“Spotify”: https://spoti.fi/3QfgF1e

“YouTube”: https://bit.ly/3Gju8QX

Did you buy that Modern Lovers album, with “Pablo Picasso”?

I certainly did. The entire album had an attitude, a sense of humor. These were intelligent people, not compromising for the audience, but on their own hejira.

And I continued to follow Jonathan Richman, I bought all the albums, went to see him. I mean “Rockin’ Shopping Center”…talking about malls having flags, hilarious!

And then there were the Frank Zappa records. Don’t let history be rewritten, the average person didn’t hear Zappa until “Valley Girl” in ’82. Or maybe “Don’t Eat the Yellow Snow” in ’74. But those initial albums… “Freak Out” is a masterpiece. A double album on a lame label that most people never heard, they should listen to it today. And “Status Back Baby” on “Absolutely Free,” a bouncy ditty about losing status at the high school, brilliant.

In other words there were special records, that you read about, that you heard about, that you sought out, bought and treasured. You were a fan of these acts which few knew, but meant everything to you.

This is the basis of rock and roll. Intelligence and insight. Just because it’s simple doesn’t mean it can’t be intelligent. The Beatles were envelope-pushers. The vaunted Patti Smith too. But today…

The goal is to become a brand.

But even worse, there’s so much product that almost everything gets lost. Whereas there used to be a threshold, a dividing line, between the relatively few who got record deals and distribution and those who did not. And if you did, there was a chance word could spread, you could become a cult favorite.

“I’m going back to him

I know my therapist’s pissed

We both know he’s a dick”

Wow, the difference between artists and everybody else, those who have something to say and those who don’t. Just because you can string words together that does not mean you’re worth listening to.

She’s admitting going to a shrink. And admitting her boyfriend is a “dick,” but she can’t leave. There’s a sense of humor, but underneath that is the truth. Forget the rap videos, most people just don’t kick their significant other to the curb and move on, crawl from the wreckage into a brand new car. Most find it hard to extricate themselves from the train-wreck. Taylor Tomlinson has got a great joke about her years-long off and on relationship, how she can’t be invited to holidays, because what is he going to say to his family?

“It should take a whole lot less

To turn me off, to turn me off”

Ain’t that the truth. Once you’re in it’s so hard to get out.

“If I’m in love, nothing hurts

Give enough, make it work

Clarify what I deserve”

Ah, that’s the power of love. And people think they have the power to make it work, to get what they want, if they just try harder, but it takes two to tango, and too often you can’t fix what’s broken, but that does not mean you exit the wreckage.

“He wears a front-facing cap

The sex is almost always bad

I don’t care ’cause I’m in love

I don’t know him well enough”

It’s not like he’s arm candy, someone who is going to impress her friends. He even turns her off. And saying the sex is bad…when did you hear this in a song recently? Never! But it’s all trumped by her blind love for him. And she’s got some self-knowledge, knows she’s projecting, but she can’t help herself.

“What am I projecting

He’s gonna start infecting my life

It will hit all at once like sepsis

What if I’m down to let this kill me

Oh”

Oh, your significant other can bring you down, ruin your life. Believe me, I know from experience. That’s how much influence one person has over another, and you’ve put time into the relationship, you’re committed, this isn’t really happening, is it?

Then it does.

“It should take a whole lot less

To turn me off, to turn me off”

It should, but it doesn’t.

This is an honest song, with insight. Not by a beautiful winner with all the opportunities, but a regular person like you and me, like the rock stars of yore, before MTV put a premium on how you looked.

Now don’t look at “Sepsis” through today’s lens, that would be missing the point. Don’t tell me it’s not a hit single. Don’t evaluate the singer’s voice. That’s the wrong way to look at it. But that’s how far we’ve come, everybody’s a cookie-cutter product, under the same delusions.

“Sepsis” is an honest statement with self-knowledge and humor. And humanity. It’s something you want to tell people about. You know, your friends, not the internet at large. People you know, who share the same sensibility.

Now I’ve told you.

“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