Trailer: https://rb.gy/30b01c

This series gets better and better.

I’ve never read a complete sentence of “Harry Potter.” And although I knew J.K. Rowling wrote genre books under a pseudonym, the reason I watched this series was because it had great RottenTomatoes ratings, 83/93. And you know those exceed my threshold.

Now “C.B. Strike,” or just “Strike” if you’re in the U.K., is not new. It premiered on Cinemax back in 2018, and I even get that channel, I might have heard the name, but I guess I’ve become suspicious of pay cable, and I refuse to watch anything week by week.

But doing research I came across “C.B. Strike,” which is now on Max, and I’m glad I did.

Cormoran Strike is the son of a famous musician and a supergroupie. He dropped out of Oxbridge to go to war, wherein he got half his leg blown off, and after returning and experiencing an up and down relationship with a pedigreed woman, he breaks free and dedicates all his energy to his P.I. business.

As for Robin… She just takes a job working in Strike’s office as a temp, but she’s got a feel for it, and she wants to stick with it, even though the pay is sh*t.

Now Robin is engaged to a putz playing the traditional game. He’s slick and monied, but controlling. And I guess this all comes down to whether you follow your dream or do what is expected of you or just follow the money. “C.B. Strike” is a great advertisement for following your passion.

So there are multiple seasons of “C.B. Strike” and if you look them up online or see them in your Max app, they’re different.

Let’s just stay with the Max app.

The first season, shot in 2018, is seven episodes long and is three different stories, corresponding to three different J.K. Rowling/Robert Galbraith books.

And what you find in the first seven episodes is that the stories are wrapped up pretty quickly, faster than you’d want them to be. Cormoran will have a brain fart, and voila!, he figures it all out.

But the second and third seasons, each made up of four episodes covering a single story each, are superior.

This is one of the few series that gets better as it goes along.

If you watch something with multiple seasons…if you like the first set of episodes, hang in there, oftentimes there’s a learning process and the producers self-correct the next time around.

Really, the third season is excellent. It does have a bit too much explanation as opposed to action at the end, but you’re intrigued the whole time.

Now the suspects in these cases change. But you don’t feel ripped-off by dead ends, and it’s not a complete twist who did it, you can understand it. But you’re guessing, and you enjoy it.

But the best part of the series is the two leads, Tom Burke as Cormoran Blue Strike and Holliday Grainger as Robin Venetia Ellacott.

Burke/Strike almost never raises his voice. It’s not that he’s not intense, it’s not that he doesn’t care, but he speaks softly and it’s so affecting. We’re used to bombastic leads. With thousand watt personalities. That is not Burke/Strike.

As for Robin… Sure, she’s beautiful, but to a great degree she plays against type. She’s willing to get her hands dirty, to go for it.

And of course there’s sexual tension. Will they or won’t they. I’ll let you watch the series and find out for yourself.

Also, “C.B. Strike” is set in an autumn-like U.K. that generates a vibe in the viewer, that adds gravitas. And when you see the modern people against the old buildings… It shows how everybody is just passing through.

Yes, “C.B. Strike” is entertainment. But truly, it’s a cut above. I don’t want to say it’s the best series I’ve ever seen, but like Cliff said, I’m down to seeds and stems.

And if you’ve watched the greats, like “The Bureau,” never mind “Spiral,” ” A French Village,” “Borgen” and “Happy Valley,” you should check out “C.B. Strike.”

Once again, stick with it, it gets better.

Unlike the horrific Max app which qualifies as a beta under Silicon Valley standards. How can Zaslav make all that money while he runs the company into the ground? It’s offensive, but ain’t that America, and you and me have no power.

You have to sign more acts in more genres and stay with them for many years.

That is the only way for the major labels to maintain market share.

They just aren’t making enough bets. They’re still mired in MTV thinking. I.e. there are a handful of universal hits and you want to control them.

No, there are more hits in more genres than ever before and if you’re just skimming from the top, you’re missing out on the moonshots.

In other words, you have to forgo the data and look at the music.

And it hasn’t been this way for a very long time.

The model is clearly established. Warner/Reprise of the sixties and seventies. The labels themselves had gravitas. Nothing was thrown against the wall. There was a reason every act was signed, and the label stood behind them for years, usually five albums. Did all of them break through? Of course not, but a good number of them were profitable, and it was nearly impossible to predict which ones would blow up.

