I was not the oldest person there, and that is rare.

The Bellwether is a cool venue. An edifice built by Another Planet and Michael Swier, proving that as big as Live Nation is, there is still room for competitors. And when it comes to small venues, the Bellwether is so far superior to the Novo that they should tear the latter down and start over.

It was sold out, meaning people still have an attraction to Mike Campbell. And nobody had their look on, and nobody was on their phone, it felt like nothing so much as the seventies, when rock ruled.

The seventies, they get a bad rap. Corporate rock. Disco. But they were very different from the eighties, when MTV made acts worldwide phenomena we all knew, when we ended up living in a monoculture, when mainstream was everything.

Now it’s just the opposite. The mainstream is niche. And if you’re not mainstream, you’re on your own, sans support.

For all the hype about the Spotify Top 50, the Swifts and the Beyoncés and the Weeknds and the Drakes, the real action, the real excitement is elsewhere, acts that don’t dance, don’t dress up and don’t even have hit records, but live they resonate, in a world where live is ultimately everything. And I mean truly live, if you’re doing it to hard drive, if it’s the same every night, you’re doing it wrong. It’s got to be alive, it’s got to breathe, it’s got to be different, people have to believe they’re having a unique experience, that if they followed the tour to the next gig it wouldn’t be the same, the only community, the only similarity is in the room where the show is happening, and that makes you feel involved, and special. I could say this is the paradigm the Grateful Dead invented, but they were not the only ones. And they ultimately had a hit. And before they crossed over on MTV, they got airplay on FM radio when we were still listening, whereas today FM is a backwater, if you listen you probably sign up for the streaming service with commercials.

Now in the seventies rock ruled. There were different strains of rock, from heavy to progressive to straight ahead, but in any bar in seemingly any town there was a band playing on the weekend. And their goal was to be so good that they could get away with playing original material. And you’d go to the venue to drink, that’s for sure, but also to hear the band, you’d talk about this band with your friends, even though it might never get a deal, might not ever be able to play in the next state.

And speaking of playing, we still did. The Beatles started that. Soon, everybody had a guitar, everybody knew how to play, at least a few rudimentary chords, we banged it out in the garage, we sang along at parties, it was radically different from today, unless you were at the Bellwether last night to see the Dirty Knobs.

Now the difference with the Knobs from those bands of yore is Mike Campbell is a veritable superstar. And he didn’t make it on speed, like the Yngwies and other guitarists of the eighties, he made it on style, on taste, and it’s a thrill just to see him play anything. And when he takes the stage, it’s palpable, this is the guy.

And with Ferrone on drums and two lesser known but just as skilled sidemen, the Knobs hit it from the very first note, they are tight, and it’s a revelation, because this is the sound, the one that infected us, that rooted us, that meant everything to us.

Sure, there have been shows forever. But music meant much more to the boomers and Gen-X’ers than it did to the generations both before and after. You know if you were there, if you weren’t, you deny this. Or, you’re a wanker in the business trying to look hip.

And the audience did not, try to look hip that is. I didn’t see one outfit, no one dressed up, it was like the Allman Brothers and the aforementioned Dead and so many of the bands back when, they wore their street clothes on stage, the music was enough, more than enough.

I mean my generation doesn’t look so great. But even though we’re in Los Angeles, that image thing, the Kardashianism, it wasn’t evident. No plastic surgery, no injections, no three digit coifs…most of the women were like the men, in jeans, dungarees, nobody was looking to make a sartorial statement, they were there for the music.

And you know rock and roll when you hear it. But it’s such a rare event these days. You can go to the amphitheatre and see the legacy acts, but that’s something different, that’s nostalgia, you want to hear your favorites and reminisce. But Campbell and the Knobs were playing all original material, for two hours. And you didn’t need to know it to get it. The changes, the picking, the sound, that was enough.

The records are secondary in this world, nearly superfluous. It’s all about the live show, you can go not knowing the material at all and have a fine time, whereas it used to be just the opposite. You memorized the records before the show, to be plugged in.

So, I’m involuntarily throwing my arms in the air, I’m grooving, and this is completely unexpected. I mean it’s not like the Knobs are going to play the Super Bowl, I’m here in a club, but the music centered me, connected me to who I always was, even though I was wary that those days and that feeling were in the past.

