More songs with “Change” in the title.

Tune in Saturday July 1st, 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

I feel powerless. You’ll tell me to vote, and I do, each and every time, the only time I missed an election was a California Democratic primary for which I was out of town, and I know voting makes a bit of difference, but it seems more about putting one’s finger in the dike as opposed to making positive change. It didn’t used to be that way, then again I came of age in the sixties, when everything was possible and everything was up for grabs. It was all about going forward, questioning norms and authority for a better life for everyone.

Yes, we live in a society. Even the white nationalists. The actions of the rest of us affect them. This reminds me of the wealthy, who always say they did it alone and are entitled to their riches. Well, no. You see if we didn’t buy your products, you’d have bupkes. We’re all interconnected, we all need to get along. Isn’t that what Rodney King said? Oh, he’s dead. And it won’t be long before I am too. Do I just shrug my shoulders and go on with my life? When did everybody in America become so narcissistic, only focusing upon themselves. Imagine if Kennedy were President again today, and I’m talking about JFK, not the conspiracy spewing RFK, Jr. who seems to be building a base of the uninformed looking for change. JFK said: “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” There are many people today who don’t believe in the country. Oh, they say they’re nationalists, but the government is evil and should be stripped down and out of their lives. How can this be? As for altruism… I’m not saying nobody cares, but it’s all about careers. You don’t want to take time out of your procession up the ladder to do for others. That’s someone else’s problem, the government’s. But isn’t this the same government that everybody hates?

So in the sixties we recognized that certain people were at a disadvantage and this needed to be rectified. Let me see… Do we want people of color to sit in the back of the bus? Be unable to go to college? Well, the dirty little secret is that many Blacks are forced into substandard schools sans the rest of society. And this impacts them their entire life. So they may not be as well-prepared for college as others who were the beneficiaries of a better education. But we’re all equal, right?

It wasn’t only about affirmative action in schools, it was also about voting rights. But the Supreme Court said racism was a thing of the past and laws were not needed. Everybody on the street knows racism is not a thing of the past. I’ll make it very simple, when you get in an elevator and you’re the only white person amongst Blacks or Latinos or…do you feel totally at ease? Admit it, in many cases you do not. You’re afraid.

But it’s their problem. They have to pick themselves up by their bootstraps. Why does everybody in America have to pull themselves up by their bootstraps? Oh, you were born handicapped? It’s your problem. Tough noogies. Or without a father? Well, you should have chosen better. What, I was unborn! And you told my mother that she couldn’t have an abortion. Are you proposing eugenics? Absolutely, we just don’t call it that.

As for the guy who started this Harvard lawsuit, it’s got nothing to do with Asians, he’s been on this tip for decades. This is his calling, to get rid of affirmative action, just like Grover Norquist wants no new taxes. Talk about the power of an individual. You can’t get a single Republican to raise taxes. Forget whether it’s called for, they’ll be excoriated by the party, they’ll be primaried. This is the result of gerrymandering. Yes, the seat is Republican, but without a Democrat who can possibly win the lunatic right winger gets the seat.

Yes, call me a Democrat. Call me a liberal. And don’t tell me it’s the same on both sides, because it’s absolutely not.

Then again, the Democrats don’t know how to fight back. Somehow Hunter Biden is the worst criminal in the world but Trump’s kids are saints? His son-in-law involved with the Saudis? As is Trump with LIV Golf. These are grifters, out to line their own pockets. Why if Trump is so rich does he keep asking for money for his legal defense?

Are there lunatic Democrats? Compromised Democrats? Of course. But the “Woke,” the language police, all those straw men the right puts up, are a tiny minority. Do we judge all Republicans by the Ku Klux Klan? Then why do we judge the Democrats by a tiny extreme?

