I couldn’t have a conversation with Seymour Stein without him mentioning Mike Vernon.

Oh, that’s a little extreme, but Seymour mentioned Mike all the time, just like he mentioned Syd Nathan and King Records…that’s where he got his start. And once he started he made a deal with Mike Vernon to put out his Blue Horizon records in America.

But now Seymour is dead and there’s no one left to testify.

I’d never heard of Mike Vernon, but it turns out I know his music. I learned that from the few obits I found. Turns out Mike Vernon produced the legendary John Mayall album “Blues Breakers With Eric Clapton.”

Do young people know this record?

Keith Relf was the frontman of the Yardbirds, and their catchy hit tunes were written by Graham Gouldman. Sure, “Over Under Sideways Down” featured the fretwork of Jeff Beck, but unless you’d seen “Blow Up,” chances are you didn’t know Jeff Beck was in the group, or Eric Clapton before him.

Most people didn’t know who Clapton was until “Disraeli Gears,” the 1967 album that featured his guitar work on “Sunshine of Your Love.” People bought that, some went back to buy “Fresh Cream,” “Wheels of Fire” was gigantic and then it was “Goodbye.”

And back then, when you discovered an act, you investigated their roots, you wanted more. There were people who already owned the “Blues Breakers” album, but what truly blew it up was Eric’s success in Cream.

And it wasn’t only Eric who got a boost in status, it was Mayall himself too, he was now seen as a fountain of great guitar players, a veritable farm team. Mick Taylor played with Mayall before he was snatched by the Stones. And before all that, you had Peter Green, Mick Fleetwood and John McVie, who ultimately formed Fleetwood Mac, whose first two albums were produced by Vernon and came out on his label to boot! It was Vernon who produced the single “Albatross”… Never a hit, it has sustained longer than the hits of its era.

Turns out Mike and his brother Richard owned Chipping Norton Recording, which I only knew because there’s a famous photo of Gerry Rafferty wearing a sweater with the studio’s name embroidered on it. “Baker Street” was cut there.

Mike Vernon produced David Bowie, Ten Years After, Savoy Brown…even the legendary “Christine Perfect” album which was released to crickets, but when Fleetwood Mac blew up with her now in it, the album was stocked in every record store…once again, people wanted, NEEDED, more.

Vernon was even a performer. He was in Rocky Sharpe and the Replays…I never knew that.

Oh, I forgot to mention that Mike produced “Hocus Pocus” by Focus!

But not a single person e-mailed me about his passing. Whereas if Seymour was still alive, he would have waxed rhapsodic, sent a lengthy e-mail I could have shared with my readers.

Now in one of the obits Vernon said that it was a time and place, the blues revival…but we’re only a motion away from another wave, this music has feeling, it’s forever.

And there were obits in the English papers, and I was stunned to find one in the “New York Times”:

“Mike Vernon, Who Helped Spark the British Blues Boom, Dies at 81 – He produced albums — by John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers, with Eric Clapton, and the early Fleetwood Mac — that defined 1960s blues rock. He also shepherded David Bowie’s debut album.

Free link: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/24/arts/music/mike-vernon-dead.html?unlocked_article_code=1.WFA.EUPE.5T6FFTGj-fyy&smid=url-share

But there were no hosannas, never mind a victory lap while he was still alive. Even worse, he died on March 2nd, weeks ago, we’re only finding out now!

I don’t know if Mike Vernon belongs in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, but one thing is for sure, he belongs there a lot more than Whitney Houston and the popsters now being inducted. Vernon’s work was bedrock.

But no one seems to care.

We used to. That was our passion, our lives…we needed to know all the players. And I knew the songs, but didn’t happen to buy the albums Mike produced, so I didn’t know…whereas today all this information is at our fingertips and people know nothing.

Then again, are the people worth knowing about? Are the acts worth knowing about? They might have hits, but they’re usually not the single vision of yore, written by the act itself. And money and fame lead, whereas before they were after-effects.

But what really weirds me out is everybody who knew Vernon, and it’s not only Vernon, is passing and not only are these people forgotten, but the stories too.

It’s extremely weird.

