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Twitter: @lefsetz

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“Did you know that there’s a tunnel under Ocean Blvd”: https://spoti.fi/3M3k82O

This is a dorm room record.

I was hiking in the mountains listening to a podcast featuring my friend, the proprietor of RealSkiers.com, Jackson Hogen. We don’t agree on everything, but this was a good primer on equipment and ski areas. To buy your boots, at a specialty retailer, and take lessons and… You can check it out here: https://bit.ly/3G35Hbn

That took me up, on the way down I checked out the playlist of the new “New York Times” music newsletter, “The Amplifier”: https://nyti.ms/3TWS2Z6 Wading through new music is like swimming in the Sargasso Sea, and with the “Times” imprimatur I decided to dive in. I was disappointed. First and foremost because the songs all seemed to be from the same viewpoint, adult alternative. And none were one listen smashes. Like I told you, I got the Giovannie and the Hired Guns track nearly instantly, and the first time I heard it was live. I mean the poor voices… Maybe if one listened to the “Amplifier” playlist a few times, the songs would start to reveal themselves, but who’s got that time?

And it is all about time. Radio used to pick the hits. And sure, a lot of genres were left out, but they never intentionally played stuff that was bad, completely unpalatable, their goal was to serve you up the best of what was available, and for a while that worked very well. But now radio has a fraction of its old reach, and therefore even when you hear a great song there’s no context, no one else seems to be talking about it, streaming television is more comprehensible, never mind being the subject of constant conversation.

Frustrated, I decided to jump off and…

What exactly was I going to play?

And then I remembered the reviews, in every major newspaper, of the new Lana Del Rey album, “Did you know that there’s a tunnel under Ocean Blvd.”

Not that the reviews could convince anyone they needed to listen to the album. The reviews were dry, quoting lyrics out of context, that didn’t add up, didn’t resonate.

But Lana Del Rey is inherently interesting, because even though she’s signed to Interscope, she seems to be playing in her own rarefied world, like the mainstream music business doesn’t exist.

So the first track is “The Grants.” Which is Lizzie/Lana’s real last name. Yes, Lana Del Rey is Lizzie Grant from Lake Placid, and even though they held the Olympics there, there’s nothing hip about the upstate New York burg. It’s kind of cognitive dissonance, this dish of a woman evidencing glamour coming from a backwater. Then again, Lana Del Rey’s whole image and career are confounding.

Let’s start with the appearance on SNL. Her public debut. To tell you the truth, I can’t even remember why it was so awful, so denigrated, but I do recall. And the funny thing is so does everybody else, including Lana herself. And ever since she’s been running away from it.

Let me state it another way. Major labels specialize in pushing the button. Using their connections to expose artists they believe they can sell tonnage on (stream tonnage on today!) Therefore, these acts don’t grow from the ground up, but the top down. The ascension is too slow the other way for the major labels. Sure, some people on the bottom may know an act, but you can’t reach mass unless you go mass. Unfortunately, for many artists, this is too soon, like it was with Lana Del Rey.

But she survived. Many acts don’t. One and done. But there was this song on Lana’s first album, “Summertime Sadness,” that penetrated the public consciousness, became an alternative hit, a fish out of water, that slowly built to the point of becoming a standard, and suddenly Lana Del Rey had a career. It had nothing to do with publicity or the machine, it had to do with the music. And Lana has pursued this path ever since.

Most acts today try to have a hit. Or don’t, and are so far from the mainstream most people have never heard of them. To be on a major label and not only play in your own universe, but triumph, that’s a paradigm rarely seen these days, if at all.

But Lana Del Rey lives there.

All of the tropes, the endless appearances in the mainstream media, the daily drops in social media, the endless live YouTube videos… Lana Del Rey doesn’t play that game. Or if she does, I’m unaware of it. I thought she didn’t do interviews for this album, but searching I found one in “Interview,” another in “Rolling Stone.” But, usually this stuff is so prevalent, so everywhere, that you can’t escape it, it becomes offensive. Then again, I saw the carpet bomb reviews in all the papers somewhat offensive, the work of the starmaking machinery right in front of my very eyes, even more refined, but less effective than in Joni Mitchell’s day.

So the opening track, “The Grants”… I understood it, but I didn’t need to hear it again, I wasn’t hooked.

