being brought to young people's concerts by your parents.
I was hypnotized, I was in a trance, I never wanted it to break.
2
How do you make a hit these days?
Well, the goal is the Spotify Top 50, which leaves out so many styles of music.
You're searching for TikTok synchs, but that platform skews more towards upbeat, jaunty songs, the dark mood that gave birth to the goth movement, the songs that you listened to alone, that kept you from committing suicide, the social network is not made for those. But those are the ones that mean the most to us.
"The world is so cold"
It truly is. Alienation rules, but our music goes in the other direction, towards commerciality, cash is king and if you're not pursuing it, taking every last dollar off the table you get little attention, we're interested in numbers, grosses, not the music itself.
"And it feels like and it feels like
Heaven is so far away"
Boy does it.
If I want to resonate these days I turn to streaming television, not music. Streaming TV is trying to get the emotions right, to reflect real life, that's not the essence of today's music. But just when you think the formula is lost, that you don't even feel the same way about music anymore, you hear "Gone Away" and you're brought right back to where you belong.
This is not made for musos to analyze. This is not made for fans of other genres to denigrate. "Gone Away" is made for people. You remember people, irrelevant of political persuasion, ultimately equal, irrelevant of their bank account, we're all on this planet with more questions than answers just looking to feel that we belong, and nothing can make us feel like we belong more than music, but that's rarely the goal.
This acoustic version of "Gone Away" is one of those tracks that could triumph on all radio formats, played at sporting contests and funerals, something that everybody knows, that they could rely on, a trusted friend when they need it.
But the system has evolved away from providing this. Instead of looking for ubiquity, the music is made for a market.
"And it stings, yeah it stings now
The world is so cold
Now that you've gone away"
Where did the music go? Tracks are built dispassionately by the equivalent of scientists whereas great art is always channeled from an unseeable, untouchable spirit, which lands when you least expect it.
"Gone Away" is stripped to the bone. Strings are added for sweetening, for meaning. And the end result is a concoction that distills the essence of life.
It's what we're looking for.
"Gone Away" live YouTube take: https://bit.ly/3uvP4xh
"Message to My Girl" Split Enz with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra" (song begins just prior to one minute in): https://bit.ly/3uwdXbU
--
Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/
--
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-Apple: https://apple.co/2ndmpvp
--
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YouTube: https://bit.ly/3uwA7uJ
1
I listened to this song seventy five minutes straight last night. And I would have listened even longer if there wasn't a podcast I wanted to hear, which turned out to be a waste, because talking heads lie and musicians, when they're in the groove, do not.
I was listening to the new Offspring album, "Let the Bad Times Roll." I was surprised how good it was. Today you put out an album and then it immediately disappears into the ether, which is why so many new acts put out singles, on a regular basis, trying to maintain mindshare. Put out an album and even fans may not be aware you've done so.
Not that I'm that big an Offspring fan. But I've got to give them credit, for persisting and existing, which is the hardest thing to do in today's marketplace. It's one thing to have a hit, quite another to have another and quite another to be able to draw an audience not only for years, but for decades.
So after my hike, I stopped at the 76 station in Bel-Air. I know gas is more expensive there, but when it's eleven o'clock at night safety becomes a factor, I've had friends who've been mugged at gas stations and my life is worth more than five dollars.
And when I pulled away from the station and was sitting at the light I was stunned that the music was still playing, normally it cuts off in this spot, the satellite can't see through the trees, and it's quite a long interval before the light goes green, so I know.
And after merging back onto the 405 I was cycling through the tracks on the Offspring album and just after I passed the point where Sepulveda cuts underneath the freeway, I heard a piano. Wait a minute, is this a ballad? This was something they did in the late eighties, in the hair band era, most people wouldn't listen to the act's normal music so they cut a track or two to appeal to the masses, the most egregious example being Extreme's "More Than Words," the rest of the LP sounded nothing like it, and not long after that huge hit the act broke up, it turned out that's what people were interested, and that's not the music Extreme normally made.
And an acoustic piano sounds so different from a raucous guitar, especially late at night when you're cruising in your car alone.
"Maybe in another life
I could find you there
Pulled away before your time
I can't deal it's so unfair"
Wait, Dexter's not changing his vocal tone, this is akin to one of those Green Day ballads.
"And it feels and it feels like
Heaven is so far away"
This is not the only ballad about death made by a rock band, the previous best example being Slaughter's "Fly to the Angels." And on that initial LP there's an electric and acoustic take and it's the acoustic take that resonates.
And then the song evolves and there are STRINGS!
In the early seventies strings got a bad name, they were seen as schmaltz. Needless to say they're not a feature of hip-hop tracks, but the truth is strings add majesty, they set your mind free, I'm listening to "Gone Away" and I'm immediately reminded of this take of "Message to My Girl" that I got on Napster twenty years ago, with Split Enz backed up by an orchestra. That's a song that never was a radio hit, but is known by all fans, you see the greats ultimately resurface and sustain.
And I'm now parked in front of the house and I can't turn "Gone Away" off, I'm loving the mood, and I'm getting the feeling...THIS IS A HIT! I don't mean a successful record but a ubiquitous record, that cuts across all audiences, which everybody embraces. But how come it's not a hit already? How come I haven't heard about it already?
So I rush into the house and do research and that's when I find out it's an old song, in fact it went to number one on the Hot Mainstream Rock Tracks chart, but that was back in 1997.
After listening a few times while I was stretching I turned off my phone and settled into the couch and got back to my book, but as soon as I woke up the next day I fired up Spotify and checked out the original.
It sounded nothing like this version. It was the same song, but it was loud and in your face, with a strumming electric guitar and pounding snare. It was good, but this acoustic piano version was TRANSCENDENT!
So now I'm intrigued, I do further research and I find out Five Finger Death Punch did an acoustic take of "Gone Away" and I'm thinking this is like Jack Ingram's quiet version of Hinder's "Lips of Angel," but it's not, the Five Finger Death Punch take starts off with an acoustic piano but not long thereafter it slips into bombast, this is ultimately nothing like the acoustic take of "Gone Away" on Offspring's "Let the Bad Times Roll," it's ultimately bludgeoning, befitting the expectations of Five Finger Death Punch's audience, which is not the mainstream. But research tells me Five Finger Death Punch's take was the inspiration for Offspring's acoustic version, who knows the truth, the web is not always right.
So it's back to Google, and I immediately find a live version of "Gone Away" by Offspring that starts with the acoustic piano, that's akin to the ultimate recorded take, and the audio is not perfect but the vibe, the prickly-skin tension is. Especially at a rockin' concert when the band slows down and plays an intimate number the audience is extremely receptive, this is the highlight of the show. You can hear the audience scream when Dexter takes a short break in the middle. And this live take is very similar to the one on the new album, but it was cut in 2018 and I never heard/saw it, because in the modern world being great is not good enough, there are gems hiding in plain sight it's just that we don't have the roads to take us there, we need an infrastructure plan for the music business. And, not long after the three minute mark, this live take evolves into the original studio take from "Ixnay on the Hombre."
Music... First and foremost it's not a business, it's a feeling. And it's elusive. Oh, a lot can go in your ears but little transforms your body, takes you to a whole new place, where nothing else matters, where it's just you and the music. And when you're in this space you don't want it to end, which is why I didn't turn off "Gone Away" on my hike last night, listening to it from the moment I left my house until over an hour later.
"Pulled away before your time
I can't deal it's so unfair"
Passing before your time. It hurts for those left. Unbearably, the feeling might fade, but it never goes completely away. Which is why "Gone Away" would resonate with such a wide audience.
But when I listened last night I was not paying attention to the lyrics, just the music.
Elton John built a whole career with his piano, and we've got some pop stars employing the instrument these days, but the end result is not raw, so much is layered on top that you end up with just another pop record, but "Gone Away" is not another pop record.
"I reach to the sky and call out your name"
When it works, and it was working last night, you lift your arms in the air, you start to conduct the orchestra, your mind pinballs around your past, listening to music at different points in your life, even being brought to young people's concerts by your parents.
I was hypnotized, I was in a trance, I never wanted it to break.
2
How do you make a hit these days?
Well, the goal is the Spotify Top 50, which leaves out so many styles of music.
You're searching for TikTok synchs, but that platform skews more towards upbeat, jaunty songs, the dark mood that gave birth to the goth movement, the songs that you listened to alone, that kept you from committing suicide, the social network is not made for those. But those are the ones that mean the most to us.
"The world is so cold"
It truly is. Alienation rules, but our music goes in the other direction, towards commerciality, cash is king and if you're not pursuing it, taking every last dollar off the table you get little attention, we're interested in numbers, grosses, not the music itself.
"And it feels like and it feels like
Heaven is so far away"
Boy does it.
If I want to resonate these days I turn to streaming television, not music. Streaming TV is trying to get the emotions right, to reflect real life, that's not the essence of today's music. But just when you think the formula is lost, that you don't even feel the same way about music anymore, you hear "Gone Away" and you're brought right back to where you belong.
This is not made for musos to analyze. This is not made for fans of other genres to denigrate. "Gone Away" is made for people. You remember people, irrelevant of political persuasion, ultimately equal, irrelevant of their bank account, we're all on this planet with more questions than answers just looking to feel that we belong, and nothing can make us feel like we belong more than music, but that's rarely the goal.
This acoustic version of "Gone Away" is one of those tracks that could triumph on all radio formats, played at sporting contests and funerals, something that everybody knows, that they could rely on, a trusted friend when they need it.
But the system has evolved away from providing this. Instead of looking for ubiquity, the music is made for a market.
"And it stings, yeah it stings now
The world is so cold
Now that you've gone away"
Where did the music go? Tracks are built dispassionately by the equivalent of scientists whereas great art is always channeled from an unseeable, untouchable spirit, which lands when you least expect it.
"Gone Away" is stripped to the bone. Strings are added for sweetening, for meaning. And the end result is a concoction that distills the essence of life.
