“The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World”: https://amzn.to/3IiORqL

The reason this book is so good is because it describes, in detail, day to day life in the concentration camp, i.e., Auschwitz.

You know I rarely read nonfiction. And I was regretting my choice until Walter Rosenberg was shipped off from Slovakia by train after trying to escape to England.

You see we already know what is going to happen, it’s in the book’s title. So it’s a very different experience from fiction, where you’re going down a rabbit hole and you feel at one with the book. In other words, nonfiction is just not personal. But you’ll read “The Escape Artist” and have a lot of questions, especially if you’re Jewish.

I thought I was overcharged. Could I go to the retail establishment and question the price or would I be labeled the cheap, conniving Jew?

Over the holidays I read a story about an American who decamped from the States, because of anti-Semitism. And now I’m judging myself in ways I never did previously. They call this a chilling effect. The term is used primarily in Constitutional law. In other words, there are effects of not only laws but other behaviors that cannot be easily measured, i.e. people refraining from action. Believe me I don’t want to be seen as a loudmouthed Jew, especially when Dave Chappelle goes on SNL and talks about all the Jews in Hollywood.

So the war ends. And then what?

Walter Rosenberg, now named Rudolf Vrba, goes back to college, earning his degree at light speed, trying to catch up on all those years of education he missed. Would I have done that? Probably not. Maybe because education in my life was not seen as enriching and beneficial so much as a hurdle you had to jump. Did you see that article in the “Wall Street Journal” today questioning the need for college? There are fewer students and the institutions are fighting for them, in many cases by lowering prices, but if you get a job at Google are you better off than the person with the college degree? 

And needless to say, if I was in a concentration camp, I’d be permanently demoralized. But Rudi bounced back, almost immediately. He went back to Poland, he visited Auschwitz, he kept on keeping on, what motivated him, I wish I could have some of that juice.

Not that there weren’t consequences. He trusted absolutely no one. And his relationships were fraught. Both love and friendship. And then there was the argument over credit, did Fred, who escaped with Walter, deserve more attention? Meanwhile, Fred stays in communist Czechoslovakia and dies at a relatively young age, whereas Rudi Vrba died of cancer at 81, in Vancouver, Canada.

So Rudi is sharp, but his home life is…well let’s just say his parents were divorced, his mother had a new relationship and Rudi was an independent, self-starter.

But he ends up in Auschwitz at age 18.

Yes, there are the stories of the gassing and burning of bodies, but that’s not where the detail is. The detail is in what happened to the few who were chosen to live, who worked in the camps. Did you know Jews could work their way up the hierarchy to the point where they wore civilian clothes of their choice? And had better food? I certainly did not.

I don’t want to glamorize it, especially in light of the Holocaust deniers…

You see it’s eighty years ago. And there are very few who experienced it firsthand who are still around.

I grew up with people who had numbers tattooed on their arms. Benny the butcher. Everybody in the community knew he and his wife were in the camps. You saw the numbers and…that’s an experience you never forget.

And you’re reading the book and you wonder how Hitler and his inner circle even came up with the idea of eradicating the Jews. And you know they did a pretty good job of it. What was already a minority is even smaller now. As for anti-Semitism… You can’t defend Israel anymore, because of the plight of the Palestinians. And now with the new government’s support of Russia against Ukraine they’re making it hard for me to support the country too. You see the goal of the Palestinians is to eradicate Israel, they believe it has no right to exist. Not radically different from Hitler’s view, but somehow people have forgotten and side with them. Of course Israel is imperfect, but why does the Jewish state get all the hate when the surrounding countries are far from model democracies?

So nobody knew. Or maybe they did.

But the people sent to the concentration camps, they truly believed they were being resettled. They took clothing and valuables and as soon as they landed in Auschwitz-Birkenau, they were stripped of their belongings, 10% were allowed to live, and the other 90% were immediately trucked off to be killed, right then. Given a bar of soap to clean themselves while they were gassed. They ran a noisy vehicle to drown out the screaming.

And Walter’s seeing this every day.

