WHAT WE’VE LEARNED

1. An independent is a Republican who doesn’t want to be seen as such. Very few people in America are truly independent. They almost always vote one way or the other. But they don’t want to be perceived as being beholden to a camp. Don’t buy it. You’re either a Republican or a Democrat, pick your side. As for the third party acolytes… Yeah, and unicorns are going to fly out of my butt.

2. In an incomprehensible music scene, mainstream media looks for a story, to define the landscape, to make sense of it all. Even though it makes no sense at all. “Rich Men North of Richmond” is a one shot, equivalent to shooting someone, a lot of news, and then nothing.

3. Hits are irrelevant, it’s about careers. Call me next year, or the year after, when Oliver Anthony can sell out arenas.

4. The concept of the song is more important than the song itself. In other words, have you listened to this? Do you want to listen to it more than once? What we’ve got here is train-wreck value. Everybody has to check it out. And then they move on.

5. People do hunger for authenticity, something seen as honest and credible, in a world where they’re constantly fed cartoons. Come on, have you listened to the Spotify Top 50? What you’ve got is people looking to get rich, who’ve smoothed off the rough edges, or are high concept outlaws… Today’s hit music is akin to the WWE. About as real as wrestling.

6. Never underestimate the power of a guitar and a voice.

7. If this was about the music, Billy Bragg’s answer song would be getting traction, but it’s not. “Richmond” is a phenomenon driven by right wing press. Believing it is owning the libs when that is patently untrue. This is what happens when a ranking system is flawed. Sales far outweigh streams on the chart, even though streams are by far the dominant mode of consumption. So truth is not. Buying “Richmond” is akin to texting two dollars to Donald Trump, an emotional effort demonstrating your belief. And if money was everything, Ron DeSantis would be contending with Trump in the polls, and he’s not.

8. There will be no Democratic response because the Democrats don’t care. They’ve seen the movie, they know the right wing is insane, they’ll vote, but they don’t want to take the everyday bait. As far as a phenomenon like this on the left… The left is not a cult, not one homogeneous group that bands together to make a point. And that’s a good thing. Because the left far outweighs the right in numbers. The right only triumphs because the game is rigged because of the Constitution, which they love so much and see no need to amend. Biden beat Trump by 7 million votes. But that’s not how the president is picked, it’s via the electoral college. Meaning only a handful of states count. The “Richmond’ phenomenon is akin to those few states, the rest of us aren’t paying attention and don’t care.

9. They want you to be scared. That there’s a creeping force that’s going to come along and dominate. But it’s a paper tiger. Don’t buy the hype.

10. There are no taboos, you can criticize anybody and get away with it today. Their weight, their religion… Leaving a very small coterie that is immune. You think you’re part of the club until you find out you’re not. If you’re white, Christian and self-sufficient, with enough money to get by, you’re included. But if you’re poor… You may think they want you, but they don’t. You can vote Republican emotionally, but oftentimes it’s against your best interests. And are you skinny and not taking any government aid? Look a little deeper, red states outweigh the blue in their amount of government aid. But don’t let the facts get in the way of a good story.

11. Just because Oliver Anthony made it, don’t think you will. And don’t think there are going to be a lot of Oliver Anthonys in the pipeline. One and done. An anomaly. A freak show. Kind of like Radiohead’s name your own price with “In Rainbows.” Do you remember who else tried this? Probably not, and none were successful.

12. Country music may lean right, but country music has made inroads because it contains all that pop/hip-hop do not, simple melodies and choruses that you can grasp and sing along to. As for the lyrics, so much is so bland that it doesn’t matter anyway. Which is why everybody glommed on to this “Richmond” song to begin with. Trump set the paradigm and almost nobody seems to have noticed. People want someone with an edge, who doesn’t triangulate, who speaks from the heart, in all walks of life. These are our heroes, whether they’re on the right or the left. If you’re honest and credible, and you put it out there and have talent, you have a much better chance than you do if you’re imitating the hit du jour. Great players are a dime a dozen, just go on TikTok, where there are kids in the single digits who shred. And vocals? Come on, even those on TV contest shows can’t make a dent. It’s all about a je ne sais quoi, something special, that makes you different, that evidences who you really are, that triumphs. This is what is killing the movie business. Sure, some people want high concept superhero movies, but most of us don’t, and until the movie business starts making films for the rest of us… But it won’t, because the costs are too high and the odds are too low. It’s a business. Yet when something is art you have a chance to triumph. If you want gritty reality go to streaming TV.

