“Squaring the Circle (The story of Hipgnosis)”: https://tinyurl.com/3rr5rvuz

It was a moment in time. But we thought it would last forever.

The oldsters, the denizens of the sixties, crapped on the seventies. It was too obvious, too overblown, some sunny element had been sacrificed, it was no longer a lark, but business, and what exactly was prog rock anyway, didn’t we abhor those who were classically trained?

And then disco came along and killed it all. Well, there was corporate rock before that. Which was akin to the hair band era of the late eighties, but less cynical. But the entire enterprise collapsed, the music business was in the doldrums, only to be saved by MTV and a wave of young English bands not beholden to what had come before.

And now everybody is getting older. Even the seventies are fading in the rearview mirror. Nirvana and Pearl Jam came along to kill the hair bands, and then hip-hop powered through, the internet came along and it hasn’t been the same since.

The feeling of isolation, doing it with no one watching, that’s palpable in the beginning of this film. Today as soon as you create, you post, maybe even hype. You feel you’re part of something, that if you’re lucky you could go viral. But there was no virality in the pre-internet era. Very few could play. And they were on the road less taken. But you could afford to do that back then. Today America is immobilized, people don’t have enough money to move. But relocating was a feature of the seventies. You packed up and drove to another city, another state, to live another life, to learn, to leave the past behind. Now you can never leave the past behind, it follows you your whole life.

And life is very hard financially. The best and the brightest don’t become artists, because they know how cruel capitalism is, and they don’t want to be left without. I remember someone at the Howard Stern Show taking a year off to bicycle around the world. Howard couldn’t fathom it, what about his career? Well, back in the seventies we weren’t worried about careers. We were living in the moment. And going to the show was a regular activity, after all the tickets weren’t even ten bucks, the hardest part was getting one. And bands were still rampant. You got a gang together to conquer the world. That’s rare these days because it’s economically unfeasible. Even if you make it you’ve got to split the money too many ways. Believe me, it is different now. Hell, in an electronic world so much of the music is electronic, it doesn’t even resemble the music of the past.

So everything you know about the music business was codified in the seventies. That’s when Peter Grant flipped the live script, so that the act got ninety percent and the promoter only a sliver. Hell, everybody knew the show was playing, advertising was unnecessary. Today you constantly hear about acts that have already played that you missed, that you didn’t even hear about.

If you’re a boomer, if you were conscious in the seventies, if you were a music fan, addicted to the record store, you’ll know every song in this movie. The album covers. This is your DNA. The school I went to when I was supposedly in college and law school. The music was art, it was vital, it was everything.

And it channeled the culture so well that it threw off untold amounts of currency. Bands were rich. As rich as anybody in the world. Taxes were high, there were no billionaires, to be a rock star was to be unfettered, to be free, with millions waiting for your words.

Sure, there was a commercial business. Kind of like today. But that was on AM radio. Some tracks could cross over to the Top Forty, but oftentimes albums had no singles, and it didn’t matter.

You went to the record store, purchased your disc, came home, ripped off the shrink-wrap, dropped the needle and listened. You didn’t do anything else, you only listened. As you studied the album cover, memorized the album cover. We knew who Hipgnosis was, they did all the innovative sleeves!

They weren’t the only ones, but the Hipgnosis covers were statements unto themselves. They weren’t dashed off, you could see the thought behind them. And the only thing you wanted to do was to get closer. I was talking to a friend with a record company today who lamented he couldn’t get good help, couldn’t even get his millennial employees to go to the gig. In the seventies you couldn’t even get a job at Tower Records, never mind a record company. If you worked at a record company you were part of the retinue, royalty, you were where the essence was created, where it all lived, you were where we all wanted to be.

This was not tech. Tech is tools. You deliver the content on social media. The smartphone is inert, you take the journey. Back in the seventies the artists took the journey and we marveled. We revered the art itself. Sure, we studied the equipment, the guitars, the Fenders, Gibsons and Martins, and the Marshall and Hiwatt amplifiers and the Neve consoles and…those were the tools and the music was the product. Everything was in service to the music. And it was hard to play and hard to sustain. You had to have the chops, the vision and someone who believed in you. Everybody wrote their own songs, because the music was direct from them to us, unfettered. And selling out was anathema, your credibility was everything. And Hipgnosis did not make the music, but the covers, the artwork, was created with the same intentions. If it didn’t feel right, if it wasn’t art, Storm wasn’t interested. He walked from “Venus and Mars” because he didn’t like McCartney’s concept, there just wasn’t enough there, he left it to Po.

