Spotify: https://t.ly/MD1gv

YouTube: https://t.ly/0JaoZ

Spotify slipped into “Sweet Black Angel.” Never my favorite track on “Exile on Main Street” but I love the sound…it’s sparse, nearly naked, and today everybody is covering up.

I’m always interested in what Spotify will play after my chosen tracks/albums are done. To see what the algorithm presents. And hearing “Sweet Black Angel” I was inspired to go deeper down the rabbit hole, back to the return to form, “Beggars Banquet.” People don’t remember that for a long time that was considered the best Stones album, before time marched on and “Some Girls” got love and people looked back on “Sticky Fingers” fondly and I always favored “Let It Bleed,” but “Beggars Banquet” was a complete surprise, a 180 from the overblown “Satanic Majesties,” it was stripped down, no dross, and all the ink was always about “Sympathy For the Devil” and “Street Fighting Man,” the former a deserved classic, the latter very good, but not quite as great, yet it was always the album cuts that resonated with me.

Of course there was “Stray Cat Blues,” with that salacious intro, “ah…yeah…” before the lyrics even began. And I’m loath to admit that for a long time my favorite has been “Parachute Woman”…”land on me tonight,” even though the meaning was slight compared to the rest.

The piece de resistance is the closer, “Salt of the Earth.” But the rest of the tracks…

Waiting for a factory girl? Man, don’t we live in a different society today.

“Waiting for a girl who’s got curlers in her hair

Waiting for a girl she has no money anywhere”

At this point the Stones were stars. And it’s not like Mick came from a lower class background. But this was just when England was emerging from black and white into color, when the grit was still baked into the buildings, and people are people…and usually those no one is paying attention to are the wildest and most interesting, because they see no need to color inside the lines.

And “Prodigal Son” sounds like anything but London. This is the England of 19th century literature.

But the song I was inspired to play after hearing “Sweet Black Angel” was “No Expectations.”

“Take me to the station

And put me on the train

I’ve got no expectations

To pass through here again”

Regrets. Leaving with your tail between your legs. Hoping to recover your good feelings, by never returning to what once was.

This was when Brian Jones was still functional. His acoustic slide guitar is key. Just like so much of “Beggars Banquet,” this is wooden music, as Crosby, Stills, Nash and sometimes Young put it. And the ignored Bill Wyman’s bass is key.

Today everybody is a winner. The external is key. But that’s not what the greats of yore were selling. It was a seamier side of life. Internal. After dark.

And Nicky Hopkins is a fifth member of the band.

But I wanted something more electric, so I skipped over to “Let It Bleed.”

Now let’s be clear, at this point I’ve forgone Spotify for Qboz, where I can hear these tracks in better than CD quality. The sound is so immediate. Right there. You’re inside it. It’s striking and pure.

Now let’s be clear, “Monkey Man” is just an album track, far from “Let It Bleed”‘s best, but this is back from when you couldn’t easily pick and choose, you had to get up off the floor, the couch, your bed, to lift and drop the needle to hear a song again, rather you let the album side play right through.

The second side of “Let It Bleed” starts and ends with absolute killers, “Midnight Rambler” and “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” but I didn’t want to hear anything that overplayed.

“I am a flea-bit peanut monkey”

I didn’t know Mick was singing “flea-bit peanut” until I looked up the lyrics online. Don’t forget, most albums released back then didn’t have lyric sheets. That was part of the magic, you had to figure the words out, and oftentimes you got them wrong.

But “Monkey Man” does not start off like a typical Stones song, in that it begins with Nicky Hopkins’s piano. And Bill’s bass. And a bit of ethereal guitar, more feedback than the notes.

And then…

Keith comes in. He plays all the guitars on this track.

And he’s just hitting a few strings. And when he gets into it, there’s just a bit of distortion, the sound is dirty. This was before the seventies, when everybody was experimenting with sounds beyond the strings themselves. Of course we had Hendrix and Clapton, but once Jimmy Page penetrated our consciousness an undistorted, a thin not fat guitar sound was rare.

But unlike the more modern productions, “Monkey Man” breathes. Because there’s just not that much there. Nicky in the left ear, Keith in the right.

But then Keith falls into a groove. I wouldn’t quite call it soul, but your head starts to nod. And Keith seems to be playing accents more than continuously. Seeing no need to dominate the track.

Although in the right ear there’s a quieter guitar that gets louder as the song plays, but really it’s Mick singing and then that fat guitar sound of Keith.

“And all my friends are junkies

That’s not really true”

Only when you’re at the peak can you undercut yourself. Today no one admits any faults. No one we knew was shooting heroin, but we knew what a junkie was, and the Stones had a bad rep, Mick is boasting of being a bad boy…and then he’s admitting he’s not quite that bad.