So you’re born Black in the inner city which the Republicans label a hellhole. You’re branded before you even start. And now doors are being shut left and right, opportunity is fading. The rich have nincompoop kids who they keep trying to get advantaged. Maybe two went to Harvard and there’s one…he barely graduated high school, after being kicked out of prep school after prep school. But Daddy and his money get him one cushy job after another, because Daddy is connected. Who is doing the same for the nincompoops who are not white and rich? NOBODY! It’s their own damn fault. And we don’t want to give you no damn money, go out and work. But even if you do, we’re not gonna raise the minimum wage. Go live in a flophouse with many, eat fast food, it’s your fault you’re obese and you’ve got to pay for it. National health care? Where in the hell is personal responsibility?

Personal responsibility. Like five year olds know all about this. Like everybody in America is born equal.

Well, in the eyes of the Supreme Court they are.

Sure, in a perfect world we need no affirmative action, but we don’t live in a perfect world.

Let’s make it about women… The corporation doesn’t want you and if it does it pays you less. You might get pregnant. You’re just too risky. But we have laws to level the playing field. But if you’re a person of color? Too bad. The right wing Supreme Court justices might be going by the literal law, but not the spirit of the law. The MLB was playing by baseball’s rules. But the end result was games were getting impossibly long. So what did the MLB do? Change the rules to equalize the game and make it more appealing to the masses, who ultimately support baseball, because once again it does not exist in a vacuum. End result? It works! Games are shorter and baseball is on the way up.

But our country is on the way down. We can’t change rules, only tear them down. Because god forbid someone gains an advantage, that the law works in their behalf. It’s your fault that you’re gay or trans and we’re going to teach you a lesson by closing doors. We say we’re all about freedom, but it turns out that freedom’s for us, not you.

So everything they told us in the “Weekly Reader” turns out to be untrue. Anybody can be President? Let’s start from the beginning, who would want to be President?

And I won’t say the election fights of the past were fair, but now it’s all about defining the Democratic candidate unfairly, taking them out of the contest. Dukakis was weak on crime. As for Hillary? Didn’t she kill Vince Foster? Forget that she was educated, she thinks she’s above us. Well let me see… Do you want to have your car fixed by an amateur? Why are education and experience anathema?

The Republicans have got this game down cold. Start labeling left wing candidates negatively as soon as they pop up on the radar screen. Death taxes? Almost nobody pays them. As for the man who came up with this term…Frank Luntz is now fighting against Trump and the crazy right. But he’s to blame, the rest of them too, enabling the ignorant and racist to the point where the tail is wagging the dog. This doesn’t work in business, the CEO gets fired, but in politics it’s fine. To the point where the Republican party is now run by the tail, not the head. The uninformed.

All you’ve got to do is go on TikTok, there are a plethora of videos. Trump is a saint and Biden belongs in jail. The facts don’t matter. Fox News and its brethren, like Luntz, have created a monster, and since it’s all about money, all they do is feed the monster.

As for the Supreme Court… The voters are so ignorant.

They were told again and again to elect Hillary because of the Supreme Court and…they didn’t like this “mean” lady. I don’t care what you thought about her, but these Supreme Court decisions are a direct result of her loss.

People voting against their interests. They’ve got no idea what is going on. How can you run a country when almost nobody knows the truth? I’ll say it again, forget opinion, the number one factual resource in America is the “New York Times.” Forget the left, the right devours it and reacts to it. But the right has told its constituents to ignore the “Times,” live in darkness.

Back to the “Weekly Reader.”

Believe me, we were nationalists back in the early sixties, we believed in our country. But then we started to question.

But it didn’t occur to us that the game was rigged. That the Federalist Society would proffer inherently biased Supreme Court justices. There’s no responsibility, just fealty to the team. And if you’re not on that team…

Even worse, if your team is bigger, you still lose. Whether it be the Constitution’s two senators for every state, the massage of voting rules or… The deck is stacked against you. And if you win, you lost. Isn’t that Trump’s mantra? Play that out. Everything is up for grabs, the aforementioned baseball game, Wall Street…facts are fungible, emotions are everything, and there are takers everywhere, poised to push you into the gutter, so you’d better be alert and vigilant to make sure they gain no traction, no advantage.