It's what we're looking for.
"Gone Away" live YouTube take: https://bit.ly/3uvP4xh
"Message to My Girl" Split Enz with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra" (song begins just prior to one minute in): https://bit.ly/3uwdXbU
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Thursday, 6 May 2021
Tom Freston-This Week's Podcast
Tom Freston was CEO of MTV Networks and then Viacom and is presently Chairman of the One Campaign, as well as an advisor to Vice and other companies. Tom is a fount of knowledge and insight, and he's down to earth and friendly. It's one thing to be a manager of people, quite another to be able to deliver live. We cover Africa, Afghanistan, Tom's upbringing, his clothing company in Asia and, of course, we go in-depth into MTV. He was was so good, I tingled. You absolutely do not want to miss this!
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-30806836/
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast/id1316200737
https://www.stitcher.com/show/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast
https://open.spotify.com/episode/6Ov47XmMM7XbGJdyuiD0DV?si=af2A9VJ_TvSm2SFA3eDJMA
https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9ff4fb19-54d4-41ae-ae7a-8a6f8d3dafa8/The-Bob-Lefsetz-Podcast
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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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https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-30806836/
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast/id1316200737
https://www.stitcher.com/show/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast
https://open.spotify.com/episode/6Ov47XmMM7XbGJdyuiD0DV?si=af2A9VJ_TvSm2SFA3eDJMA
https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9ff4fb19-54d4-41ae-ae7a-8a6f8d3dafa8/The-Bob-Lefsetz-Podcast
--
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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Wednesday, 5 May 2021
Brad Stone's New Amazon Book
1
"Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire": https://amzn.to/3h39lpW
Monday I decided to replenish my stock of St. Ives face scrub. An old girlfriend had turned me on to Aapri, but they stopped making that, so I switched to St. Ives, which is a bit rougher, but I've gotten used to it, these apricot face scrubs work so well.
So I used to buy the St. Ives at the drugstore, but during the pandemic I saw no need to do this so I ordered it from Amazon.
I got the wrong product.
Now you have to know I have OCD, I check things out to the max, I essentially never make a mistake on stuff like this. So I went back to the picture on the website, and it was the product I wanted, but not the product I got. So I contacted Amazon and they apologized but then I had to return the item, which is a pain in the ass I try to avoid, that's why I try to get it right the first time around.
Now noticing the St. Ives tube in the bathroom was starting to run low, I decided to reorder. Turns out I had to budget fifteen minutes for this.
You see on Amazon, you can click on "Returns & Orders," and search on your previous purchase, how convenient! But when you click to "Buy it again," you can't, what should be simple is not, you're taken to another page where in this case it said "See buying options."
So I clicked on that and... I was brought to a page where they pictured the item, but I had to once again click on "See all buying options."
Now I got a slide over page from the right side of the browser listing a slew of options at various prices and various delivery dates. This was positively insane! I'd normally just choose the one with the best rating and the cheapest price, but in this case I wouldn't receive it for weeks, that didn't make sense. So I decided to start all over.
I searched for St. Ives and I found out there was a St. Ives store on Amazon, what could be better! But when I got there there were two competing items, which made no sense, but when I scrutinized the image, I saw one was in French, so I made a tab for the one in English. But it was for six tubes, and I really didn't want that many, as a matter of fact, I only wanted two. That's why I made the tab, I needed to do further research.
So I search on "St. Ives Fresh Skin" on Amazon and what comes up?
Two pictures from the St. Ives Store, not mentioning the size, one the French product, the other "Acne Control," which is not the product I desire.
Below that...
Well, that was positively insane. I saw my product, but it was in tiny travel tubes, which is not what I wanted. Next to that there was an offer with a dated package which was priced at nearly double every other offer. As for the other two products on that same line, they were far from what I requested, but this line was all SPONSORED! I.e. ads!
The line after that was another sponsored product I had no desire to acquire.
Below that, I saw the French product, four tubes for $18.90. Even better, it was labeled "Amazon's Choice"! Seemed reasonable to just click on that, but why was the product French?
But I really only wanted two tubes. I scrolled down the page and found them, for almost as much as four tubes cost.
That's when I started to scrutinize the per ounce price.
The pack of two was $1.37 per ounce. The pack of four was $0.79 per ounce. But the pack of six, from the St. Ives Store, was $0.61 cents per ounce...WHY WASN'T THIS AMAZON'S CHOICE??
I don't mind paying a bit more for a smaller quantity, but I don't like being ripped-off. So I ended up buying the pack of six, and now I've got enough St. Ives for years. And I blew all this time buying something that should be a no-brainer.
2
You'd think "Amazon's Choice" would be the best deal. But Brad Stone's new book told me that was not necessarily so. The book also went into chapter and verse re advertising on Amazon, and also talked about third party sellers and...if you're getting confused, you now know how I feel. I mean this doesn't happen on the Apple site. It's clear, you buy what you want and move on, even though the products are much more expensive. And there's the rub, the margin on most Amazon products is small, so they do their best to monetize around them.
But hang in there...
Amazon makes more money selling third party products than it does on the products it sells itself. So, the company decided to grow the market. And it turns out many third party sellers get their products from China and then resell them on Amazon so why not cut out the middleman and allow the Chinese to sell directly on Amazon?
Which is what Amazon did, and now the third party sellers were screaming bloody murder, they couldn't touch the price.
But then a lot of the Chinese products were inferior. Clothing where the sleeve immediately fell off. But if you shut down one brand in China, they just start all over using a different brand, it's impossible to stop. Meanwhile, third party sellers must buy advertising, the sponsored posts referenced above, otherwise their products fall way down the search page.
And to tell you the truth, all of this doesn't bother me as much as the fact that I CAN'T EASILY BUY WHAT I WANT!
You see Amazon is squeezing every penny out of screen real estate.
But it gets worse. Selling products isn't such a good business, but providing web services is. Amazon makes most of its money from AWS, Amazon Web Services, which hosts third party websites, even of big companies, this is how Netflix started.
And I could go deeper but reading this book I kept asking myself...WHO CARES?
3
I guess I'm living in an alternative universe. I didn't even know there was such a thing as an MBA when I graduated from college. Life was about fulfillment, I wanted to make a living in the arts.
But most people can't.
You can have little and work in the Amazon warehouse. Now what you saw in "Nomadland" ain't so true anymore. People don't walk twelve miles every day, they stay in one place and...they now have repetitive stress injuries. But one thing you know for sure, when the whistle blows...they go home and get drunk or stoned, try to blow off steam before they have to go back and do it all over again. And they don't get paid enough money to get ahead. And you can't work the same fulfillment gig for years, they blow you out after a few, they don't want tired, uninvested workers. So you're on a hamster wheel, and then they take away the wheel, push you out of the cage and don't care where you roam.
Or you could be working higher up in the food chain. But your job is to squeeze out more pennies, as per above, making everything more efficient. Now let me think, do I want to spend all my working hours making a warehouse run right? Talk about a meaningless life. And as you move up the food chain, you make more money, but you can't spend it because you're working all the time, and most people end up burning out and retiring, and if you played your cards right you had good stock options so you're financially cushioned, but that all depends on the stock price going up, which it may not, despite your best efforts.
4
So Jeff Bezos is in charge. Lock, stock and barrel. He's very hands-on, and he's not so nice. He's learned not to be offensive, but in truth he suffers no fools.
And there are layers of management.
And you have to produce a six page document outlining your perspective, which everybody reads at the start of a meeting, and if chastised in the future you claim it was all in the document, Bezos criticizes your writing skills, you just did not make it clear enough. He laughs that bozo laugh and tells you failure is cool, but that's only if you fail at an A+ level, see around every corner, adjust for every possibility.
And you must think of innovation 24/7, because Bezos keeps telling you Amazon is a "Day 1" company, and must continue to be, a "Day 2" company rests on its laurels, loses its edge and goes out of business.
And there is a ton more business gobbledygook. Is it a two way door or a one way door? If you take this path can you retreat or not? I mean who in hell gets excited about this stuff? Kind of like the law...I know more lawyers that don't practice than those who do. Forget TV, law is mostly boring. And it's hard to make big money. You work for people who make big money, but you don't yourself. Which is why most lawyers are like doctors, always thinking of some business investment that can make them rich. But law is like Amazon in that you've got to get it exactly right. Maybe in the burbs you can use a general practitioner who makes mistakes, but you need a specialist in the city, who will cover every nook and cranny, every potential pothole, because deals go bad and then you go back to the paper and chances are unless you paid through the nose, your lawyer didn't cover you.
Now this is where people bristle. Re the elites. But in America there's no middle class. Either you're working at the top level, or you're a drone in the warehouse with no upward mobility, not making enough money to ever get ahead.
5
If you're interested in Amazon, you should start with Brad Stone's 2013 book "The Everything Store." It's definitive. Stone is the Amazon expert. This is where you learn about Bezos's upbringing and the engulf and devour subterfuge it employs to kill competitors. Amazon keeps lowering the price until your profitability erodes and you are forced to sell to them.
But the truth is Amazon has a very small retail market share.
And the truth is Amazon is the best in the business. Despite the foregoing, I trust Amazon before any of its competitors. And if you have a problem, the company does try to make it right.
Stone's new book, "Amazon Unbound," picks up where the previous one left off, and runs right up to today, all the way through the pandemic.
Do you need to read it?