“I’m a cold Italian pizza”

Was this a reference to the album’s cover, that ‘za squeezed into the cake concoction?

“I could use a lemon squeezer

Would you do?”

Funny how the previously released “Led Zeppelin II” spoke of lemon squeezing… A term unused in the U.S. that we instantly became familiar with. When rock stars were at the bleeding edge of sexuality, before anyone could Google porn.

“I was bitten by a boar

I was gouged and I was gored”

“Gouged and gored” I always heard, but not “boar,” at least not as in an animal…

“Yes I’m a sack of broken eggs

I always have an unmade bed

Don’t you?”

I heard “eggs” and “unmade bed,” but in the pre hi-res audio days, when we listened on less than perfect stereos, we only caught certain words, and Mick was famous for slurring and the Stones buried the lyrics in the track to the point on “Exile” they were nearly indecipherable.

“Well I hope we’re not too messianic

Or a trifle too satanic

We love to play the blues”

I caught all that. And it was hard to hear “satanic” without thinking of “Sympathy for the Devil,” but the attitude evidenced…they were the other, they weren’t offering salvation, they just wanted to play the blues, but they were DANGEROUS!

That’s what permeated the track, the danger.

That’s what struck me, the difference between then and now. For a long while hip-hop sold this danger, to some degree it still does. And in active rock you hear anger, I’m not quite sure danger, but for a long time there was no danger in rock and maybe that’s why it expired.

The bluesmen were not brought home to mother. How did Robert Johnson die?

Musicians were a cult. They actually knew how to play. And they lived an alternative life. With sex, drugs and…rock and roll. They invented this!

And then everybody glommed on, grew their hair long and lost their ethos.

Taylor Swift has built a career on complaints. No one was complaining back then, they were living the life of Riley.

And those on the Top Forty were not even in mind.

That’s why the ’72 tour was such a thing. This was not about the money, this was about bad boys raping and pillaging across the country… Maybe we can use that term once again. It was a state of mind, not actual rape. But now you can’t even test limits with speech, never mind action.

And what exactly was “Monkey Man” about?

Now the Urban Dictionary will tell you it’s “A person who does drugs (specifically cocaine).”

That sounds right. The Stones were famous for using drugs. It was part of Keith Richards’s identity.

But Wikipedia says “Monkey Man” is ” a tribute to Mario Schifano, whom they met on the set of his movie ‘Umano Non Umano ((Human, Not Human!'”

Now as into foreign film as were back then, I’ve never heard of Mario nor his film, which doesn’t even have its own Wikipedia page, which means it might as well not exist, but “Human, Not Human!” could mean monkey.

Or…

It’s not really about the lyrics at all. Except for the words that stick out here and there.

“But I’ve been bit and I’ve been tossed around

By every she-rat in this town

Have you, babe?”

“She-rat”? That’s sexist, abusive… We don’t even want to hear your explanation, be lucky you’re not #MeTooed.

Then again, the Stones and the other bands drew women to them like lemmings.

Let’s be clear, sex was part of the package.

“Well I am just a monkey man

I’m glad you are a monkey woman too”

We are in this together. Ultimately, rock was not exclusionary. You just had to throw off your preconceptions, society, and join in. The Fortune 500 were anathema.

Of course, things changed. The Stones were the first to do a major sponsorship deal, with Jovan, talk about a forgotten brand.

And somewhere along the line it became about the money.

And then all the people who stayed away needed to get close, go to the show, even though it was too down and dirty for them  in ’69.

And there’s that darkness, but baked into “Monkey Man” is also FUN!

You wanted to be Keith Richards throwing off those riffs.

Charlie and Bill holding down the bottom.

And then there was that sound, encapsulated in the notes emanating from Keith’s guitar. They penetrated you in a way the words did not. Mick was just the icing on the cake.

And the way the track seemed to accelerate at the end. It didn’t fade out so much as disappear into the distance, a train of debauchery pulling away from you.

What was that?

These are just human beings, but how did they come up with this sound? This attitude? This life?

We were drawn closer to the flame. We were even willing to get burned a bit in our journey. You could not get this anywhere else but in the grooves of a record or live at the show. It wasn’t on TV. Not even in the movies. The rock stars were kings. You don’t nod your head when you use Facebook, never mind other social media. Music might throw off money, but money never ever has had the power of music.

And you need to remember that.

I don’t know if we can get back to the garden.

But I know if we do the people who lead us there won’t be like you and me. They won’t care about societal convention. They’ll just be concentrated on getting the lightning of sound in a bottle.

We’ve come so far from that magic…

It’s just not the same.