So, the Dirty Knobs are far superior to a bar band. But it’s not about stardom, but the music. It was extremely enjoyable, until…

The four musicians left the stage after almost two hours, you know, before the obligatory encore, and nobody kept applauding. I was wondering if they’d just turn up the lights, whether that would be it, but that almost never happens. They weren’t clapping, but they weren’t leaving either. They knew the band would come back on. And when they did…

Mike had three guitars propped up in front of the mic. He said these were the axes he used on the originals, that they’re too valuable to take on the road, but since this is a hometown gig… And he picked up the first guitar and…played the very first track from the very first Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers album, “Rockin’ Around With You.” Whew!

Campbell doesn’t have quite the pipes of Petty, but the interesting thing is he talks the same way, with the same accent, it’s not Petty and it’s not a facsimile, the Knobs make these songs their own, but you know them by heart.

And what an interesting choice. You’d expect “American Girl,” or “Breakdown.”

You see it was Tom Petty’s birthday, and the band was playing his material in honor of that date. And just when you figured they’d stop, they went on. And on. And on. The Dirty Knobs played ten Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers numbers, more than anybody could expect, and they were not the usual suspects. The most obvious were “You Wreck Me,” “You Got Lucky” and “Even the Losers.” The words of the last two truly resonated. All these decades later you can visualize what they’re based upon. And you can see the economy of the songwriting. Today they throw everything in, Tom and Mike left a lot out, in song and production, which made the records transcendent, as fresh today as yesterday.

Oh, there was a rendition of “Listen to Her Heart,” the failed single from the second album. Yes, you heard the song on the radio, especially in L.A., but the band was poised for greatness and somehow “You’re Gonna Get It” did not improve the band’s status. It was good, but…a year and a half later “Damn the Torpedoes,” burst out of the dashboard with “Refugee” and the rest is history.

“You don’t have to live like a refugee”

The perspective was not only different from the boasting prominent in today’s music, but it was also different from the bombast purveyed by the English and heartland rockers. Tom Petty was slight, he wasn’t the macho cool dude, he was a thinking person, he didn’t see the world the same way as the bloviators.

Which leads me to the absolute highlight of the evening.

Now I saw Petty and the Heartbreakers at the Whisky. I heard “Breakdown” and “American Girl” on the radio in L.A., before the rest of the country cottoned to the sound. But if you want to talk about the first album, if I’m going to request a song from the first album, it’s either going to be “The Wild One, Forever,” or “Luna.” They’ve got that late night with too much humidity in the air feel.

But they did not play those last night. They played one I least expected, “Fooled Again (I Don’t Like It).”

“Looks like I’ve been fooled again

Looks like I’m the fool again

I don’t like it, I don’t like it”

Picture it, it’s easy. Petty is the victim. He thought he had something, but it was too good to be true. Not only did he lose it, he wasn’t even aware of how it was going down. All he can do is protest, tell his story in this song. And it starts off slow and quiet, but then it builds, evidences all the anger…

Now unlike the Dirty Knobs songs in the first two hours of the performance, everybody in the hall knew the words to these Petty songs. Because that was the era, you bought the albums and you devoured them. And sure, you might have seen the band live, but mostly you knew the songs from the records.

Now Mike got the audience to sing along to his own songs, got everybody to say F*CK THAT GUY! It’s not like there was an undercurrent of talk, people were paying attention, but let’s be honest, they came because Mike was Petty’s guitarist. So when Mike gave them what they were looking for, more than they were looking for, they were elated.

I certainly was.

And the thing about those Petty records is you could hear everything, the kitchen sink was left out, so when Mike strums the chords and Ferrone pounds the beat on the drums, it’s positively primal, but it’s everything.

“Strange voice on the telephone

Telling me I better leave you alone

Why don’t somebody say what’s going on

Uh-oh, I think I been through this before”

This is not the football player, not the cheerleader, this song is sung by the other, who is living their life in the shadows, but it’s just as meaningful as yours.

“You never said you had no number two

I need to know about it if you do

If two is one I might as well be three

It’s good to see you think so much of me”

I’ve felt this. I’ve been fooled, more than once, and in certain cases by the same girl. I remember when I saw my more than crush kissing other guys at the party, out in the open, all I know is she wasn’t kissing me.