The concept. That’s the essence of art. Always. It started in the modern era with abstract expressionism, and then we had the minimalists. Maybe we need to hearken back to Picasso, at the turn of the century. You see the idea is everything, but sans execution it’s nothing. Prog rock was an idea. Punk was an idea. What have we got today? A bunch of me-too. When was the last time you were amazed, wondered how someone came up with something?

So they attribute the breakthrough to the Nice album “Elegy.” With the live version of “America” we heard on FM radio. Nice couldn’t break through because the vocals were substandard. So Keith Emerson decamped and formed ELP with Greg Lake and Carl Palmer.

And “Atom Heart Mother,” when most people still had no idea who Pink Floyd were. The cow on the cover. It’s meaningless! Intentionally. But it became iconic because of the success of the album.

“Band on the Run”… The video of the photo shoot is a window into what once was. When everybody was still young and it was all the aforementioned lark. People with no CV succeeded and then blew all their money pushing the envelope, constantly. Not only the acts, but Hipgnosis too.

And there’s footage of the Wings Over America tour. The trucks were famous, they were featured in “People.” And the video of fans running onto the field. He was not yet Sir Paul, he was a guy who created a breakthrough LP that was all over the airwaves and people had to go to experience it. Nostalgia was a minor factor. Today it’s all nostalgia.

So the issues of talking heads and licensing are nonexistent when you play on this level. The members of Pink Floyd, Graham Gouldman of 10cc, Peter Gabriel, McCartney, they’re all testifying, as to their relationship with Hipgnosis and how the album covers came to be. And we get a window into Peter Grant. You couldn’t speak to his acts directly, you had to go through him. Everything was still street, you can’t learn how to be Peter Grant in music college. And Grant’s instincts and creativity… Yes, not only the acts were inventing it as they went along, but so were the managers, the record companies, the promoters…

And we all wanted in.

These movies cost too much to make, so they open them theatrically for reviews, hoping to get better streaming licensing deals. But the audience for these flicks doesn’t go to the theatre. And by time the films hit the flat screen, the audience has moved on and forgotten about them.

You can rent “Squaring the Circle” for $5.99, but no one does that, almost no one anyway. I wish the hype coincided with streaming availability, but it does not.

The business still hasn’t adjusted to the present. It’s the opposite of the seventies, everyone can play and it’s nearly impossible to break through to an audience. Millions of tracks on Spotify have never been listened to even once. So, in the world of creation today, always put money second, like the techies. Gain an audience, then there are a ton of ways to monetize. Monetize first and you’re screwed. Building an audience behind a paywall? Nearly impossible.

So, can you live without seeing “Squaring the Circle”?

Absolutely. But if you lived through the era, you’ll be brought back, your life will seem meaningful, you’ll be reminded how much it counted, and that they call it classic rock for a reason.

If you’re a young ‘un… “Squaring the Circle” is like the Dead Sea Scrolls. An artifact of a past era that will utterly amaze those who were not there originally. I’m glad it’s documented, because history is slipping through our fingers as I write this. At least there starts to be footage in the seventies, unlike so much of the sixties. But how much art from the past has been lost to the sands of time because documentation was so expensive or impossible, everybody did not have a 4k video camera in their pocket. I’d like to go back, but I can’t.

But you can go back to when dinosaurs roamed the earth in the seventies. And at this point, just like little kids know the name of all the reptiles, everybody knows almost all of the work in this movie. “Dinosaur” is no longer a pejorative when it comes to music. All the young people wish they were there.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you – Part 2”: https://tinyurl.com/yc6nybue

This is the most rock and roll thing I’ve seen any white man do in the Spotify/social media era. It reeks of the Bob Dylan/Neil Young era of yore. However, both of them never saw a need to explain themselves. Dylan went on record he was just a guy who knew no better than you. Young was constantly cryptic, as was Dylan, when he deigned to respond. However, both Dylan and Young were better informed.

But it was a different era. It was easier to grasp the truth. Today the truth is fungible and all Oliver Anthony has is his experience. And he’s testifying as to that. And he gets kudos for that. He’s a beacon in a sold-out world.

First there was corporate rock. And then MTV and CDs. There was more money than ever before in the music business. And more money was needed to be rich after Reagan legitimized greed with his economic policies, foisting income inequality on the masses. Everybody strove for success, but sometime in the past twenty five years many woke up and realized it wasn’t working for them, that there wasn’t an upward path, and that the winners were ultimately abusing them with their economic policies and lifestyles.