Contrary to popular belief, most VC funded projects do not fail. They just do not return at 10x, never mind 1000x. 2x and 3x are still winners, but not enough to drive the entire business. Which is the same at a record label, you don’t expect everything to be giant, but hopefully most stuff doesn’t fail.

VCs invest in new ideas. They look to the future. They go where no one else has. To own a vertical.

I get why majors want hits, because in the streaming era those are the records that pay. But so many of those acts have no career, they can’t tour and they don’t last. And therefore you make money once and then…

Never mind opportunity cost. If you’re investing in the next me-too record, you can’t invest in what is great thereafter.

The biggest music business story of the past few years is Zach Bryan. NO ONE would have predicted that he would sell out stadiums so soon. Bryan was not selling what anybody else was, nothing in the Spotify Top 50 sounded like Bryan, so when you heard his music it stood out. Furthermore, like Warner/Reprise of yore, Bryan is credible. Won’t do anything for a buck. It’s all about the music and the relationship between the fan and the act.

Now the music business blew up in the sixties because of FM radio. Owners could no longer simulcast on FM what they were airing on AM. This gave a window to all sorts of alternatives, from Cream to Wild Man Fischer.

What has the internet wrought?

Streaming. Anybody can play.

And that’s very important to acknowledge.

The paradigm of yore was to spend a ton of money getting it right, because if you did cash rained down. Now you can’t spend that much. Furthermore, costs are down. So the script has flipped to capturing lightning in a bottle. To have many writers and remixers is to miss the point. That’s an old paradigm.

As for streaming itself, it pays handsomely to the victors, but the profits don’t come close to those of the CD era, when product was expensive and royalties were low.

Furthermore, marketing costs have decreased. You can reach the public for free. And the old ways of marketing deliver de minimis results. Print means almost nothing, as does TV. Terrestrial radio means more, but far less than it used to, and not only is it decreasing in mindshare, the young, impressionable audience does not listen to it. (To argue with me here is to miss the point, if you’re defending the past, you’re dying, you just don’t know yet.)

Used to be A&R people found acts with value and invested in making the record.

But then the script flipped to the Doug Morris model. Throw everything against the wall and see if it sticks. I.e. get it on the radio and see if it sells.

That’s history too.

Everything grows from the bottom up these days, just like in the late sixties. Word of mouth is everything. The public is hungry for quality product.

But all we get is Sabrina Carpenter.

If I read one more rave review about her new album…

This is pop music from a Disney character. The hard core audience that sustains this business is not interested in her whatsoever. What you’ve got here is a famous name blown up by the machine. Sure, she might have a hit, but does anybody BELIEVE in Sabrina Carpenter? Only the brain dead.

And there’s a business in brain dead. But Warner/Reprise rarely invested in it. Because it was all about timing, knowing when to invest and when to fold in a very short period of time.

Look at it this way… Do you know of any Top Forty acts from the sixties and seventies selling out stadiums?

Well, the Eagles have no problem, and they’re not the only ones.

Never mind seemingly every rocker of the eighties, from Def Leppard to Green Day to Motley Crue.

But what have we got in the Spotify Top 50? Brands. With the focus on the external. Where they’ve been, what they’re selling, the music is just a vehicle to make bank. Furthermore, everybody sells out, and as soon as you sell out you’ve lost credibility. Sure, social media influencers sell out, but that’s a different business. Instead of owning its uniqueness, music is trying to be a commodity like everything else, to its detriment.

And sure, Taylor Swift is selling out stadiums, but this is not equivalent to the British Invasion, where the Beatles were followed by the Stones, the Hollies, Herman’s Hermits, Gerry and the Pacemakers, the Dave Clark 5, the list is endless.

Actually, Hannah Gadsby had it right in yesterday’s “New York Times.” She called Taylor Swift “‘a can of Coke masquerading as a sorority cult.'”

Genius, and accurate.

But you can’t say anything negative about Swift, then you’re a hater.

But come on, all this hoopla, is it really about Swift’s music?

