Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/5baa7rfx

YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/vjmyz9h5

Do they think we’re deaf? Why can’t they leave well enough alone?

And going straight to the heart of the matter, John would have HATED this record. After the Beatles, John wanted to strip things down and make them more impactful. His vocal was up front and the records tended to be simple, even if produced by Phil Spector. Hell, listen to “Instant Karma,” that crunchy drum sound, but mostly John’s insightful and obvious yet with all his personality vocal. Talk about a killer track, you only have to hear it once to get it, and I’ve never changed the channel when I’ve heard it on the radio.

Yes, the first real solo album, “Plastic Ono Band” was a cry from the heart. The opposite of a Beatles record. Underproduced.

And sure, “Imagine” had strings, you could even say it was sappy, but it was by no means vanilla mush, like “Now and Then.”

John wanted his records to be visceral. And even when he worked with Jack Douglas on his final project… Hell, listen to “Beautiful Boy,” it’s heartwarming, whereas “Now and Then” is dreary. And there’s a reason it was just a demo, because John didn’t want it out!

I mean in a collection of dreck, like those “Anthology” albums of thirty years ago, sure, include it if you want to. But come on, did you listen to those CDs more than once, if once? You were excited, yet there was a reason this stuff was left on the cutting room floor. But there was a movie, there was hoopla, why not cash in with a record! After all, it’s just about the money.

And as they get older, sometimes rock stars display their true values, and it’s not pretty. There’s a great story in today’s “Los Angeles Times,” and if we still lived in the pre-internet era, it would be read by everybody in the industry, it would make an impact, now it’s just crickets. Hell, seemingly everybody I know has canceled the “Los Angeles Times.” My shrink, who gets the “New York Times” and the “Wall Street Journal.” My physical therapist’s husband switched to the “Daily News,” that’s the San Fernando Valley “Daily News,” because the L.A. “Times” no longer prints the box scores. This is how you fail as a business. Put the bottom line first. Keep cutting and cutting until even your core abandons you.

Anyway, here’s the article:

“The unmasking of the narcissistic, conspiracy-spreading baby-boomer rock star”: https://tinyurl.com/3sue68rs

John Lennon is lucky, his image is frozen in time. There were no late age compromises, faux pas, he was credible, true and honest, hewing to his values until the very end. The only penalty is that he’s gone. 

And by releasing this travesty of a number… It does nothing for John’s image, does nothing for the Beatles’ image, but it is the holiday season and we’ve got to sell something…

Even worse, there will be no impact. There was press, and boomers might check it out, but radio won’t go on it, that’s not what Top Forty does anymore, they don’t play this kind of music, and Top Forty is the only format that moves the needle.

As for TikTok, “Now and Then” is so dreary no one would set a video to it.

When John sings: “I know it’s true,” that’s magical. But the changes are not. And then there’s an errant piano, a chunking rhythm section, anything but defined, anything but clear. Sounds like ELO and Jeff Lynne, a wash of sound, anything but distinct, the opposite of not only John’s solo output, but the Beatles’ too.

And then the strings come in, A seesaw “Lady Madonna” effect sans the magic. They come out of nowhere. They distract, not add.

And then comes the second verse and the superfluous guitar figures in the background, this is when it really turns into dreck. If you make it past this I give you credit.

Now it’s a drag, the kind of song you stop singing, and then those sawing guitars over a lame vocal change that is overwhelmed by the instrumentation, and then an ELO chorus. If John heard this he’d be like the Nazi in “The Producers,” he’d be standing up screaming that the people involved don’t know him or his music, this is one of the reasons he left the damn band to begin with.

Talk about losing the plot… Didn’t anybody involved blow the whistle, say this was a bad idea? That there was no reason to tarnish the image of the band that got it right from beginning to end?

“Free as a Bird” was bad enough. I’m trying to think of a worse Beatles song, but I can’t. At least the slight songs of yore contained magic. As for magic, there’s absolutely none in “Now and Then,” I mean why cut it at all? If you don’t think this is the worst Beatles cut ever, you’ve got no ears.

And then you have the brain dead press saying how great it is. This is the problem with the hype industrial complex, it’s got no soul, no powers of discrimination, it’s afraid of the haters, so it just hypes crap to high heaven that the public instantly forgets anyway. Hell, you might talk about “Now and Then” during Thanksgiving dinner, but you certainly don’t want to play it, unless there’s someone who hasn’t heard it and doesn’t know what you are talking about.

