“Fear City: New York vs The Mafia”

Netflix trailer: https://short-link.me/15ALU

I thought they took the Mafia down in the seventies, after all didn’t “The Godfather” come out in 1972? Weren’t the seventies the heyday of Mafia movies? With made men testifying for the government in exchange for witness protection?

I guess not, according to this documentary, the Mafia was taken down in the EIGHTIES!

That’s right, when the average punter could name the five families, they were still at it. Acknowledging the Feds like Tony and his paisans.

But the government was disorganized. That’s one thing we’ve learned for sure in the past few decades, with the O.J. trial and so many more… If you’ve got money, you can hire attorneys who can run circles around those working for the government. After all, very few few see government work as the end all and be all. It’s a stepping stone at best. Therefore, you get the young and inexperienced, which was the case in the trial against the Commission.

I’d love to tell you this documentary is well-made, a tour-de-force, but that is not the case. HOWEVER, we’ve all got this fascination with the Mafia, and it’s all laid out here, the families and the FBI and Giuliani…

It all came down to a Cornell professor, who instructed the government on how to fight organized crime. They were suspicious, but they went along with it. The key was to create separate task forces and go against the head guys, the aforementioned Commission, via the RICO act! This professor had written it, the government did not know how to use it.

And how the FBI snoops…

That’s really interesting. How they plant the bugs, how they build the case. Listening to hours of tape and figuring out the truth.

Not that these Mafiosi were dumb. They never left their houses empty. The heads of the families didn’t write stuff down. And they controlled so much!

Like the concrete business in New York City. You marvel at how they could get away with it.

And you’ve got ex-Mafiosi who’ve served their time in prison explaining how the life was.

“Fear City” is not a huge commitment, only three episodes, but if you ever watched “The Godfather,” if you ever had any interest in the Mafia at all, you’ll dig it. Watch it.

“Hitler and the Nazis: Evil on Trial”

Netflix trailer: rb.gy/mrxhgk

I just wasn’t satisfied by the fake. No drama was resonating, from the foreign to the domestic, from crime to relationship comedy, nothing was floating my boat. I needed down home reality.

Which is why I watched the Titan documentary.

That having resonated, I watched a great documentary on the Mafia, which I should write about separately.

And that led me to this Hitler doc, made by Joe Berlinger, of West Memphis Three and Metallica fame.

Now Tony Soprano loved to watch the History Channel, which used to be World War II 24/7, but I never cottoned to that, and does that still even exist, in a world where streaming has eclipsed network and cable combined? I don’t know, but I figured I’d give Hitler a shot.

And I was stunned how much I didn’t know.

Maybe you know it, kudos. But growing up in the sixties, we never studied World War II. Our teachers had lived through it so they thought we knew all about it, even though this was untrue. We learned about World War II through osmosis, the words of our parents, society in general, it was palpable, at least what they now call the Holocaust, never again we were told, and now it’s happening to a degree never seen previously in my lifetime. If you think most people separate Israel from the Jews, you’re not Jewish, you’ve never experienced antisemitism. If any other country was fighting Hamas would there be this uproar? And this Hitler documentary is a great analogue. Hitler, like Hamas, refused to surrender, so the Allies bombed the hell out of Germany, killing so many people. But Hitler had to be defeated. As for Hamas, should it be allowed to stand?

You need to read Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib’s piece in the “Washington Post”: 

“The first step to saving Gaza is seeing Hamas for what it is”

Free link: https://wapo.st/4k9IAgx

Money quote?

“The war in Gaza has killed 35 members of my extended family and destroyed both of the homes in which I lived as a child.”

Unlike all the nincompoops on campuses living in safety, this guy has been directly affected, yet he knows where the blame lies.

And all the musicians… Funny how you can take a stand on Palestine yet not Trump. Talk about going with the flow…

I know this is a dangerous topic. My inbox is filled with pro-Palestinian rhetoric excoriating me for not calling for Israel to immediately stop the war and vacate Gaza. But it’s very simple, Hamas could stop the war tomorrow, they could just cough up the rest of the hostages. But they refuse to do this, putting the entire populace at risk.

But Hitler knew the score, the problem in the world is very clear, it’s the JEWS!

But we already knew this. Then again, today Holocaust denial is a thing. I wonder what these naysayers would say if they saw the piles of corpses, where did those come from?