13. It’s no longer about the hit, but the mass. This is why Netflix kills its competitors. All we hear about is balancing the books, that too much product is being made. But that’s exactly why we subscribe, because of the plethora of material. With a constant flow of the new. It’s like Amazon, it triumphs because it’s got everything, and is dependable. If you haven’t had problems with the MAX app, you’re not using it.

14. Complaints. Us vs. them. How inspiring is that? We’ve been hearing this from the right ad infinitum. I mean if “Rich Men North of Richmond” makes you feel good, then you think someone is stealing your retro lifestyle that wasn’t so good to begin with. The future only moves in one direction, forward. Progress is inevitable.

15. “Richmond” is specific about the losers and the losses, but the enemy, those men north of Richmond, who exactly are they? This song is laughable because we don’t know who the enemy is. Call out the enemy. And the enemy is more right than left anyway. And how about the right to work states, sans unions. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. But don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story.

16. Low pay? Minimum wage is higher in the states north of Richmond. Miners? There aren’t that many left and you’d be stunned how much energy is now produced by alternative methods.

17. Control? That’s a pejorative on the right, FREEDOM! Last I checked it was the right that was controlling women’s bodies, what we could read…and when it comes to taxes, the end result of their lowering, by Republicans, is the rich have gotten richer and the poor have gotten poorer and…

18. In other words, the right wing cheerleaders who blew up this song are pulling the wool over the eyes of their somnambulant constituents, who are too dumb and too uninformed to know the facts, what the hell is going on.

19. This is not Lil Nas X. Who was built organically on social media and then blown up via manipulation, i.e. the kerfuffle that country radio wouldn’t play “Old Town Road,” which is infectious, unlike “Rich Men North of Richmond.”

20. “Don’t follow leaders, watch the parking meters.” If you want wisdom don’t look to some ignorant reactionary punk south of Richmond, but someone who knows of what they speak, who is intelligent and can express themselves, who knows you’ve got to think for yourself. If Oliver Anthony is a leader…count me out. Count almost everybody out. Because this dude is too ignorant to follow.

21. Here today, gone tomorrow. That’s what happened with Jason Aldean’s song and that’s what will happen with this song. Next!

P.S. It’s all a front anyway, a posture with no backbone, did you see Kid Rock drinking Bud Light?

I was puking blood.

The good thing about being locked up for three years is I never got sick. But three weeks ago I went out four nights in a row. Two of those were outdoors. One was indoors, but there was a high ceiling and I was relatively alone. Another was at a restaurant sparsely attended. But after that outdoor gig at the Hollywood Bowl I went backstage and got in a long conversation with Jacob Collier and his team. This is what I do best, relate to artists. If I was a businessman I’d be rich, but I am not. I don’t know how to get along like a bro, I don’t know how to charge. But if you want to talk concepts, feelings, I’m your man. And a real artist specializes in those. And it was Jacob and his right hand guy from MIT and his manager Adam and a management team member from England and we were having a very fruitful conversation about AI and the possibilities. Jacob was talking about triggering, using AI to create music. It’s all blue sky, there are legal issues, but instead of being defensive, saying no first, artists look forward, see every innovation as an interesting challenge, an opportunity.

So Jacob had just flown in from Asia. As had two of the aforementioned team members. And I think I got something from them. Because traveling musicians, they’re sick all the time. I don’t want to blame them, stuff happens, but everybody else I was with over those four nights is totally fine, and for three weeks now I’ve had a cough.

Hmm… No sore throat. No jag where I couldn’t stop coughing. And then…

I’d just left my car for a hike in the mountains, this was Friday night, and my chest felt rough, scratchy. And I didn’t have a beverage with me, but there was a water fountain about ten minutes ahead and I figured I’d stop there and partake and ultimately clear my throat.

But the cough wouldn’t go away. So I decided to expectorate, you know, to clear the passageway.

And when I spit on the ground… I saw blood.

Not that thin stuff, you know, saliva with a bit of a tint. This was splotchy, and a deep crimson color.

But that was just once. My throat was clear now, right?

Well, I kept on coughing and expectorating and the same thing happened. Splotches of blood. Big ones.

This was after I’d turned around. After I’d Googled and found out coughing up blood was evidence of an infection, maybe pneumonia. I needed some expertise.

So I called my doctor and when I got to the part where you page him, I realized I’d better go home first, in case I needed to write something down, and that was only twenty minutes away, so there I went. And when I got home I paged my doctor, who got back to me right away. Yes, that’s the attention I get. And I’m paying a hundred cents on the dollar. My internist went off insurance years ago, and then he stopped taking Medicare, but this was the guy who found my leukemia and…it’s worth every penny.