Well, I'll let you decide. If you read business books for tips, absolutely. Forget the theories put forth by those who never did or those who are on a victory lap, Stone got complete access, he tells you how it really went down. And I'd be lying if I said I don't admire Bezos's acumen, a lot of what he did was right for business. Hell, the music business is laissez-faire. So much money is wasted it's laughable. Acts don't realize the label is charging them for limos and then the labels don't account accurately and then acts blame Spotify, et al, which are the most transparent elements in the food chain, built on data, they don't lie. A bean counter could squeeze incredible profits from the music business. The only problem is if you squeeze the profits, you kill the golden goose. As a matter of fact, to a great degree that's what's happened today. It's not the seventies anymore, the label is the quarterback, not the act. And the label wants insurance, which is why you must employ a cowriter and get a remix and... If you want to sit at home and get inspired and lay it down with no interference, the major label is not for you. At best, the major label will scoop you up after you've proven your success online, but it's not signing non-hip-hop or pop acts for big bucks and setting them loose in the studio and then promoting the end product for years. Hell, the CEO may not be working at the company that long, and he needs his bonus! Never underestimate having skin in the game. If you're the owner, it's your company, you care!
6
So "Amazon Unbound" walks you through all the decisions, all the failures, it goes deep into the identities and the process. Also, another thing the hoi polloi don't realize is big operators respect neither the press nor the government, they do their best to obfuscate and spin.
But when you're atop the pyramid, you're ripe for blowback, it goes with the territory. Companies will now not talk to Amazon, for it's got a reputation of stealing ideas. As for going into business with the company, they see that as death too. So, Amazon's job is getting harder. But it's got critical mass. And online, where one store sits right next to another, it's hard to compete with the behemoth.
The truth is I love Amazon. I order from the company incessantly. And if you're boycotting it, the joke is on you. Kinda like those acts who promoted BlackBerry and were shown using their iPhones. Or Trump saying to boycott Coke when he's got a Diet Coke on his desk. Some products are just too good!
You can go the other way, I tried this in the sixties, I bought the new K2 Competition skis instead of the ubiquitous Rossignol Stratos. End result, two pairs delaminated within a month, then I switched to Rossis, which stayed in one piece, and in truth they were better!
Or you can go to the neighborhood store where inventory is low and prices are high. If you think you can save Main Street...you probably think you can save buggy whips. Things change, own them. Improve Walmart, make sure it can't close after decimating the local Main Street.
No one can compete with the buying power of these behemoths.
And the end result is low prices, which customers love! People will switch airlines for ten bucks, maybe even five, the public is cheap, and it loves convenience, go in that direction as opposed to trying to keep the relics on life support alive.
7
But most people don't care. They're emotional, not informed.
We need a $15 minimum wage. A minimum wage even higher than that!
But business comes before people in America.
And business is a drive to the bottom.
You can't get service from Facebook? That's because you don't pay! Products are so cheap that if they break you just replace them. And if you want service, you've got to pay for it, which people just can't fathom, but why do you think the item is so cheap? And you talk to someone overseas, because it's expensive to use Americans. Which should illustrate why manufacturing can't come back to America, but people can't link the facts, they want dirt cheap products that work right out of the box but they also want to be able to own a 3,000 square foot house and a boat working an unskilled job.
Even worse, with the barrier to entry so low today, everybody thinks they're entitled to make a living as an artist, it's seen as just another career choice. Why not ask these same people if they deserve to play in the NBA? Or be a rocket scientist? No, you deserve to work in the Amazon warehouse, and even that's not a secure job.
Which is why the enlightened get an education, otherwise you're nowhere in America, you're just a victim, so downtrodden that you're depressed. You haven't read a book since high school, never mind this one. The train pulled out of the station decades ago, but you keep blaming immigrants for taking your job. Americans have become so dumb. And they believe everything they hear and can't analyze any issues and are constantly looking for scapegoats. I mean what is end game for the Trumpists? A dictator who allows you to be free, without health care, without government support, as the rich get richer and you get screwed?
And Bezos didn't believe you were his responsibility. He made beaucoup bucks off your back and didn't give any back, philanthropy was not in his wheelhouse.
And now that he's got his, he's handing off the day to day reins as he traipses around the world with his new girlfriend hanging out with the rich and powerful, the movers and shakers. They party on David Geffen's yacht, because Geffen can connect them with Hollywood, and anybody who's not in Hollywood wants to be, they want access, they want to be able to make decisions.
Yes, at the end of the day, people always come back to the creative arts. And the truth is Amazon now makes movies and TV shows. Because life is unfulfilling without the arts.
And on both ends of the continuum life sucks. If you're poor or rich. Believe me, you don't want to be so wealthy you don't have to work. That's not living, which is why so many of them die, like Christina Onassis. It's about getting high and being fabulous, and the truth is that's not so fantastic, we're human beings, our lives have to have meaning, irrelevant of your wealth.
Which is why Bezos went to work. He built a juggernaut. It was hard work. The public is benefiting from his efforts. At a cost, there's always a cost. But you've got to pat the guy on the back, he was focused, he delivered, what consumers couldn't even conceive of.
That's an American story.
"Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire": https://amzn.to/3h39lpW
Monday I decided to replenish my stock of St. Ives face scrub. An old girlfriend had turned me on to Aapri, but they stopped making that, so I switched to St. Ives, which is a bit rougher, but I've gotten used to it, these apricot face scrubs work so well.
So I used to buy the St. Ives at the drugstore, but during the pandemic I saw no need to do this so I ordered it from Amazon.
I got the wrong product.
Now you have to know I have OCD, I check things out to the max, I essentially never make a mistake on stuff like this. So I went back to the picture on the website, and it was the product I wanted, but not the product I got. So I contacted Amazon and they apologized but then I had to return the item, which is a pain in the ass I try to avoid, that's why I try to get it right the first time around.
Now noticing the St. Ives tube in the bathroom was starting to run low, I decided to reorder. Turns out I had to budget fifteen minutes for this.
You see on Amazon, you can click on "Returns & Orders," and search on your previous purchase, how convenient! But when you click to "Buy it again," you can't, what should be simple is not, you're taken to another page where in this case it said "See buying options."
So I clicked on that and... I was brought to a page where they pictured the item, but I had to once again click on "See all buying options."
Now I got a slide over page from the right side of the browser listing a slew of options at various prices and various delivery dates. This was positively insane! I'd normally just choose the one with the best rating and the cheapest price, but in this case I wouldn't receive it for weeks, that didn't make sense. So I decided to start all over.
I searched for St. Ives and I found out there was a St. Ives store on Amazon, what could be better! But when I got there there were two competing items, which made no sense, but when I scrutinized the image, I saw one was in French, so I made a tab for the one in English. But it was for six tubes, and I really didn't want that many, as a matter of fact, I only wanted two. That's why I made the tab, I needed to do further research.
So I search on "St. Ives Fresh Skin" on Amazon and what comes up?
Two pictures from the St. Ives Store, not mentioning the size, one the French product, the other "Acne Control," which is not the product I desire.
Below that...
Well, that was positively insane. I saw my product, but it was in tiny travel tubes, which is not what I wanted. Next to that there was an offer with a dated package which was priced at nearly double every other offer. As for the other two products on that same line, they were far from what I requested, but this line was all SPONSORED! I.e. ads!
The line after that was another sponsored product I had no desire to acquire.
Below that, I saw the French product, four tubes for $18.90. Even better, it was labeled "Amazon's Choice"! Seemed reasonable to just click on that, but why was the product French?
But I really only wanted two tubes. I scrolled down the page and found them, for almost as much as four tubes cost.
That's when I started to scrutinize the per ounce price.
The pack of two was $1.37 per ounce. The pack of four was $0.79 per ounce. But the pack of six, from the St. Ives Store, was $0.61 cents per ounce...WHY WASN'T THIS AMAZON'S CHOICE??
I don't mind paying a bit more for a smaller quantity, but I don't like being ripped-off. So I ended up buying the pack of six, and now I've got enough St. Ives for years. And I blew all this time buying something that should be a no-brainer.
2
You'd think "Amazon's Choice" would be the best deal. But Brad Stone's new book told me that was not necessarily so. The book also went into chapter and verse re advertising on Amazon, and also talked about third party sellers and...if you're getting confused, you now know how I feel. I mean this doesn't happen on the Apple site. It's clear, you buy what you want and move on, even though the products are much more expensive. And there's the rub, the margin on most Amazon products is small, so they do their best to monetize around them.
But hang in there...
Amazon makes more money selling third party products than it does on the products it sells itself. So, the company decided to grow the market. And it turns out many third party sellers get their products from China and then resell them on Amazon so why not cut out the middleman and allow the Chinese to sell directly on Amazon?
Which is what Amazon did, and now the third party sellers were screaming bloody murder, they couldn't touch the price.
But then a lot of the Chinese products were inferior. Clothing where the sleeve immediately fell off. But if you shut down one brand in China, they just start all over using a different brand, it's impossible to stop. Meanwhile, third party sellers must buy advertising, the sponsored posts referenced above, otherwise their products fall way down the search page.
And to tell you the truth, all of this doesn't bother me as much as the fact that I CAN'T EASILY BUY WHAT I WANT!
You see Amazon is squeezing every penny out of screen real estate.
But it gets worse. Selling products isn't such a good business, but providing web services is. Amazon makes most of its money from AWS, Amazon Web Services, which hosts third party websites, even of big companies, this is how Netflix started.
And I could go deeper but reading this book I kept asking myself...WHO CARES?
3
I guess I'm living in an alternative universe. I didn't even know there was such a thing as an MBA when I graduated from college. Life was about fulfillment, I wanted to make a living in the arts.
But most people can't.
You can have little and work in the Amazon warehouse. Now what you saw in "Nomadland" ain't so true anymore. People don't walk twelve miles every day, they stay in one place and...they now have repetitive stress injuries. But one thing you know for sure, when the whistle blows...they go home and get drunk or stoned, try to blow off steam before they have to go back and do it all over again. And they don't get paid enough money to get ahead. And you can't work the same fulfillment gig for years, they blow you out after a few, they don't want tired, uninvested workers. So you're on a hamster wheel, and then they take away the wheel, push you out of the cage and don't care where you roam.
