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https://tinyurl.com/yur6kvdh

This is an amazing book. One of the ten best of the year according to “The Washington Post,” shortlisted for the Booker Prize, but it isn’t simple to read.

Because it’s set in Ireland, with Irish words, and one character’s passages are printed sans periods.

But “The Bee Sting” is not “Ulysses,” it’s far from incomprehensible. But you’ll find yourself rereading occasional passages for understanding, and it’s far from short, 736 pages, in fact.

Turned off yet?

I was. I’d reserved “The Bee Sting” on Libby because of positive reviews. But I hadn’t read the legendary Paul Murray book, “Skippy Dies,” and when confronted with such a formidable task, reading one book in the time I could read two, I was discouraged, but I plowed in, for a taste, just to prove that it wasn’t my thing.

But it turned out it was. Not that I knew that instantly.

No, I knew the subject matter was interesting, I just didn’t know whether the writing was. You see the book started off with the life of Cassandra, a teenager, in the modern era, at the time of the financial crash. And she’s a good student, and… School friendships. That’s nailed in this book. Not only with Cass, but her younger brother PJ. They’re your best friends and then a summer passes and they’re not. They’re hanging with other people and dissing you, wanting nothing to do with you.

And there’s so much pressure to conform.

Oh, there’s an incredible passage in the book, how we’re all anxious, we’re uptight, think we’re different, but in truth we are all different and we can relate on that level. Ah, let me just quote a bit:

“…and you can see that beneath our individual quirks and weirdnesses, we’re the same. We are the same in being different, in feeling bad about being different. Or to put it another way, we are all different expressions of the same vulnerability and need. That’s what binds us together.”

You won’t get that in the newspaper.

And maybe that’s the point, in a world that’s going to hell in a handbasket, “The Bee Sting” is a respite, a whole ‘nother world, but concomitantly it’s even more true than the news, most of the art we’re exposed to. This is not in superhero movies, a great streaming series can touch upon this, but words are better. As for music? It used to own this sphere, but no longer.

There’s so much good stuff in this book. Insights. But it’s not laden with these, you stumble on them every once in a while, which is why they resonate so much, like: 

“That’s the past, isn’t it. You think it’s behind you, then one day you walk into a room and it’s there waiting for you.”

Ain’t that the truth. When you’ve written them off, believing they’re deep in your history, they reappear. Or you find yourself in the same situation after you think you’ve grown past it.

But let’s be clear, this is not fiction written for an award so much as a story. Yes, some of this highbrow literature is so dense and moves so slowly that when you get to the non-conclusion you wonder if it’s written for anybody to read, it’s impenetrable.

But not “The Bee Sting.”

It’s the story of a family.

The daughter who wants to distance herself from her parents.

The little brother who knows more facts than the oldsters, but is still not taken seriously.

The wife, who is the best looking woman in four counties.

And the husband… The scion of the owner of a VW dealership.

And then the recession hits. Turns out money held the family together.

And the wife grew up without money, with an outhouse, not indoor plumbing.

And the husband… He had a brother…

And you’re reading the book and stuff you thought you had nailed is suddenly up for grabs.

But what is life, how do you make your decisions. You think it’s going to all work out, and then you wake up at some point and find out it’s far from your dream. Were you weak, did you make bad choices, or is this the way it is for everybody?

And how important is sex, desire. Can it trump the practical, does it always rear its head.

And do you live the prescribed life, the one laid out for you from nearly birth, or can you jump the tracks.

And when you go away to college… You grow, you become someone different, this schism causes tension, not only in the family, but in yourself.

Every member of the family’s story is delineated.

And everybody has advantages, and everybody is challenged.

And they’re all residents in a small town, where everybody knows everybody else, is deep in their business.

“The Bee Sting” is Franzen, but with a lighter tone. The last Franzen, “Crossroads,” is a leap forward, there’s less of an air of heaviness. But nowhere while reading “The Bee Sting” do you get the sense that Paul Murray is shooting for awards season, rather he’s rubbing his hands, thrilled, laughing at times, over his plot choices.

This is not “Demon Copperhead.” “The Bee Sting” is not quite a chore, but it takes a while to become riveted, to want to cast off your regular life and get back to it.

You want to know what happens, but you also want to read what the people think. There’s a great combination of the interior and exterior.

And one thing that is done so well… We all think we know what is happening, and oftentimes we’re just plain wrong. This happens all the time with gossip. Conventional wisdom is one way, but it’s missing the point completely. Who you think is the father of the baby is not.

Don’t read the above as instruction to immediately read “The Bee Sting.” I need to warn you, this is not a mystery, this is not romance, it does not cut like butter. This is for serious readers who know how to commit, who are willing to work through the challenges to get to the nougat.

You know who you are. And if you’re one of these people, I must tell you, “The Bee Sting” is OUTSTANDING!

Drummer for Free and Bad Company. Simon tells a good story, you’ll enjoy this.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/simon-kirke/id1316200737?i=1000635786171

https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9ff4fb19-54d4-41ae-ae7a-8a6f8d3dafa8/episodes/ddf9e0d6-44ff-4903-b284-d2a41a5a9628/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-simon-kirke

And now Jimmy Iovine?