By Christmas “Now and Then” will be completely forgotten. Drowned in the tsunami of crap coming across the transom every single day, hour and minute. “Now and Then” only got traction because of the still reigning power of the Beatles. But this detracts from the image.

As for the movie:

It’s extremely well done. But George looks positively awful. McCartney is the only one of the three who hasn’t aged. I mean can’t you leave our memories intact? We didn’t want our heroes to get old, but now it’s slammed in our face. Do you think George would have allowed this footage if he were still alive? Absolutely not. Image is everything.

So the film is alternately both fascinating and creepy. You can check it out, but it won’t leave you with a good feeling.

And who cares that we now have technology that can…

Why don’t we fix the Sistine Chapel? Go back and resurrect everything that was cast aside as imperfect, not quite good enough in the past? You don’t mess with the classics, that’s heresy.

As for the godawful remixes of the Beatles albums, always with an excuse, that the original stereo mixes were rushed, which Geoff Emerick, the original engineer, told me was patently untrue, they’ve now become the standard online, indistinguishable from the originals unless you’re truly paying attention. How can this be, how can you mess up the legacy of the biggest group in history, which will last far beyond its demise? Taylor Swift recutting her originals is heinous, they don’t sound the same, but no one will be listening to her crap a hundred years from now. And her motivation was the same as the Beatles’, money. Oh, that’s right, she was on a vengeance trip too. At least the Beatles haven’t devolved to that.

And you listen to McCartney’s voice-over in the movie and and at first you think hmm, he’s pretty with it, he sounds good, maybe Biden isn’t too old. And then as it goes on and you continue to listen you realize that Paul has lost a step, that he is old, that he’s not the same, you can hear it right in his voice.

And this is a Paul production, his fingers are stamped all over it. Which is why John Lennon would hate this record. The great Beatles songs were such because of the push and pull of the two. But Lennon got no say here, they just laid crap upon his vocal… It’s John who has something to lose. He can’t record a new number to cover this abomination, this stinker that leaves a bad taste in our mouths.

And you ask why I care. Why we all care. And that’s exactly the point. If you lived through Beatlemania, you know it was different. Swiftmania isn’t in the same league. The Beatles were everywhere and impacted us all. You can go through life never hearing a Swift cut, but the Beatles? They were omnipresent, they dominated radio when radio was king. They got all the guys to grow their hair, they got us all to buy electric guitars. Come on, look at all the musicians who say they started because of the Beatles.

The Beatles were progenitors. Everything they did rang true.

But not “Now and Then.”

Tune in Saturday November 3rd 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

And they said it wouldn’t have happened to Elizabeth Holmes if she was a man. OH YEAH?

I’m sick and tired of people venerating the rich. As if being rich made you great across the board, a virtuous genius who we must all make way for. Even worse, some of these pricks, like Elon Musk, truly think they’re untouchable. Look at Elon’s legal track record. He believes he can act with impunity, and now he wants a governmental penalty to be lifted because why? HE’S ELON MUSK!

But it’s even worse, we had to see Michael Lewis hyping his book on every TV and news outlet extant. Yes, if Michael Lewis is involved, it gets a pass. Why? You don’t have to look too deep to see that Lewis was snookered. But Lewis is bright and articulate and we can’t say no, he deserves a slot on “60 Minutes.” Welcome to the hype industrial complex, where we promote you and forget you. Can you say OLIVER ANTHONY?

Hell, if FTX was on the up and up, why was it based in the Bahamas? This guy wanted no oversight, no regulation. And when he got nailed he said he wasn’t guilty, told not to use electronic devices at home and he did anyway, thank god they sent him to jail. This guy thinks he’s above the law.

And we had to listen to the tale of the parents over and over again. Poor Sam. What about the innocent kids shot and killed in the inner city? If you’re a poor Black you don’t count. Because we must support the educated elite. I mean if you went to Harvard or M.I.T. you get a pass. You know math, whoopee! Turns out there’s a whole lot else you don’t know.

And the public… It’s one thing if it’s a tchotchke, like a Pet Rock, but crypto?

Let’s talk about the Bored Apes, let’s talk about NFTs… Hear about them recently? They’re worthless. But everybody was stunned by the new new thing, everybody was trying to privately scam themselves into being rich.

Like the bozo bros on Reddit who thought they could beat the Street with GameStop. Which is floundering and failing while I write this. What next, supporting Egghead Software? Yeah, physical retail for games, that’s a promising endeavor. Put it right next to the Blockbuster store. Hell, Netflix even got rid of DVDs by mail, but too many want to live in the past, as if it will never evolve, never end, and think they can outsmart the professionals.