Swift hasn’t made anything that goes straight to the heart since her first two albums written with Liz Rose. Working with the producer du jour and selling multiple versions of vinyl to remain number one? That’s commerce, not art.

And other than the money… Does anybody who made their bones in this business in the sixties, seventies or eighties care?

No.

Not to mention that even Swift made it in a different era. Sans the success in country, there’s no success in pop.

And this isn’t to rain on Swift’s parade, but to illustrate how broad the marketplace is, how much opportunity there is elsewhere.

We don’t even have a reasonable Swift imitator, because it’s a dead end. There’s no movement here. But all the news is dominated by her.

Yeah, she wrote a song about me, after I wrote how her appearance on the Grammys would kill her career. But I was wrong. I was playing by the old rules, the new rules are your dedicated fans will keep you alive no matter what, as long as you are serving them. But how many people are dedicated fans? How many people can even sing two Swift songs? Phish sells out arenas, and they’re far from ubiquitous.

The whole business needs a rethink. But the three heads of the major labels are out of touch. At Universal and Sony we’ve got men stuck in the eighties and nineties. It’s all about worldwide hits. But that’s no longer the game. As for Warner… You’ve got a guy who knows nothing about music lording it over those who do.

The math in music comes AFTER the success, not before. You can count streams, but if you’re all about the data going in, then you’re not about the music.

Opportunity is rampant for indies. Now is the time to make the music you want to, that doesn’t fit in the Spotify Top 50 pigeonhole. The public is hungry for the new, the different and the credible.

You only have to look at the movie business for example. By playing it safe, releasing less product in specific genres, the movie business has become decimated. You’re not going to get a “Squid Game” in the movie business. You’ll get that on streaming because Netflix realizes we all have different tastes.

I mean who even wants to listen to the Spotify Top 50?

Twenty acts for ten years. Who is willing to take that plunge? NOBODY!

But that’s the way it used to be, that’s what built this business into the juggernaut it is. But instead, the majors are wearing blinders.

There will be change. We can’t go for this long with the old genres continuing to dominate.

Also, nobody with brains wants to be a musician, the odds are long and the pay ain’t great. You can make more at a bank, in many jobs. So we don’t get the best and the brightest.

But if we show the POWER of music… Everybody wants power. To influence the culture. Used to be the acts were bigger than the politicians, but no more. But they can be again.

All bets are off. We’re open to all comers. My girlfriend talked about buying one meat ball at Whole Foods today. She was referencing the Ry Cooder cover of the Singer/Zaret song on his first album. This is culture. I know this song by heart. Took years for Ry Cooder to break through. But he’s still got a career. Yesterday’s flavor of the moment? HISTORY!

P.S. Hannah Gadsby was about to give up and then she threw the long ball and did a special that included art history, that people weren’t even sure was comedy, and now she’s a cultural icon. And instead of boasting, she’s expressing anxiety about her career. And talking about ecology with throwaway toys. This is what the majors used to sell, not anymore.

“‘Hannah Gadsby: Woof’ Review: A Comic’s Pet Themes – In a soul-baring new show at the Edinburgh Fringe, the Australian stand-up leans once again into fears, anxieties and mental health worries.”

Free link: https://rb.gy/yyrj6q

The ones you love but rarely listen to.

Tune in Saturday August 24th to Faction Talk, channel 103, at 4 PM East, 1 PM West.

Phone #: 844-686-5863

X/Twitter: @lefsetz

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

Be afraid Donald, be very afraid.

This election is all about perception, and the media keeps talking about the issues.

The most important article you will read this week is in the “New Yorker”:

“Among America’s ‘Low-Information’ Voters”:

https://apple.news/AvKdeIufhTTyhvRt-PvK60g

I hear from these people every day. You’re never going to change their opinion. If you quote the “Times,” they’ll point to Facebook. They’re not budging from their support of Trump and…

We’ve got the Pro-Palestinian contingent. Weren’t they supposed to disrupt the convention, turn it into another ’68? Well, it turns out the noise made by a few was larger than the feelings of the many. We live in a myopic country, most people can’t find Gaza on a map, they might hate the Jews but that has got nothing to do with this election.

It’s old versus new, baby. The known versus the unknown. Depression versus joy. A potentially bright future compared to a return to a bleak past. The world only moves forward, do you want to go back?