And judgments are willy-nilly. Who survives, who gets a better job, it’s all at the whim of the SS. They don’t study the facts, look at your CV, they just make instant judgments and that’s it. And they’ll whip you and kill you without thinking twice.

So first there’s raw survival. Could I have handled the train, standing up for days, everybody crapping in an overflowing bucket?

And even if I was allowed to live, would I have been able to endure the hardship? Don’t look like a perfectly healthy specimen and they kill you. You’ve got to fake it to make it, as they say on TV these days. Not only day after day, but year after year.

And Walter/Rudi’s main goal in escaping is to warn the Hungarians, that they’re next. But nobody he tells the story to is as freaked out as he is. They’re calm. They doubt. And the Hungarians are shipped off to Birkenau, where there’s a new rail line to make the killing easier, eradicating the need to move the soon to be murdered by truck.

But the worst thing is everybody knew. Churchill. Roosevelt. And they did nothing. Could they at least bomb these new rail lines? No.

On my birthday a few years back I went to the Holocaust Museum in L.A., and they had reproductions of the newspaper from that era. Oh, it was in the news, but nobody paid attention.

Not that the Germans wanted the story out. Their goal was to lock up or kill everybody who knew.

And those who knew…didn’t believe it.

That’s right, those who were exposed to Walter’s words were convinced they couldn’t be true.

So there are big events in life and how do you go on? Like if you were in Vietnam, or Iran… You came back, most people never went, life moves on, but does it for you?

Or more benign events. Like classic rock. Even rock music itself. It had a multi-decade heyday, but now it’s over. Do you move on or just live forever in the land of nostalgia? I mean it’s kind of creepy when you see old fat tattooed guys at the gig… They seem to have missed out on everything, life passed them by, all they’ve got is this music.

And everybody with a brain now knows music doesn’t drive the culture, not the way it did back in the classic rock era, even the MTV era. Sure, the music affects people, but do we really listen to these nitwits tell us what to believe? Streaming television drives the culture, but no one in the music industry will admit this, even though when you get together that’s all they want to talk about, streaming TV and politics.

Yes, politics is taboo… But hang with a promoter and it comes up instantly. It’s a hell of a lot more interesting than the music.

Don’t protest. That’s just the point. We’re all focused on different stuff.

We were all focused on the same things and the internet came along and blew that model to hell. Now what? How do you live your life?

And just like in World War II, disinformation is ever-present. I mean this vax stuff is insane. Yes, the reason Damar Hamlin had such grave consequences from the hit is because he was vaxxed. People were saying that on Twitter within minutes!

Do you have to read “The Escape Artist”? Are you missing out if you don’t? Well, there are numerous people, especially boomers, who can’t get over the Nazis and the Holocaust. I remember picking up the paper in the eighties when they broke the story that Mengele had been living in Brazil and died. The members of the SS didn’t all go hide, most of them went on to work under their real names, findable…if society cared enough.

Man’s inhumanity to man. That’s what they call it.

Groupthink, obeying orders will get you nowhere. And that’s what American education is all about. They don’t want you to be able to think, because then maybe…

I mean how does a guy like Putin come up with this stuff, believe he’s king and can negatively affect millions of people on a whim? Who are these tyrants?

They exist. And I’m not going to tell you this or that person is Hitler, but I am telling you if you think it can’t happen again, here, you’re absolutely wrong.

“Where they burn books, they will, in the end, burn human beings too.”

Heinrich Heine, 1822.

Bob had only heard of Zach Bryan when you wrote the first article about his LA performance and upon your recommendation bought American heartbreak and holy s..t my 8 year old daughter knows most of the words to almost every song. She asks about the backstory for each song, sings along and I can’t wait to take her to see him. Then he releases the live show and wow – you’re spot on about the audience knowing every word – who doesn’t like his lyrics?

Hal Kempson

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I have never listened to Zach Bryan before. I knew he was becoming a big deal in the country world. Listened to the record because of all the hype/conversation/news (and a week off where I can actually just check something out). WOW. What a great record. Some rad songs here, and a loud crowd for a live record. Was just way better than I expected.