Never mind more than crushes that involved some connection, some physical activity, that I thought were leading to more, but it turned out this uber-desirable woman lived with an upper classman.

“I don’t like it

I don’t like it

I don’t like it

I DON’T LIKE IT”

This music spoke to us, it was personal. It was not made to dance to, to party to, to shoot selfies to, it wasn’t background noise, it was positively primal.

And when it was all over, it was quarter to midnight, the show had lasted two hours and forty five minutes. But this was not Springsteen giving us his all, trying to overwhelm us, beat us into submission, it was clear that Mike and his compatriots loved playing, and as long as we showed up and stayed they’d do so. It’s tough to soldier on, but Mike is playing clubs, because that’s what a musician does, play, the money is secondary.

And I can’t say the tickets were expensive. But maybe that’s just the point, it was a show, not an event, and there’s a difference. The music blended with your regular life, was part of your regular life, it was rooting, and that was more than a surprise.

And I got home and was hungover, and am still not completely centered, even though I didn’t drink an ounce of alcohol. You see I was transported, to what once was and I thought could never again be. I thought maybe I’d moved on, because nobody was delivering what I was looking for, the essence, more than stardom, more than a jukebox, but living breathing rock and roll.

The kids don’t get it, otherwise they’d have been in the audience last night. But if you’re of a certain vintage, of a certain age, you know exactly what I’m talking about. And if you go to see the Dirty Knobs…

You won’t be fooled again.

It’s the real deal.

I don’t want to pay for Netflix’s ad-supported tier.

WHAT?

Here’s the bottom line. Netflix knee-jerked and established an ad-based tier after a quarter of bad numbers to appease Wall Street and now the model is floundering, as if one couldn’t see this from the get-go.

People hate commercials. Period. Netflix established a new model, then it punted. It’d be like Mercedes-Benz offering the right to drive a car three days a week for a cheap price. Not only does it make no sense, because people need a car all seven days of the week, or not at all, it CHEAPENS THE BRAND!

It’s bad enough that Zaslav trashed the HBO brand. It’d be like Columbia Records changing its name to Black Rock Records. Why? Zaslav’s logic is too many people have a bad impression of HBO, they see it as elitist, so he caters to the lowest common denominator and…according to Scott Galloway Warner Discovery is soon going to be in play.

But not Netflix. Because the bottom line is Netflix had first mover advantage in streaming, it kept pushing the envelope, adding product when Zaslav was eliminating it from Max. Yes, I want to pay for less, in what world does that work? Netflix is a powerhouse of production, Zaslav eliminated foreign production but Netflix carried on, and I’ll argue their best original content is foreign. Good move.

I had no intention of dropping my Netflix account. I even paid five bucks extra for 4k. But now, you want to raise me three dollars because your advertising tier is a failure?

Yes, the advertisers themselves are complaining because Netflix is not delivering the audience it said it would. So, how do you goose the ad-based audience? BY RAISING THE PRICE ON EVERYBODY ELSE!

I’m just here minding my own business, touting Netflix, check the archives, and the pricks who run it don’t care about me at all. Steve Jobs was against raising prices at the iTunes Store, he didn’t want to kill the goose that laid the golden egg. And when Spotify raised its streaming price, it did it by a dollar. I can understand that, it’s been under ten bucks for years, and inflation is rampant, Spotify deserves a dollar. But why does Netflix deserve THREE?

Once again, Netflix is looking at its bottom line, playing to the Street instead of its customers. I mean how out of touch can you be?

I was cool with cracking down on password-sharing. Because we’re all paying the price for that, as we are for shrinkage at retail outlets. But Netflix won that war, raw subscriptions went up, and now you’re going to put the shiv in me?

Never mind the issue of price points. $19.99 is not twenty dollars, even though it is. Perception is it’s less than twenty. So, if like Spotify, it went to $20.99, I could rationalize that. But $22.99? What, did Ted Sarandos pull that number out of his ass? There is a limit to what people will pay, just ask the cable providers, who were the only game in town until they weren’t. Cord-cutting is rampant. Because people are sick of paying for content they’re not watching, especially ESPN.