It’s not like Bankman-Fried had a ton of experience. Sure, young people can make change, but let’s be clear, money is money, and money is a professional business. Kinda like ticketing. The public still can’t understand it, but since they buy tickets they believe they know it all!

And enough with this lying and weaseling in the witness box. Seems like nobody in America can remember anything they ever said or did. If asked about losing his virginity, Bankman-Fried would say he didn’t recall. And that goes for the Trump progeny too.

God, we watched TV and movies our whole lives, “Do you solemnly swear…” Those words are meaningless today. No one stands up for what is right.

Give those flippers, like Caroline Ellison, credit, they realized they were screwed, that they did wrong, they owned up to it. But no, those Mar-a-Lago people loyal to Trump, do they truly think Trump is loyal to them? He’s proven over and over again he’s only loyal to himself, everybody else is expendable. Furthermore, the same dudes you abused on your way up, you might meet up, on your way down. That’s Allen Toussaint, from back when musicians were thought leaders, not whores, when money was important, but not everything. Artists? Look up the definition. Just because you play that doesn’t make you an artist.

But Taylor Swift is a billionaire, Magic Johnson too! SO WHAT! Good for them, but what does it mean, as to their identity, the world at large, other than taxes are too low and the income gap is too wide. You’re rich, you’re a star, you get a pass, we all love you.

And then there’s the greenwashing. Since Bankman-Fried was laying cash on left wing causes, you couldn’t turn his money down. Thank god cultural outlets won’t take Sackler money anymore. These people are and should continue to be seen as pariahs.

Sam Bankman-Fried should be sentenced to teach math to the underprivileged for the rest of his life. But that’s too small for him, he’s got to make a splash, put a dent in the universe.

Like Elizabeth Holmes. From birth these people have been coddled, told their sh*t doesn’t stink, that they’re never wrong. Hell, kids today all get a pass. When I was growing up the worst thing you could do was bring a note home from school, you’d get a whipping, literally. Today if you bring a note home your parent goes to the school and raises hell, their kid must be innocent!

Right and wrong? Irrelevant! I’m above the law, and furthermore my intentions are good, so I’m immune.

Used to be our heroes were poets, artists, people with something to say, who were providing insight, who had us questioning our values. But today we’ve got Marc Andreessen saying that Silicon Valley should get a pass, sans regulation, for the good of the nation. Huh?

Then again, that’s the problem, right? Regulation. Let’s hobble the government, defund the IRS, let’s get the “Deep State” out of our hair. Sure, but don’t ask for a handout in a natural disaster, and don’t complain when the guilty get rich and go free.

The whole system is in play, and half of it is under the rubric of the Constitution. Yes, what men back in the 1700s thought, let’s look to that. Hmm… How many television stations should there be? Soon, there will be very few TV stations at all, because of streaming and other choices. Bruce Springsteen and 57 channels with nothing on? Talk to a kid, they’ll have no idea what he’s talking about. New rules for new people. But if it gives me an edge, I’ll twist the words however I want to.

Thank god Sam Bankman-Fried is going to jail. Chalk one up for the little people, those who can’t afford a multi-million dollar defense, who believe in right and wrong and then discover their overlords do not.

Never mind the people who lost money in the collapse of FTX. People believe there’s insurance for everything, they expect insurance for everything, there’s that pesky government issue again, but the truth is you’re rarely made whole. All that value wiped out? That hurt somebody. Maybe fat cats. But they were investing your pension money. As for the newbies investing in crypto… I’ve got a bridge to sell you.

Hell, you could tell Bankman-Fried didn’t think the rules applied to him by the clothes he wore and his hairstyle. This is what rock stars did, because they were the other, they were so successful they could wear whatever they wanted. But today musicians are cartoons, rockers with leather and long hair, as if nothing has changed in half a century, never mind rock that rock has died, and it’s the techies who wear hoodies and sweatpants but they’re not like the rockers of yore, they’re just capitalists oftentimes purveying empty items just to get rich.

So, Sam’s parents will never get over it. Why don’t they look themselves in the mirror and examine their complicity, their responsibility?

And Sam… Maybe you’ll be like Ted Bundy. Just before being put to death he admitted he did it all, everything he was accused of, he was guilty. And so are you Sam.

I don’t know anyone who will buy another Tesla. And I know a lot of people with Teslas, and they LOVE their Teslas!

