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.

She died.

Who’s that?

Alice from “Alice’s Restaurant”!

Oh, they had an Alice’s Restaurant in my hometown. Didn’t they even have one on the Malibu Pier? Always homey inside, with barnboard and healthy food…

NO!

That was all in the wake of the song, the movie and…

The sixties are over, but once upon a time there was a counterculture.

“Alice’s Restaurant” came out in the fall of 1967. If you were living in San Francisco or New York, you heard the entirety of the eighteen minute song on the radio. If you lived in the hinterlands…I don’t know, I didn’t live in the hinterlands.

When did the sixties begin?

Earlier than you think. Everybody focuses on the late sixties, Humphrey, Woodstock, but the wheel turned much before that.

But you had to be paying attention to know.

It started with civil rights. I remember our rabbi taking the bus down south to protest. This was when it was less of a herd mentality and a personal desire, a personal need, you had to stand up, you thought the issue was black and white, you needed to make a statement, and you thought it made a difference.

And somewhere along the line people became aware of the Vietnam War. First there were advisors, then we were in a full scale conflagration. Which most people thought we would win easily, after all, weren’t we the United States?

And while we were just living a life, hippiedom began in San Francisco. And after the Beatles wiped the radio deck clear of everybody but the Beach Boys and the Four Seasons, and the Mamas & the Papas and Jefferson Airplane and so many came in their wake… It was clear, something was happening here.

“For What It’s Worth came out in ’66, after the Sunset Strip riots. No, the title was not in the song. But this was at the advent of acts having power. And in truth, the labels were starting to blink, they wondered if they truly knew what was going on. They all hired house hippies to steer them.

So by ’67…

Well, ’67 was the Summer of Love. But those outside the metropolis, those not hip, and you could tell by the clothes and the hair, still weren’t clued in, but eventually they got on the same page. There was just too much excitement. There was a vibe, an underpinning. Every young person was a Democrat back then, you could point out the Republicans, they were so rare. The youth were aligned. But then came Kent State and you could no longer tell someone’s values by the length of their hair and Nixon resigned and Reagan legitimized greed and everybody sold out to the almighty dollar and we truly haven’t had the spirit here since 1969.

But back then…

There was an alternative. And it was just a matter of when you got hipped. And in the suburbs, in Fairfield, Connecticut, fifty miles from New York City, we got hipped early.

My mother was a culture vulture.

But so was Mrs. Hurley, our sophomore English teacher.

I was thinking about her just today. Someone was talking about the antisemitic protests in Montreal. Which made me think of being in that city in the fall of ’67, for Expo ’67. And coming home on Sunday, my parents detoured to drop me Off-Broadway, where my class was attending a performance of “MacBird.”

Back when Off-Broadway was a thing. Broadway was for musicals, big tent productions. Off-Broadway was where all the experimental, cutting edge productions were. Testing limits.

Yes, a field trip on a Sunday. We didn’t need no stinking time off from school to attend a cultural event.

And we went to see Janis Ian at Philharmonic Hall on a Friday night, before it was Avery Fisher Hall, before it was David Geffen Hall. We had to hear “Society’s Child.”

And on the bulletin board in Mrs. Hurley’s classroom was thumbtacked…

An article about Arlo Guthrie and “Alice’s Restaurant” from “Time” magazine.

The straight news was becoming hip to the alternative, to the youthquake. And when you made it there your acolytes felt good for you, you’d triumphed, and as a result we had too.

So what was “Alice’s Restaurant” all about?

The draft.

All those Trumpers… I’d like to hear your take on things if you were subjected to getting your ass shot off overseas.

I mean we grew up in the wake of World War II. We knew you had to fight for your right…to live under a democracy, if not to party.

But did we really want to be in the line of fire?

And then the first guy from my high school died.

It was a real thing. Regular people, they got drafted and…

Can I tell you the military was the enemy, as were the cops? Everything’s flipped today. Back then we were suspicious of organizations, it was about the lone individual.

Like Arlo Guthrie.

Woody Guthrie’s son.

Not that everybody knew who Woody Guthrie was. This land was your land, from the redwood forests… We’d been singing those words since first grade, we had no idea someone actually wrote them, we figured they’d been passed down through the ages.

And of course Bob Dylan was influenced by Woody Guthrie. But at this point, most people only listened to Top Forty, they didn’t go any deeper. They hadn’t heard “Purple Haze,” which also came out in ’67.

So this guy with the funny name had this long song…

Oh, we were into length. That was testing limits. There were long versions and short versions, like with “Light My Fire.” Did you know the long version, were you even aware it existed?

So Arlo Guthrie takes a whole side of an album to tell this meandering story about being drafted but evading service because he was a litterbug. The Group W Bench….that was in regular conversation, just like W.C. Fields.

So it was Thanksgiving and the dump was closed and Arlo and his buddy put the trash in a ravine and…

Suddenly, Alice and her restaurant were famous.

But then there was the movie, and everybody truly knew who she was. And it was most people’s first exposure to Joni Mitchell, who sang “Songs to Aging Children Come” on a hillside in the snow.

The “Alice’s Restaurant” movie was dark. Anything but a superhero fantasy. Then again, life was alternately light and dark. We were testing limits while MLK and RFK were being assassinated, while there were riots in the street. You listened to a record to know which way the wind blew.

So Arlo became a cultural staple.

And he “came back” in the Woodstock movie when he flew in from London from over the Pole. And he made some great music thereafter, but then there was corporate rock and disco and MTV and he wasn’t quite a footnote, but he was far from mainstream.

As for Alice Brock?

The restaurant closed not long after the song came out. She got a divorce. She had a cameo in the movie…

And then she disappeared.

But we never forgot her. You can’t forget these iconic moments of the sixties.

And I went with my buddy Keith to see Arlo at Fordham University. He started picking the notes to “Alice’s Restaurant” and a whoop of recognition came over the hall. But he said there were three versions of the song, and we didn’t know which one he was going to play.

He played one about Johnson being paranoid. Yes, LBJ was anathema. Little did we know we’d get Nixon, little did we know we’d get Trump. We actually had it pretty good in retrospect, but we wanted more. Not for ourselves, but for society.

Now dumping your trash in an unauthorized place… All these years later that seems a taboo. I never understood a dump being closed, but when we rented a ski house in East Jamaica, Vermont in that same year of ’67, that was the case… No dumping on Sunday. So my father would look for a dumpster.

Now you’re even afraid of putting your trash in a dumpster, because who knows, there might be a camera.

That’s what I don’t understand about the poor and uneducated and their physical crimes. There are cameras everywhere, don’t you watch streaming television?

But in the wake of the environmental movement, which really didn’t gain traction until 1970, with the first Earth Day, on April 22nd, my birthday, the first day I got high, we went to see the Woodstock movie…

The rules changed.

Now if someone throws garbage out the window you get pissed.

Then again, that philosophy is waning. And they told us to recycle and almost all we put in the blue bucket goes into a landfill overseas.

But some people are saying to drill, baby, drill.

And it’s confounding if you were around back then. It seemed like we were always going forward. But that hasn’t been the case for years. And techies are our idols, not musicians. Hell, Steve Jobs revered musicians. But today’s musicians are not the best and the brightest and they’re looking to sell out to the techies, when in reality music is all about telling truth to power, that’s what Arlo Guthrie did.

But at this late date, all you can say is…

“I don’t want a pickle

Just want to ride on my motorcycle”

(That was on side two.)