Davey Johnstone, guitarist and musical director for Elton John, has an amazing memory…learn not only about his history, from folkie to rocker, but the recording of Elton John tracks and more!

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/davey-johnstone/id1316200737?i=1000604466364

https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9ff4fb19-54d4-41ae-ae7a-8a6f8d3dafa8/episodes/355aed54-9b5b-4baf-97dc-44b1b7bdff35/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-davey-johnstone

https://www.stitcher.com/show/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast/episode/davey-johnstone-300654125

This could be the best vinyl record I’ve ever heard.

Not that it’s for the average punter. It costs $150. In addition, it’s actually two records, which spin at 45 RPM and contain only two or three songs a side. So…

If this were the sixties, you’d stack them and play them…

If this were the seventies, you’d rotate the knob on your Technics turntable to play a side as many times as you desired, and if it was only once, the tonearm would return to its resting place and…

That’s not how they do it today.

Today the fully manual turntable is in vogue. The old standard used to be the Thorens, and the AR was quite serviceable, despite being so cheap. But really, few people wanted a fully manual turntable back in the day, because it was just too much of a pain in the ass.

Which is to say that this edition of “Can’t Buy a Thrill” is not made for casual listening. You’ll be getting up to lift the needle and change the side every ten minutes. And if your turntable has a center screw-down weight like mine, you’ll have to unscrew it and rescrew it to play the next side.

This is not the analogue revolution you read about in the newspaper. That’s mostly albums cut digitally and squeezed down to analogue and vinyl, which seems kind of strange to me, because technically you’re not hearing the music the way the artist cut it, but there are people who testify as to the warm sound of vinyl…

But that’s not what is happening here. The UHQR version of “Can’t Buy a Thrill” is all analogue, after all it was cut analogue originally. However, modern science does allow some improvement re compression and…

This is a science project. Got to give Analogue Productions kudos, they include a lengthy description of their process in the package. It’s very convincing. UHQR is actually a term JVC used fifty years ago, that’s been resurrected. As for the vinyl…it’s actually clear, and supposedly flat from edge to edge, unlike the warped records of yore, and this allows a proper tracking angle and… If you’re laying down $150 you’re interested in this kind of information, you want value for your bucks. This is not the seventies, where you wait for the sale to purchase a bunch of albums, you either lay down your $150 or…

So, the tech is very convincing. However, there was that kerfuffle with MoFi, they were cutting vinyl with a digital step. My understanding is Analogue Productions did not do that here, it’s a fully analog setup/transfer.

But really, it all comes down to the sound. And how does it sound? AMAZING!

Now in truth “Can’t Buy a Thrill” had hit singles, but is never singled out as the preeminent Steely Dan album. But it’s my favorite. Well, first I preferred “Katy Lied.” And can I say I play “Gaucho” more than any of them these days? Have a listen, the languid pace…fits today’s times, even though it’s forty years later. Having seen it all, been jaded. But “Can’t Buy a Thrill”…

At this point the most famous cut on “Can’t Buy a Thrill” is the second, “Dirty Work,” sung by David Palmer. The backup singers perform it today, because “Steely Dan” can’t do a show without it. Oh, don’t argue with me, sometimes the cut that is not a hit sustains. As for the hits… The first was “Do It Again”…which caught one’s ear because of Denny Dias’s electric sitar. And the second was the concomitant opening cut on the second side, “Reelin’ In the Years,” with its Elliott Randall one take guitar solo. Yes, one take. This was in the days of capturing lightning in a bottle, with the gunslingers showing up with their chops and delivering. Today everything is tweaked. Never mind punk was a reaction to the multitrack overproduced albums of the seventies…

Steely Dan was not an FM band. You heard them on AM. Took years before the Dan was a staple on FM. Which meant you perceived them as a singles act, a throwaway, especially since they were on ABC, a second-tier label. It was kind of like the Eagles, the first album had the giant hit “Take It Easy,” which dominated the AM airwaves in the early summer of 1972, but the credibility of the rest was hampered by this giant success. However, the Eagles were on Asylum. And the second album stiffed. And to my point above, not only was “Desperado” not a single, it’s the most revered track from that LP, and the Eagles can’t do a show today without playing it! It wasn’t until “On the Border” that FM truly embraced the Eagles. And then came “One of These Nights,” which cemented the band’s reputation, made them the Eagles of today, and then a year and a half later they blew our minds with the iconic “Hotel California,” a great leap forward. Actually, the two bands’ careers parallel each other. Two key members. And a folding of the tent as the eighties unfolded.