Innocent until proven guilty. Then again, it seems the court of public opinion is everything. As for that settlement with Puffy/Diddy… Makes it look like it was about money. Well, what I mean is if someone is guilty, you should play it out to the end, to court, to a verdict. Having said that, it’s very expensive and the opposition can bury you in paper. However… Until we have more admissions or convictions of guilt, change will be impaired.

Yet this is a turning point.

It goes back to Tommy Mottola. What I mean by that is Mottola flipped the script, to where the executive was more important than the talent. Of course this was always the case with Clive Davis, however he lived in his own pop backwater, and we all knew the credible stuff was put out by the other labels, certainly after Clive left CBS, which was fifty years ago.

So…

Many music executives are failed musicians. They’re envious of the musicians. The stars can be lame, not showing up on time, bad with their money, substance abusers, but they are still treated like royalty, they can still get laid whenever they want to.

Walter Yetnikoff got into the substance abuse game, then again, those were the cocaine years, not inexcusable, but you didn’t have to be an artist to snort the drug.

But in the late sixties and seventies, things were different. The artists had complete control. They recorded where they wanted to, cut what they wanted to, and the label had to put it out, as it was. Kinda like the movie business in the seventies if you think about it.

But then came the money. 

In the movie business it was the blockbusters, it was “Jaws” and “Star Wars.” We always had blockbusters in the music business, even though the business never got any respect, even though it was more profitable than movies for a long time, even though Warner Brothers’ music division built the Warner cable system, but the twin towers of the overpriced CD with low royalties and the worldwide impact of MTV rained down so much money that the theft-prone labels, whose whole business model is based on taking the lion’s share, started to rain down money, a lot of money. 

So… The artists were getting screwed, getting vinyl/cassette rates on CDs, having agreed to supposedly help the new technology get a foothold, but then rates never went up, and the labels were making more and more money. And when Napster, et al, put a dent in revenues, the labels decided to horn in on the live action, they had to preserve their business model, they had to make money, and supposedly the execs were responsible for all this and rather than cutting their pay, they just got rid of all the little people.

And now the Big Three companies are publicly owned, no one has skin in the game. So the execs are paid so much… Lucian Grainge, triple-digit millions to take the company public? I’m not criticizing the job Lucian did, but I am criticizing the pay. And with that pay comes…

A whole new bunch of friends, all flying private, oftentimes on their own planes, sometimes with yachts, you’re keeping up with a whole new level of Joneses, and you need the money to do so, and you convince the board you’re indispensable and your compensation package… Good luck making that as an artist.

And with that money comes…

You’ve got to know, it’s rare that the football captain becomes head of the multinational corporation. It’s a different breed of people. In straight life, those who jumped through hoops, in the music business…hustlers, and the successful are very smart, and since the business gets no respect, no one is doing a deep dive into the activities of the brass.

So you were a nerd once, you couldn’t get the time of day from the desirable women, but now you’ve got all this money and power and that buys a lot of action, but even worse, people with these assets start to believe they’re entitled to this action. And that they’re above the law, no one is going to get them.

And like I said above, it’s a dark business. The artists are indentured slaves, independent contractors who get no benefits, and most don’t make much, they get the advances but no more, and those who do hit have to pay for all the losers. As for all the talk about Spotify royalties, the truth is most acts of the past didn’t even go into royalties. And now the executives decided whether you needed a cowrite, a hit single, whether to put the album out at all.

So we had #MeToo. But somehow the music business escaped. What’s the phrase, “sex, drugs and rock & roll?” What part of that do people not understand? Sex comes first, it always comes first. Didn’t so many of the male acts say they played music to meet women?

So…

Now these executives labor at a high price nearly unsupervised. Make the company money and you keep your job. Used to be the labels shuffled executives every few years, but that was back when there were six of them, now you don’t work your way up from the bottom so much as enter in the middle and go to the top, and those who did start from the bottom, they believe they’re entitled to their success, they believe they paid their dues, just like the artists.

As for the artists… Prior to cellphone cameras… Let’s just say they used to rape and pillage. And no one is as hot and sexy as a rock star, no billionaire, not even a movie star, people are lining up to make contact with the artist, sometimes even sex, but even so, many men took it past the limit, into raw abuse.

But now there are cameras in every phone and it has completely changed life on the road. Forever.

And now these lawsuits are going to change the behavior of executives too.

As for lone wolves, like managers…they too are going to feel the heat.

Don’t ask me to draw the line, what is abuse and what is not. But let’s be clear, many men took advantage of women, period. And when this is all done, that behavior will be impacted.

Some women may be making bogus claims, but… This is like shooting fish in a barrel, sex is the essence of the business.

As for the defamation lawsuits in response… Some of these claims are outright false, but if you’re guilty… This seems to be the only way to fight back and hopefully keep your reputation intact. But after this, boards will become more sensitive to this behavior, won’t tolerate it, despite the profits.

It’s a whole new world.

If you don’t know where the line is…

You’re oblivious, you’re not looking. Because the line is always obvious. Just because everybody else does it that does not mean you can too. And if someone is intoxicated and you have sex with them…beware. Oftentimes there’s an inherent power difference.

We don’t need to remove the sex from rock and roll. Only the abuse.

And it’s about time.

P.S. This is ultimately a mediocre article in the “Los Angeles Times,” but it was right there on the front page of the Calendar section today, and the photos look like mugshots, talk about a chilling effect, hopefully…

“The music industry is finally having its #MeToo moment”: https://tinyurl.com/ykbn45rh