Seems rare when a record is getting this kind of media attention that it actually is a great record underneath it. Hope a lot of people discover him for it.

Stephen Chilton

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Seems like you and Obama are the only people talking about Zach Bryan. I don’t get this. He missed pretty much every major list. Why don’t critics love him as much as the people clearly do. His music obviously resonates with folks in a very real way. What is everyone else missing?–

John N. Hamilton

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I’ve been a fan for 3 years.  Watching the growth of ZB is something you will only witness once in a lifetime.  So raw.  So real.  He is a once in a lifetime artist.

Thanks,

Dan Sheehan

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It really hurts to see Zach and his rhetoric lately knowing how many promoters have emotionally invested time into his career the last 18 months only to feel like like we have a knife in our back. It hurts even more to see him tweeting about “Twitter fingers” when he’s yet to entertain any in-person conversations with Ticketmaster on the issue. Instead he’s chosen to weaponize his fans on issues they are uneducated in. Much like Taylor’s master ownership debacle with Scooter

Look and see whose name is on most of the paychecks he will receive in 2023, that’s all I’m saying….

The one and only! Taj is serving as the NYU/Americana Artist-in-Residence for 2022-23. Intelligent, feisty and as sharp as ever, Taj tells us about growing up, his adventures with major labels and independents, and how he has sustained his career all these years. Revered by his compatriots, this is a chance to experience the magic of the man himself!

https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/taj-mahal/id1316200737?i=1000591575128

https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9ff4fb19-54d4-41ae-ae7a-8a6f8d3dafa8/episodes/41488d9c-5825-43d6-bb2c-3a6c05c0955c/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-taj-mahal

https://www.stitcher.com/show/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast/episode/taj-mahal-210354406

https://spoti.fi/3WuSBK3

Set-up is history.

This is what the movie industry does not understand.

The studios and the usual suspect artists want theatrical releases, because of the attendant marketing. So when these flicks hit streaming services everybody is aware of them.

And that marketing is uber-expensive. Tens of millions of dollars. To promote a film that in most cases does uber-poorly at the box office. The execs and the creators are still lost in the twentieth century, as if we were all home watching Thursday night Must-See-TV, being spoon-fed film advertisements that will inspire us to rush out and see the movie blindly the coming weekend.

But we’re not blind anymore. Critics don’t matter, but the wisdom of the crowd does. Such that by Friday afternoon you can tell whether a film is a hit or not. Once RottenTomatoes ratings appear, the future box office of the film is predicted. Assuming there is any box office. Unless it’s a sequel or a superhero movie, good luck.

And it’s similar in the music business. You release an advance single to create awareness. You prime the public…

To have the exact same experience the movie business does. By the middle of Friday afternoon, the future of the major product is sealed. Word is out, all over the internet, as to whether the project is worth your time or not.

First and foremost, the set-up of yore was based on precepts that no longer apply. Radio is no longer king and sales are nearly nonexistent. It’s about consumption. Does the audience listen over a period of time, racking up streams? First week numbers don’t mean much, all they do is impress the fellow members of the old school network, like the newspaper.

And there’s the creation of anticipation. News stories in advance, bringing the pot to a boil on Friday and… This is not how it works anymore. There’s too much in the channel and no one cares, except the hard core.

Zach Bryan released a live album on Christmas Day. Used to be there wasn’t even any new product in January, never mind over the holiday. Van Halen’s “1984” came out on January 1st of that year and owned the airwaves for a month, there was no competition. The labels had focused on Christmas…

But just like the rest of the world, music is now a 24/7 business. Whether someone listens Christmas week or in the dead of January it makes no difference, but it does matter if people listen!

Now the flaw in most acts’ thinking is believing people care. That there’s a ready audience out there for their music. There’s not. Everybody’s got too much music, they don’t need yours. You’ve got to think small, and see if the story grows.

I’m not saying NPR and “CBS Sunday Morning” and even SNL are going to hurt you, but they really don’t mean much. It’s all about targeted advertising/marketing today, that’s why the online data is so valuable. Most people don’t care and never will. How do you reach those who do?