But the music remains.

How much of today’s music will remain?

“Albatross” is forever… The Spotify Top 50?

I don’t need someone to root for in order to enjoy a TV series or movie.

Good is not good enough for me. I want the best, which often doesn’t even cost more. Not so I can show it off, but so I can USE IT! All those features…I explore and use them.

I read the manual. Always. When I buy a car, before I set up a piece of electronic gear…

I don’t care how much violence there is, that won’t prevent me from watching a series or film.

I’m not into entertainment. What they call “popcorn movies.” I’ve never read a comic book in my life. Well, other than “Archie” and “Casper the Friendly Ghost.” Marvel means nothing to me.

I hate fantasy. If there are ghosts, demons, anything that doesn’t happen in real life, I’m out.

And I’m not a big fan of sci-fi either…

I want to go deep. If I like a song, I can literally play it thirty times in a row. Much more than once, I’ve played one album and one album only for an entire week…”Led Zeppelin II.” Nik Kershaw’s “15 Minutes.” As for singles… Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy” and Paula Cole’s “14” and Paul McCartney’s “Big Barn Bed”… I put the song on endless repeat and revel in the mood.

I hate groupthink. I don’t want to disagree for the sake of disagreeing, but I don’t want to hold back my opinion for fear of blowback.

I like a nice house, but it’s far down the list of what’s important to me. What’s in my mind is what counts.

I hate shopping for clothes. Mostly I just go to the Polo outlet store and stock up when I’m in need.

I don’t take almost anybody’s opinion as the truth, because people are so uniformed. Unless they’re at the center of what they’re talking about, I go online and do research. Yes, my own research, but at trusted sites… I hate when people send me info from blogs that a quick look at Wikipedia will tell you are biased. It just shows how uninformed they are.

I love the news. I love reading the physical paper because I see stories I don’t find online. Having said that, I’m checking the news apps all day long. For breaking stories. NYT, WSJ, LAT, Apple News+, even X…but only the tweets of those people I follow, the “For you” feed is trash.

If I find something great I want to tell everybody about it.

I love to argue a point. Wrestle with the issues. Get into the minutiae and tease out the truth. Sure, a song may be good, but if it had this or that it would be SPECTACULAR!

I’m susceptible to bullies, but I’ve learned over time that my reaction, my cowering, is unfounded. The people who respond negatively first?/ They’re the most invested in putting you down.

I hate when someone reads a missive of mine and then in a derogatory way says I missed this or that, when if they just read what I wrote they’d see I mentioned it!

Also, I hate when people criticize me for not mentioning a minor player when writing about a major one… What I do is not comprehensive, go to the encyclopedia for that…or maybe today, Wikipedia.

I hate nitpickers.

I believe intellect trumps money, you just have to know how to use it.

I hate sour grapes. From unsuccessful people and people who tell me how hard they’re working. Too many don’t know what sacrifice truly is.

If I’m your friend you can count on me, and I hope I can count on you.

When I find someone is on the same page as me, I buzz on the inside.

I’m an alienated f*ck. I’m the one who refuses to call the teacher “professor,” I’m the one who puts their feet on the desk, I’m not saying there should be no rules, but you’ve got to earn my respect, your title is not enough.

When I was twenty one I knew everything, now I realize how much I don’t know.

If you have a deformity, get plastic surgery…but if you’re doing it to stay young, I don’t get it. Charlotte Rampling has had nothing done and she’s more beautiful than the nipped and tucked.

Okay, you don’t eat and you’re stick thin… You might be impressing other women, but I’m turned off and most men are too. Eat something. And just wait until osteoporosis hits.

Everybody’s got a story…their life, and I want to hear it.

I accept almost nothing at face value.

I’m susceptible to people judging me, but I do what I want anyway.

Bugs me that college is now seen as a glorified trade school. Then again, the real learning in college happens outside class, hanging with people in the dorm.

I love living in LA. because the only person who ever asked me my SAT scores was a Boston Brahmin.

My two favorite flavors of ice cream are Phish Food and Chunky Monkey.

I refuse to save money on that which is cheap to begin with. I don’t want Chips Ahoy, I want Entenmann’s, or even better.