Really, no one does, but they’re afraid of the future, the unknown, they need someone to hold their hand and make them feel like it’s going to be all right.

And that’s what Kamala Harris did last night. Actually, she equivocated on Gaza, saying the Israelis deserved support but too many people are being killed in Gaza, but how many people were really listening to that anyway?

And you’ll hear all the naysayers, on both sides of the political fence, saying they still need to hear more about the issues, that that’s what this election depends upon… NO IT DOESN’T!

If you weren’t already in the bag for Kamala, what you saw last night was an intelligent woman with all her faculties, a competent woman, a younger woman, saying she’s on the case.

Come on, most of what these candidates promise doesn’t come to pass anyway, never mind the fact that both parties twist the truth.

But not like Donald Trump, the ultimate narcissist, who is spinning out of control.

The worst fear of a narcissist is no longer being on top, gaining the most attention. That’s why Trump keeps lying about crowd size. Why he’s boiling over all the focus on the Democratic convention and Kamala. That’s his spot, and now they’re usurping it!

Someone smart would change their game. That’s what strategy is all about. But Trump is just doubling-down, digging his hole deeper.

Did you read about his phone call to Fox DURING Kamala’s speech last night?

“Dialing In to Fox News, Trump Offers a Rambling Rebuttal to Harris’s Speech – The network ended the live interview after 10 minutes. Beeps could be heard as the former president seemed to accidentally press the buttons on the keypad of his phone.”

Free link: https://rb.gy/fye0v2

The piece-de-resistance was Greg Gutfeld’s comment after Trump was cut off:

“‘He’s still talking, by the way,’ Mr. Gutfeld joked.”

I won’t quite say that Fox News has turned into Don King, but the outlet is distancing itself from some of Trump’s shenanigans (famously, King started out in the corner of his fighter, but when the opponent was winning, he slowly shifted to their end of the canvas).

You don’t want to lose your core constituency.

And if you watched last night, you not only saw the rapt attention, but the raw inspiration and tears of women and people of color. Kamala was there for them.

Once again, it doesn’t matter if you disagree, I’m talking about perception. You saw a deep desire and belief in Kamala the way you used to see it with Trump and his acolytes, but without the craziness. (Didn’t Susan Powter implore us to stop the insanity?)

So what were the criticisms of Kamala in 2016… That she flip-flopped and was strident.

She ain’t gonna flip-flop this time, as Ian Hunter sang, once bitten, twice shy.

As for being strident… She was the opposite of that last night. She was warm, and friendly, and she radiated intelligence and competence, and those qualities are not only lacking in Trump, people have been wondering about them re Biden for over a year.

But Joe’s history.

Yet you’ve got Trump talking about Hunter last night. HYSTERICAL! A crybaby. You can only laugh.

So the bottom line is unless Kamala loses her mind and touches the third rail, the only thing that matters re the issues is the debate(s), when both candidates appear on stage.

Of course Kamala holds all the cards. From abortion on down. Statistics tell us most people support the Democratic agenda, even if they were disenchanted with Biden. And if Kamala prosecutes the case just like she did last night, it’s over for Trump. He’s going to amp it up with his lies, and she’s going to smile and make fun of him.

This is where the non-primary is helping Kamala and the Democrats. She wasn’t beaten to hell, she’s not bruised and battered, she fresh as a daisy.

Meanwhile, Trump has been fighting his whole life.

And now he looks like his good friend Putin. Who told the world how powerful he was and then little Ukraine took Russian land and Putin still hasn’t figured out what to do, he looks WEAK!

Trump looks anything but presidential these days. And like I said, it all comes down to perception.

And suddenly Trump doesn’t dominate the news cycle. People have been bitching for eons about all his free press. Now it’s all about Kamala, just like a new record replaces an old one on the chart.

Come on, do you really think someone is sitting at home debating who is better on immigration, Kamala or Trump?

There’s this belief that the undecided are weighing the issues, calculating their votes… Nothing could be further from the truth.

No, what has happened is the disconnected have become incentivized. The battle has been recast. Suddenly Trump is the old fading man we know all about and Kamala is seen as new and fresh, a crusader against all the b.s. we’ve been experiencing from the right for years.