And then came the title track, “Did you know there’s a tunnel under Ocean Blvd.” All the reviews write about a literal tunnel in Long Beach, but I didn’t think of any of that when I listened to the song. It was dreamy, with a hook employing the title. My mood changed. It wasn’t conscious, but suddenly I was relaxed, and then my mind started to drift. This is the experience I’m looking for, most people are looking for. Sure, the mindless stuff serves a purpose, but that doesn’t stick with you.

And I’m wondering who has the time to listen to all this new music, and I start thinking about being in college, and that’s when it hit me. This is the kind of music you play in the afternoon alone in your dorm room. During intimate conversations with your friends. It’s meaningful, mood-setting, without being too heavy. Furthermore, it’s not really background, you can never really tune it out.

Now they say that women catch the lyrics earlier than men. But listening to “Did you know that there’s a tunnel under Ocean Blvd” not only were the lyrics secondary to me, they didn’t seem to be the essence, a necessary component of the album like all the reviews said, the textures and sounds, the vocalizations stood on their own, the lyrics were the cherry on top. I mean read the reviews and you don’t want to listen to the record, it sounds intellectual as opposed to soothing, for the bookish, but not everybody, there are tons of albums like this, with interesting lyrics, but as music they don’t hold up.

And the album continues to play out and the mood continues. It’s not that the songs sound identical, it’s just that there is a mood created. Nothing jarring, not a cornucopia of tracks made to appeal to everybody, including a song that might get radio play.

I’m listening and I hear nothing that I’d expect to hear on the radio. Maybe on the Spectrum or some other SiriusXM station, but nothing that would appear in the Spotify Top 50, that’s not the goal.

And unlike the on paper admirable but uneasy listen of Fiona Apple’s latest album, “Fetch the Bolt Cutters,” “Did you know there’s a tunnel under Ocean Blvd” is extremely listenable, you want to play it, hear it, know it.

But it does contain an hour and seventeen minutes of music. Meaning it can’t be digested easily, and to comprehend it you have to dedicate a good chunk of time, which will prevent you from listening to something else. But there’s no filler, only adventure, mental adventure.

I mean there’s Zach Bryan, with a plethora of material, and Morgan Wallen. These new acts take up so much personal mindshare, but if you go to their gigs the audience knows every word, there’s a rabidity much more intense than there is for the Spotify Top 50, although Wallen cuts can appear there. This is not BTS, other acts with angry mobs of devotees who will annihilate you if you say anything negative. The connection is not cultural, it’s musical. The music stands on its own. All you have to do is jump in.

And like I said, this is radically different from what is purveyed, emphasized by the usual suspects.

And I wouldn’t expect any mainstream legs on “Did you know that there’s a tunnel under Ocean Blvd,” I don’t expect more news stories, hit singles, the album has dropped and it will be supported and spread by its audience, media will not be the key, the album will be alive in the culture but if you’re not clued-in you won’t get it. But you’ll be somewhere and hear the music and ask yourself, what is this? Because it’s not in-your-face like so much of today’s mainstream music, it’s not playing to the last row, but only the first few, it’s not trying to convince you, it just is. And that’s enough, more than enough.

And unlike the aforementioned Fiona Apple, who took eight years between her last two albums, not only did Lana Del Rey put out an album in 2019, but two in 2021. Most acts polish one album, bring in outside writers to insure acceptance, and then promote it and tour it for years, whereas Lizzie Grant just keeps making them. For herself. And her audience. If you’re not a member of the club, that’s cool.

How did she get here?

Well, she might have grown up in Lake Placid, but she went to Kent, a prep school in northwestern Connecticut. And one thing I can tell you about the prep school graduates…they’re extremely well-read, I felt inadequate when they started to speak at Middlebury.

And Lizzie actually graduated from college, Fordham. What a concept! In a world where the younger you are the more marketable you are. Where being uneducated is a badge of honor. Where forgoing college is de rigueur because you don’t want to waste all that time when you could be working on your career, you might miss your time. You learn something in college, not only in class, but outside, you meet people from different backgrounds, you have new experiences, your vision is broadened. Lana Del Rey is 37 and at the top of her game, and even most of the classic rock acts were creatively dead at that age.