I was born with the American Dream. That we all start from the same line, that we can all become rich and successful, that it’s eminently possible. But that was before the lottery was legal, never mind casino gambling outside Las Vegas. People want a shortcut to wealth, it’s their only option. Never mind that the lottery is a tax on the poor. I could explain that, but…

The explanations don’t work. Only experience works. And the experience leads to politics. And everybody in entertainment says to avoid politics and then this nobody comes from nowhere and triumphs, channeling people’s anger.

The poor have been screwed. Left behind as their jobs were shipped overseas. And welfare was demonized and cut. Poor is pejorative, it means more than no money, it means you’re weak and don’t count, that if you had any wherewithal you’d pick yourself up by your bootstraps and make yourself a success, as if birth circumstances and health consequences are irrelevant.

However, is Oliver Anthony good enough to sustain his rejection of the Republican party’s co-option of him?

Dylan and Young had put in years before they distanced themselves from their audience. Rejected adoration. They’d proven themselves artistically. Oliver Anthony is just beginning. And if it weren’t for the political hoopla would his song have been strong enough, a one listen smash, to propel him to the top of the chart?

Well, he is speaking about taboo issues in entertainment. Country radio is either about somnambulance, partying all the time, or adhering to a good ole boy ethos, the kind that had northerners worried about entering the redneck south in the sixties and seventies. Investigate the country world, everybody will testify that it’s controlled by radio. And you play along or you’re excised. Of course there are those in Nashville not playing this game, but their impact is marginal. Commercially. In reach. Unlike Oliver Anthony, who is said to be making 40k a day on “Rich Men North of Richmond.” And they said streaming doesn’t pay. Well, it does if you have a hit. And Anthony had a hit doing it completely differently from everybody complaining. Anthony is channeling his inner truth, his music is unfettered, he’s the disrupter as opposed to the me-too, the man who the major labels want nothing to do with, unless you prove success without them.

So…

If I were a betting man I would not bet on Oliver Anthony’s continued success. Because he’s just not that talented. Maybe he’s a harbinger of things to come, but in a world where even Taylor Swift and Beyonce are not universal, what are the odds that someone less talented and less polished can be?

Long.

But in a matter of days, Oliver Anthony had more reach, more impact, than either Swift or Knowles, whose tours are breaking records. Yes, there’s been a ton of news about their treks, but it’s all business, there’s very little ink about the songs. You see Swift and Knowles have lost touch with the public at large. They’re niche. Very big niches, but niche nevertheless. Maybe they speak of the universal love, but the inner feelings, the frustrations of the hoi polloi, they lost touch with that. Swift broke channeling teenage angst, then she sold out to the pop cognoscenti and lost the plot. The entire music business has lost the plot. Which is why it’s secondary in impact to streaming television. Don’t quote dollars, quote gut impact. Moving the culture. Foisting discussion. Sure, musicians have diehard brain dead fans who will castigate you if you question their hero, but don’t associate that with the general passion of a hit of yore.

Now sans the right wing interpretation of “Rich Men North of Richmond,” sans its adoption as a right wing mantra, I think the song would have been dead in the water. But the truth is politics is more powerful than the traditional hype mechanisms of a long in the tooth music industry. Oh, the music industry is loaded with publicists, speaking to usual suspect outlets, but this is a far cry from the days of the past when the song itself generated the publicity, when the hype came after the impact. That’s the story with both Jason Aldean and Oliver Anthony’s songs, the press reacted. And there was a visceral impact upon the public. Everybody had to listen. When was the last time there was a must-listen tune? And even if you hated these songs, you had an opinion, you could discuss them with others, which has been an impossibility for years in this Tower of Babel world. In other words, Aldean and Anthony brought us together.

Maybe because we’re apart.

I don’t expect Republicans to do any more quoting of Oliver Anthony after this video, I don’t expect constant iTunes purchases. There will be no shadow campaign to make him a hero. And maybe “Rich Men North of Richmond” will sustain, but sans controversy, is the average person interested? Like I said, it’s not like Anthony has demonstrated the talent of Ed Sheeran, nowhere close. Then again, Anthony has channeled a truth that seems to have completely escaped Mr. Sheeran,.

Entertainment, That’s what the Spotify Top 50 is all about. Visceral, changing the culture content? That was gone years ago.

Now the longer Anthony talks in this video, the more naive and out-of-touch he seems. Then again, I’ve got to give him credit for speaking from the heart. Yes, music is a dirty business. But I’ve got news for Oliver, all business is dirty. If you raise your head above the vultures come, instantly.