And now Netflix is turning into cable. The most hated outlet in the country. The record industry was tops there for a while, when it sued its own customers to keep revenue from physical product coming in, trying to eliminate file-trading, but the record industry saw the light, well, Daniel Ek made the industry see the light, he started the streaming juggernaut and now the labels are rolling in dough with many fewer expenses, how great is that?

I never thought of canceling Netflix. I’ll let it run, I thought, there’s always something I want to watch on the service, especially if I can’t find anything elsewhere. Yes, Netflix is bedrock. And most people see it this way, which is why it’s the only streamer in the black. So what does Netflix do? You’d think they’d reward us, but instead they disregard us.

At $22.99 a month… Maybe I’ll disconnect when there’s no good product. Kinda like BritBox… I just signed up to watch a series, I’ll keep it for a month and then I’ll disconnect. Like I do with Mhz. Like I do with Apple TV+. And don’t tell me dripping an episode a week changes the paradigm, with Apple TV+ I just wait until the series is done and then…usually I don’t even bother watching it, there’s new stuff to watch. Apple TV+ is an insult, there’s just not enough there.

Didn’t anyone learn the lesson of the new millennium, that the customer comes first? If we all stop subscribing to Netflix, the outfit is screwed. And Netflix is not like water or food, we can live without it. Turns out many people can live without the aforementioned ESPN. Treat me bad and I’m out.

I want it all and I want it now. That’s one of the reasons I love Netflix. If I hear about a show I can dig in and watch it all the way through. As for waiting a week for a new episode, what, are we living in the last century, it’s already 2023! Sure, some complacent oldsters who never learned how to use their DVR, never mind their VCR, are cool with an old model they grew up with, but poll the youngsters… Holding back product, that’s insane!

Remember when the issue was leaks in the music business? Yeah, the bad people put out the album without authorization, it screwed up the label’s promotion plan. For all the complaining, the script has flipped. Now labels just wish there was that kind of hoopla about a new release, that someone would care so much that they’d make the effort to leak it and the audience would clamor for it. Today you put out new music to crickets. It’s hard to gain attention, you’ll do anything for attention.

It’s not like Netflix does not have competition. And I’m not talking about Prime or Disney or Hulu or… I’m talking about TikTok. That’s the story no one wants to amplify, that the hours spent on TikTok far outstrip those spent on these streaming services. Just give me more of an incentive to drop my subscription Netflix, I dare you.

But you can admit your mistake. Delta lifted its frequent flier milestones so high that members went berserk. Then Delta backed off. They still have higher thresholds, but it’s not quite the insult.

Most people don’t know Netflix is raising its prices, there’s time to backtrack. Charge me a dollar more. I’m with you on that. Like I said, there’s been inflation, prices have gone up everywhere. But you’re going to raise me more than 10%? Inflation has been tamed, what are you thinking?

They’re not. This is just further demonstration of the elite being out of touch with the public. Many people are struggling, they’re on a budget. For all the b.s. about people paying for subscriptions they’re not using, the truth is most people know exactly what they’re paying for, and when they see $22.99 on their next bill, they’re going to think about it.

Like your cable bill. I mean enough already. It’s like a car payment. Why do I need cable? But I’ve got to give the cable outfits credit, they’re starting to realize this, they know their future is internet delivery, which is why Comcast stood up to Disney. Allow me to excise my ESPN subscription. And while you’re at it, let me cut out Fox too. Two outlets that I’m supporting with my three digit cable bill. I get to vote with streaming, but not on cable. Which is why people are cutting the cord.

No one at Netflix understands business, understands people. Excel is inert. It’s all about emotions. And I’ll never feel the same way about Netflix again. The company is not looking out for me, it’s looking out for itself. We had a partnership, now Netflix is an overlord squeezing me. Well, I don’t need Netflix…and I’m not the only one.

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

Phone #: 844-686-5863

Twitter: @lefsetz

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

Spotify playlist: https://tinyurl.com/3ahvs5ru

YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/3rk57ykn

It was not a hit. As a matter of fact, the entire album was a stiff.

Donna Summer was part of David Geffen’s trifecta, launching his new, eponymous label with three superstars, Donna Summer, Elton John and John Lennon. And all three of their albums stiffed, although subsequent to his tragic and untimely assassination Lennon’s album was resuscitated, “(Just Like) Starting Over” was played incessantly, and one can argue quite strongly that “Double Fantasy” contains the most well-known Lennon solo cuts, the ones the audience knows best, other than “Imagine,” and the album is the one that has been embraced by the public.

