Completion of playlists from previous shows.

Tune in Saturday December 20th to Faction Talk, channel 103, at 4 PM East, 1 PM West.

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

This just feels wrong.

Most Americans were not alive when JFK was assassinated. One can argue that’s when the sixties began. That’s when the generations split. The fifties were somnambulant, even the hipsters had crew cuts. By time the sixties arrived, there were pockets of experimentation, the roots of new musical acts that would triumph after the Beatles, and there were always bohemians, still labeled beatniks, soon to be labeled hippies, however many wives did not work outside the home, GM was the wonder of the world and the U.S. was an international monolith that wasn’t questioned by its citizens, never mind those from outside the country.

JFK barely won. Victory wasn’t declared until the morning after the election. But JFK ushered in a new era of hope, a break from the past, you see he was younger than the old farts, the country was now looking forward, not back.

He asked what you could do for your country instead of yourself.

He didn’t wear a hat at the inauguration and that business died overnight.

And he vowed to put a man on the moon before 1970. And manned spacecraft were launched.

Now protest was burbling. Civil rights were being fought for down south. It was a point of transition that Johnson ultimately certified into law, forcing the nation to treat everybody equally. And there was a folk music scene to support the underprivileged and abused, the U.S. was not mindlessly partying, then again, most people were not hip to the inequality and issues of our nation until later in the decade, after JFK was gone.

And then came the Cuban Missile Crisis. There hasn’t been anything like it since. You really felt like the end was possible. We were still afraid of nuclear war, we hid under our desks to protect ourselves, and we saw the pictures of the missiles going to Cuba… And JFK stood up to Russia and the crisis was averted.

But some people didn’t want progress. They wanted the country to be rooted in the past. With whites triumphant and illegality pushed under the rug…never forget that the original RFK was attorney general, and he was rooting out malfeasance…

And then JFK was murdered. Every boomer knows where they were when they heard the news. It was incomprehensible. Our parents had the TV on 24/7, Jack Ruby killed Oswald and then there was the day of mourning and…

They immediately started renaming things to honor JFK’s memory. Idlewild airport became JFK. It seemed a bit overdone at the time, and a bit of it was pulled back, then again, the president was killed in cold blood.

And then the sixties ensued. The Vietnam War blew up, with America pouring gasoline on the conflagration. The younger generation separated from their elders. Not only did they have their own music, everything was in question, everything was up for grabs, the motto was “question authority.” To be smart, educated and informed was a badge of honor, it was these people who were lifting the populace out of ignorance.

Then there was Jackie. Young with designer clothing. Who led tours of the White House on TV. We heard that she spoke seven languages. And she put the arts front and center. So it was not a big stretch when she started fundraising for a national cultural center, nor was it surprising when it was named the Kennedy Center, a living memorial to JFK.

Now every day I turn on my phone and it’s looney-tunes, I can’t believe what I read. I’m also aware that many people feel differently from me, they want to jet back to a past that they’re looking at through rose-colored glasses. Progress has been good. Change still needs to be made. But the world always goes forward. JFK led the charge into the future. That is why he was both revered and hated.

Ironically, those with the anti-JFK viewpoint are triumphant today. Trump is in power. Unlike some of my lefty brethren, I feel he won fair and square.

And I can quote the litany of his efforts that stick in my craw. From throwing the baby out with the bathwater with DOGE, pardoning the January 6th rioters, wobbling on support of Ukraine in its war with Russia… These are all substantive issues, which deserve a debate.

As for the less important… There’s the gilding of the White House like some Eastern European dictator. The plaques. The ballroom.

But renaming the Kennedy Center is just too much.

Because this is the arts. Something Jackie Kennedy not only supported, but did her best to spread across America.

And this is JFK. Set in stone.

Build some memorials to Trump after his term. He’ll get a library, probably some statues, and I won’t be happy with the lionization of the man and his memory, but I’ll shrug and accept it.

But renaming the Kennedy Center? Why?

Trump has never been a champion of the arts. If anything, he’s doubled-down on the commercialization of America, where the dollar is now king and the best and the brightest don’t go into the Peace Corps or politics and try and improve the world, but go into finance to enrich themselves, to line their pockets.

Ain’t that America.

But do you have to touch the arts?

That’s the one thing we have left. Art foments change. But Trump is putting the kibosh on that. He’s sending a message, that he is in control. It’s all right to be an artist and sell out to corporations, make a ton of bread, but if you question authority, look out.

Then again, I am a child of the sixties. Sure, musical acts made good money, but the money was secondary to the music, the message, the exploration, the pushing of the envelope. We had rapid development and innovation not only in music, but movies…all the arts. We went from “I Want to Hold Your Hand” to “Sgt. Pepper” to Woodstock and “Hello Dolly” to “The Graduate” and “Bonnie and Clyde.” This was the sixties, which started with JFK, an era many old white men have denigrated and tried to make disappear for decades.