So he called me back instantly, I described my symptoms, and he asked me what I thought.

I said I thought I should probably take an antibiotic.

He wasn’t so sure. He thought I needed to be seen. He thought I shouldn’t be cavalier about this.

Now the weird thing about turning seventy, and that is the age I am, even though I feel about fifty years younger, is you realize you’re gonna die. You can fight aging, but you’re never going to win the battle. You can lie to yourself, get plastic surgery, hang with young ‘uns, lie about your age, but inside you can see the end coming. And it’s very weird, because so much of what used to have meaning no longer does. And that’s exacerbated by the Internet era, where everything is Balkanized, where there really is no chart and you’re not sure where you really stand. You’re alone. Even worse, your contemporaries, so many of them have already retired, they’ve retreated, they’re living a life of leisure. And they’re focused on their grandkids. I’ve got no kids, never mind grandkids, and there’s still so much I want to accomplish, but time is running out. Christine McVie didn’t even make eighty. And Robbie Robertson just barely did. And then there was that guy who went to the hospital, they found out he had pneumonia, and right thereafter he died.

I didn’t want that to be me. But it could be.

So my internist gave me two options. I could go to Sollis or the ER.

Sollis? I’d never heard of it. What it is is concierge ER. They see you immediately, they triage the situation, get you additional treatment if you need it, get a bed for you in the hospital. And my doctor thought I might need that, a bed in the hospital, or oxygen, he was scared by my cough.

But you’ve got to join Sollis. But my doctor said the first visit could count. He wasn’t sure of the cost, he thought it was five grand. Turns out it’s six grand. And that was just too rich for my blood. And this was the first time I wished I had more money. Made more money. Because when it comes to your health, you don’t want any limits, you want the best and you want it now. As the Eagles sang, the doctor says he’s coming, but you’ve got to pay in cash. It’s good to have that cash.

But if I might need to be admitted to the hospital anyway, why not start off at the hospital? My doctor recommended St. John’s, which is in Santa Monica.

So I shaved and showered. On one hand time was of the essence, on another if I was stinky and…

I was planning to go alone. Because the ER can be interminable. But Felice insisted on coming with me. Which I felt guilty about, but like I just said, she insisted.

And in case you haven’t been to the ER recently, they prioritize. If you come in profusely bleeding, or if you come in an ambulance after being in a car accident, they see you right away. But if time isn’t of the absolute essence, if your condition is not life and death, you may continue to be bumped down, it could take hours to be seen.

But it didn’t seem that busy in the waiting room. And no one looked incredibly sick. Then again, after about an hour someone came in with suitcases, and another with oxygen, so I read my book and did the Saturday “Times” puzzle on my phone. I never do it, I don’t have the patience and I’m not good at it, but I astounded myself by actually filling up about thirty percent. Well, maybe twenty five percent.

And then they called me in.

After three hours.

And now I had to give my spiel. I like to make it detailed but short. You want to give all the information, clearly, with nothing extraneous. And you’ve got to talk about extenuating circumstances, like I’m immune-compromised, because I got a Rituxan infusion for my pemphigus and it wiped out all my B-cells. This is another reason my doctor wanted me to go to the ER.

But I’d be lying if I didn’t tell you that as soon as I was lying on the bed, talking to the doctor, I felt like I wasn’t entitled, that what I had was no big deal. Then again, I’d already put in three hours.

Did you know they’ve got a portable x-ray machine now? They wheel it up to your bed, shoot pictures, and you wait for the results. They said it would be at least an hour, but the analysis came in about thirty minutes later. It said:

“IMPRESSION: No definite acute process. A small amount of left lower lobe pneumonia cannot be completely excluded, exam limited by portable technique.”

So now we needed to do a CT scan.

Now when you’re lying there, it’s like you don’t exist. It’s like a club of doctors and nurses and they all hang in this office in the middle and they’re having a rollicking good time and even if you yell, they usually don’t hear you. And I didn’t want to be pushy, but I’d been holding it in for hours, I needed to pee.

So when one of the maintenance people went by, I told them and they got a nurse and I was disconnected from the wires and I went to the bathroom and…

Now I’ve seen worse at port-a-potties. At airports. But this was a hospital. Go to In-N-Out and they’re cleaning the toilets regularly. Even in the gas stations you fill up at in the desert. This is their calling card. But at the hospital?

Since I was disconnected and up, I figured I’d give #2 a try. But there was no way.