But my favorite cut on “Can’t Buy a Thrill” is “Brooklyn (Owes the Charmer Under Me),” I got into it listening to a borrowed copy almost four years after it was released. I bought “Pretzel Logic” from the Record Club of America first, then “Countdown to Ecstasy” and “Katy Lied.” You see at first I didn’t take Steely Dan seriously. And when I went back to “Can’t Buy a Thrill,” the thrill was already gone. The band no longer played live. No one was talking about it, I could own it. And there’s a special warm feeling when only you’re listening to an album. Well, a successful album, today you can listen to an album and be the only one who’s ever done so, or so it feels.

So let’s say you’re into vinyl, the acolytes will tell you you can buy a reasonable system for a grand or so. But that is ultimately untrue. Because first and foremost it won’t play LOUD! The amplifier won’t have enough power, and even if it does, the speakers will not be able to handle it, they’ll distort, or even blow up.

Now the wisdom back then still holds today. Speakers are the key. Just like boots are the key in skiing. But do you know how much speakers cost today? To replace the high standard of yesterday, the JBL L100, it’s $2200…APIECE! Yes, you could get by with the Large Advent back in the day, a two way that went for under $150 for most of its run. As for the L100…they were ultimately $333 each. They might have been ubiquitous in that Maxell commercial, but if you went to someone’s house and they had them you were impressed.

So you need a good turntable, for multiple reasons, number one being if you employ a heavy tonearm/pressure you’ll ruin your records. You can get a quite good Pro-Ject for about $500. But you still might need a phono pre-amp (don’t ask why, but if you go to the shop you’ll soon learn one is necessary, sometimes it’s built into the amplifier, but, ironically, the better the amp the less the odds this is so).

As for an amp… Maybe you can be in the game for $500…BUT YOU’RE GOING TO WANT TO SPEND MORE!

You see in the seventies stereo stores were everywhere. You saw what money could buy, you started off cheap and then dreamed and hopefully moved up the ladder, replacing components as you went. But in the modern vinyl world…

The acolytes just want you in the game, with a sound that ultimately…sounds good. They’re interested in accurate reproduction, but, like I said, you can get that but you’re going to be disappointed, you’re going to want more volume, much more volume.

So, there are plenty of vinyl fans who are playing their records on crappy systems. I’d venture most. Just ask a teen or twentysomething what they’re using, you’ll be horrified. And this is all to say…if you want to hear the depth and definition of the UHQR “Can’t Buy a Thrill” you’re going to need a pretty good system, a better system than most people have. Now aged boomers might have a system like this. Then again, “Can’t Buy a Thrill” is a fifty year old album, so it’s a match. But $150 for one LP? Well, how deep is your pocket?

So we listened to our music two ways in the days of yore. As background and foreground. Yes, you could put on an album as you cleaned the house, did other stuff. But if you had a good enough system there would be times, especially when you got a new album, or listened to a favorite, that you’d park yourself in the perfect spot in your listening room, crank it up and relish the sound. Which was pretty incredible. That’s the experience this UHQR album is made for, active, foreground. It’s made for concentration. Not from the other room, but in the perfect stereo spot, and if you’re there…

Well, you might not even like “Can’t Buy a Thrill,” you might hate Steely Dan, in that event no matter what the clarity you’re not going to get it. Back in the sixties they gave you the impression any album was good on dope, but this was patently untrue, it had to be one you liked.

So as fresh as the music sounds, and it does sound fresh, not dated at all, you have to remember it was cut fifty years ago, I’m not talking about the sound, but the ethos. Rock stars were the billionaires of their day, albeit not that rich. And by this time they had 16 track machines. And albums were not cut live to tape, they were built layer by layer. It was a serious process, but unless you were already huge, there was a limited budget, you had to cut your album within a couple of weeks, maybe as many as six, whereas the superstars could take six months or a year. Oh, it was their money, believe me, but the royalties were through the roof.