Respect? How can you respect the Supreme Court? Lackeys, tools of the right. There’s an agenda, and it’s not in your favor, the majority, the average citizen, it’s all about protecting the whites and corporate interests, too often the same damn thing.

But there’s nothing I can do about it. You can’t get an abortion in your state? MOVE! But don’t move to California or New York City because they’re crime-ridden and morally bankrupt and… Well, which way is it?

Everybody’s so confused they’ve got no idea.

And all we hear is freedom, FREEDOM, FREEDUMB!

I thought freedom wasn’t supposed to hurt anybody else. And if it did, we enacted laws preventing the behavior. How does someone else’s abortion hurt you? If anything, the birth hurts you. That kid has needs, and they may have to be met by the government. But they shouldn’t be! Personal responsibility! Think about that every time you have sex, every time the condom breaks, every time the baby you’re carrying is gonna kill you but an abortion is illegal.

So we’re on our own. We can’t play in the MLB and we can’t really play in government and we certainly can’t play on the Supreme Court.

Sounds good in theory, that everybody has an equal chance to get into college. But the truth is everybody is not equal, everybody does not begin at the same starting point. Let’s talk about golf, the white man’s game. Everybody gets a handicap, to equalize scores in tournaments. Yes, you get an advantage at the country club, but not in regular life, it’s unfair!

Talk about unfair…

But I won’t. Because it won’t make a difference. The game is rigged and too often those on the side of right say their hands are tied.

We’re going backwards. I lived through the good old days of equality. Now society is much coarser and much less even. Sure, we’ve got smartphones. And yes, poor people have flat screens. But you can’t afford good food and you can’t afford a new car and…it’s capitalism. Any change will bring socialism and you don’t want that, do you?

Maybe you do.

Like Medicare.

And Social Security.

Nah, let’s just let our old people suffer. We keep hearing about deaths of despair. This didn’t used to be a thing. But I’ll tell you, if I run out of money I’ll kill myself, you can’t get a job when you’re ninety. Too many baby boomers are going to confront this situation, and then what?

Oh, too bad, it’s their own damn fault.

And it might be, but does that mean we’re going to cut them loose?

That’s what the Supreme Court says. We’re all born and then you’re on your own. However it plays out it’s your fault.

Hogwash. 

You’ll love listening to Dwight’s tales of growing up in Ohio and coming to Los Angeles to make it. Dwight is quite the raconteur, and this is the longest podcast I’ve ever done. It’s like hanging with your best friend.

https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9ff4fb19-54d4-41ae-ae7a-8a6f8d3dafa8/episodes/9e42b14f-5e35-47b0-82a5-492c4a31c168/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-dwight-yoakam

https://www.stitcher.com/show/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast/episode/dwight-yoakam-304859482

The theatrical movie business is never going to recover. And we might need population growth to fill all those office buildings. But music? It keeps getting bigger and bigger.

The movie business killed itself. This is what happens when you put bean counters in charge. Let’s see… Marketing expenses are so high, let’s make fewer and fewer movies and promote the hell out of them. Furthermore, to get a good return on our dollar, let’s make sure the films can play in every country around the globe, let’s not localize them, like with comedy, content that does not play overseas. And let’s build franchises. Because the goal is to eliminate risk. Not only endless sequels, but comic book characters. Look at the gross!

Well, don’t. Because the true metric is attendance. And somewhere along the line entire swaths of the public stopped going to the theatre.

The baby boomers…older ones might go out of habit, but so many have checked out, because they don’t make the kind of flicks they got addicted to in the sixties and seventies. Deep thought pieces that stimulated your brain and engendered discussion. As for foreign flicks, the independents, there’s so much product it’s hard to make sense of the landscape, and movies come and go, it’s no longer religion.

