Tune in Saturday July 13th to Faction Talk, channel 103, at 4 PM East, 1 PM West.

Phone #: 844-686-5863

Twitter: @lefsetz

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https://t.ly/lBaRk

1

This is a really good TV show.

But it’s on BritBox.

I know, I know, you’re sick of having to subscribe to another streaming platform, and I am too, but I was running out of blue chip shows.

As you know, I won’t watch week to week. Therefore I won’t pay for Apple TV+. And the interesting thing is when the series ends, I usually don’t go back and sign up to watch it straight through. I noticed this happening with movies a few years back. I’d make a notation to stream it when it came to television, but when it was finally available, I just couldn’t create the inner oomph to partake. And my point here is never, NEVER hold back anything from the audience today. You might think you’re winning, you might think you’re building water cooler buzz, but the joke is on you. If you don’t make something readily available, the masses will just move right past it, you’ll miss the target and not even know it.

Kinda like the Hawk Tuah girl. Are we going to be talking about her a year from now? Three months from now? Strike when the iron is hot. You think everybody is paying attention, everybody is hungry for your product, when in truth most people are just shrugging if they are even aware of it.

But there are a limited number of good series out there.

This is what purveyors will never acknowledge. That most of what they’re selling is mediocre, in a world of plenty. And if someone finds something good, they’ll tell everybody they know about it. And oftentimes it’s the left field that even the purveyor did not see as a hit that succeeds. Like “Squid Game.” And “Tiger King.” (Forget the backlash against the latter, the bottom line is these people were so whacked, you couldn’t stop watching them.)

As for “Blue Lights”…

It’s a BBC production, so if you live in the U.K. you’re probably aware of it.

And if you’re in some country other than the U.S. it might be available on a service you’re already paying for, channels are different in Canada, and Australia, and…

But in the U.S. you have to pay extra for it. Which even though it’s de minimis, $8.99 for two seasons, twelve one hour episodes, a deal when you compare it to going to a two hour movie, it’s hard to get people over the transom, so I don’t expect “Blue Lights” to be the talk of America.

Then again, how much do people know about Belfast? The Troubles?

I’ve been there. Pretty amazing.

But “Blue Lights” is set in the present. And it’s all about emergency services patrolling the landscape, trying to put out fires, both metaphorical and physical. Where half the people hate the peelers. (They’re called that after Sir Robert Peel, who formed the first modern police force in London in 1829, and that’s also why cops in Britain are called “Bobbies,” get it?)

There are certain areas where the peelers are afraid to go. The residents don’t need no stinkin’ police people, they’re the enemy, and not only will they not cooperate, they’ll fight back, with sticks and stones and bones might be broken.

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I know, I know, you’ve seen enough cop shows. And I must say, “Blue Lights” is not a revelation. And it is not as good as “Spiral,” the pinnacle of the genre, but compared to what’s on American television, what the algorithm serves up, it’s far superior.

You see you’ve got peelers on probation. Are they going to make it? Are they going to stay on the street or move higher up?

And all policing is about compromise, bending the rules. To what degree do you go along to get along and to what degree do you stand your ground?

And this isn’t the weathered male police force of 1970s New York. Half of the peelers are women. Can women and men work alongside each other with no sexual tension? That’s a question that’s asked here.

And so many underlying issues. What’s it like to be biracial where everybody is not? Can you lift up a community or is it basically Chinatown? Should you take the law into your own hands? Does it always come down to intimidation and raw force?

All these questions and more are asked.

You can watch the typical TV fare, but if you want something deeper, I recommend “Blue Lights.”

And now that I’m paying for BritBox for a month, I’m looking for another show on the channel.

He’s got a new autobiography, “What a Fool Believes.”

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/michael-mcdonald/id1316200737?i=1000661890048

https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9ff4fb19-54d4-41ae-ae7a-8a6f8d3dafa8/episodes/597742ac-cba4-41cf-b4e2-103e6b60227c/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-michael-mcdonald

thesessionmanfilm.com

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Does anybody under forty even know who Nicky Hopkins is/was?