So I walked around the building, looking for another lavatory, and eventually I found one and I’d like to tell you it was clean, it wasn’t, but it was cleaner, so I did my business and on my way back, I poked my head into the bullpen, the office, and they freaked out! I just wanted to know when I was going to get my CT scan. It was 2:30 in the morning already. The two people in the beds next to me were close to death, at least they looked that way. They were now asleep. Both very aged. No one seemed to be worried about them. But me?

And I’m thinking I’m young, but I’m aged too, just not that aged.

So I go back to my bed and within half an hour they came and started rolling me around, on the way to the picture room. And this is when I really started to feel weird, like I wanted to get out of there.

What I didn’t mention is I’ve had the negative experience a number of times. You know, what is a routine test is not. And the doctor looks grave and they start to take action and your head spins and you settle into passivity, being wheeled around the hospital is part of the experience, you almost enjoy it. But in this case, I wanted to jump up and leave, I didn’t want to be considered sick. But I’d invested so much.

So they took the pictures and I started to wait again.

I had the scan just before 3 A.M., and then it was 4, and then it was approaching 5… I was getting itchy. But like I said, I’d invested so much time.

Now I forgot to mention, that those results that came in early… I got them on my phone. It’s really pretty amazing. St. John’s is a Providence hospital, but UCLA and Cedars have these apps too. You get the results as soon as they’re in, oftentimes before the doctor sees you, and this can be scary. But the CT scan was not showing up.

And then, at 4:55 AM, the ER doctor came to consult with me. The CT scan had shown nothing… Well, it did show calcification of the heart, but I already knew that. Rust never sleeps. You’re fighting deterioration 24/7. Go to the doctor, face the music, accept the process, or be ignorant and die.

So…

It could be pneumonia. Or it could be bronchitis. You can cough up blood with bronchitis. But just to be sure I should take an antibiotic.

And after eight hours at St. John’s, we got in the car and left. At 5 A.M. Thankfully before the sun came up. Because if you’re a late night person you know there’s nothing so depressing as the sun coming up, you want to lay your head down before that happens.

And I got to be about a quarter to six and…

I wanted to forget the whole damn thing. Make like it didn’t happen. Because otherwise I’d get angry and frustrated and there was no upside to that.

And I woke up to e-mail from my internist asking for a report, the data had not shown up for him.

I told him I was going to take a Z-pak.

He told me if the cough persisted there were things he could prescribe. Steroids… There were about four.

And then I decided I was not going to leave the house. Screw hiking, I was wiping the decks clean. Because it’s like Covid, not such a big deal if you’re young, but if you’re old, it’s a really big deal. What seems minor could kill you. We always think we’ll bounce back, but that’s not always true.

And now I’ll hear from those people telling me Covid is serious, and coming back. As if I live in a rat hole and know nothing. And this will lead to the antivaxxers, which I completely don’t understand. Did you ever get into a discussion with these people? They start citing facts that are easily disprovable online. If you paid attention you know that the mRNA vaccines were not new, they’d been created over years, it’s just now they had a use, for Covid. But I keep hearing people telling me they were rushed. That it was too new. And then about all the people who died. Well I know plenty of people who died, but they didn’t get vaccinated. Which way do you want to have it? I’ve got to ask you, do you feel lucky, punk?

And believe me, when you’re in the hospital dying you’ll want everything they can throw at you. You won’t be calling your healer, your naturopath, you’ll want some of those western drugs. Oh no, Big Pharma is the enemy! And doctors just want to run up the bill!

Of course Big Pharma is flawed. And there are stories of doctors over-prescribing on a regular basis, doing unnecessary surgery. But do you throw the baby out with the bathwater?

I’m not arguing with you. It’s your choice. Do what you want. But know your odds of a long happy life are better if you go to the doctor, get the tests, get the immunizations. Then again, statistics tell us the wealthier live longer, because they get better health care.

Bingo.

This is one area where you don’t want to skimp. Then again, maybe you don’t have enough money to get the best care. That’s another feature of America, everybody’s on their own.

And I’ve got to tell you, at five in the morning Sollis looked pretty good. I still couldn’t rationalize it, I mean when was the last time I was in the ER? But maybe next time it will be more serious.

So I’m laying low, my cough is a bit better. But who knows?

I certainly don’t, but I don’t want to chase the dragon, I don’t want to test the limits, I don’t want to burn the candle on both ends. Because when you’re older it can catch up with you.

Then again, thinking about it Friday night, I decided I cannot become gun-shy, I cannot stop doing things for fear I might get hurt. If you’re not living life to the fullest, why live?