And then there are the families… Turns out you can see Pixar movies on Disney +, so why wrangle your kids and spend all that money at the theatre? Furthermore, the theatre is not on demand, there are appointed times, you can’t be late, whereas you can stop and pick up Disney+ content whenever you want. The new Pixar movie, “Elemental,” is everything adult fare is not…it’s innovative, and it got some great reviews, and it’s got a 92% audience score on RottenTomatoes, and the critics score is not quite as high, it’s 76%, but the flick stiffed at the box office. “Elemental” is the lowest grossing Pixar pic in history, or close to it, depending on how you massage the figures. Then again, when Steve Jobs ran the company, Pixar movies were an event, by ramping up production Disney eradicated a lot of the magic. And like I said, you can watch them on Disney+ anyway.

Oh, you say, it was a mistake to put them on Disney+ during the pandemic. Well, if they held all this content back there wouldn’t be a Disney+, which has the thinnest content slate of any streamer other than Apple, and that’s only because Apple has no catalog, and it’s making more new stuff. And the home experience is incredible these days. With giant hi-def flat screens and surround sound… Sure, there’s a bigger picture at the theatre, but you’ve also got all those humans. Most people don’t want to hang with all those humans. There’s no policing of the movie theatre audience, getting patrons not to talk, to turn off their phones, and if you complain…expect blowback. People think it’s part of the admission price, to do whatever they want during the screening.

And then there’s the office. I get it, socialization is needed. But it turns out you can save so much time and accomplish just as much at home. All that brouhaha about innovation in the office…studies say this is untrue, that most innovation is singular, by one person, oftentimes out of the office. You don’t need to go to the office to innovate, you can take a break, take a hike, that’s when the neurons start to fire. And studies say people actually work harder at home. And it’s so much easier, there’s no commute. They’re trying to bring people back into the office, but corporations don’t have the power they used to, they’re not the only game in town, treat me right or I’ll quit. Ditto the unionization movement. You want to be on the side of the worker today, the wind has changed.

But in music?

The internet was supposed to kill music. After all, who would play if you couldn’t get paid? EVERYBODY! Turns out that everybody wants their music on Spotify. As for getting paid…

This is what the oldsters don’t understand, they’re making less on recorded music because they’re getting less mindshare. The pool used to be small. They had label deals, with advances, and marketing and promotion, and there was a limited amount of competition. But with all that competition… This is like network television, ratings have plummeted to lows incomprehensible during the last century. Because there are so many other options, never mind cable and now streaming, but YouTube and TikTok and…

So what we’ve got is a plethora of cottage industry acts. And in truth, today everybody starts out cottage industry, and after you’ve proven yourself you can make a major label deal, or not. The majors don’t want everything, just what they can blow up, and that’s only a fraction of what’s out there.

So what we’ve got is an endless development pool. It’s overwhelming, yet it doesn’t have to be. But everybody who can separate the wheat from the chaff is addicted to the old model and refuses to do so. The streaming outlets need the major label product so they won’t tell you anything sucks, it’s all presented as equal, the customer is on their own, meaning you don’t discover new music on the streaming platform, that’s where you go once you’ve already heard about it. Music is broken via word of mouth, or TikTok… The streamers do a piss-poor job of breaking acts, they don’t even know how to.

And now music is everywhere. The retrograde music industry finally woke up and realized it’s not about shutting down new uses, but licensing them. This is why music is now so valuable, why catalogs are selling for a fortune. This is not a one time event. The revenue from music will continue to go up, because they keep inventing new uses for music. Just like things go better with Coca-Cola, things go better with music. And music, unlike Coke, has an unlimited number of brands, you can find anything you want. And it enhances your TikToks, your YouTube clips… It may just be pennies, but those pennies add up, just ask the publishers, this is their business model. Never mind sync licenses… There’s more visual product than ever before, and almost all of it needs music. Of all stripes. Of all costs. There’s room for the superstar and the wannabe.

So the public is music-crazy. They’re exposed to music 24/7, they can’t escape it, except maybe when they’re asleep. And all these uses pay. Get your mind off the old paradigm of selling physical product. It’s not about a short arc of sales, but an endless life of copyright, you get paid when people stream your music decades from now, assuming they do.