But this is not about John Lennon.

Donna Summer was a superstar. Seen as a disco sideshow, the sound she helped pioneer became dominant and she was the scene’s queen. Still derided by many, but then came “Bad Girls,” suddenly it was clear Donna Summer could rock, that she was testing limits while the corporate rockers were repeating themselves.

That’s where I came along. Someone my boss represented was in the band. Actually, two people. And they came in one day with the double “Bad Girls” album and I dropped the needle and was stunned, it was good! “Hot Stuff” started with a driving beat, with more energy than you heard on the rock stations. “Bad Girls” had a breezy feel that epitomized the ethos of the late seventies, and then there were those extraneous, background sounds, the beep beeps, and then Summer started to toss off the lyrics, as if she ruled the world and didn’t care at the same time. And “Dim All the Lights,” had a swinging, swaying feeling like the last dance at your high school, it captured the zeitgeist better than the rock stuff. And the closer, “Sunset People,” which captured the feel of the Boulevard back when you had to be here to experience it.

So I bought the 1982 Geffen album “Donna Summer” the day it was released. The initial single, the opening cut, “Love Is in Control (Finger on the Trigger),” had everything but the kitchen sink, but underneath the production was a substandard song. This was a new sound, nowhere near as good as the Giorgio Moroder sound. It was Michael Jacksonized Donna Summer.

Yes, they shared the same producer, Q, Quincy Jones, this was going to be a revelation, an apotheosis, Summer was going to be as big as the man with the one white glove, only she wasn’t. “Donna Summer” was a dud.

Now, in truth, decades later I cottoned to “Love Is in Control (Finger on the Trigger),” especially the breakdown, what happens starting at 2:42 is magical, but what are the odds something can be a hit, can become legendary if it takes years to get it? Zero.

Track 2 was even worse, “Mystery of Love.” God, the whole album featured incredible production, incredible playing, incredible singing, just substandard material. The record existed in a nowheresville, this was not the Donna Summer of yore, it was too slick, too mainstream, it wasn’t hip.

But Donna Summer still owed one album to Mercury, from her old deal, which she had to deliver as part of her contract with Geffen. And funnily enough, just like with Linda Ronstadt and Asylum a decade before, the album sans Geffen was gigantic, the one that broke through. Donna Summer was singing “She Works Hard for the Money” in her waitress uniform on MTV. She was back. But then she disappeared again, she never had anything resembling a true hit thereafter. Well, that’s not completely true, Summer decamped to Atlantic, worked with Stock Aitken Waterman and produced “This Time I Know It’s for Real” in 1989, but despite the chart numbers listed on the song’s Wikipedia page, I don’t remember a video in constant rotation on MTV. And I don’t remember it being on the radio, it eluded me completely. Then again, I’d given up on Donna Summer at this point, there’d been too much disappointment.

But on that Geffen album “Donna Summer,” there were two tracks, and I continued to go back to them, again and again.

The first was “State of Independence,” a Jon and Vangelis composition whose recording had gotten radio airplay, that I knew, that was built on the magic of Jon Anderson’s voice before he went back to Yes for the monster “90215,” a sorely overlooked album today, sure “Owner of a Lonely Heart” is still heard occasionally, but go back and listen to “It Can Happen,” Hold On,” “Changes and “Leave It,” maybe the younger generations will discover the album in the future, it’s right there on streaming services, it’s unique, requires no prior listening or understanding, and it delivers.

But the best iteration of “State of Independence” does not, exist on streaming services that is. Whoa, wait a second, after decades, it’s finally appeared, an album I played incessantly back in the nineties, Moodswings’s “Moodfood”!

Talk about a magical album, one that almost no one knows…

The entry point is “Skinthieves,” with an astounding Jeff Beck guitar solo at the end. And then there’s “Rainsong”… I could pull up what I wrote about this ethereal, meaningful number back in the nineties, but I don’t want to bring up chiaroscuro memories. I’ll just leave you with these lyrics:

“I was thinking about our life together

Knowing it must be now or never

To get back to you

Now I’ve just got to get out of this rain”

The vocal is by Linda Muriel, someone neither you nor I know, but the delivery is from deep inside her soul.