But for those who do…

When was the last time you saw Shel Talmy on film?

And the man with the most gravitas is…Bill Wyman?

Oh, Mick and Keith are here too, and they wax rhapsodic, but they were all there…

Actually, it was at the Marquee Club where the Stones first encountered Nicky. Who dedicated followers of liner notes will be very familiar with (and Dave Davies is in this flick too!)

Nicky Hopkins was the ultimate session man. Billy Preston gets all the credit for being the fifth Beatle, and I don’t want to take anything away from the man whose career went ’round in circles, but the A#1 session man of the classic rock era was Nicky Hopkins.

Who is not in this film much, but when he is… He’s completely different from your image of the man. He’s soft-spoken, anything but dark and far from intimidating. He comes across as nothing so much as…A MUSICIAN!

And they recite the history, some known, some unknown, but the essence of the film is the legendary heads talking about the work Nicky did. And when the piano player reproduces Nicky’s licks…a smile comes to your face. And when there is talk of and ultimately the playing of the intro to “Monkey Man”…I got shivers, and a grin formed on my face. That iconic riff. That had nothing to do with the Glimmer Twins, that was pure Nicky.

And I bought “The Tin Man Was a Dreamer,” Nicky’s one and only solo album, which had a great version of “Edward,” which was listed as “Edward (The Mad Shirt Grinder)” in its original incarnation at the end of the Quicksilver album “Shady Grove.”

And I didn’t know that Nicky was so close to John Cippolina. And there’s a great delineation of the cross-pollinated San Francisco scene of the day, with Cippolina’s sister and Jorma and Jack, but I could never quite fathom how Nicky went from sideman to band member.

The money. The work. You don’t get royalties as a sideman.

Or as Steve Lukather has told me a number of times… An older studio cat told him that although he was the top gunslinger today, fashion always changes, he needed to find his own thing, and then Luke and his Valley buddies formed Toto.

Nicky moves back to England and is happy, but has to relocate back to L.A. to work. And I always wondered how he ended up in Nashville, but it turns out the ’94 Northridge earthquake was the last straw.

This is not a Hollywood biopic, like they made for Queen and Elton John. This is a documentary…documenting the story, an important story, so it won’t be forgotten.

I mean the licks live on…

But in these days of synthesizers and hard drives, never mind AI, people seem to forget that there are real people behind the music, and all this stuff cut back then was the beneficiary of some studio breakthroughs, but was ultimately handmade.

And I’d recommend you watch “The Session Man,” but so far there’s no distribution.

This ain’t music. Which can cost almost nothing to make and nothing to distribute. Sure, you can make a movie on your iPhone, but if you want talking heads, never mind music rights, you’re going to spend a few bucks. And it’s always hard to find those bucks.

And some of these films are so low budget as to be questionable uses of your time, but the Hopkins film is something better. Sure, it’s hagiography, but you know each and every one of the talking heads, from Chris Kimsey to Greg Phillinganes, another session man, and it’s a treat to see and hear the musings of P.P. Arnold, who had little presence in the U.S. market and who many people might think has passed.

“The Session Man” is a link in your education. It fills holes in your mental history of rock and roll. Which revolutionized society, impacted a an entire generation, music was the coolest medium, it drove the culture and Nicky was there, not on the periphery, but audible on some of your favorite records.

But Amazon and Netflix, et al, have cut back on buying this stuff. Amazon won’t even let you distribute it pay-per-view. Yes, Amazon used to take everything, not anymore. So you can make it, but…

As I always say, distribution is king. If you can’t see it, it doesn’t matter how good it is.

If your eyes light up when you hear the name “Nicky Hopkins” you’ll want to see this movie. It is not a revelation, but you’re taken inside the gold mine, you get a fuller understanding of who the man was.

But for now, “The Session Man” plays festivals… Used to be music docs were rare, you even paid to see them in a theatre, now there’s a plethora, seemingly every act of yore has one.

Many of those acts are forgettable.

But not Nicky Hopkins.