But we still had our cathedrals, where the arts were displayed untouched. Carnegie Hall. The Metropolitan Opera House.

The Kennedy Center.

Art was up front and center in these edifices. They were bastions of creativity, of exploration, of soul-fulfillment.

But no more.

I could delineate all the negative moves Trump has made at the Kennedy Center this year, and the concomitant drop in revenues, but the building still stands as tribute to JFK.

But no longer. Now Trump’s name comes first. It’s a stick in the eye not only to Democrats, but to artists all over the country, all over the world. The message is not only that everything is up for grabs for Trump, but that the past that is revered by him and his cronies is being eviscerated, and a message is being sent that no one is safe, no one is untouchable. Artists better watch out. You think late night hosts are not safe…

Is nothing sacred?

I guess not.

Live long enough and the past you remember…seemingly no one else remembers it, or not how it really played out.

The brief tenure of JFK was about hope and freedom, righting wrongs.

But homey don’t play that anymore. As a matter of fact, minorities got too big for their britches, they had to be taught a lesson, constrained. And on one level the renaming of the Kennedy Center is just another stake in the heart.

But it’s so much more. It’s an erasing of American values.

It’s an erasing of JFK’s memory.

It’s an erasing of my personal past.

It’s an erasing of the America I knew.

It’s a bridge too far.

Is it the straw that breaks the camel’s back? Is this when the public will say no mas? I have no idea.

But this one hurts.

Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mark-mothersbaugh/id1316200737?i=1000741822727

https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9ff4fb19-54d4-41ae-ae7a-8a6f8d3dafa8/episodes/d93ab284-6127-40bf-97b7-501450b03140/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-mark-mothersbaugh

I was trying to figure out what was going on here.

The Europeans know how to party, they make American après-ski look like a joke. In America you might get tanked at a bar, there might be some dancing to a band playing classic rock, but at Ischgl especially…sure, there’s skiing, but people go there to cut loose, to dance…you watch the videos and are amazed, they’re aliens having such a good time, you want to experience it.

And ski resorts in America have been trying to replicate these extravaganzas, but so far to no avail… Maybe it’s just that Americans take their skiing more seriously, whereas in Europe…skiing might be secondary to lunch and what happens after the lifts close.

So Vail books name acts a few weekends through the year, to try and draw patrons if nothing else, and last weekend it was Sofi Tukker.

But usually it’s just one big show. On Saturday, they had Sofi Tukker play at the top of the mountain, a la Europe. And another deejay played at the bottom starting before the lifts shut down. And then at 8 P.M., the main show took place, at Ford Park. Outside, during the winter. Hell, they have winter shows at Red Rocks!

So I didn’t catch the afternoon performance at Eagle’s Nest. But as far as the deejay at the bottom…I’ve never seen the area so crowded.

And at 7:20, I put on my down jacket and started walking to Ford Park.

I was wearing my New Balances. It didn’t occur to me to wear boots with tread, after all it hadn’t snowed in a week. But it was slippery and…

I was wearing a down coat, but the lined leather gloves I had just didn’t cut it, next time I bring ski gloves, I’ve got an ancient pair I keep in my boot bag that are perfect for these conditions, I broke them out in Aspen.

As for my hat… It said “Blue Man Group,” and the guy manning the medical tent commented on it. Which completely surprised me. I’ve worn this hat for twenty years and no one has ever said a word.

And that’s where I was standing, in back, by the big red cross, waiting for Don, to give me a wristband, which I never used…all the action was in front of the stage, not behind…and I don’t know how you’d make your way to the back if you wanted to.

So, the show begins promptly, and it is a show!

Giant screens. Pots emitting fire. It’s an extravaganza. I think it was Sophie Hawley-Weld standing atop the risers playing the guitar…but there was no live video feed and I wasn’t that close and I was not familiar enough with the band. But one thing I heard was the big thump.

This was what is now called, has been called for nearly two decades, EDM.

Now if you’re a classic rocker, you probably don’t get it. You may even be categorically against it! A deejay spinning records, which are really files, the whole show can be contained on a thumb drive.

And that’s what this show was. The guitar didn’t last. Sophie danced and sang and Tucker Halpern was responsible for the beat, the music, the sound. And everybody in the audience was…

Dancing. Not wildly, like this was the end of the world. And not spinning like people do at Dead shows, but hypnotically, locked into the beat.

Were they on drugs?

This was not a young crowd. And it cost a hundred bucks to get in. I worked my way forward, to the degree I could, I checked the attendees out, and most looked like they were of working age, mid-twenties at the youngest, into their thirties. Sure, there were some ski town oldsters, but really, this show was for a younger generation.