Or you could be working higher up in the food chain. But your job is to squeeze out more pennies, as per above, making everything more efficient. Now let me think, do I want to spend all my working hours making a warehouse run right? Talk about a meaningless life. And as you move up the food chain, you make more money, but you can't spend it because you're working all the time, and most people end up burning out and retiring, and if you played your cards right you had good stock options so you're financially cushioned, but that all depends on the stock price going up, which it may not, despite your best efforts.
4
So Jeff Bezos is in charge. Lock, stock and barrel. He's very hands-on, and he's not so nice. He's learned not to be offensive, but in truth he suffers no fools.
And there are layers of management.
And you have to produce a six page document outlining your perspective, which everybody reads at the start of a meeting, and if chastised in the future you claim it was all in the document, Bezos criticizes your writing skills, you just did not make it clear enough. He laughs that bozo laugh and tells you failure is cool, but that's only if you fail at an A+ level, see around every corner, adjust for every possibility.
And you must think of innovation 24/7, because Bezos keeps telling you Amazon is a "Day 1" company, and must continue to be, a "Day 2" company rests on its laurels, loses its edge and goes out of business.
And there is a ton more business gobbledygook. Is it a two way door or a one way door? If you take this path can you retreat or not? I mean who in hell gets excited about this stuff? Kind of like the law...I know more lawyers that don't practice than those who do. Forget TV, law is mostly boring. And it's hard to make big money. You work for people who make big money, but you don't yourself. Which is why most lawyers are like doctors, always thinking of some business investment that can make them rich. But law is like Amazon in that you've got to get it exactly right. Maybe in the burbs you can use a general practitioner who makes mistakes, but you need a specialist in the city, who will cover every nook and cranny, every potential pothole, because deals go bad and then you go back to the paper and chances are unless you paid through the nose, your lawyer didn't cover you.
Now this is where people bristle. Re the elites. But in America there's no middle class. Either you're working at the top level, or you're a drone in the warehouse with no upward mobility, not making enough money to ever get ahead.
5
If you're interested in Amazon, you should start with Brad Stone's 2013 book "The Everything Store." It's definitive. Stone is the Amazon expert. This is where you learn about Bezos's upbringing and the engulf and devour subterfuge it employs to kill competitors. Amazon keeps lowering the price until your profitability erodes and you are forced to sell to them.
But the truth is Amazon has a very small retail market share.
And the truth is Amazon is the best in the business. Despite the foregoing, I trust Amazon before any of its competitors. And if you have a problem, the company does try to make it right.
Stone's new book, "Amazon Unbound," picks up where the previous one left off, and runs right up to today, all the way through the pandemic.
Do you need to read it?
Well, I'll let you decide. If you read business books for tips, absolutely. Forget the theories put forth by those who never did or those who are on a victory lap, Stone got complete access, he tells you how it really went down. And I'd be lying if I said I don't admire Bezos's acumen, a lot of what he did was right for business. Hell, the music business is laissez-faire. So much money is wasted it's laughable. Acts don't realize the label is charging them for limos and then the labels don't account accurately and then acts blame Spotify, et al, which are the most transparent elements in the food chain, built on data, they don't lie. A bean counter could squeeze incredible profits from the music business. The only problem is if you squeeze the profits, you kill the golden goose. As a matter of fact, to a great degree that's what's happened today. It's not the seventies anymore, the label is the quarterback, not the act. And the label wants insurance, which is why you must employ a cowriter and get a remix and... If you want to sit at home and get inspired and lay it down with no interference, the major label is not for you. At best, the major label will scoop you up after you've proven your success online, but it's not signing non-hip-hop or pop acts for big bucks and setting them loose in the studio and then promoting the end product for years. Hell, the CEO may not be working at the company that long, and he needs his bonus! Never underestimate having skin in the game. If you're the owner, it's your company, you care!
6
So "Amazon Unbound" walks you through all the decisions, all the failures, it goes deep into the identities and the process. Also, another thing the hoi polloi don't realize is big operators respect neither the press nor the government, they do their best to obfuscate and spin.
But when you're atop the pyramid, you're ripe for blowback, it goes with the territory. Companies will now not talk to Amazon, for it's got a reputation of stealing ideas. As for going into business with the company, they see that as death too. So, Amazon's job is getting harder. But it's got critical mass. And online, where one store sits right next to another, it's hard to compete with the behemoth.
The truth is I love Amazon. I order from the company incessantly. And if you're boycotting it, the joke is on you. Kinda like those acts who promoted BlackBerry and were shown using their iPhones. Or Trump saying to boycott Coke when he's got a Diet Coke on his desk. Some products are just too good!
You can go the other way, I tried this in the sixties, I bought the new K2 Competition skis instead of the ubiquitous Rossignol Stratos. End result, two pairs delaminated within a month, then I switched to Rossis, which stayed in one piece, and in truth they were better!
Or you can go to the neighborhood store where inventory is low and prices are high. If you think you can save Main Street...you probably think you can save buggy whips. Things change, own them. Improve Walmart, make sure it can't close after decimating the local Main Street.
No one can compete with the buying power of these behemoths.
And the end result is low prices, which customers love! People will switch airlines for ten bucks, maybe even five, the public is cheap, and it loves convenience, go in that direction as opposed to trying to keep the relics on life support alive.
7
But most people don't care. They're emotional, not informed.
We need a $15 minimum wage. A minimum wage even higher than that!
But business comes before people in America.
And business is a drive to the bottom.
You can't get service from Facebook? That's because you don't pay! Products are so cheap that if they break you just replace them. And if you want service, you've got to pay for it, which people just can't fathom, but why do you think the item is so cheap? And you talk to someone overseas, because it's expensive to use Americans. Which should illustrate why manufacturing can't come back to America, but people can't link the facts, they want dirt cheap products that work right out of the box but they also want to be able to own a 3,000 square foot house and a boat working an unskilled job.
Even worse, with the barrier to entry so low today, everybody thinks they're entitled to make a living as an artist, it's seen as just another career choice. Why not ask these same people if they deserve to play in the NBA? Or be a rocket scientist? No, you deserve to work in the Amazon warehouse, and even that's not a secure job.
Which is why the enlightened get an education, otherwise you're nowhere in America, you're just a victim, so downtrodden that you're depressed. You haven't read a book since high school, never mind this one. The train pulled out of the station decades ago, but you keep blaming immigrants for taking your job. Americans have become so dumb. And they believe everything they hear and can't analyze any issues and are constantly looking for scapegoats. I mean what is end game for the Trumpists? A dictator who allows you to be free, without health care, without government support, as the rich get richer and you get screwed?
And Bezos didn't believe you were his responsibility. He made beaucoup bucks off your back and didn't give any back, philanthropy was not in his wheelhouse.
And now that he's got his, he's handing off the day to day reins as he traipses around the world with his new girlfriend hanging out with the rich and powerful, the movers and shakers. They party on David Geffen's yacht, because Geffen can connect them with Hollywood, and anybody who's not in Hollywood wants to be, they want access, they want to be able to make decisions.
Yes, at the end of the day, people always come back to the creative arts. And the truth is Amazon now makes movies and TV shows. Because life is unfulfilling without the arts.
And on both ends of the continuum life sucks. If you're poor or rich. Believe me, you don't want to be so wealthy you don't have to work. That's not living, which is why so many of them die, like Christina Onassis. It's about getting high and being fabulous, and the truth is that's not so fantastic, we're human beings, our lives have to have meaning, irrelevant of your wealth.
Which is why Bezos went to work. He built a juggernaut. It was hard work. The public is benefiting from his efforts. At a cost, there's always a cost. But you've got to pat the guy on the back, he was focused, he delivered, what consumers couldn't even conceive of.
That's an American story.
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Tuesday, 4 May 2021
Micky Dolenz-SiriusXM This Week
Tune in today, May 4th, to Volume 106, 7 PM East, 4 PM West.
Phone #: 844-6-VOLUME, 844-686-5863
Twitter: @lefsetz or @siriusxmvolume/#lefsetzlive
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Phone #: 844-6-VOLUME, 844-686-5863
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Monday, 3 May 2021
Train To Nowhere
Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3nHTEG7
YouTube: https://bit.ly/3xMe8BW
It only happens on Saturday night.
Honestly, during the week I jump between Howard Stern and the news, I just can't slow down enough for music. Then again, if those don't appeal I'll go through the presets, 60s on 6, the Beatles Channel, for some reason the more familiar resonates in this scattered world.
But I did not know "Train to Nowhere."
This first happened a few weeks back. I was driving back from hiking and I was listening to the radio and I suddenly felt like I'd jumped back in time, like it was the seventies and I was back in that era, something akin to smellavision, as in all the feelings I had back then returned. I was listening to the tunes and it felt like I was in college, or working at a summer camp, or traveling and...I haven't had those exact same feelings in eons. I mean I was alone in my car, there wasn't much traffic, the music took me back, to be honest that's why I wrote about "Strange Brew," it was playing on Deep Tracks and it was like I was listening to it back in 1968.
Now on Saturday night the news is lousy. CNN is on some theme programming, MSNBC...I don't know what they're up to, they keep changing weekend format. And I enjoy the car guys on NPR, the only problem is they're both dead, and many of the problems people call in about are no longer relevant, cars need so much less service today, especially electric ones. And I'll go to the POTUS channel, but it's on reruns, and political talk that is not of the moment is hard to listen to. And the BBC...sometimes you hit, sometimes you don't. Same deal with Bloomberg. As for Fox? Even its weekend programming is second-rate. So, driving on the weekends, I always listen to music. And last Saturday night, two days ago, what I heard on Classic Vinyl was too obvious, so I switched to Deep Tracks and they were playing "One World (Not Three)" by the Police, is that really a deep track, not to me, I know it by heart. But just when I parked my car, the station started playing a song I didn't know, and when I started hiking and pulled up the station...it was still playing the Police song, you see the streaming app is behind the radio, which I actually like because I don't miss anything in the interim, but for some reason Saturday it seemed like there was a five minute gap, and usually it's much shorter, so I was listening to the Police song and it was just too much, but I hung in there.