But Anthony does have it right, saying it’s all about his constituency. This is not lip-service to fans, this is an emotional thing. Anthony is not denying where he’s coming from. And he’s not putting on a cowboy hat and faking it. One of the best elements of the video is the pattering of rain on the truck. Hollywood would have cut this. Hollywood wants facsimiles of truth, not the real thing. It’s like twenty writers on a song. The honesty is long gone. One guy and his guitar triumphed over all of them.

Anthony explained his swipe at the obese. And he seems to defend welfare, by saying how few people are on it, but since he was an unknown we did not know where he was coming from. And still, I don’t think he understands energy. Then again, watch the whole video and you’ll ultimately hear that he doesn’t blame the poor food choices on the poor. You know it costs a fortune to eat healthy. And to buy Ozempic. Right now it’s hard to get insurance to cover these new weight loss medications, assuming you’ve got insurance to begin with. And maybe that’s Anthony’s point, that the Rich Men North of Richmond got rid of the provisions of Obamacare that protected the poor, and then there are states that refuse to take Medicaid money. Yes, Anthony seems to be speaking for the downtrodden, albeit in a somewhat ham-fisted way.

But one thing is for sure, his anger shines through.

We’re all angry. And very few of us are fully-informed. And we’re dedicated to our tribe, or proud to say that we are not in a tribe. It’s crazy, George Harrison implored us to think for ourselves almost sixty years ago, but that mantra is long gone.

Critical thinking. Analysis. It’s all emotion these days. And manipulation. By the rich and powerful. They’ve got you where they want you. Anthony now says he’s rebelling against this. Where does this leave him? With his audience, with his fans, of which there are relatively few. The politicos are done. Sure, some might want to adopt him to align themselves with the poor, but based on this video, it appears that Anthony doesn’t want to play.

Anthony does not appear to be eager to capitalize on his success. And we haven’t had that spirit here since 1969. And it’s quite refreshing to see it. Hollywood says everybody sells out, that you should go for the cash, not to miss your opportunity. But here we have someone who has taken the opposite path and succeeded far beyond those who played the game. As big as Lil Nas X was, he’s nowhere near the league of Oliver Anthony. Everybody knows Oliver Anthony and his song. In a world where that’s essentially impossible. That’s mind-blowing.

We need more Oliver Anthonys.

Tune in Saturday August 26th 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

“Battle of Ink and Ice: A Sensational Story of News Barons, North Pole Explorers, and the Making of Modern Media”: https://tinyurl.com/yu3n73vw

With all this hype about BookTok, I decided to do a deeper dive.

A waste of time. What we’ve got here is women, and a few men, testifying as to their love of a book(s). That’s it, they love it, it’s their favorite. Should you partake? NO! This is not how recommendation works. You recommend something if you think someone else will like it. And believe me, almost all of the recommendations coming my way are substandard.

Which is all to say I’m reluctant to recommend you read “Battle of Ink and Ice.” It’s not that it’s a hard read, it’s just that it takes a while to get hooked and you never get completely riveted. If you want a book that excavates history and will keep you more riveted, try Bill Bryson’s “One Summer: America, 1927”: https://tinyurl.com/ucz96kjm I downloaded it from the library because Gary Dell’Abate recommended it, not expecting to do much more than start, never mind finish, but this ten year old book is a revelation, in its delineation of the history of the time, most of which we’ve forgotten if we ever knew it to begin with. There’s the race to fly across the Atlantic, the complete story of Lindbergh, and politics and Babe Ruth… I wouldn’t put “One Summer” at the top of your list, but like I said above, if history is what you’re looking for, it’s easier to read and soon hooks you, unlike “Battle of Ink and Ice.” But “Battle of Ink and Ice” ultimately has more impact, will deliver more insight, it’s hard to stop thinking about it.

Newspapers were the internet of their day. Starting around the time of the Civil War. It’s astounding how similar they were to what we’ve been living through online the past thirty or so years. There were upstarts, competition, sensationalism, lies… The publishers were selling papers, truth was secondary to getting people to cough up their dough. We’re still in this era in social media. X is full of b.s., and controlled by the #1 b.s.’er himself, Elon Musk. Mark Zuckerberg seems to lack almost all humanity. And there were press titans in the past, like the owner of the “Herald” and his son, who ruled by whim.

And ultimately you got Pulitzer and Hearst and there was a lot of money, but not a whole hell of a lot of trustworthiness.

Now this newspaper story is told via the race to reach the North Pole. Both Cook and Peary claimed the achievement. Was one of them lying?

Well, papers had invested in polar exploration, so were they inherently biased?