There are exceptions to all of the above.

Dan Clancy is the CEO of Twitch. This is a must-listen.

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dan-clancy/id1316200737?i=1000757533142

https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9ff4fb19-54d4-41ae-ae7a-8a6f8d3dafa8/episodes/e2f676e0-03c9-406b-8eb4-bfcb81c3701c/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-dan-clancy

“When you ain’t got nothing, you got nothing to lose”

“Like a Rolling Stone”

Bob Dylan

1

Back in the MySpace days, when I still responded to complete unknowns, which I no longer do, a guy sent me his music and…

I’m never going to lie. I’m never going to give false hope. But I’m also not going to slam you to the wall. So…I told him it was interesting, and to keep at it.

Fine, case closed.

Only it wasn’t.

About a month later, this same guy sent me an e-mail telling me to tell my entire list to vote for him in some MySpace music competition. Yeah, right. I didn’t respond. But he kept e-mailing me, and after the fourth time…that’s when I made my big mistake, that’s when I crossed the line and ultimately learned my lesson, this interaction proved to me that ten percent of the public is crazy, and you don’t know which ten percent it is, so unless you know someone, or they’re famous, or established in the firmament, DON’T RESPOND!

Yes, after the fourth missive, because I’m a f*cking idiot, I sent an e-mail to the guy saying if he didn’t stop, if he kept telling me to send a missive to my list telling people to vote for him, I’d send a missive to my people telling them NOT TO VOTE FOR HIM!

There, done, problem solved.

I got up, went out for an appointment…this was in the days before ubiquitous smartphones…and when I came back to my computer…

My e-mail was rolling. I mean seventy or a hundred e-mails were downloading every few seconds. What the hell? I consider my inbox inviolate, I don’t want junk in it. But this was worse, how could I find the good stuff, I couldn’t just delete it all, I’d lose the important stuff too.

So diving into one of the e-mails, it turned out that this guy went on MySpace, gave people my e-mail address, told them what a prick I was and got them all to e-mail me telling me off.

Wow.

So, I’m not the average bear, right? I got ahold of MySpace and had his account frozen, because this was a gross violation of the terms of service.

Whew, problem taken care of.

NO!

This guy just started all over again under a new address. Of course this too was a violation of the terms of service, but what did he care, what were they going to do to him, he had nothing to sacrifice, he was nobody, and he knew it and was weaponizing it.

2

That’s what you get from playing online. You see how the world really works. Whenever I write something positive about social media my inbox goes berserk, people tell me about Jonathan Chait’s book, say that social media is the ill that is killing society, and they wouldn’t give TikTok or Instagram Reels a minute of their time, they wouldn’t go on the services, because just like Spotify, THEY’RE THE DEVIL!

There.

Only that’s where all the people are. This is how both Republicans and Democrats missed the affordability crisis. Because they don’t interact with the general public, they have no idea what people think. The same way the so-called “Greatest Generation” missed rock music. You think there’s hatred against hip-hop? You’ve got no idea how much an entire generation decried the Beatles and what came after. Dylan might be lionized for going electric today, they even made a movie about it, but back then it wasn’t only the folkies who hated him.

So the oldsters missed “Like a Rolling Stone.” They didn’t know you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. That an entire generation was enthralled by rock and roll and there would be an upheaval, which some called a “youthquake,” and society would ultimately be changed forever. Free love? Well, it might not have been so easy to get, but having sex before marriage became de rigueur, divorce became rampant, the social fabric was ruptured and rebuilt.

And the oldsters missed it.

Just like Trump missed Iran,.

3

You could come up with a plethora of reasons why Iran should be neutered. But Iran isn’t America, just like Vietnam was not America. These people don’t have the same values as Americans, they don’t see the world the same way, they’re willing to sacrifice, just about everything, to maintain power.

We’ve seen this over and over. Even with the Taliban. We think they’re fighting by our rules. They’re not.