Savoy Brown... I've written about the band before. It's famous primarily for being the start of Foghat, unjustly maligned, if only we had straight ahead boogie rock today. Lonesome Dave was just a secondary member of Savoy Brown, but in Foghat!! And Savoy Brown constantly played the Fillmore East, I never saw them, but they seemed to be billed constantly, about as much as this band AUM, which I think they used to fill holes in the bill, when they needed a third act.
So I'm hiking up the trail and finally "Train to Nowhere" comes back, and it's just as satisfying.
"You can catch it if you want to ride
Don't you worry if it pass you by"
But it's not about the lyrics, it's about the guitar! They don't even make records like this anymore, with this sound, which was bedrock back in the late sixties, a feature of British blues bands.
It's funny, so much of what I hear makes me want to turn it off, but these notes, this sound, this groove immediately hooked me, and it was not like the song was a big hit, but in the pocket. Actually, I checked it on my phone, maybe I was out of the loop, maybe it was an FM smash, but it wasn't, but it was the opening track on the band's 1969 album "Blue Matter," WHICH IS NOT EVEN ON STREAMING SERVICES!
And truthfully, the vocal is imperfect, it resembles nothing so much as Canned Heat, but maybe we can go up the country on that road again.
You see there's not that much on "Train to Nowhere." It's the band, the guitar is not soft, but there's a lot of air. And the drums come in and it's got that driving, solid Cream feel.
"Train I ride goes to god knows where
I don't know and I don't care"
And I'm thinking how nobody writes train songs anymore, that era has passed. But it's hard to care about the rest of the world, especially when Kim Simmonds starts to wail two minutes in, it's simple, unadorned, yet so right, and the rhythm section sustains the groove. This is not music made for TikTok, nor for video, just to listen to, not dancing, not standing, but with your ass parked, on a couch, a chair... It's all about the music, even though it's so simple. It's a fulfilling trip, you don't need to multitask, it's enough, you go on a singular adventure, it's just you and the music, and that's more than enough, and you don't want the mood to be broken.
"If you ain't got money don't despair
'Cause you don't have to pay no fare"
We all need money, but not like we do now, income inequality was much less of a thing, you could make it on minimum wage, your defining characteristic could be that you listened to music, knew all the players, followed the sound like you used to follow baseball. And everybody playing had reached puberty, and had been practicing for years, to be good you had to.
"Ride the wrong rails live your life in vain"
Now if you're sitting in front of your computer with hellzapoppin' endless input, chances are "Train to Nowhere" won't resonate. Then again, that intro guitar is magical. But the track is not in-your-face, it does not demand attention, rather you hear the sound and turn your head, wanting to know where the music is coming from, you need to get closer, you need to luxuriate in it.
And it's over half a century since this track was cut. A longer period of time than the one between Robert Johnson and its recording. But through the miracle of streaming music, it's readily available, it's right here, right now.
Can you slow your life down enough to enjoy "Train to Nowhere"?
It's hard these days, but it was the rule back then, there was limited input, we could take time to explore, to go deeper, we were more open.
So I'm sitting here two days later and I pull up "Train to Nowhere" and my head starts involuntarily nodding along, it's doing so now, I can't tell you the science, but I will tell you I know the feeling, and the feeling never changes, it's not one we're selling today, but that's just because like the Aztecs, the Greeks, we've lost the classic formula, only today it's hiding in plain sight.
Maybe marijuana helped. Dope slows you down, whereas drink makes you verbal and ecstasy makes you manic. That's another reason what they now call "cannabis," for fear of negative connotations, spread far and wide, it was part of the culture, it was part of the music, today it's mainly about looking cool, it's a door to nowhere, just a dark room where you're disconnected from this painful world. But in the dark back then you were not sitting there somnambulantly, you were on this aural adventure, a trip, better than any ride at Disneyland, any VR experience, it was so good that you had to go to the gig, you sacrificed your life to the sound, it was a train to somewhere, that somehow doesn't exist anymore.
YouTube: https://bit.ly/3xMe8BW
It only happens on Saturday night.
Honestly, during the week I jump between Howard Stern and the news, I just can't slow down enough for music. Then again, if those don't appeal I'll go through the presets, 60s on 6, the Beatles Channel, for some reason the more familiar resonates in this scattered world.
But I did not know "Train to Nowhere."
This first happened a few weeks back. I was driving back from hiking and I was listening to the radio and I suddenly felt like I'd jumped back in time, like it was the seventies and I was back in that era, something akin to smellavision, as in all the feelings I had back then returned. I was listening to the tunes and it felt like I was in college, or working at a summer camp, or traveling and...I haven't had those exact same feelings in eons. I mean I was alone in my car, there wasn't much traffic, the music took me back, to be honest that's why I wrote about "Strange Brew," it was playing on Deep Tracks and it was like I was listening to it back in 1968.
Now on Saturday night the news is lousy. CNN is on some theme programming, MSNBC...I don't know what they're up to, they keep changing weekend format. And I enjoy the car guys on NPR, the only problem is they're both dead, and many of the problems people call in about are no longer relevant, cars need so much less service today, especially electric ones. And I'll go to the POTUS channel, but it's on reruns, and political talk that is not of the moment is hard to listen to. And the BBC...sometimes you hit, sometimes you don't. Same deal with Bloomberg. As for Fox? Even its weekend programming is second-rate. So, driving on the weekends, I always listen to music. And last Saturday night, two days ago, what I heard on Classic Vinyl was too obvious, so I switched to Deep Tracks and they were playing "One World (Not Three)" by the Police, is that really a deep track, not to me, I know it by heart. But just when I parked my car, the station started playing a song I didn't know, and when I started hiking and pulled up the station...it was still playing the Police song, you see the streaming app is behind the radio, which I actually like because I don't miss anything in the interim, but for some reason Saturday it seemed like there was a five minute gap, and usually it's much shorter, so I was listening to the Police song and it was just too much, but I hung in there.
Savoy Brown... I've written about the band before. It's famous primarily for being the start of Foghat, unjustly maligned, if only we had straight ahead boogie rock today. Lonesome Dave was just a secondary member of Savoy Brown, but in Foghat!! And Savoy Brown constantly played the Fillmore East, I never saw them, but they seemed to be billed constantly, about as much as this band AUM, which I think they used to fill holes in the bill, when they needed a third act.
So I'm hiking up the trail and finally "Train to Nowhere" comes back, and it's just as satisfying.
"You can catch it if you want to ride
Don't you worry if it pass you by"
But it's not about the lyrics, it's about the guitar! They don't even make records like this anymore, with this sound, which was bedrock back in the late sixties, a feature of British blues bands.
It's funny, so much of what I hear makes me want to turn it off, but these notes, this sound, this groove immediately hooked me, and it was not like the song was a big hit, but in the pocket. Actually, I checked it on my phone, maybe I was out of the loop, maybe it was an FM smash, but it wasn't, but it was the opening track on the band's 1969 album "Blue Matter," WHICH IS NOT EVEN ON STREAMING SERVICES!
And truthfully, the vocal is imperfect, it resembles nothing so much as Canned Heat, but maybe we can go up the country on that road again.
You see there's not that much on "Train to Nowhere." It's the band, the guitar is not soft, but there's a lot of air. And the drums come in and it's got that driving, solid Cream feel.
"Train I ride goes to god knows where
I don't know and I don't care"
And I'm thinking how nobody writes train songs anymore, that era has passed. But it's hard to care about the rest of the world, especially when Kim Simmonds starts to wail two minutes in, it's simple, unadorned, yet so right, and the rhythm section sustains the groove. This is not music made for TikTok, nor for video, just to listen to, not dancing, not standing, but with your ass parked, on a couch, a chair... It's all about the music, even though it's so simple. It's a fulfilling trip, you don't need to multitask, it's enough, you go on a singular adventure, it's just you and the music, and that's more than enough, and you don't want the mood to be broken.
"If you ain't got money don't despair
'Cause you don't have to pay no fare"
We all need money, but not like we do now, income inequality was much less of a thing, you could make it on minimum wage, your defining characteristic could be that you listened to music, knew all the players, followed the sound like you used to follow baseball. And everybody playing had reached puberty, and had been practicing for years, to be good you had to.
"Ride the wrong rails live your life in vain"
Now if you're sitting in front of your computer with hellzapoppin' endless input, chances are "Train to Nowhere" won't resonate. Then again, that intro guitar is magical. But the track is not in-your-face, it does not demand attention, rather you hear the sound and turn your head, wanting to know where the music is coming from, you need to get closer, you need to luxuriate in it.
And it's over half a century since this track was cut. A longer period of time than the one between Robert Johnson and its recording. But through the miracle of streaming music, it's readily available, it's right here, right now.
Can you slow your life down enough to enjoy "Train to Nowhere"?
It's hard these days, but it was the rule back then, there was limited input, we could take time to explore, to go deeper, we were more open.
So I'm sitting here two days later and I pull up "Train to Nowhere" and my head starts involuntarily nodding along, it's doing so now, I can't tell you the science, but I will tell you I know the feeling, and the feeling never changes, it's not one we're selling today, but that's just because like the Aztecs, the Greeks, we've lost the classic formula, only today it's hiding in plain sight.
Maybe marijuana helped. Dope slows you down, whereas drink makes you verbal and ecstasy makes you manic. That's another reason what they now call "cannabis," for fear of negative connotations, spread far and wide, it was part of the culture, it was part of the music, today it's mainly about looking cool, it's a door to nowhere, just a dark room where you're disconnected from this painful world. But in the dark back then you were not sitting there somnambulantly, you were on this aural adventure, a trip, better than any ride at Disneyland, any VR experience, it was so good that you had to go to the gig, you sacrificed your life to the sound, it was a train to somewhere, that somehow doesn't exist anymore.
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Reaching 'Herd Immunity' Is Unlikely in the U.S.