So start with the second cut, the title track. And let a few cuts play. You’ll be drawn in.

And don’t listen as a test, listen like you did to a new album in the old days, when you broke the shrinkwrap and gave it a chance to penetrate.

Women making this kind of music are supposed to be dark and alienated, physically as well as mentally. Joni Mitchell was beautiful, but she was a hippie chick. With her long hair. Whereas Lana Del Rey is much closer to a model.

Oh, don’t criticize my perspective. I’m being honest. Speaking words people think but you cannot say. It’s great that Lana Del Rey is physically attractive, it’s just that we expect women blessed with good looks to trade on them, and that’s not a component of Lana Del Rey’s art or success. Also meaning that Lana/Lizzie is operating in uncharted territory. Everything seems to be retro these days, painting by the numbers established by the acts of yore. But “Did you know that there’s a tunnel under Ocean Blvd” doesn’t sound exactly like anything else, like all those albums we listened to in our dorm rooms back in the seventies. It starts out background but becomes more foreground as you listen to it, as it seeps in, as you become intrigued and want to go deeper.

This is an achievement. I’m telling you now. I haven’t even truly penetrated the lyrics. But I want to play “Did you know that there’s a tunnel under Ocean Blvd,” I want to go deeper, and shouldn’t that be the way it is?

Producer Burt Sugarman just put “The Midnight Special” on YouTube. We talk about the show as well as Burt’s career, from TV to hamburgers! You’ll be fascinated!

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/burt-sugarman/id1316200737?i=1000606578815

https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9ff4fb19-54d4-41ae-ae7a-8a6f8d3dafa8/episodes/dd104023-36c4-4d8e-b534-872509cd0012/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-burt-sugarman

https://www.stitcher.com/show/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast/episode/burt-sugarman-301282113

How did we turn into a can’t do nation?

Or to put it another way, if Democrats suddenly embraced gun ownership would Republicans renounce it?

I don’t own a gun and never would. Primarily for two reasons: 1. I’d end up shooting a friend or relative knocking on the door or prowling around the house in the dark, innocently. 2. I’d probably shoot myself. My hold on reality is very thin. I think about this back pain I had…I remember telling everybody if there was a gun in the house, I’d probably shoot myself. Thank god there was not.

Now I grew up in the dark ages. When you walked to school in kindergarten and the term “playdate” had yet to be coined. We came home from school, even walking in the rain, and then we’d get on our bikes and go to a friend’s house, or the baseball field… As a matter of fact, we rarely stayed home, my mother wouldn’t tolerate it. And we couldn’t watch TV during the day… My mother was a woman of action, she wanted us to grab hold of the world and go for a ride.

As for all the bad things that can happen to a child… She never thought of them. And if we brought them up she pooh-poohed them. And I never had a key to the front door my entire life, we moved into that house when I was six months old and my mother didn’t move out for half a century, literally.

So…

Well, let me go a bit further. My mother wasn’t uptight about what I read or saw. Movie ratings appeared when I was still living at home, and the only issue with an R-rated movie was sneaking in. And if I wanted to go into New York to see a concert… I was stunned when I went to college and found kids so sheltered. Or people who didn’t go to their first concert until they were in high school. I went so early I can’t remember what I saw. Music was a family tradition, I remember being brought to Young People’s concerts at the same time I entered school. Then again, I was brought up in a family where culture was more important than money. And what money we had was spent on food, travel and cultural events. We all crammed into a split-level house, with really only one bathroom, living conditions even poor people wouldn’t accept today.

And I know that time marches on, that there is progress. I accept that now people live in giant houses, lease new cars and fly on a whim, to even see a concert, but socially… Bring back the sixties!

Oh, don’t be literal, talking about oppression and discrimination. Then again, being a Jew could be even worse today. Back then people only said things, now they take action. There weren’t shootings in synagogues in the old days.