Once again, you right wingers can e-mail me your falsehoods, your hate of the left, ad infinitum, which you will do, but you’re missing the point. THIS IS NOW A HIGH SCHOOL ELECTION!

Trump was never a wonk. That’s not Harris’s résumé. It’s known bully versus new girl in school. It’s that simple. It’s a popularity contest. People want to see the self-satisfied male go down, it doesn’t really matter who is running against him. But the fact that it’s a fresh faced female…you can believe in that, you can have HOPE!

The blowback is already deafening. The mainstream media, the political junkies, they want to make it about the issues, the horse race, they want to dig deep, bloviate on TV, deliver their think pieces, not even knowing that most people are alienated by this class. No, most people are eager to get on with their lives. They believe Kamala is selling safety. Trump is selling chaos. And no one likes chaos.

That’s why Trump got elected in 2016. He promised a disembowelment of the elite. And he did that. But there was no real plan after running, no idea what to do after victory. We mostly got the same Republican tax low get rid of services agenda we’ve always gotten from the right. With a whole bunch of hate to boot. Sure, some people want more of this, but most do not, they actually want us to get along, together.

And be able to get an abortion to boot.

That’s how desperate Trump now is, he’s changing his tune on abortion, trying to make it look like he’s on the pro-choice side, assuming we’ve all had amnesia.

Once again, Trump is running on a record, and unless you’re rich, the only benefit of his term was that it was anti-Democrat. Period. Whereas Harris is tainted by negative perception of the Biden term… But most people don’t think the vice president has any power anyway.

And the video from the convention. Shawn Fain, with his “TRUMP IS A SCAB” t-shirt? And Ana Navarro comparing Trump to the leaders of her homeland Nicaragua? It’s like shooting fish in a barrel. Trump’s only second is Elon Musk, whose Tesla was outsold by BMW electric cars in Europe this quarter, and Wall Street can’t get the X debt off its books, and…

Those in the right are in an echo chamber. Ignore them, even better, LAUGH AT THEM! They can’t handle it, they’ve got no sense of humor. And most of the rank and file are completely uniformed on the issues.

So. other than the debates, Harris does not need to get down to the real nitty-gritty. It’s only the pundit class who complain and want more detail. Her voters don’t need it, they’re IN!

Perception is Harris is a winner and Trump is a loser. Didn’t he lose once already? And complained he didn’t? That might work amongst his delusional fans, but no one else is buying it.

So it all comes down to turnout. That’s the big concern of this election. Not what Kamala said today or Trump tomorrow. They’ll meet together once, maybe a couple of times more, and then they’ll be running separate operations that will not intersect, the final battle coming on Election Day.

This has been the right wing strategy forever, to get the left to fight the battle on their terms, to define the issues, force the left to play, whether it be inanities like Obama’s birth certificate…and now Trump has rolled out that same trope with Kamala. If we don’t pay attention to it, it doesn’t exist!

Homey don’t play that no more. The rules of engagement have been redrawn.

And I hate to tell you this, but it doesn’t have a whole hell of a lot to do with Harris herself. The public was ready for a change, the public was ready for hope. We can question all day long whether she has enough experience, but how much experience did Trump have in 2016? NIL!

But now I’m taking the bait. The truth is Harris has plenty of experience. And when she said last night that her career has always been “For the people,” man did that resonate.

So when people try to drag you into a discussion, the same battles we’ve been having for the last eight plus years, don’t even bother. Don’t insult, just, once again, laugh. Tell them you’ve got your team and we’ve got ours, and we’ll see you on November 5th.

The popular vote is in the bag.

The Electoral College?

We need each and every vote.

At this point we don’t need to convince you one way or the other, your mind is made up, even those who say it’s not, they just like the attention, or they don’t want to be labeled.

No, it all comes down to getting to the polls.

This is your job. Vote by mail if possible. In November drive people to their voting place. No excuses. I don’t want to hear you’re sick or don’t care or…

This is the election of your lifetime.

Don’t you want to have a say?

OF COURSE YOU DO!

And if everybody votes, that loser Trump will be banished forever, only to show up in court, hopefully to end up in jail.

Then we’ll know there’s justice for all the people, that the law applies to everybody.

I can’t wait.