So what you had was acts trying to not only be successful, but push the envelope, try to be unique and leave their mark. Everybody was in their twenties, they didn’t think about the twenty first century. They had something to say, and if it resonated with the public, there were untold riches and sex and… That’s the rock star lifestyle. And to be a rock star you had to write and play, it came straight from the heart, there were exceptions, but only a few. So Steely Dan is cutting “Can’t Buy a Thrill” and are not exactly sure what they’ve got. You never do until the record is finished. A good demo might not ultimately be captured. And an also-ran might emerge and resonate with people. And then you’ve got albums that the cognoscenti think are the best that made no impact, like Steely Dan’s second, “Countdown to Ecstasy.”

But really this is not about the music, this is about the sound. If you’re a fan of “Can’t Buy a Thrill”…it won’t be so much that you’ll hear stuff you never heard before, although that will happen, but that the dross will fall away and you’ll feel there’s a live human being making the sound, and they’re right there, inside your speaker.

This is rarefied air. Not only is this a classic album, that has stood the test of time, this is not the vinyl you see in your clothing store, not even in your record store. As expensive as that might be, as much TLC might be involved, more in the old days, this UHQR reproduction is a huge leap beyond that. It’s more akin to listening to your favorite albums on CD when that format came upon the market. Suddenly the sound was clear. But warm it was not. However vinyl always was, and this version of “Can’t Buy a Thrill” most certainly is.

So ultimately it’s a personal experience. If you have a turntable, if you have enough power to turn it up as loud as you want without distortion, you can buy this album and be mesmerized. Truly, you will be.

“Unscripted: The Epic Battle for a Media Empire and the Redstone Family Legacy”: https://amzn.to/3lehXP5

He called his daughter the c-word, on more than one occasion.

I’d tell you that’s all you need to know, but there’s more, much more.

I only picked up this book because it was co-written by James B. Stewart, author of “Den of Thieves,” the best financial book I’ve ever read.

But it starts out trashy.

Now if you’ve read all the reviews, and there have been a plethora, you don’t need to read “Unscripted.” But you might want to. Not so much for Sumner Redstone’s crudity and salacious activities as the duplicity of the executives and the boardroom shenanigans.

But let’s start off with Sumner. Although well-publicized, at the end of his life he had two live-in girlfriends. One he was engaged to, the other who he dated previously. And there was a third woman brought in to sexually satisfy him. Never mind that he continued to call the former private airline flight attendant who he essentially stalked and browbeat into submission, in all ways if not sex.

You see it’s about the money. Sumner spread it, bought women houses. Laid so much cash on them that not only did they never have to work again, they became philanthropists in their own right.

As for the CV of these women…

Maybe you don’t live in Hollywood, i.e. the greater Los Angeles area. Because if you did, you’d find the best-looking women in America. Toned and treated… They come to Hollywood to make it, oftentimes without portfolio. Their looks are their calling card. And they have to make bank before their looks fade.

I know, I know, it sounds kind of offensive, but it’s true. Just like the boyfriend who’s been on TV, but has also been in jail. And the talent manager who made his mortgage by gambling in Vegas. You see L.A. is one of the few places where your backstory does not matter. Where you went to college, even if you went to college…no one cares. Everybody flies by their wits. They spice up their looks, go out on the town and lay layers of b.s. on everybody, hoping that something will stick, that they’ll make a connection and end up with a development deal or…

And I mention all this because there’s a good chance this is not who you are. You jumped through the hoops, you went to college, you have a respectable job, you’re not DESPERATE! That’s what lies beneath the shiny surface, this con has got to work. And I say all this because I can’t relate to these money-grubbing women abusing and ripping off Sumner, to the tune of tens of millions of dollars, alienating him from his family in the process, not even telling him his mishpucha called.

And that’s a question in the book. Does the apple not fall far from the tree, does Shari Redstone have Sumner’s DNA, or…

So Sumner bought Viacom, built an entertainment empire essentially from scratch. He wasn’t about getting along, he was about winning. And at the top tier of entertainment… One thing you’ll learn if you have access is these people are very very smart. Maybe not educated, but extremely intelligent, and certainly street smart, because you can’t get anywhere near this rarefied atmosphere unless you are. And Sumner, an Ivy League graduate with a law degree, is brilliant. As for said law degree… He sues people on a regular basis. You might freak out if sued, but the heavy players, those with deep pockets, use lawsuits as a chisel, they want to see what you’re made of, whether you can rise to the occasion. And, of course, they want to win.