Steph Paynes is the lead guitarist and driving force of Lez Zeppelin.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/steph-paynes/id1316200737?i=1000678516624

 

 

 

https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9ff4fb19-54d4-41ae-ae7a-8a6f8d3dafa8/episodes/22aa286e-2c10-417b-b93a-ec0d38e5a42d/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-steph-paynes

 

“MSNBC’S Audience Sliced in Half as Viewers Flee Post-Election”: https://t.ly/cNh0b

What is MSNBC for?

The day after the election I tuned in MSNBC and it was the same as it ever was, you’d think nothing had changed, it was the usual suspects railing against Trump and the Republicans. I switched stations and haven’t been back since.

It’s not a news organization. There are almost no reporters. You can’t seem to tune in without them quoting the “New York Times” or the “Wall Street Journal.” Even Rachel Maddow does this, and she’s the most credible star they’ve got!

As for Lawrence O’Donnell… This guy has got a chip on his shoulder, no one on the other side can ever do anything right. He’s a nitpicker. He refuses to see the forest for the trees.

Which is what the Democrats were forced to do after Election Day. But not MSNBC!

Everybody needs to pivot. Did you read today’s “New York Times” article on Southwest Airlines?

“How Southwest Airlines Lost Its Groove”

Free link: https://t.ly/pqVhh

If you keep doing the same thing and expecting to win…you’re going to lose. Maybe the hard core will stand by you, but how many hard core MSNBC fans are there, who want to spend time in this reality distortion field.

On MSNBC the Democrats are always right and the Republicans are on the verge of getting their comeuppance. But this never happens. MSNBC represents the elite that the country rebelled against. We’re sick and tired of people telling us they know better. Just because you wear a suit and tie that does not make you right.

We can debate whether there’s any future in cable news. Look at the demographics, only old people watch it, young ‘uns are not coming on board. Eventually this audience is going to die, and then what? Maybe you treat MSNBC like Alden Capital treats newspapers. You cut and bleed it dry knowing it’s time-stamped.

Otherwise MSNBC has to pivot. Has to reinvent itself.

Has to stop being a delusional left wing cheerleader.

On MSNBC the Democrats had it in the bag, Kamala Harris was a good candidate and everything was hunky dory, only it wasn’t.

I’d love to see MSNBC do a deep dive into the Harris campaign and the candidate herself. Truly look at why she lost. Enough with the insanity that Harris ran a perfect campaign. How about more info on how Harris locked up the nomination right after Biden decided not to run. She got an early heads-up and called all her potential competitors and asked whether they were with her or against her. Can’t MSNBC investigate the flaws of the Democrats instead of constantly pointing fingers at those on the right?

How about a Snopes show. You know, rumors, are they true or false? And apply it to both sides. An hour of that a day would be interesting. Google News does this, MSNBC can.

How about giving more airtime to the TikTokkers on the left. All we hear about is the political influencers on the right. But social media is filled with regular people in beards and overalls who are on the left. Give them some views.

MSNBC’s only hope is to fill a niche that no one else has.

The facts. However they may fall.

CNN says it is doing this, but so far the message is mixed.

That’s another show every night. The issues in play, what are the facts.

Tariffs, winners and losers. Car companies, electric car companies, Newsom saying he’ll keep electric car incentives even if Trump eviscerates those on a federal level. This is information, we all want information. Enough with opinion, it turned out MSNBC’s opinions were WRONG! Are they going to refuse to pivot, just like the DNC?

It should be that if you want to know what is going on, you tune in MSNBC for the facts. Which don’t always come down on one side or the other. Make MSNBC authoritative alongside the “Times.”

No arguing. No spin. No “Crossfire,” no usual suspects with their insane distortion of the truth.

As for Rachel Maddow… She needs to do what she does best, which is historical context. For an entire hour. No interviews. Do a deep dive into what was and thread it up to today. And let the people decide for themselves, even though the facts might be self-evident.

Sure, it will take a while for the public to adjust. But like Adobe which went from sales to subscription, after a while word spreads and you come back stronger than ever before.

Maybe tie in with Bloomberg. Which got away from hard political news. Use their facts to delineate the truth.

And an honest business hour to combat CNBC’s cheerleading.

That’s what’s wrong with MSNBC, the cheerleading. Like we’re all supposed to believe when our team gets wiped out again and again and again.

Turns out all the money in airlines these days is in slicing and dicing the cabins and charging for upgraded amenities. The one size fits all paradigm of Southwest no longer works.

Don’t tell me about Fox. Just because it works on the right doesn’t mean it will work on the left. Fox’s spin is that we’re the downtrodden underdogs. Forget that we’re delusional, we are fighting the forces of evil.

Democrats are not that dumb. How do they lay out the bread crumbs and lead the blue collar and other defectors back to them.

Not by isolating and doing the same damn thing, but by trying a different strategy.