And I can get into the beat. It does make you move. But I was wondering, what exactly was the attraction?

And the first thing that occurred to me was escapism. Now back in the nineties, raves were the other. But we’ve even had hit EDM singles this century. It’s not an unknown sound. But…despite Alden telling me it was about the lyrics and Sophie’s voice… They didn’t seem that special to me.

And the funny thing is Sophie Tukker has been around, since 2014, the acts of yore didn’t have such a long heyday. Then again, are they still potent, or is this the kind of act that plays out in the hinterlands?

Now when I lived in the hinterlands, if you got major talent even twice a year that was a big thing. But today, in Vail and Summit County…it’s a veritable cornucopia of talent laying down their sound on a regular basis.

Now some of these acts play Goldberg’s Belly Up in Aspen, but Aspen is a different headspace. Aspen is four hours from Denver, Vail is under two (assuming there is no traffic, which is a big assumption). And the Belly Up is a smaller room which tends to book elite talent, but…

You see there’s a long stretch of highway between Denver and Salt Lake City. And the communities want culture. So at the Vilar and in Vail the shows are often underwritten. And there’s an amphitheatre in Dillon and…

There are a ton of shows. You don’t have to live in the metropolis to see high level entertainment anymore. But in the old days, it was all happening in the city. Now it still happens more in the city, but…most Americans don’t live in New York or L.A. And when you see a show in those markets you can feel the pulse, this is where acts make their bones, these are the shows that count, the press weighs in. But those hundreds of millions across the nation need entertainment and these shows… This is not MTV, playing to all, this is positively local. It’s a business for the touring acts, it’s their livelihood…the shows are totally off the national radar screen, but is that the business today?

I’m not being completely clear here, but what I will say is it used to be when you were in the boonies, it felt like it. But it did not feel like it at Saturday night’s show.

Now you could say the stars of the evening were Sofi and Tukker and their dancers, but really, the audience was the star.

This is not how it used to be. Back in the classic era, there was a clear line of demarcation between those on stage and those off. Those on stage were kings, and those in the audience were serfs paying fealty. But Sofi Tukker was doing it for the audience, to energize them, whereas it used to be those on stage were Gods who appeared not to care about the listeners.

So the audience… It’s twenty-odd degrees and they’re drinking and dancing (as for drugging, except in extreme cases, that doesn’t show)… What exactly was the appeal?

We didn’t have this kind of music, this kind of show in the days of yore. Sure, there was music you danced to, but it had singers and changes, songs you heard on the radio. Whereas these numbers…sounded like they came from outer space.

We wanted our music to have meaning.

Sofi Tukker is not about meaning, it’s about experience.

Does everybody just want to leave the real world behind? Is it just too daunting, too overwhelming? Do people just want to be set free to be in a zone that has no intersection with the rest of the world?

Now like I said, in the nineties there were raves, which were veritable secrets, you had to be in the know and they took place out in fields and…

But Sofi Tukker…these EDM shows are big business.

So do we pooh-pooh this sound, this experience, laugh at it, or…

It’s an anthropological investigation. There is something happening here, but it certainly isn’t exactly clear.

But this was big time entertainment. The production was equivalent to that you find in an arena, this was not done on the cheap. You don’t find Sofi Tukker in the Spotify Top 50, then again…

The Spotify Top 50 is now the other. People begging for fame, recognition…. Whereas acts like Sofi Tukker seem to hang in the ether, they’re part of an overall culture, and if you don’t get it, they shrug their shoulders, they don’t care.

Now investigating further, going deeper into Sofi Tukker’s story, I read about the “hits,” the songs they were famous for, and I started to play them.

One is entitled “Drinkee.”

Now the lyrics are in Portuguese so…if you think the track had traction because of the lyrics, you’re sorely mistaken. As for the English translation, there’s nothing special here.

But the music!

You listen for mere seconds and your head starts to nod and if you go as far as two minutes in, you can’t get the hook out of your head… And I’m listening on the chairlift and I start to ask myself…is this radically different from “Sunshine of Your Love”? Even “Smoke on the Water”?

Now much of today’s rock is hard, and it’s fast and noisy and in your face, that’s today’s metal scene. But that’s not what this is. “Drinkee penetrates a much wider net of people, and you come to it, it does not overpower you.

So, are the basics of “Drinkee” that different from the songs of yore, those based on legendary riffs? “Smoke on the Water” told a story, but “Sunshine of Your Love”…had both ethereal and simplistic love lyrics. Are these numbers all of a piece, or can you put the classic rockers high above “Drinkee”?

And I think “Purple Hat” is okay, good, but when “Batsh*t” started playing in my ears… Once again, I was hooked, in the groove.

So was everybody in attendance at the Ford batsh*t crazy, or did they just want to party like it’s 1999 or…

I’m still trying to figure it out.