"Reaching 'Herd Immunity' Is Unlikely in the U.S., Experts Now Believe - Widely circulating coronavirus variants and persistent hesitancy about vaccines will keep the goal out of reach. The virus is here to stay, but vaccinating the most vulnerable may be enough to restore normalcy.": https://nyti.ms/3xLGGvm
I read this this morning and I went INSANE!
I'm not one of those people who sleeps with their phone by their bed, if I did I'd never get any sleep. As for those who e-mail me telling me not to send missives late at night... Do you really get that little incoming? And if you want to be available for emergencies do you really not know how to adjust your settings so you're not awakened by interruptions of a lesser sort?
Ah, power users. David Pogue's contract with O'Reilly for the "Missing Manuals" expired and he now has a new series, "Unlocked." Over the holidays I read the books on the Mac and the iPhone. Genius. If you don't read the manual, you're unaware of so much you can do. Like in Big Sur, the Do Not Disturb feature. Yes, just like on your iPhone, you can click on Do Not Disturb and all banners and sounds are silenced, there is no incoming, so you can concentrate. I use this every damn day, during Zoom calls, but mostly while I'm writing, otherwise I can't concentrate. Check it out: https://apple.co/3tdFCgr Also, the Pogue book will tell you how to put the Do Not Disturb icon in the menu bar, readily available always. As for the iPhone...did you know you could ask Siri for your passwords? Try it, amazing!
So all this is to say the first thing I do every morning is to unplug my iPhone in the kitchen, take it to the bathroom and catch up. I'm sorry if you're grossed out, but I watch these foreign TV shows where high school students sleep over at each other's houses and have sex and the parents don't bat an eyelash. Can you imagine how much healthier our nation would be if it stopped being so puritanical and admitted we all have bodily functions and desires? Don't hold your breath.
So I'm reading this article about the failure to reach herd immunity because of the anti-vax camp and...I want to write but will it have any impact? And then I think we've got to get the country artists on board. But I Google, and it turns out they already are, they made a PSA which has...325 views! A kid farting in his basement has more views! Check it out: https://bit.ly/3gZewYa
What this tells us is the Academy of Country Music has no idea how to reach its audience, never mind impact it. And it's not only the ACM, the entertainment brass is so inured to the old methods that it's lost touch with the majority of the public. Grammy and Oscar ratings keep tanking and they think it's about the show...no, it's about the CONTENT! Most people don't care! You may call it "Record of the Year," but I've never heard it and have no desire to listen to it. Think about this, when it comes to entertainment most people are anti-vaxxers, they can't be swayed, because in this case they've been turned off by crap or are deep into something more appealing or both. BUT NO ONE ACKNOWLEDGES THIS!
I could write about how insane the anti-vaxxers are, how the vaccine didn't work for me and now I'm subject to their bad behavior, BUT I CAN'T REACH THEM! I'd just be preaching to the converted, and how exciting is that?
But think about that. The anti-vaxxers have an infrastructure appealing to them, and that's all they listen to. Not only Fox News, but the Daily Caller and so much more. There's no need to read news that you don't like. And the algorithm twins, Facebook and Google, have reinforced this. Let me tell you right now, America is going down the drain, and it's our own damn fault, we let these internet giants disrupt our nation and around the world authoritarians are taking over, because otherwise you've just got chaos, nothing gets done. Think about that, Biden wants an infrastructure bill passed, and the right wants to debate the definition of infrastructure, it's more worried about appealing to its base than what's right. Do you think they do this in China? Of course not! And a whole hell of a lot gets done in China, but in America, you have the freedom to be an uninformed idiot, freedom not to worry about the greater good, and we end up with gridlock. And false protests. You want to recall Newsom? Waste our California money to do so, there's no way in hell a Republican will replace him, no way, but I've got to pay for you to stroke your tiny unit.
No one can reach everybody, NO ONE! But systems keep operating like they can. The movie business...pre-Covid it raises its prices to keep grosses up while attendance flags. And then it focuses on foreign exhibition and for a while it works but now domestic films dominate in China. Everybody's selling out today to ruin themselves tomorrow. Kinda like the online "influencers" who forgo educations because they believe their momentary fame is forever. Why not ask Milli Vanilli? Oh, Rob is dead and Fab...who knows what even happened to that guy!
It's like our nation is comprised of 340 million cars with the pedal to the metal heading straight towards the cliff. And so much of what we're told is just plain wrong.
So when it comes to music... Do it your way, focus on art not cash. You're never going to be as rich as Jeff Bezos, but you can make him squirm.
If you're involved in politics, it's all about grass roots, going door to door, just ask Stacey Abrams.
And if you make any progress, expect the losers to move the goalposts. Or to double-down. Do you hear the record companies saying they'll increase streaming payouts? No, they like that Spotify is getting the heat, just like you think Ticketmaster is the criminal when the truth is it's the acts themselves. If people can't understand this, what are the odds they can understand the big issues? And you can't complain about anti-vaxxers if you're bitching about streaming payouts, think about that.
As for vaccinations, the best article I read on this came from CNN:
"Covid-19 vaccine myths: These reasons for not getting a shot don't hold up. In fact, they'll set the US back": https://cnn.it/3xL2wPS
Send this and the "New York Times" article above to every anti-vaxxer you know, each and every one! Forget all the "science" coming down from the top, how you can't change people's minds. Of course you can! By making them feel like a minority! Everyone wants to be a member of the group, freedom is no match for ostracization. If people were inundated with these messages, were taught that their reluctance to get vaccinated is hurting everybody else, not only themselves, maybe they'll re-evaluate. What people don't realize is opinions switch on a dime. If door to door canvassing got people to vote against Trump, why do you think it won't work against the anti-vaxxers!
As for Rupert Murdoch, like Trump you've got to know he's been vaccinated. As a matter of fact, if you Google you'll find out he got his first shot back in December. Yet he lets Tucker Carlson spew falsehoods ad infinitum, stirring up an ignorant base that continues to act and vote against its interests under a false conception of freedom. Words have power. Thank god Tucker Carlson can't reach the majority of the population, but when it comes to herd immunity we need 90% of people to get the shot and he's messing it up for all of us!
Never forget, you don't shame the mouthpiece, you shame the deep pocket. Rupert is married to Mick Jagger's old flame, Jerry Hall, he wants to be included, how about an anti-Rupert song? No, we're too busy singing about inanities to focus on the big issues. Where's the money in an anti-Rupert song, where are the branding possibilities?
And it's always someone else's responsibility.
No, the truth is it's yours. And you're the only one who can save yourself, via action. Power now comes from the ground up, not only in politics but the arts. But those at the top don't want you to know this, they want to keep you uninformed and dumb. And no one wants any responsibility and everyone's afraid of losing a potential fan. But not the corporations, they take a stand and lose real money but the artists are wimps. Yes, Delta lost a Georgia tax break and you're unwilling to risk the fandom of someone who doesn't like you that much to begin with?
Things are not only rotten in Denmark, they're rotten in America too. The smell is overwhelming. We can't rely on our politicians and talking heads, we certainly can't rely on musicians, we've got to take action ourselves. Don't shut up about vaccines, it's literally life and death, and don't let anybody tell you otherwise!
I read this this morning and I went INSANE!
I'm not one of those people who sleeps with their phone by their bed, if I did I'd never get any sleep. As for those who e-mail me telling me not to send missives late at night... Do you really get that little incoming? And if you want to be available for emergencies do you really not know how to adjust your settings so you're not awakened by interruptions of a lesser sort?
Ah, power users. David Pogue's contract with O'Reilly for the "Missing Manuals" expired and he now has a new series, "Unlocked." Over the holidays I read the books on the Mac and the iPhone. Genius. If you don't read the manual, you're unaware of so much you can do. Like in Big Sur, the Do Not Disturb feature. Yes, just like on your iPhone, you can click on Do Not Disturb and all banners and sounds are silenced, there is no incoming, so you can concentrate. I use this every damn day, during Zoom calls, but mostly while I'm writing, otherwise I can't concentrate. Check it out: https://apple.co/3tdFCgr Also, the Pogue book will tell you how to put the Do Not Disturb icon in the menu bar, readily available always. As for the iPhone...did you know you could ask Siri for your passwords? Try it, amazing!
So all this is to say the first thing I do every morning is to unplug my iPhone in the kitchen, take it to the bathroom and catch up. I'm sorry if you're grossed out, but I watch these foreign TV shows where high school students sleep over at each other's houses and have sex and the parents don't bat an eyelash. Can you imagine how much healthier our nation would be if it stopped being so puritanical and admitted we all have bodily functions and desires? Don't hold your breath.
So I'm reading this article about the failure to reach herd immunity because of the anti-vax camp and...I want to write but will it have any impact? And then I think we've got to get the country artists on board. But I Google, and it turns out they already are, they made a PSA which has...325 views! A kid farting in his basement has more views! Check it out: https://bit.ly/3gZewYa
What this tells us is the Academy of Country Music has no idea how to reach its audience, never mind impact it. And it's not only the ACM, the entertainment brass is so inured to the old methods that it's lost touch with the majority of the public. Grammy and Oscar ratings keep tanking and they think it's about the show...no, it's about the CONTENT! Most people don't care! You may call it "Record of the Year," but I've never heard it and have no desire to listen to it. Think about this, when it comes to entertainment most people are anti-vaxxers, they can't be swayed, because in this case they've been turned off by crap or are deep into something more appealing or both. BUT NO ONE ACKNOWLEDGES THIS!
I could write about how insane the anti-vaxxers are, how the vaccine didn't work for me and now I'm subject to their bad behavior, BUT I CAN'T REACH THEM! I'd just be preaching to the converted, and how exciting is that?