What you want is the person on the factory floor contradicting a Fox viewer by saying they saw something different on the facts hour on MSNBC. Believe me, when you retort that some talking head on MSNBC said otherwise, it means nothing.

You win by being the other.

Being the left wing version of Fox is a losing strategy.

I’m disillusioned. I know dedicated MSNBC viewers who are disillusioned. What, is the channel waiting for Trump’s faux pas to do the same damn thing expecting us to return like lemmings?

I’m not interested in that. I don’t care about tit for tat. I want to play the long game, if anything. How do we turn this ship around? Hell, if this were the Titanic MSNBC would be so busy pointing out the failures of the captain that they’d refuse to get off the ship. Everybody would be running for the exits and on MSNBC they’d be lionizing their favorite captain and bringing out experts who support their position while the ship is listing.

Everybody but Rachel Maddow is expendable.

Don’t worry about someone being on the left or the right, worry first and foremost about credibility. MSNBC needs umpires.

MSNBC should be a den of strategy…that’s a club, I’m interested in joining. One hour about what we can do, with updates. More “Shark Tank” for political/societal change than sideline snickering.

Right now MSNBC is a joke and the only people who are unaware of this are those who work for the damn channel.

ENOUGH!

“Drake accuses Universal Music Group and Spotify of unfairly promoting Kendrick Lamar’s ‘Not Like Us'”: https://t.ly/wi2pY

“Drake Files Second Action Against UMG, Alleging Defamation Over Kendrick Lamar’s ‘False’ Song”: https://t.ly/32_oO

Who knows what the truth is.

But one thing is for sure, the credibility of Universal and Spotify is in question. In a world where Ticketmaster is more hated than the cable industry. If you’re big in the world today, you’re automatically guilty. This is the ethos of the individuals oppressed online. If you’re defending the corporation, if you’re taking the side of the man, you’re excoriated.

Whatever the truth is here, this is the result of consolidation. Drake and Kendrick Lamar are both Universal artists. Is there an inherent conflict? I’m not saying it’s illegal, it’s not, but I am saying going forward it will be an issue…does the label have my back, or someone else’s?

And let’s be clear, Drake’s image has taken an irreversible hit.

As for a discount deal with Spotify… That seems totally plausible. This is what labels did with physical retail to move product. So did Universal accept a lesser payment for “Not Like Us”? There’s a long history of Spotify paying less in return for promotion. 

Let the games begin.

We have innumerable artists saying that Spotify doesn’t pay enough, while the big kahunas are accepting less for dominance?

As for employing bots… I truly doubt that Spotify, et al, agreed to this. This is a smoking gun, and there’s no upside. But Universal doing anything it can to drive traffic? Once again, that’s the history of music promotion.

So whatever happens here, Universal loses. As has Drake. He will never recover from this rap battle. Did Universal have his back? It certainly didn’t look like it. If they weren’t parts of the same conglomerate would another label have fought for Drake harder against Kendrick? One would think so.

And then there’s the dirty little secret that a whole bunch of people just don’t care about this rap battle. In a world where country music is ascendant, where you don’t have to listen to anything you don’t want to, how many people have actually paid attention to the music from last spring that is at the center of this conflagration?

This is a lesson from the election. Perception may be very different from reality. The entire music business was and is focused on this rap battle. But in reality is it a tempest in a teapot? And let’s be clear…in a world where there’s war in the Middle East and in Ukraine, where grocery prices are sky high, do we really care about a pissing match between two rich rappers?

Fans are as diehard as ever. But how wide is that fandom?

And today people are skeptical of celebrities. In truth, many social media influencers have a wider reach than hit musicians. Which is something mainstream media and the industry at large refuse to acknowledge, they’d rather bury their heads in the sand and believe it’s the same as it ever was.

The election proved that big time media was out of touch. Trump bad, Kamala good. Then why did Trump win in the end? Never have big artists reached fewer people. But the industry has not adjusted for this. Instead of major labels trying to gain market share by signing ever more acts in ever more genres, they’re signing very few acts in very few genres and trying for moonshots. But a moonshot in the MTV era was very different from today. Back then you were literally known around the world. Today you can be a Spotify Top Ten artist and most of the public cannot name a single song of yours.

In an era of transparency, the music business continues to be opaque. As for Spotify…it actually publishes the streams, available to everybody, right in the desktop app. But since Spotify is the biggest streamer with the most listeners it must be guilty.

What Drake wants is sunlight, whatever the truth might be. But historically the industry has done everything to avoid this, settling all lawsuits, avoiding precedent.

But it used to be that acts were afraid of labels. But with so much money in touring, this is no longer the case. Lawsuits are more prevalent.

Questlove said in the wake of the  Kendrick/Drake rap battle that “Hip-hop is truly dead.”

But it might just be the beginning of transparency.