And the weirdest thing is as I was getting ready to go to the hospital, scared, I realized if I did die, I’d lived a good life. Maybe I’d die before my time, but how much could I complain? Then again, my father died at seventy, from the Big C. I wonder what was going through his mind?

I’m now at that age. Both of my parents are gone. Which means I’m next.

When it’s going to happen I am not sure. But I want to do my best to push it as far into the future as possible.

Trailer: https://tinyurl.com/dfft5d48

I watched this two-part series about a month ago, and didn’t write about it then because no one would know what I was talking about. Kind of like when I wrote about “Hamilton” before the mania hit. There’s a delay. Even worse, this two-part series premieres tonight on MGM+, the streaming service formerly known as Epix, and how many people have a subscription to that? Ultimately, it will be available elsewhere, but the buzz will be gone, and sans buzz will it ever be seen?

So what you’ve got here is a maybe to be forgotten production about a fading era.

This is very strange for those of us who lived through it. Kind of like the Deadheads of today, whose knowledge seems to start with 1970’s “Workingman’s Dead.” But before that there was a journey into the universe, an exploration, yet what about the rest of the San Francisco bands? Like the Charlatans?

Completely forgotten.

Charlatans member Dan Hicks ultimately had success in the early seventies with his band the Hot Licks. There was “Canned Music” and “I’m an Old Cowhand (From the Rio Grande).” But even more there was “I Scare Myself,” with Sid Page’s violin.

Here, check it out, and you should:

Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/7zcu2chp

YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/yc6u9b79

Listening today you’ll hear a roughness we didn’t experience back in 1972, when it was released. You see back then it wasn’t about perfection, but a feeling, an essence. The music was not bulletproof, it connected on a soulful level, it lived and breathed, which is why we embraced it.

Like the Grateful Dead themselves. Who might have been the roughest of them all, even into the seventies. “Workingman’s Dead” and “American Beauty” were anomalies. Mostly the band was one of experimentation, trying to find a groove that would hook the audience and lift the assembled multitude.

Now the funny thing is the pre-1970 San Francisco music scene is being forgotten. Back then there was almost no information. And there were few hits. The Dead had none. Nor Dan Hicks. The Jefferson Airplane broke through on “Surrealistic Pillow” with “Somebody to Love” and “White Rabbit,” but Quicksilver Messenger Service never had a hit. And it wasn’t until the seventies that Steve Miller became ubiquitous.

Now by time you hit the seventies, there’s music on TV, and tons of press, and that era remains alive. So the second episode of this production is less enticing, but the first…

There were no influencers, there was no social media, everything was positively local. And Grace Slick was two-dimensional, all you knew about her was her songs. Which made her even more iconic. Because you filled in the blanks yourself.

And Janis Joplin… Her backstory has faded, but even creepier, her music has faded. At this point, Joplin is mostly remembered for her rendition of “Me and Bobby McGhee,” if she’s remembered at all. But that Big Brother album, “Cheap Thrills”… That was not background music. You listened to that record and wanted to get closer. Which is why you went to San Francisco, you wanted more of this.

Now this experimental ethos in music was superseded by the experimental ethos in tech, ironically also from the Bay Area. Used to be California was a different country, three hours behind. Cut loose from the east coast. A place where anything went. Today they say that’s Florida, but nothing could be further from the truth. Florida is about retro hedonism. Sure, there are a lot of loose nuts and bolts, but California has always been about moving forward, pushing the envelope, this is where Chuck Yeager made his sound-barrier breaking flights.

Yeager was made famous by Tom Wolfe, by his inclusion in “The Right Stuff,” which they even made into a movie. But the piece-de-resistance of Wolfe’s nonfiction output came earlier, in 1968, with “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test,” the story of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters. This was required reading for the college student of the seventies. This was inspirational. Here were a bunch of people rejecting conventional society, making fun of people who rarely got the joke.

So, Jerry Garcia is dead. Tom Wolfe too. When I talked to Dan Hicks in the nineties he was burned out, still singing for his supper, after all these were not people with IRAs, but living in the now.

And not only are so many of the musicians gone, now their audience is disappearing too. And their stories with them. This won’t happen to the modern era, everything is digitized, at your fingertips, but before that…

I highly recommend the first episode of this series. And if you’re younger than forty, stick around for the second too, it will be new to you.

But mostly the series bummed me out. Because I’d been there and done that and seemingly everybody has moved on from there. Warmongers employ the peace sign. Groupthink is prevalent.

But once upon a time it was all about being an individual, on your own trip. That was what the sixties in San Francisco were all about.

Tune in Saturday August 19th 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