And parents… God, it’s a big bad world out there, and you’ve got to learn how to navigate it at some point. In Japan they send kids on errands alone before they are even old enough to go to school. In the U.S. kids call their parents not only when they’re in college, but even when they’re out, assuming they’re not living at home, to ask such questions as to how to do their laundry, or to muse over their personal problems. My mother never wanted to hear about my inner life. My father was good in a crisis. But my parents weren’t my best friends, no one’s parents were. And when we left the nest… Our parents would be shocked at some of the stuff we did. As for books and learning…

Is this how far we’ve come, books are going to threaten your kid? Never mind that new schoolbook in Florida that mentions Rosa Parks, but does not include that she was Black. We’re going backwards. It’s supposed to be the information age, and now we’re keeping information from kids? Who have so much access at their fingertips?

I mean they make all these companies put child controls in their hardware and software… Who uses this stuff? And it’s not easy to figure out to begin with! What are you protecting your kid from? Information on sex, so they’ll get pregnant the first time out? What is this retrograde movement really about? I know we’re never going back to the sixties, but that does not mean some of the sixties values can’t be embraced. But a bunch of people want us to go back to the fifties!

And let’s not even mention white nationalism.

It’s not like this country hasn’t been in crisis previously. What comes to mind is the airplane hijackings of yore. Everybody threw their hands in the air and said nothing could be done as planes were diverted to Cuba on a regular basis, kind of like school shootings today. What did the country do?

Well, if you’re young, you’re not going to believe this but…you used to go to the airport and walk straight to the gate, uninterrupted. And when you got off the plane your family or friends would show up to greet you, right at the gate! But now we’ve got the TSA, metal detectors. And the amazing thing is they detect stuff. Never mind the celebrities caught with guns, regular people possess them even more. And how do we know this? Because the TSA catches them.

Security at airports is a big pain in the rear end. But there are no more hijackings.

So when it comes to gun control…

What kind of bizarre world do we live in that there are originalists on the Supreme Court. What would the framers of the Constitution think of today? That’d be like asking what Mozart thinks of Megan Thee Stallion, he couldn’t even imagine it, fathom it. We never did get flying cars, but we got a hell of a lot of stuff we could never imagine. We got phones on our wrists, but we also got the ability to text anybody anywhere. To do our business online, without low-skilled help screwing up the details. It’s a wonderful world when it comes to technology, which by the way no one in D.C. can understand, everybody’s inured to the past. But even if the Second Amendment was written with standing up to the government in mind, do you really think any of those old blokes would have the same position today? A bunch of yahoos with firearms standing up to drones and nuclear weapons and… It’d be like that old movie, Bambi Meets Godzilla, and if you haven’t seen it, take a peek, it’s very short: https://bit.ly/40LloMh

Life doesn’t go backward. We don’t go from gasoline automobiles back to horses and carriages. We evolve. To believe we can jet back to the past is to put one’s head in the sand. How come we can’t agree on this? We can’t seem to agree on anything! Not even facts!

So when you go to the airport you’re inconvenienced. You have to budget extra time, it’s a big hassle, but we’re much safer for it. But when it comes to guns, we must be hands-off. Huh?

Now I know that you can argue gun ownership is a constitutional right, whereas airplane access is not, but… We sacrificed for safety with air travel, why can’t we do the same with guns?

I can go crazy here, like the people who believe the techies will solve climate change and not to worry about the problem and say… Why can’t techies put force fields around schools, disallowing guns to come in? Even better, why can’t they make guns unable to fire when you leave your house, or when other human beings are within sight. God, we have GPS in our phones that can track tiny items down to the inch, but we can’t apply it to guns?

And who says “arms” means all guns? Why can’t I have a bazooka? Or drive around with a ramming pole on my car? I mean what guns should we be able to possess? I mean you need an assault rifle because..?

And don’t tell me that there are all these assault rifles already out there. So many people who commit gun crimes buy their wares not long before they commit their violations. When you make access harder, you reduce the problem.

And why not incentivize people to give up their guns? I’d pay taxes for that. Kind of like cash for clunkers during the 2008 recession. Not only will we give you your money back, you can get a ticket to see Taylor Swift! Yes, come with a gun and we will allow you in to see Drake, or the Eagles… Sure, Ted Nugent wouldn’t participate, but most musical acts would. They’d play for free to get guns off the street. There are solutions, not only if you think outside the box, but if you think at all!