But Sumner becomes incapacitated. Delusional. He truly believed he was going to live forever, that the rules of nature didn’t apply to him, but they did. And Shari takes over the empire and…

The guys won’t listen to her. It’s an old boys’ network. So offensive… This is what women are up against. It’s not about what is good for the corporation, but what is good for one’s relationships. Not that women are always better, the live-in girlfriends hire a female attorney who caters to their wishes when it’s obvious they’re ripping off Sumner.

But, Shari’s always asking questions, wondering about the future, and…

The CBS board doesn’t want to hear about the future. Furthermore, they’re paranoid. They blame every bad event on Shari, believing she’s going behind their back. And it’s all about loyalty. You need your votes. And to break this loyalty is nearly impossible.

That’s CBS, at Viacom…

Philippe Dauman, Sumner’s surrogate son, takes over and runs the company into the ground. He’s got no business plan, other than buying back stock. As for the creative touch? Zippo. this is what Wall Street doesn’t understand about entertainment. It can’t be boiled down to zeros and ones. It’s amorphous. Which the Street does not like. But then they see these high-flying executives and the returns, and they want in on the action. Believe me, there’s nothing sexy about being a banker. Even Lloyd Blankfein. Or the heads of Apollo. They might be rich, but they’re not hot, they don’t have the country hanging on to their every word, everybody does not want to sleep with them, so they sidle up to entertainment, hoping some of the shine will rub off on them.

To run an entertainment business you have to know talent, you have to know creative, and if you don’t… Top talent will not work with you. They want someone they can relate to, who understands them, who coddles them. Moonves wasn’t even involved on the financial side, he was all about the shows…after all, the shows are what make the money. Dauman is in charge of the fading MTV, and what does he do? Nothing. There’s an asset that he’s allowing to go down to zero. Shari wants to get rid of him, but Dauman doesn’t want to go.

And there’s so much money involved. Moonves made $700 million running CBS. Not as much as the bankers, but that’s plenty. He didn’t start the company, he didn’t own the company, that’s quite a level of compensation.

But Moonves is still susceptible to the machinations of a down on his luck talent manager, who represents someone Moonves took liberties with, to say the least. So Moonves takes his calls, responds to his texts… You’ve got to know, access is number one in entertainment, and very few have it, and those bragging usually know someone down the food chain. Moonves was on top. Yet he was beholden to this manager.

And everybody lies. Or doesn’t answer. Especially Moonves. Nothing happened. Then it was consensual, and then…

“Unscripted” will tell you how business really works.

It will also tell you that money is not enough for these titans, they belive they’re entitled to sex, and oftentimes cross the line to get satisfied. Like the woman who came in and gave Moonves head on a regular basis.

You won’t learn how the business really works reading the trades, reading the words of some outsider trying to make a living by giving you advice, but they get right down to the real nitty-gritty in “Unscripted.”

And in many ways, it’s despicable.

The stars aren’t sexy. I’m not talking about physical appearance, I’m talking in advertising terms. They’re no longer special. They’ve been demoted image-wise. And traditional media doesn’t want to admit this.

Want to know who’s a star? Greta Thunberg. Because she believes what she says, irrelevant of whether you agree or not.

You see the generations have changed and this is unfathomable to boomers and Gen-X’ers. Because they remember when.

Call it the internet. Sly Stone had it right, everybody is a star. Actors in momentary pictures can’t compete. Even Kim Kardashian is being eclipsed. Because the paradigm changed. TikTok is all about being real, testifying, and the movie stars were never real, they were built by the studios for the audience to adore.

And we did.

The Oscars used to be a ritual. Not only because of the movies, but because we got to see the stars. This was rare. We had no access to them. Now we have access to everybody. Everybody’s on the same plane except for the billionaires. They’re the ones people look up to, or look down on today. Because they’ve got enough money to do it their way, to write the rules, and it’s always about the rules.

Talk to a Gen-Z’er, ask them what is hot. Chances are they’ll mention a TikTokker or YouTube influencer you’ve never heard of. But they spend hours with these people, it’s like they’re friends. We never thought we were friends with the movie stars, never ever.

I didn’t bother to watch the Oscars. I stopped about seven or eight years ago, when I was traveling and couldn’t tune in…and realized I wasn’t missing anything.