But they don’t like Elon Musk.

If you’ve been following the news, it’s getting hard to sell electric cars. The Big 3, not so big anymore, are slowing development and production. Which is the exact wrong thing to do, because that will only put them further behind when the revolution comes, and it’s inevitable, and it will be gradual, then all at once.

Gasoline cars are a right wing cause célèbre. They don’t like that the government is subsidizing electric cars, even though it subsidizes oil companies, and electrics are seen as a left wing thingy, and if the left loves them, the right hates them.

Now don’t tell me I’m pulling this out of my rear end, I’ll just point you to this recent story in the “Wall Street Journal,” and it’s a free link:

“Electric Cars Were Already Having Issues. Then Things Got Political. – The 2024 race for the White House reignites debate over EVs”: https://tinyurl.com/4s7bv577

Electric cars were the new new thing. Early adopters were status seekers and the environmentally conscious and the Model S and then the Model X were expensive. It was a rarefied air, it was a luxury item, and it burnished you image if you had one. And anybody who did have one couldn’t stop talking about it. The acceleration, the lack of regular maintenance.

And then came the Model 3. Suddenly everybody could get in on the action. And they did. Tesla sold through its inventory and the stock went up and up and then…

The Chinese ramped up. Just like TikTok is the biggest competitor of Netflix, BYD and the other Chinese car companies are the biggest threat to Tesla. And other than Tesla, every other manufacturer’s sales are in the toilet in the People’s Republic.

Now if you’re a record company, or a movie company, you don’t think about the future, you believe it will never come, you love your fat salary and believe you can litigate upstarts away.

Well, that didn’t work out so well, almost all of recorded music revenue now is from streaming. Spotify is excoriated and vinyl is venerated, but the latter is a de minimis part of overall revenue. But vinyl is sexy. It’s physical, it’s big, it’s retro, it’s cool.

Tesla was cool, but it’s not anymore.

The rest of the auto industry got on the electric bandwagon, but the truth is not one single company is in the league of Tesla when it comes to technology. Kia and Hyundai are the only ones close, but they do not use the Tesla charging system, and that is everything.

Detroit thought consumers were stupid. That they’d keep paying more and more for SUVs, which is why Stellantis has a huge inventory of overpriced Jeeps. I mean 100k for a Jeep? Did anybody ever see Jeep as a luxury brand?

And since there’s more profit in trucks and SUVs, Detroit convinced the public to buy one, even though they drive worse than sedans, but you get to sit up high and impress your neighbors! Idiotic.

And then came Tesla.

Think of Tesla as a software company. Period. Tesla built its electric cars from the ground up. Every other manufacturer, except the aforementioned Koreans and VW, bolted electric on to a gas body/chassis. They could say it was electric, but it made no sense. All they were selling was sex. And Volkswagen started early, from scratch in the wake of Dieselgate, but still can’t get the software straight.

So not only does Tesla have a first mover advantage, no one else is even close, not in electric cars. I’d like to say otherwise, but it is untrue.

So you go into the dealership and you ask yourself, do I want to buy a car with a 220 mile range, and pay handsomely for the privilege? Even Porsche can’t get the range right. As for Lucid, it’s overweight and overpriced. And Rivian is in serious trouble. And who wants to buy a car that’s going to run out of fuel/energy?

Early adopters, but that ship sailed. Yes, there was a small scrum of people who would overpay to be the first purchasing Detroit and European electric iron, and that ran out.

And then Elon Musk lowered the price.

Today you can buy a Model 3 for the same price as a gasoline car. After incentives there’s no premium. But Tesla can no longer sell as many as it makes, because of Elon Musk. Let’s just call it the X-factor.

And the competitors don’t use Tesla’s charging network, which has had years of development and truly eliminates range anxiety. Whereas the builders of infrastructure for competitors has been done by sleazy independents who if they even build charging stations, they’re oftentimes broken. The story is everywhere, you calculate how long to the next charging station, you finally limp in, and the charger doesn’t work.

Tesla’s charging network is seamless. It exists, it doesn’t break, and the transaction is all done on your phone. And competitors have realized Tesla’s superiority, so they’ve jumped to Tesla’s system, but it’ll take a few years for them to produce compatible cars.

And then there’s Toyota. Caught behind the 8-ball on electric cars, way behind, and therefore Toyota says everyone wants hybrids. That’s been the building story for a month, people want hybrids, they’re not ready for electric. But that’s complete b.s.