But think about that. The anti-vaxxers have an infrastructure appealing to them, and that's all they listen to. Not only Fox News, but the Daily Caller and so much more. There's no need to read news that you don't like. And the algorithm twins, Facebook and Google, have reinforced this. Let me tell you right now, America is going down the drain, and it's our own damn fault, we let these internet giants disrupt our nation and around the world authoritarians are taking over, because otherwise you've just got chaos, nothing gets done. Think about that, Biden wants an infrastructure bill passed, and the right wants to debate the definition of infrastructure, it's more worried about appealing to its base than what's right. Do you think they do this in China? Of course not! And a whole hell of a lot gets done in China, but in America, you have the freedom to be an uninformed idiot, freedom not to worry about the greater good, and we end up with gridlock. And false protests. You want to recall Newsom? Waste our California money to do so, there's no way in hell a Republican will replace him, no way, but I've got to pay for you to stroke your tiny unit.
No one can reach everybody, NO ONE! But systems keep operating like they can. The movie business...pre-Covid it raises its prices to keep grosses up while attendance flags. And then it focuses on foreign exhibition and for a while it works but now domestic films dominate in China. Everybody's selling out today to ruin themselves tomorrow. Kinda like the online "influencers" who forgo educations because they believe their momentary fame is forever. Why not ask Milli Vanilli? Oh, Rob is dead and Fab...who knows what even happened to that guy!
It's like our nation is comprised of 340 million cars with the pedal to the metal heading straight towards the cliff. And so much of what we're told is just plain wrong.
So when it comes to music... Do it your way, focus on art not cash. You're never going to be as rich as Jeff Bezos, but you can make him squirm.
If you're involved in politics, it's all about grass roots, going door to door, just ask Stacey Abrams.
And if you make any progress, expect the losers to move the goalposts. Or to double-down. Do you hear the record companies saying they'll increase streaming payouts? No, they like that Spotify is getting the heat, just like you think Ticketmaster is the criminal when the truth is it's the acts themselves. If people can't understand this, what are the odds they can understand the big issues? And you can't complain about anti-vaxxers if you're bitching about streaming payouts, think about that.
As for vaccinations, the best article I read on this came from CNN:
"Covid-19 vaccine myths: These reasons for not getting a shot don't hold up. In fact, they'll set the US back": https://cnn.it/3xL2wPS
Send this and the "New York Times" article above to every anti-vaxxer you know, each and every one! Forget all the "science" coming down from the top, how you can't change people's minds. Of course you can! By making them feel like a minority! Everyone wants to be a member of the group, freedom is no match for ostracization. If people were inundated with these messages, were taught that their reluctance to get vaccinated is hurting everybody else, not only themselves, maybe they'll re-evaluate. What people don't realize is opinions switch on a dime. If door to door canvassing got people to vote against Trump, why do you think it won't work against the anti-vaxxers!
As for Rupert Murdoch, like Trump you've got to know he's been vaccinated. As a matter of fact, if you Google you'll find out he got his first shot back in December. Yet he lets Tucker Carlson spew falsehoods ad infinitum, stirring up an ignorant base that continues to act and vote against its interests under a false conception of freedom. Words have power. Thank god Tucker Carlson can't reach the majority of the population, but when it comes to herd immunity we need 90% of people to get the shot and he's messing it up for all of us!
Never forget, you don't shame the mouthpiece, you shame the deep pocket. Rupert is married to Mick Jagger's old flame, Jerry Hall, he wants to be included, how about an anti-Rupert song? No, we're too busy singing about inanities to focus on the big issues. Where's the money in an anti-Rupert song, where are the branding possibilities?
And it's always someone else's responsibility.
No, the truth is it's yours. And you're the only one who can save yourself, via action. Power now comes from the ground up, not only in politics but the arts. But those at the top don't want you to know this, they want to keep you uninformed and dumb. And no one wants any responsibility and everyone's afraid of losing a potential fan. But not the corporations, they take a stand and lose real money but the artists are wimps. Yes, Delta lost a Georgia tax break and you're unwilling to risk the fandom of someone who doesn't like you that much to begin with?
Things are not only rotten in Denmark, they're rotten in America too. The smell is overwhelming. We can't rely on our politicians and talking heads, we certainly can't rely on musicians, we've got to take action ourselves. Don't shut up about vaccines, it's literally life and death, and don't let anybody tell you otherwise!
--
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, 2 May 2021
More TikTok
1
You absolutely must listen to the third episode of the Foundering podcast on TikTok. I don't care if you're an agent or a promoter, a label executive or a wannabe act, this will set you straight on where we're going and where we're not.
"TikTok Redefined the Economics of Fame - Episode three of 'Foundering: The TikTok Story' explains how the startup chooses who gets famous, which videos go viral and which trends blow up.": https://bloom.bg/2Rjj00K
You see there's a great bifurcation in music today. All the focus has been on streaming payouts, when the ball has moved, now it's all about the kind of music that's being made!
I know, I know, that does not correlate with the news, but when did the news ever tell you where you were going to go?
This podcast episode will tell you that TikTok is active with its users in a way that YouTube and Facebook/Instagram are not. Those are old models, TikTok is new. TikTok is consumer facing. Sure, the other platforms depend on users, but they're hands-off, they provide the tools and then it's a free-for-all. But not on TikTok. TikTok handpicks its stars, nurtures them, provides information to allow them to maintain their stardom and does not close out newbies. Yes, once a platform reaches critical mass, if you're late to the party you've got no chance. Sign on to Facebook for the first time today, good luck building a friend base, that was something people did ten years ago. Same deal on Twitter. The stars have been anointed, and even though a few new ones may be minted, the odds are really long. But TikTok focuses on building new stars, otherwise the creator class, in this case the hoi polloi posters, gets discouraged and moves on.
You see TikTok knows its creators are the stars. They are the focus, they are number one, they supersede rights holders and advertisers, everybody in the ecosystem. And the creators can get rich. Come on, try to make it as a musician, you're gonna be broke, quite possibly forever, your odds are better online, and fewer skills are required.
Now TikTok satiates the music companies, the site is music dependent, but when you listen you'll learn that labels were reticent. This is what has hampered music for decades, there's so much money in it that those involved are averse to risk, whereas art is always about throwing the old over for the new. And believe me, if you're making bucks on TikTok, you're reinventing the wheel every damn day, you've got to post content that is appealing all the time, or you're forgotten. That is today's internet paradigm, something oldsters rebel against. If you're not posting content constantly, you're never going to make money online, look to other avenues. And the amazing thing is there are other avenues, in the real world.
So the record labels are businesses. They don't create trends, they follow them, and they go where the bucks are. And before the internet, there was a very narrow sieve of exploitation. If you didn't have a record deal, you were SOL. But today, you don't need the label's imprimatur, you can just start. That doesn't mean you can get fans and get rich, that just means the barrier to entry is low and some genius will figure out how to make it.
But now you don't focus on the platform. This is what all the wankers complaining about streaming music payments don't get. That paradigm has sailed. With the twentieth century. Now it's about the music itself.
Let's be clear, TikTok is not about the music, but the performances. But even more significant, only a snippet of a song is used. Which is why you'll find the tracks in the Spotify Top 50 have brief intros, if they have intros at all, and they're laden with hooks. But as we make the tracks ever more bite-sized, the more we open the playing field to other music.
Let's start with the money. You pay your dues until you make it. And you make it much slower in the real world as opposed to the virtual world. It's kind of like education. You can make bread on TikTok without schooling, but you can't get a job in the real world sans degree. You see TikTok fame is an extension of Kardashian fame. But now you don't even have to know Ryan Seacrest to get you a TV show. YOU DON'T WANT TO GET A TV SHOW, THAT'S NOT WHERE IT'S HAPPENING!
2
You complain the Spotify Top 50 is crap, no-talent music made by committee for those with challenged ears. And to a great degree you're right. Hell, try to find a hit written and performed by one person, it's an impossibility, never mind the insurance of adding a featured performer to the track. Popular music is swirling down an ever-deepening drain, and if you're complaining about this, your head is up your rear end, you should be jumping for joy, so much of the landscape is open for exploitation! And one thing is for sure, the major labels don't want it. They operate under internet metrics, but not all art can be quantified this way, all listeners don't go around liking online. What I mean is...
If you want to be successful, don't go where everybody else is, blaze your own path!
Once again, I must remind you, very few people can make a living making music. Don't get too enthused, because odds are you'll never make it. You have to be a near genius creatively to make it, and most people are not. Not everybody can be the CEO of a Fortune 500 company and not everybody can be a hit act. But someone can be. And not all the hit acts are in the Spotify Top 50.
And too many other acts are focused on radio genres. Active Rock is very active, in that it's loud and in-your-face, they're not playing the equivalent of Crosby, Stills & Nash on Active Rock.
What I'm saying here is...
To focus on the music.
When everybody else goes short, you go long. Now is the best time ever to create a long track. Demonstrating your skill, entrancing the listener. These tracks grow via word of mouth, not via hit pathways. A perfect example, Alice In Chains' "Rooster." It's slow and dirgey and over six minutes long, but it's fantastic, ethereal, hard to burn out on. Or Led Zeppelin's "The Rain Song," from "Houses of the Holy," that's the track people e-mail me about the most, and it's seven minutes and thirty nine seconds long! And neither of these tracks are about instant hooks, never mind multiple hooks...
You see what is outside today is inside tomorrow. But in today's world, there's not just one pathway to success, but many.
The key today is live performance. That's where you feel the music. That's where you get touched by it. And the truth is you've got to pay a lot of dues to get good enough to get people's attention when they've never heard your music previously, that doesn't happen out of the box, but if you can... Today's world is all about experiences, streaming music on demand is not an experience. On some level TikTok is, proving that the online recording game is now subsidiary to the layers of creativity poured on top!
3
Want to break through today?
Form a blues band. Yes, someone in the act has got to be able to play guitar, and the vocals must be excellent and the songwriting must be stellar, but if all three align, you'd be a breath of fresh air talked about everywhere. The problem today is most people focus on fame before songs, and people don't realize we only have room for excellence, for greatness, if you're not the best songwriter of all time, you can't have Bob Dylan's voice and expect to be a star.