But the piece-de-resistance on “Moodfood” is “Spiritual High (State of Independence), Pt. 2.” Actually, there are three parts to “Spiritual High,” they start the album, and you should listen to them all, but Pt. 2 has got a driving club beat and the vocal is by none other than Chrissie Hynde! Yes, with a voice somewhere between Jon Anderson and Donna Summer, and for some reason her thinner vocal adds even more meaning. But the version on “Donna Summer”…

Q throws in everything, including the kitchen sink, but this time the underlying song is worthy of the production. It features the essence of Toto, David Paich, Steve Porcaro and Steve Lukather, as well as backup vocals by Bill Champlin, Steve George, Richard Page and one Pamela Quinlan. Well, there’s also an all-star chorus featuring everybody from Michaels Jackson and McDonald and James Ingram, Stevie Wonder, Christopher Cross, Dionne Warwick, and even Dyan Cannon, and that’s not everybody! Yes, only Q does this, but here it works. But this nearly six minute version of “State of Independence” isn’t a single, not what they play on pop radio, although it did go to number one in the Netherlands, but in the U.S. they played this kind of stuff on FM rock stations, but this was not rock, but it was great.

But not as great as “The Woman in Me.”

“You know baby

I’m so happy to be here

With you tonight

And I just wanna let you know

That I’d follow you to the end of the world

Just to show you that I care

And I want you to know that

If you need me

I’ll always be there”

That’s all sotto voce, before the main vocal begins. It’s so intimate.

Unlike U2 at the Sphere. I was reading about that earlier today, that’s spectacle, U2 performing “Achtung Baby” and other hits, “The Woman in Me” was never a hit, and never will be. It was released as a single, but barely made a dent, it’s just an album track on an album that was a stiff, that is not going to have a renaissance, because it was a misfire, not that good, Donna didn’t need all that production, she was enough, but on this cut Q’s production techniques work.

“Dancing close

Feeling restless

It’s a slow sultry night”

Sultry is the word. For the entire song. It’s the aural equivalent of “Body Heat.” And it’s personal. You feel like you’re the only one listening, unless you’re living the life delineated in the song, with your honey, sharing a private moment.

Private. So much of today’s music is public. Meant to be shared with the assembled multitude, to party. And some of that stuff is great, but what really reaches me is the opposite, the stuff made for just me, alone in my bedroom, when my spirits are low, when I need the music to soothe me, to make me feel like there’s a reason to continue to live, just to hear this sound, to experience this bond with the sound.

So I dropped the needle on “Donna Summer” the day I bought it and was disappointed until I got to cut 3, “The Woman in Me.” It immediately registered. And I wasn’t listening to it on earbuds, it didn’t emanate from a small speaker in the dash of an automobile, rather it was coming out of the speakers of my state of the art stereo with enough power to wake up the neighbors (and, unfortunately, I once did this).

We need an entry point to an album. And back when records were shorter, with two sides, it was easier to do this. We’d play them through once, then concentrate on one side, then the other, waiting for a track to speak to us. And “The Woman in Me” spoke to me, immediately.

And for some reason, in a fog this morning, reading the newspaper, eating coffee skyr with walnuts and blueberries, “The Woman in Me” started playing in my head. I could have called out to Alexa to play it, but it was better in my mind, more personal.

It’s not like I was in a bad mood, but I can’t say I was in a good one. I had nothing on my day’s plate that was disturbing, then again, there was nothing exciting scheduled. And the news was fascinating, but it was at arm’s length, I was not in the paper, but “The Woman in Me” was in my head.

And I started to think… Of that old house, listening to “The Woman in Me.” About all my moods, all my feelings, back when. And how “The Woman in Me” is primary to me, but seemingly no one else. It was a commercial misfire. You’re not hearing it on the radio. All that effort went into its production, its recording, but it’s really only known to a select few, those who purchased the album and played it, and those who might have heard it on one of its occasional radio spins. But it’s a hit. To me. On my own personal parade. Donna Summer is alive when I hear “The Woman in Me,” and so am I. When I hear the right song in my head my life is complete, I can conquer all comers, I feel powerful. 

And today “The Woman in Me” is that song.