Electric cars are no longer cool, Elon Musk eviscerated all of Tesla’s coolness.

The charging network sucks for Tesla competitors.

Gasoline and hybrid were cheaper than electric.

Why in the hell would you buy an electric car?

Oh, there are many reasons. But the pubic is ignorant, doesn’t know most of them. One day, your gasoline car is going to be worth nothing, like your old Nikon SLR. It’ll happen overnight, you’ll be left holding the bag. Do you want to take that risk on the second most expensive purchase in your life, after a house? Most people say no. Or, you could lease, but that’s for the broke and the rich, it’s just a plain rip-off for most, and leasing is cratering too, because of soaring interest rates.

So you’re scared.

You were against computers, you saw no reason to buy one, they were used by nerds, and then came AOL. In one summer, 1995, seemingly everybody bought a PC, they wanted to play online. Tesla was AOL, but Tesla blew it. Because unlike Elon Musk, Steve Case was not insane. And Elon Musk is, a great example that you can be great in one thing and clueless in another. And now we know that those who squeezed him out of PayPal were probably right. This guy is whacked.

But he brought electric cars to the forefront.

And then undercut the business.

So we have Elon Musk to blame for the slowdown in adoption of electric cars. Teslas were not sold by advertising, they were sold by word of mouth, and now Tesla owners are not bragging about their cars, because that brings up a discussion of Musk, and the only people who seem to be in his camp are the troll bros on X, most of whom can’t afford new cars anyway. This guy has a stink upon him, he killed word of mouth overnight.

And everything sells by word of mouth today.

So don’t blame the slowdown in electric car adoption on the consumer, that people are not ready for electric, blame it on Elon Musk and the rest of the lame industry that still hasn’t caught up with Tesla. Oh, it will, but it’ll be years more, just like it took until Windows 95 for Microsoft to have even a reasonable competitor to Mac OS.

And let’s be clear, Detroit doesn’t want to sell electric cars, it wants to rest on its laurels. And it doesn’t want to invest. And this story that the public has turned on electric cars is just plain wrong.

Well, let me make this simple, it’s just a matter of when, when the country goes electric.

One in four new cars sold in California are now electric. Yes, the Golden State is still the harbinger of the future, despite the blowback of it being behind. There was a great story in the “Los Angeles Times” about how much workers sacrificed by moving elsewhere. They thought they were winning, but they were giving up protections.

“Hidden costs for remote workers moving out of California”: https://tinyurl.com/bdh76jm8

As goes California, so goes the country. Believe it.

So we’re in the middle of a perfect storm. People don’t want gasoline cars, but they’re afraid of electric cars, because of Musk’s antics and poor product from competitors.

The public hasn’t rejected electric cars so much as the purveyors convinced them not to buy them. Ford and GM cutting production and investment in infrastructure, they’re just reacting to problems that they created.

And the Chinese electric cars keep getting better and better.

And you want an electric car. Unless you’re out of town, on a road trip, you never have to go to a gas station, never have to be exposed to cancerous vapors, don’t have to waste the time. And fuel is cheaper. And maintenance costs are cheaper.

And all the red herrings of the past are gone. Turns out electric car batteries last for years, for hundreds of thousands of miles. And Tesla build quality has improved, as has its service. But you wouldn’t know this reading the press. The public says no is the story, the public wants hybrids.

Hybrids are an antiquated half-step. Usually electric range is short, they still pollute, you’ve got to go to the gas station… Hip fifteen years ago, outdated today. Would you want to use an iPhone 7? We can’t convince you to buy one, it’s obsolete, and so are gasoline automobiles, you just don’t know it yet.

Get rid of the government incentives, why have them if people don’t want electric cars! But the industry made them not want electric cars, they were primed and they ultimately will buy electric cars.

Spark plugs? Tune-ups? Oil? Imagine if your computer ran on those. Stinky, gooey, icky machines.

We’re being sold a bill of goods. The public didn’t turn on electrics, the press and industry missteps made them gun-shy.

But when you can buy a Chinese electric car for maybe even less than a gasoline car, and there are few moving parts to break… Remember when Hyundai was a joke? Now Hyundai is number three in the U.S. Perceptions change. And Teslas are already mature, far superior to the Hyundais of the nineties.

But many people don’t want to put money in Musk’s pocket. They don’t want to support this guy. So electric car sales crater and we’re told the public isn’t ready.

Oh, the public is ready, it’s just that self-inflicted wounds have given them reason to stay with gasoline automobiles.

Isn’t it a pity.