So life is all about reading the room. And Trump failed to do this. He was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and has always been a big swinging dick, a bully… Fly commercial? He ain’t got a little Gulfstream, he’s got a 757. He got Qatar to give him an entire plane. (Just know, a gift is never free…you learn this in business, get a favor, owe a favor.) He’s got no idea how the “little people” live. Nor does he want to.

And it’s not only Trump, it’s the billionaires.

Okay, you made all this money on the backs of the public, not that you believe that, you think it’s all you. And the people are pissed not only that you have all this money, but that you pay little or no taxes. And they want not only a level playing field, but retribution. And what do you do? YOU FIGHT!

How f*cking ignorant are these people? They don’t understand this is a bad look, that will haunt them? Moving to Florida… As if there’s any respite, as if there aren’t agitated people everywhere. You STFU. Maybe pay a few dollars more. It’s not going to affect your lifestyle. But these people are so removed from the general public, and want to be, that they’re unaware of how people think. And if there’s a big problem, they figure they can pull some strings and fix it via their relationships. This is why they all hung with Epstein, not for his money, but for the relationships he yielded, and that’s where you truly gain money and power.

And now it’s not only California, but Washington. And New York City. We can debate the efficacy of wealth taxes all day long, but this is now a movement.

4

So the Strait of Hormuz is closed and Trump looks over his shoulder, looking for reinforcement from the little people, all the countries he’s dissed, and what does he hear? CRICKETS!

So now he tells Iran if they don’t open the Strait, he’s going to bomb their electrical plants. And not only does the nation’s powers not care, they double down, saying if Trump does this:

“Iran dismissed the ultimatum as it launched a new round of attacks on Israel and issued its own warning. Ebrahim Zolfaghari, an Iranian military spokesman, vowed on Sunday that if Iranian energy sites were attacked, it would strike more infrastructure in the region used by Israel, the United States and American allies, such as fuel depots and desalination plants.”

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/03/22/world/iran-war-oil-trump

There, take THAT!

There’s nothing Trump can do to stop them. As for regime change, unless he puts boots on the ground and invades the country, it ain’t gonna happen. We can say it should happen, that what is going on now, the stranglehold of a theocracy, is terrible for the world and the nation’s people, but these clerics, these powers, they don’t give a f*ck, they’re willing to sacrifice EVERYTHING!

5

And you can extrapolate this concept into other areas. Live Nation went behind the court’s, even the litigators’ back. But this ain’t gonna satiate the public, which is incredibly pissed. And will continue to be pissed. And you can only piss off the public for so long.

Live Nation is just a headline,, because it directly interacts with the public on a sexy issue, music. But it’s all these corporations ripping off the public in an era where the masses are hurting. But they’ve got flat panel TVs and smartphones, even SUVs. They’ve got it better than they’ve ever had in history, they should be happy!

Keep telling them that. See how that works out.

Remember Napster? And who saved the recording industry, not anybody in it, but a techie from Sweden.

These are immutable rules of life. We all live together in a society, we’ve got to get along, and it’s a delicate balance, and you can only push so far.

Used to be you learned this via records.

Today, despite preaching fealty to their fans, the acts are brands, mini-corporations, selling not only t-shirts, but perfume and…

Don’t listen to a musician if you want to know which way the wind blows.

But they grew up in a mercenary society. They want what the rich have. To fly private, to separate themselves from the general public. They want to WIN! Art? SCHMART!

Society never changes. A strongman, a dictator, can maybe keep the lid on it for a while, but only a while.

At some point you have to accept the opposition’s values, you’ve got to start from there. Make fun of them at your peril. Believe they’re going to act like you at your peril. BECAUSE THEY’RE NOT COMING FROM WHERE YOU ARE!

You’ve got so much to protect, they’re willing to burn the house down.

Amazing how so many people in power don’t know this, they believe the system will save them.

The system couldn’t save me at MySpace. Well, eventually. And then MySpace died. But I know contracts are just a starting point. You can sue, even win, yet good luck trying to collect. And some people are judgment-proof. If I had all the money people owed me…

But I had to leave it on the table, as a cost of doing business.

How come I know this and the people running the country don’t?

Because they’ve been getting their way for so long they’re oblivious, they think the rules don’t apply to them.

But they do.