Ultimately it comes down to the music, and the credibility, who the act is.

Forget the cartoons you see on the pop chart. They come and go. What about the bread and butter artists who are building careers, who are going to play music forever? That’s where the focus should be.

And it hasn’t been there for a very long time. Because labels are inured to the set-up, the system. They massage the product until they believe people will care, with more songwriters and features and mixes, and then they spend money, just like the movie studios, as if this will guarantee success…it won’t.

In other words, we’re returning to the days of yore. True A&R. Nothing is easy. How can you find an act that sells itself?

First and foremost you can believe in Zach Bryan. He’s got credibility, he’s his own man, he’s not beholden to the system. And so far he’s not selling out, there’s no tie-in with the Fortune 500, no brand building with perfume, etc.

In other words, if you want to make money in the music business today, you’ve got to start small, you’ve got to be in it for the long haul. You’ve got to have patience, as an act and as a purveyor. If you want it all now, not only are you doing it wrong, you probably won’t be a success.

And once you gain traction like Zach Bryan, you superserve your audience. He constantly releases new product, which is what fans want most. Especially today, people are not fans of the scene, they’re fans of the act. And the fan bases might not even intersect. You may like BTS or Taylor Swift or Zach Bryan and nobody else. And nobody else cares about what you’re into.

So this live album was recorded on November 3rd, at Red Rocks, America’s second most famous outdoor venue (after the Hollywood Bowl). It snowed. But it was an experience, if you were there…memories are made of this.

But the project was released in less than two months. Everything moves fast these days. If you’re spending time getting it right, you’re wasting time.

And the live album was a surprise. There was no set-up, it was just dropped. And the fans and ultimately the media spread the word.

As for employing “Ticketmaster” in the moniker…

I won’t get into the politics, but Ticketmaster is in trouble. Because it coasted too long, didn’t work on its image, obviously didn’t spend enough on its software. It’s a bad look. The tech companies didn’t used to have lobbyists in D.C., they didn’t even advertise. But when you become big enough, you have to play the game, at least a little bit.

Ticketmaster is always playing defense. And I could delineate the truth, but that’s the company’s job. As a result of the recent brouhaha there might be change.

Anyway, like Radiohead’s “In Rainbows,” you can only use “Ticketmaster” in the name of your album once. No one cared about the acts that asked fans to name their own price after Radiohead, and no one will care about the acts that use “Ticketmaster” in the name of their album subsequently.

In other words, just like in tech, Zach Bryan has a first mover advantage. You’ve got to be nimble today, you’ve got to take chances.

But really it only comes down to the fans.

If you listen to the live album you’ll be stunned by the rabidity of the audience. They’re constantly singing the words. They’re in it with Zach. This is not some show at the summer shed by an act that had hits years ago, or even a pop act with a few that made the chart recently. This is PASSION! People want to belong. They want to be able to own something. They want something to believe in. For far too long we’ve had to believe in tech companies and bros because the musical acts were such nincompoops, tools of the machine. But not Zach Bryan.

I wouldn’t expect a year to go by before Zach puts out new music. Maybe not even a few months. You can’t overload the system, because there is no system, everybody is cottage industry, making it up as they go.

Also, the audience is so hungry, that if they find something they like, that’s great, they embrace it. That’s the story of not only Zach Bryan, but Morgan Wallen. Most offerings are so mediocre, so overhyped, so emotionally hollow that people are stunned when something delivers, and they tell everybody they know about it. And listen to the tracks ad infinitum.

But it does come down to the material. Zach’s tunes are catchy, there are changes, whereas they’re lacking in the hit parade. And he says he wants to create honest country music. What a concept!

It doesn’t matter if you hate Zach Bryan and his music, it doesn’t matter if you never even listen to him. All of us being in it together, judging each other’s taste? That’s positively old school. It only matters if the fans like the music, that’s it.

Can you create something so good that when it’s over the listener needs to play it again? That’s today’s litmus test. You can try to force something on the public, but the odds of it connecting are miniscule.

Watch this space.