And most music doesn’t get streamed. It’s not only the oldsters who complain about compensation, but the youngsters too. Everybody thinks they’re being ripped-off, not realizing there’s only so much money and attention to go around. And people want stars. But a star might be a bluegrass band that can sell a thousand tickets everywhere it plays. You see there are kings (and queens!) in every genre. And those at the top can make a good living. You read all about the acts in the Spotify Top 50, but those who never enter it oftentimes make more. Today music is a long game, you pay your dues and you build your fan base and you monetize it forever. Never mind merch. And so much more.

Yes, the paradigm has changed, but the new paradigm is even better, because there are so many ways to monetize. But the competition is fierce. This is what happens when a business matures and the compensation goes up. Baseball players fifty years ago drank and could be overweight, whereas today’s seven figure athletes, sometimes eight figure per year athletes, are incredible physical specimens, they lift weights, they work out, they need to be in shape to battle the competition, but also to ensure longevity. So if you’re complaining it’s harder today… Let me tell you, the “good” old days are never coming back, never.

And with everybody having the same smartphone, possessions becoming commoditized, it’s become about the experience. Come on, why do you think food is such a thing? And so is the concert. There are different levels, there are superstars who play to hard drive, but those unknown by many playing different songs every night can sustain for decades. Come on, did you ever encounter a casual Phish fan? No, either you’re a diehard or don’t care. And the diehards might have seen a hundred shows. Believe me, that keeps Trey, et all, in dollars.

Music is everywhere. There are more stadium shows than ever, more acts that can sell stadiums, and although the bar business is rough, having been supplanted by recorded music, seemingly every burg hires acts to perform, as a cultural benefit to the locals.

But with an unclear top. And those at the top making tons of bucks while reaching fewer people… It’s hard to make sense of the world. But if you pull the lens back… There seems to be a market for everything. Morgan Wallen, a country act, is the biggest chart performer. And then there’s the Latin act Bad Bunny. Sure, hip-hop and pop seem to dominate, but there’s so much else.

And I just can’t see a downside.

Ticket prices? Believe me, they wouldn’t be high if people didn’t want to pay. Scalpers? Bots? They’re all a result of demand. Sure, there are some problems here that need to be addressed, but not making enough money is not one of them. And it’s hard to get sympathy from the government. Now let’s see… The business is raining down cash and you want us to spend time and money enacting and enforcing legislation to undercut the law of supply and demand?

People want music, do you know how much else they don’t want?

Sure, superstars draw attention. I’m not saying a new Beatles or the equivalent wouldn’t juice the business even more, but the culture is not ready for that. Because to be iconic and believed in you have to leave money on the table and say no, and that’s just not today’s culture. Everybody wants everything, especially in a world with an elite tier living a lifestyle the rest of us don’t. You might read about the compensation of artists, but they’re low compared to the CEOs, who get paid astronomical sums year-in and year-out.

But the content of the content… Turns out music is so strong that it can survive even on mediocre content. Everybody talks about streaming television, people may not talk about music the same way, but maybe music has become like food, air and water. A necessity. You wouldn’t think of signing off the streaming music service. As for those who do, who complain? They’re going unheard, just like the oldsters who complained their cheese was moved twenty-odd years ago. You see twenty plus years have passed. The boomers are in their seventies, young people never knew a different world from today. Where you own little but pay for everything on demand. That’s what Netflix is, that’s what Spotify is, they call that access, and you don’t want to forgo it, you NEED IT!

And then Netflix clamps down on subscription sharing and what happens? The freeloaders pony up. They can’t live without Netflix. The product is just that hot.

But music is more visceral. And there’s the live component. And when done right it embodies the personality, the identity, of the maker. And you can go to the show and see these acts in the flesh. There’s a human component absent from any film, any TV show.

Are tweaks needed? Compensation rates, getting paid for recordings on terrestrial radio… Sure, but anybody who says the music business is upside down and in the sh*tter has their head up their a**.

Kick back and listen to the music.

It’s morning not only in America, but the whole damn world.

IT’S GLORIOUS!