No, I’m not telling you to watch this Hitler documentary to learn about the killing of Jews, although it’s not a bad bonus, but because of TRUMP! You see in many ways the landscape was the same.

The populace was disillusioned, they felt they’d’ been dealt a raw deal. They were angry and Hitler tapped into this discontent.

It was all about the Treaty of Versailles, which ended the first World War. The terms were just too onerous. The average German was suffering, chafing under these restrictions. Beware of settlements within which you demand too much, they often backfire. And if you don’t know a treaty, a contract, is just a piece of paper, you’re naïve.

The Weimar Republic? Seen as good for some, but they were the few, and much of the public was suffering.

Hitler comes from nothing and takes power with about 35% support. Sound familiar? Like the hard core Trumpers?

Oh, don’t get your knickers in a twist, don’t claim TDS, don’t be ignorant, calm down and watch the first two episodes, your jaw will drop and you’ll feel queasy, the parallels are just too clear. A charismatic leader is given an entry and then he takes over, excludes all comers and becomes a dictator.

I’m living in these United States, explain again why ICE wears masks? If the government can’t fight its battles in the open, with identities clear, maybe their cause is not just. If ICE members are fearful of retaliation… Why don’t all members of Congress hide their identities, and CEOs too. This is not the solution to the problem, if you’re fearful about violence speak to the core, the motivation and how to prevent people from taking action, not defense.

Now I must warn you, this documentary has a few quirks. First, the images are colorized. We fought that battle with Ted Turner decades ago, I haven’t seen someone talk about it recently, yet it’s still offensive.

Second, there are re-enactments. But the real problem is that you sometimes can’t separate the re-enactments from the real footage.

Then again, when you see the real Nazis in the dock in Nuremberg…

There’s all this damning information, the Nazis were meticulous note keepers. But what does each and every Nazi say (except for one, who accepts a smidge of responsibility), IT WASN’T ME! IT WAS ALL HITLER! I HAD NO IDEA!

Yeah, right.

Will we have a Nuremberg style trial for all the Trump enablers? The Congresspeople who are afraid to go against Trump for fear of retaliation, just like with Hitler? You got in line or you were excommunicated. The Führer could fathom no bad news, no contradictions.

It’s eerie.

Do you need to watch all six episodes?

Maybe not, but you do need to watch the first two.

Now don’t roll your eyes and shrug your shoulders, saying analogies to Hitler are employed too frequently and don’t apply. Trump has been operating from the authoritarian playbook, which was laid out clearly in Project 2025, just like in “Mein Kampf.” And Stephen Miller is Joseph Goebbels.

Don’t tell me I’m being histrionic, you can ignore my words completely, as long as you watch the first two episodes of this documentary.

As for me, those Nuremberg Nazis hanged because they couldn’t say no, they couldn’t stand up to Hitler, they couldn’t see that certain actions were immoral.

And it’s not like we’ve never seen this in America before. McCarthyism? A black stain on American history, but how many went along with it back in the fifties, afraid to look soft on Communism?

This is the American spirit we’ve lost, in a world that has become totally about money, even though so many have been left behind. America was always about the rugged individual, free to be themselves, walk their own way, not put up with the b.s.

Today everybody is a sheep, and it’s not only in politics. People are afraid to go against conventional wisdom, stand up to the bullies. They’re afraid of being excoriated by the minions.

But not me.

Spotify playlist: https://rb.gy/jdfgor

I really don’t want to write another obituary, but I don’t want Mick Ralphs to be overlooked as he too often was in the two big bands he was a member of. 

Mott the Hoople was dominated by Ian Hunter, even though the band’s initial single was an instrumental cover of “You Really Got Me,” long before Diamond Dave and the Van Halens did their version of this Kinks classic.

There was a buzz on that first Mott the Hoople album, it had the aforementioned Kinks cover, and it also featured a distinctive album cover, M.C. Escher’s “Reptiles,” which I studied in the bins. As for buying an LP based on the cover, I never did that, who would? And “You Really Got Me” was all over underground FM radio, which was burgeoning in the New York market with multiple stations, and I saw the band open for the Traffic reunion at Fillmore East in the spring of 1970, but the album was not a commercial success, and the three Atlantic LPs which followed the eponymous debut were not either, even though “Brain Capers” got good reviews. It was a different era, if a label signed you they stuck with you, especially the English acts, but not forever, Mott eventually jumped to Columbia, however…

The other big cut on the debut was “Rock and Roll Queen,” which was Mott’s signature cut before “All the Young Dudes,” and it was composed by Mick Ralphs. That’s why I’m writing this, not only was Ralphs’s playing overlooked, but his songwriting ability. “Rock and Roll Queen” was an Ian Hunter tour-de-force, the average punter had no idea that Mick had composed it.