But the essence is… Cook was likable, and said he got there first, and as a result he got a hero’s welcome. A congratulatory sail around Manhattan, a parade on the island and then a book tour across the nation. He got rich. Peary was bitter, kept on saying Cook was a loser who hadn’t made it. Peary was exposed as someone who was in it for the glory only, screw scientific achievement, he needed to get there first.

But when the Danes ultimately investigated Cook’s documentation, months later, they laughed, they said there was no way he made it to the Pole.

But it was too late for Peary. The parade, the speaking engagements…the public thought he was a sore loser, full of sour grapes, they couldn’t warm up to him, even after Cook was deemed a liar. Even crazier, some people continued to defend Cook, because of likability, if nothing else.

Sound like today?

Conventional wisdom can be plain wrong. And media can shape people’s opinions. And character and presentation count more than the truth sometimes.

By time I came along, papers were respectable. Yellow journalism was mostly in the rearview mirror. Papers had been consolidated and were seen as authoritative. We were told in school not to trust everything we read, but the papers were relatively trustworthy.

And then came the internet. Which pushed the papers aside. It’s funny to see all this hogwash about saving newspapers. They’re history, the model is gone. To try and prop them up is like trying to prop up anything that’s been superseded by the present, a fool’s errand, a waste of money. The “New York Times” triumphs because not only does it sell news, authoritatively, as the last man standing, but because it also sells games, cooking, sports and consumer advice…all these verticals as subscriptions.

As for the failing “New York Times”… It was failing, almost dead, and then Adolph Ochs purchased it and resuscitated it. Ochs was a businessman, not a journalist. He left that to others. Hired good people and mostly didn’t meddle. And decided to pursue an untracked vertical, one wherein you paid more for financial news, which others were ignoring, and facts as opposed to opinion. The other papers specialized in opinion, the “Times” let you make up your own mind. The “Times” got respect, never mind purchases, from the upscale, the movers and shakers, and it was on its way. The “Times” questioned the truth and didn’t get caught up in petty tit for tat. And those that played by the old rules were ultimately also-rans, that had to merge to survive, if they did at all.

It’s just astounding that history is repeating itself. That the medium is different, but the story with the internet is the same. A new paradigm comes along, the entire populace is excited about it, and it draws in people who are looking to get rich…scammers, spammers, those who see an opportunity, who care not a whit about getting it right, the public at large, trust, they just want to sell.

Like not only Elon Musk, but Mark Zuckerberg. And then the Chinese come along and do it better than either of them, with TikTok, just like the “Times.”

It’s all there.

“Battle of Ink and Ice” got great reviews. It’s not unknown. Not some book from a university press that is poorly written and will ultimately go nowhere. It’s not obscure. And if you read it it will deliver insight, will get your brain cranking.

“Battle of Ink and Ice” does not read like a textbook, it’s not a chore, but if you want something that will deliver absolutely…

Ultimately, the Ann Patchett book “Tom Lake” is overrated. It’s not that it’s bad, it’s highly readable, but it’s ultimately slight in meaning, minor. But the fact that it’s so lauded and talked about just demonstrates how hard it is to write something great.

I’d say to read Dennis Lehane’s “Small Mercies” before. It’s a genre book, by the guy who wrote “Mystic River.” This is not my interest, I’d never read a Lehane book before, but a friend I trust recommended it and…it’s not quite riveting, but it’s close. And unlike “Tom Lake”…it does have a deeper meaning, it does apply to life in general, it’s not solely about plot. Then again, it’s a bit of a stretch to say that.

The new Winslow book is his worst ever, a total disappointment. Don’t even bother.

I’m having a hard time delivering a slam dunk, at least one I haven’t written about previously. And unlike the BookTokkers I’m not going to salivate over Colleen Hoover. Once again, the wisdom of the crowd is not always right. Just because you’re reading that does not mean you can pat yourself on the back. There’s a whole hell of a lot of streaming TV that’s better than so many books.

My point being is if you read one book a year, don’t start with “Battle of Ink and Ice.” But if you’re the kind of person who likes history, mostly unknown or unamplified history, who likes a book removed from today but has lessons for today…

There’s a whole hell of a lot of information out there that will enrich your life, that will give you a leg up. Too much conversation is worthless, bloviators who know nothing and jockeying for position by losers. If you want to rise above, you can, in your own little home, just by informing yourself via media…reading, streaming TV… You don’t need to brag about reading “Battle of Ink and Ice,” but if you do complete it you’ll have perspective I certainly didn’t have prior to reading it. And this perspective now informs my view of today’s landscape. I read the book for fun, but it paid unforeseen dividends.

You’re on your own.