The truth is active music listeners are looking for a cornucopia of sounds. Even more they're looking to be affected by the music. Today's hit music slides right off of you, it's sauce for your efforts to hook up. Today's music is secondary, not primary. And it's all about the money. Everybody in music talks about the money, even people who've never made a record, that's the focus, but that's never the focus in art. If you don't love it for itself, stop. And if you love it and take the public on an exquisite journey the doors are open!
But for far too long the best and the brightest have avoided music, the odds are too long, and innovation is abhorred. But the key is to use the notes, the instruments, to create something new and different, not me-too and expect a new result.
You see today's music is so in pursuit of the dollar, a platform for branding more than standing alone, that it satiates fewer listeners.
And look at the concert grosses. They're rarely packed with those in the Spotify Top 50. And if they are, they're usually different acts the following year.
Yes, you can get depressed learning about TikTok or you can be inspired. Everything you love about music has been excised. How long a journey can you go on? Sure, the TikTok clip can be replayed ad infinitum, but let's also be clear it's about the trick, not the music.
As systems become ever more digital, you want to go analog. Even acoustic. Look at movies, they chased the dollar with cartoons/superheroes and the end result is that most people never go to the theatre anymore, never mind watch the Oscars, they're too busy consuming humanity-based longform content online.
The medium changes the message. But now the medium has resulted in music that's all about brief hooks, which is ultimately background, disposable. Never in the last fifty years has the landscape been more wide open. Now is not the time to complain, now is the time to innovate!
The public is all ears.
But only for the new and different.
That's your responsibility. Only a few are up to the task. But those few will be bigger than all the rest. We saw this when FM superseded AM. Sure, there continued to be AM hits, but all the action, the money, the respect, the gravitas was in the FM acts.
The Spotify Top 50 is AM.
The world at large is FM.
FM started small and took over. That's what's going to happen again. Look at the rest of the world, the non-musical landscape, it's endless niches, many of them profitable, why should there be only one profitable niche in music?
THERE ISN'T!
--
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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To change your email address http://lefsetz.com/lists/?p=preferences&uid=0eecea7b60b461717065cbde887c8e25
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You absolutely must listen to the third episode of the Foundering podcast on TikTok. I don't care if you're an agent or a promoter, a label executive or a wannabe act, this will set you straight on where we're going and where we're not.
"TikTok Redefined the Economics of Fame - Episode three of 'Foundering: The TikTok Story' explains how the startup chooses who gets famous, which videos go viral and which trends blow up.": https://bloom.bg/2Rjj00K
You see there's a great bifurcation in music today. All the focus has been on streaming payouts, when the ball has moved, now it's all about the kind of music that's being made!
I know, I know, that does not correlate with the news, but when did the news ever tell you where you were going to go?
This podcast episode will tell you that TikTok is active with its users in a way that YouTube and Facebook/Instagram are not. Those are old models, TikTok is new. TikTok is consumer facing. Sure, the other platforms depend on users, but they're hands-off, they provide the tools and then it's a free-for-all. But not on TikTok. TikTok handpicks its stars, nurtures them, provides information to allow them to maintain their stardom and does not close out newbies. Yes, once a platform reaches critical mass, if you're late to the party you've got no chance. Sign on to Facebook for the first time today, good luck building a friend base, that was something people did ten years ago. Same deal on Twitter. The stars have been anointed, and even though a few new ones may be minted, the odds are really long. But TikTok focuses on building new stars, otherwise the creator class, in this case the hoi polloi posters, gets discouraged and moves on.
You see TikTok knows its creators are the stars. They are the focus, they are number one, they supersede rights holders and advertisers, everybody in the ecosystem. And the creators can get rich. Come on, try to make it as a musician, you're gonna be broke, quite possibly forever, your odds are better online, and fewer skills are required.
Now TikTok satiates the music companies, the site is music dependent, but when you listen you'll learn that labels were reticent. This is what has hampered music for decades, there's so much money in it that those involved are averse to risk, whereas art is always about throwing the old over for the new. And believe me, if you're making bucks on TikTok, you're reinventing the wheel every damn day, you've got to post content that is appealing all the time, or you're forgotten. That is today's internet paradigm, something oldsters rebel against. If you're not posting content constantly, you're never going to make money online, look to other avenues. And the amazing thing is there are other avenues, in the real world.
So the record labels are businesses. They don't create trends, they follow them, and they go where the bucks are. And before the internet, there was a very narrow sieve of exploitation. If you didn't have a record deal, you were SOL. But today, you don't need the label's imprimatur, you can just start. That doesn't mean you can get fans and get rich, that just means the barrier to entry is low and some genius will figure out how to make it.
But now you don't focus on the platform. This is what all the wankers complaining about streaming music payments don't get. That paradigm has sailed. With the twentieth century. Now it's about the music itself.
Let's be clear, TikTok is not about the music, but the performances. But even more significant, only a snippet of a song is used. Which is why you'll find the tracks in the Spotify Top 50 have brief intros, if they have intros at all, and they're laden with hooks. But as we make the tracks ever more bite-sized, the more we open the playing field to other music.
Let's start with the money. You pay your dues until you make it. And you make it much slower in the real world as opposed to the virtual world. It's kind of like education. You can make bread on TikTok without schooling, but you can't get a job in the real world sans degree. You see TikTok fame is an extension of Kardashian fame. But now you don't even have to know Ryan Seacrest to get you a TV show. YOU DON'T WANT TO GET A TV SHOW, THAT'S NOT WHERE IT'S HAPPENING!
2
You complain the Spotify Top 50 is crap, no-talent music made by committee for those with challenged ears. And to a great degree you're right. Hell, try to find a hit written and performed by one person, it's an impossibility, never mind the insurance of adding a featured performer to the track. Popular music is swirling down an ever-deepening drain, and if you're complaining about this, your head is up your rear end, you should be jumping for joy, so much of the landscape is open for exploitation! And one thing is for sure, the major labels don't want it. They operate under internet metrics, but not all art can be quantified this way, all listeners don't go around liking online. What I mean is...
If you want to be successful, don't go where everybody else is, blaze your own path!
Once again, I must remind you, very few people can make a living making music. Don't get too enthused, because odds are you'll never make it. You have to be a near genius creatively to make it, and most people are not. Not everybody can be the CEO of a Fortune 500 company and not everybody can be a hit act. But someone can be. And not all the hit acts are in the Spotify Top 50.
And too many other acts are focused on radio genres. Active Rock is very active, in that it's loud and in-your-face, they're not playing the equivalent of Crosby, Stills & Nash on Active Rock.
What I'm saying here is...
To focus on the music.
When everybody else goes short, you go long. Now is the best time ever to create a long track. Demonstrating your skill, entrancing the listener. These tracks grow via word of mouth, not via hit pathways. A perfect example, Alice In Chains' "Rooster." It's slow and dirgey and over six minutes long, but it's fantastic, ethereal, hard to burn out on. Or Led Zeppelin's "The Rain Song," from "Houses of the Holy," that's the track people e-mail me about the most, and it's seven minutes and thirty nine seconds long! And neither of these tracks are about instant hooks, never mind multiple hooks...
You see what is outside today is inside tomorrow. But in today's world, there's not just one pathway to success, but many.
The key today is live performance. That's where you feel the music. That's where you get touched by it. And the truth is you've got to pay a lot of dues to get good enough to get people's attention when they've never heard your music previously, that doesn't happen out of the box, but if you can... Today's world is all about experiences, streaming music on demand is not an experience. On some level TikTok is, proving that the online recording game is now subsidiary to the layers of creativity poured on top!
3
Want to break through today?
Form a blues band. Yes, someone in the act has got to be able to play guitar, and the vocals must be excellent and the songwriting must be stellar, but if all three align, you'd be a breath of fresh air talked about everywhere. The problem today is most people focus on fame before songs, and people don't realize we only have room for excellence, for greatness, if you're not the best songwriter of all time, you can't have Bob Dylan's voice and expect to be a star.
The truth is active music listeners are looking for a cornucopia of sounds. Even more they're looking to be affected by the music. Today's hit music slides right off of you, it's sauce for your efforts to hook up. Today's music is secondary, not primary. And it's all about the money. Everybody in music talks about the money, even people who've never made a record, that's the focus, but that's never the focus in art. If you don't love it for itself, stop. And if you love it and take the public on an exquisite journey the doors are open!
But for far too long the best and the brightest have avoided music, the odds are too long, and innovation is abhorred. But the key is to use the notes, the instruments, to create something new and different, not me-too and expect a new result.
You see today's music is so in pursuit of the dollar, a platform for branding more than standing alone, that it satiates fewer listeners.
And look at the concert grosses. They're rarely packed with those in the Spotify Top 50. And if they are, they're usually different acts the following year.
Yes, you can get depressed learning about TikTok or you can be inspired. Everything you love about music has been excised. How long a journey can you go on? Sure, the TikTok clip can be replayed ad infinitum, but let's also be clear it's about the trick, not the music.
As systems become ever more digital, you want to go analog. Even acoustic. Look at movies, they chased the dollar with cartoons/superheroes and the end result is that most people never go to the theatre anymore, never mind watch the Oscars, they're too busy consuming humanity-based longform content online.
The medium changes the message. But now the medium has resulted in music that's all about brief hooks, which is ultimately background, disposable. Never in the last fifty years has the landscape been more wide open. Now is not the time to complain, now is the time to innovate!
The public is all ears.
But only for the new and different.
That's your responsibility. Only a few are up to the task. But those few will be bigger than all the rest. We saw this when FM superseded AM. Sure, there continued to be AM hits, but all the action, the money, the respect, the gravitas was in the FM acts.
The Spotify Top 50 is AM.
The world at large is FM.
FM started small and took over. That's what's going to happen again. Look at the rest of the world, the non-musical landscape, it's endless niches, many of them profitable, why should there be only one profitable niche in music?
THERE ISN'T!
--
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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