But I must admit, as much as we try to shame the right, this is the right not only elected representatives are scared of, but even the media. Last night on Tucker Carlson they said the cause of the Nashville shooting was Antifa, I kid you not. If Antifa is so big and powerful, how come I’ve never met a single member? I’m a dyed-in-the-wool liberal, no one has ever approached me, no one has ever owned their membership. As for the woke… Okay, some kids being schooled on mommy and daddy’s money are playing with their rights and identities at college. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do, experiment? What I’m saying here is if you think every Democrat is woke, you’re asleep. Sure, there are issues of pronouns and trans and…doesn’t this boil down to freedom? How come we have freedom to own guns but not to be trans? I mean really, which is more dangerous to society?

Small cadres have impact way out of proportion to their constituencies. As for speakers being booted from colleges… Have you ever investigated any deeper? In many cases, these speakers not only have truly heinous views, they’re invited so there will be a protest, so there will be a conflagration, so the rational students will be incensed, so news will be made. Let’s see, would you let an antisemite speak at your synagogue? A white nationalist at a church dominated by Black members? Dig beneath the surface, but everything is a talking point these days, there can’t be agreement, there must be war.

And then we have the Democrats in Congress saying nothing can be done, and telling AOC to tone it down. God, these old men need to be woken up. Everybody has drunk the kool-aid, can’t think outside the box. We lived through that in music, the revolution came and streaming dominates, even though the “Billboard” chart still counts physical disproportionately. Morgan Wallen’s number one album? It sold 12,500 copies last week. But it did have 256 million streams. Hell, I guess it’s like our government, where the minority has undue influence and power.

So, let’s start with people who believe in solutions. Who don’t say their hands are tied. Who keep agitating for change and won’t shut up. If you keep talking, you reach people. Then again, we’ve got an ex-President telling us there will be death and destruction if we challenge him and the status quo.

Why is everybody afraid to stand up?

Well, my generation, the free range kids, turned out to love money more than everything. Possessions. Lifestyle. They’ve eclipsed the arts. But scratch a boomer doctor and you’ll find in many instances they wish they were a musician.

As for changing the law… Maybe we don’t even start there. We start with public campaigns. Not only anti-gun, but… Neighborhood Watch could delineate who in the neighborhood owns a gun. And incentivize them to get rid of it as per above. How about a little more sunlight on gun ownership? If you live out in the prairie or mountains, where animals can get you, sure, you can own a gun. But not an AK-47. And electronics won’t allow you to shoot it in the city.

But we’re moving in the other direction, with open carry.

It’s like everybody has lost their senses. I mean if you believe what that nitwit Marjorie Taylor Greene says, if you believe in QAnon… Maybe we do that first, have a campaign to inform the populace of truth, no law is involved there. Shame Netflix into giving you airtime, get Spielberg involved. I mean entertainment has so many tools, why can’t they be employed?

As for those saying “my gun, my life”… Let’s incentivize them to all live on Ted Nugent’s ranch. Go where the other gun nuts live. Let them shoot each other. I mean as many people seem to have been involved in mass shootings as got Covid. Oh, of course that’s untrue. But even the “Wall Street Journal,” the right wing paper of record, said masks and vaccines saved lives, even Trump is pro-vaccine, but once again, everybody’s defaulting to the lowest common denominator, playing to the uneducated yahoos. Imagine if the rest of life were that way. Everything had to be dumbed-down to the lowest and slowest, that we had to live by their rules, however dumb. That’s what’s going on in politics today.

So, I’ll leave you with this question… How come we can’t come up with solutions? Hearing no while kids get shot up gets old, and if you think thoughts and prayers are going to save you, do anything for you, you must believe there’s a little man in the sky who knows everything you do, whether you’ve been naughty or nice…and in truth, religion is fading in America, but we’re still ruled by the ancient telling us that babies should not be killed, and if it ruins the mother’s life and if the baby grows up in poverty, it doesn’t make a difference.

Some of this stuff is irrational on the surface.

But we keep being told nothing can be done.

They build whole cities in China seemingly overnight, but we can’t even build one high-speed rail line in California.

How about a plan?

Then again, the Republicans refuse to proffer a budget.

Oh, don’t both sides me. Trying to win by not playing is a fool’s errand. It doesn’t work in sports and ultimately it doesn’t work in politics. Where else can you survive constantly saying no? Life is about risk-taking, America used to be about throwing the long ball, moonshots, but now we can’t even get out of our own way.