And by the time of “All the Young Dudes”… The story was that Bowie wrote and produced the number, and I don’t want to take anything away from the way Ian Hunter twists the words and emotes vocally, but that indelible guitar work, that was Mick Ralphs.

And if you weren’t concentrating on Ian Hunter in the band, your eyes drifted to the tall and gussied up Pete “Overend” Watts, with his platform boots. Mick Ralphs was just the guitar player.

But I bought that album, which bore the moniker of the hit song. I’d read it was good, but also I had to own “All the Young Dudes.” The LP never caught fire, you never heard another track on the radio, but if you owned it, on the second side…

There was a Hunter/Ralphs number “One of the Boys” that is great straight ahead rock and roll with attitude, and then there is…

“Ready for Love/After Lights,” which was remade on the initial Bad Company album, but as good as Paul Rodgers’s vocal is, the original is a completely different experience, that sets you free to drift, something that’s been lost in today’s in-your-face era. Furthermore, Mick SANG IT! His weak voice adding gravitas.

The follow-up to the “All the Young Dudes” album, entitled “Mott,” was solid throughout and more commercially successful, even though there was not a huge hit single. HOWEVER, “All the Way from Memphis” opened the not yet legendary Martin Scorsese’s “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore” and Ralphs wrote the driving opening track on the second side with Ian, entitled “Drivin’ Sister,” truly the second best song on the album…

And then Mick left. Replaced by a man named Ariel Bender, who was really Luther Grosvenor from Spooky Tooth, and the ensuing record wasn’t bad, Mr. Bender could pick the notes, but he could not add the flavor Mick Ralphs did and the band broke apart, Ian Hunter went solo and…

Started off with a lot of hype and then faded until he switched to the nascent in America Chrysalis label and delivered a classic, “You’re Never Alonie With a Schizophrenic.”

Meanwhile, Mick Ralphs was the guitarist in one of the biggest bands in the world, the first signed to Led Zeppelin’s Swan Song label, Bad Company, where Paul Rodgers showed that he was more than a one hit wonder, that “All Right Now” was just the beginning.

But in that previous band…it is well established that Paul Kossoff was one of the best guitarists EVER! So not only did it look like Ralphs was slotted into a replacement Free, with Simon Kirke from that band on the drums, but almost no one could live up to the talent of Paul Kossoff, whom Paul Rodgers told me was the best guitarist he ever worked with, and don’t forget that he worked with Jimmy Page in the Firm and fronted Queen with Brian May.

But, once again, Ralphs’s songwriting talents were overlooked, still are. It’s one thing to be able to play, but to compose? And don’t ever forget, Bad Company was a guitar-dominated group, and Mick was the guitarist. Paul played occasionally, but it was Mick who did the heavy lifting, and go no respect.

It was MICK who wrote Bad Company’s debut smash, “Can’t Get Enough.” Yup, you might have forgotten that, if you ever even knew it.

Mick also wrote “Movin’ On” on the second side of the first album, a track in the vein of “One of the Boys” and “Drivin’ Sister,” and just as good.

But it was really the second album that broke Bad Company wide, that made the band ubiquitous. That’s right, as huge as the debut was, “Straight Shooter” was even BIGGER! And all the wankers on the Rock Hall of Fame committee seemed to have forgotten this until this very year. I don’t want to get into a pissing match, but KISS was never a match for Bad Company, KISS was about the live show, Bad Company was first and foremost about the music! And “Straight Shooter” opened with a bang, Mick Ralphs’s “Good Lovin’ Gone Bad.”

But the true breakthrough cut on the second album was the second song, with its stinging guitar emphasis, a Ralphs/Rodgers co-composition, a song that you heard everywhere in 1975 and those addicted to the radio still remember, FEEL LIKE MAKIN’ LOVE! Yup, that staccato guitar, wow!