And the only people talking to me about the movies were oldsters. It’d crack me up when my contemporaries told me they went to the movies. Really? You took all that time? When there’s so much entertainment at your fingertips in your house? You drove, parked, sat through previews and commercials because..? It’s kind of like baseball, the younger generation decided it wasn’t interested. It was too slow, they didn’t grow up with the game, they had no allegiance. Everything has a time frame, everything is superseded, but many people can’t accept this, that their time is gone.

Before he became a pariah, Woody Allen was a genius. Whose girlfriend was Diane Keaton, who was not only beautiful, but had her own unique identity. Remember when women started wearing vests? Keaton started that. The two were exotic, and you had no access to them whatsoever. You could only see them on screen, Allen famously didn’t even go to the Oscar show. He thought competition in the arts was a fool’s errand, an artificial construct placed upon that which cannot be judged. I agree, but that’s not the point. We hungered for more information. They put out a double album of Allen’s early standup routines. We couldn’t get enough. We salivated for more. Today we’ve got too much, of not only the individual, but everything.

And the movies themselves are not visceral enough.

Driving home from hiking just now I heard the theme to “Midnight Express” on Casey Kasem’s Top 40 Countdown from this week in 1979. Man was that movie a big deal. It was directed by Alan Parker, who was not known for special effects, but story. And Giorgio Moroder was at his peak. His time passed too. But for a moment there he was everywhere. We hungered for more, there were stories about the real Billy Hayes. We wondered if we’d take the same risk. Then again, this was when the goal of a college student was to spend a summer in Europe, bumming around. Airfares were cheap and so were the lodgings. I remember sleeping twenty to a room, on cots. Kids today wouldn’t stand for that. But they also see no reason to go to Europe. Why? They’re already in college, they don’t have to build their resumé, it won’t help them get a job…

I’m not saying they should stop making movies, then again they’re so much less satisfying than series. There’s more buzz on series than movies. I mean how many people have told you about “Ted Lasso”? And let’s be clear, they paid for that too!

And unlike Giorgio Moroder’s theme from “Midnight Express,” the songs nominated for Oscars today were not hits, we’ve never heard them, how great can they be? It’s like the Oscars are a sideshow. And Tom Cruise didn’t even show up. Jack Nicholson knew showing up and being cool was part of his image, it made him even more cool. But in real life, Tom Cruise isn’t cool. A cooler person is Kelly McGillis, a star of the first “Top Gun” who wasn’t called back for the sequel, she said she looked like a regular sixtysomething woman. She’d moved on. Tom Cruise looks barely older than he was during the first film. What’s there to believe in?

And we all want something to believe in.

And the change is we believe in ourselves. We think we can do it, we can make it. First and foremost, we’ve got the tools, and they’re free, or close thereto. Anybody can put music on streaming services, and post to TikTok. And if you’re innovative enough, you too can be famous, maybe only in your own town, but… And there are people just like you who got rich online. They’re not nepo-babies. They didn’t start with a leg up. They made it purely on their wits.

Of course there are people who worship BTS. And Taylor Swift. And even the aforementioned Kim Kardashian. But they’re young, looking for something to hold on to, they haven’t been disillusioned yet.

That’s the flip side. Sure, you can become rich and famous, but odds are low. And you’ve got a low-paying job. And everybody with a brain doesn’t even go into the arts. It’s not the zenith of culture. That’s the economic titans. The revolutionaries delivering exotica to us virtually, instantly. Come on, ChatGPT is cooler than any movie, any record. Forget the blowback from the media, about its imperfections. We’ve been hearing about AI for a decade, and here it is. And it can write your school paper and… Wow, that changes things.

And I’m down on Elon Musk, but he did change an entire industry. Elon Musk made the electric car the standard, all over the world, a decade from now the only gas guzzlers you’ll see on the road will be old, passé.

So the Oscars are a circle jerk. Almost like the Wizard of Oz. We’re supposed to be overwhelmed, impressed, but when the curtain parts, when we see the people behind the show…they’re not giants, they’re very small, and they’re flawed.

I don’t care if the ratings go up. They won’t double. All awards shows have this problem. The stars are not as big as they used to be. And we can see them all the time online. What’s so special about the show?

Nothing.