And how about that guitar on the two opening cuts on the second side, “Deal with the Preacher” and “Wild Fire Woman”? Just listen! It’s not how fast you play, but what you wring from the instrument, a sound, a soul, a feeling that goes alternately straight to the heart and straight to the genitals.

As for the third album, not equal to what came before but still with merit, it opens with Mick Ralphs’s “Live for the Music,” my personal anthem:

“Some people say I’m no good

Laying in my bed all day

But when the nighttime comes I’m ready to rock

And roll my troubles away”

I’ve gotten sh*t for DECADES about being a late riser, a creature of the night. In a world where everybody boasts about how early they awaken, those in the arts know that nothing good happens during the day, greatness arrives after dark, oftentimes after midnight, when the rest of the world is asleep and you can stretch out and be yourself, create. And when you create in these hours you can’t fall asleep thereafter. Creative work takes mental energy that you just can’t come down from, which leaves you up all night, just like a band that’s left the arena stage unable to shut their eyes on the bus.

But then, but THEN, comes the PIECE-DE-RESISTANCE! My absolute favorite Bad Company song, one that I sing to myself and play CONSTANTLY, “Simple Man.”

“Simple Man” is a masterpiece from start to finish, the music and the lyrics, the guitar-playing and the vocal, but the key comes forty seconds in:

“Freedom is the only thing means a damn to me

Oh, you can’t fake it

Freedom is the only song, sing a song for me

Oh, we’re gonna make it”

Absolute free speech, all the right wing b.s. parroted under the rubric of freedom, that’s not real freedom and that’s not what Bad Company is singing about, the meaning I take from this number. Rather it’s the freedom to be ME! And believe me, I’ve run up against this my entire life, people criticizing me for what I say and who I am, I just want to be left alone to be myself, but since I’m not just like everybody else, this is a problem. The bands and the music they used to play represented this ethos, they lived in an alternate world, they were a beacon to those of us who didn’t fit in. Please, at this late date, let me be me. Let everybody be themselves if they’re not hurting you. Yes, what difference does it make to you if someone has an abortion or is trans… Give them their FREEDOM!

And then there’s the Bad Company “comeback” album, when their previous record was a disappointment, when they’d disappeared for years, when nothing was expected, the group came back with DESOLATION ANGELS! Mick wrote “Oh, Atlanta,” which Alison Krauss employed to cross over to the mainstream.

So Mick Ralphs was more than a guitar player, MUCH MORE, but he was a great guitar player TOO! All those legendary Bad Company records, that was HIM, up front and center, that was MICK!

And he had a stroke nearly a decade ago and now Mick Ralphs just passed.

This is not just another faceless member of a group, a support player, sans Mick Ralphs THERE IS NO BAD COMPANY! Paul Rodgers never had as much commercial success after he stopped working with Mick. And let’s not forget Mott the Hoople.

But everybody forgets Mick Ralphs.

But not me. You see it’s all personal. How the music hits you. Sure, you can stand with tens of thousands and enjoy a live performance, but the essence is how the sound hits you, yourself, and only yourself. It’s what goes in your ears.

Speaking of “Desolation Angels,” how about that intro to “Rock ‘n’ Roll Fantasy”?

That’s what it was, our rock and roll fantasy. It’s gone now, but the music still remains, even though those lauding artists with a way with words and not much more and pop singers want to forget this era completely. Sure, to a degree it’s cock rock. But sans this sound so many of today’s young males feel lost and alienated. Used to be this music made them feel alive and whole. As for the girls… Just go backstage, to the stage door at a Bad Company show, call them groupies, call them whatever you want, but these women were drawn to the sound and the men who made it, no one wants to be raped, but that does not mean people don’t want to have SEX! And this was the music that got them excited and they f*cked to. You need to get loose and into the mood, and the way you did that was to put on a record. And you can dance to a disco track, but it doesn’t have the raw sexual energy, the stripped-down human essence of rock, what did Aerosmith sing, WALK THIS WAY?

These Bad Company records stand up. Because Paul Rodgers could sing and Mick Ralphs could play and both could write, and Simon Kirke and Boz Burrell provided a rock steady rhythm section.

Bad Company and I can’t deny.

BAD COMPANY ‘TIL THE DAY I DIE!

Tune in Saturday June 21st to Faction Talk, channel 103, at 4 PM East, 1 PM West.

Phone #: 844-686-5863

If you miss the episode, you can hear it on demand on the SiriusXM app. Search: Lefsetz