YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/ye2yyv8s

We got Duke and the Drivers.

You’d be surprised how many people in the music business got their start with the concert committee at their college. They tell tales of student apathy, as in they had no problem getting on the board, and then they booked and promoted concerts, made contacts, got a toehold in the industry.

Not at Middlebury College.

I looked forward to Winter Carnival. Well, I’m going to tell you, just like après ski, if you think the Carnival is going to bring its own fun, you’re wrong. These events are just for those already partying to get down harder. Well, at Winter Carnival it’s even worse. Really, it’s just an excuse to have a few events, like a concert.

But Middlebury College didn’t have enough money to pay the people I wanted to see.

But having said that, we did have a few big shows. We got Mahavishnu Orchestra, can you believe that? Not long after “The Inner Mounting Flame.” But when bands played my out of the way college, they were punching the clock, they weren’t truly into it. Want to see a great show? Go to a gig in L.A. or New York, or London or Paris or Berlin. You’ve got to go where the press is. That’s when the act turns it up and delivers. Most acts save L.A. for last, others start in L.A., which I think is a big mistake. You see the band usually isn’t ready at the beginning, and the reviews are less than stellar. But, you say, you need those reviews to sell tickets! I get that, but if you end the tour with raves people are primed to come next time around.

We got Poco after Jimmy Messina had left, right after the live album “Deliverin’,” when it was clear the act was never going to break through. And, of course, the band ultimately jumped from Epic to ABC and did have hits. I love “Heart of the Night.” There’s that one great line…

“Shining down on the Ponchartrain”

That album also contained “Crazy Love.”

But the track I love most from the ABC era was not a hit, it was the opening cut from “Head Over Heels,” the first album on the label, Timothy B. Schmit’s “Keep on Tryin’.” I had to buy that album just to be able to hear the song at will.

Wow, “Head Over Heels” is not on Spotify, what’s up with that? I just wrote about it and I needed to hear it.

But it is on Qoboz, and in hi-res!

But it’s not on Amazon. Meanwhile, while I’m at it, the Free stuff is in hi-res on Amazon, sounds amazing.

But “Keep on Tryin'”?

“I’ve been thinkin’ ’bout

All the times you told me

You’re so full of doubt

You just can’t let it be

But I know

If you keep comin’ back for more

Then I’ll keep on tryin’

Keep on tryin'”

Check it out on YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/5cd482yp

The word that comes to mind is EXQUISITE! Believe me, back in the day when we all saved our pennies for big rig stereos, to hear this emanating from the JBL L100’s was utterly delicious, a transcendent experience, an acoustic guitar with Timothy B. like an angel on top, WHEW!

Did I ever tell you I saw Illinois Speed Press at the Fillmore, before Paul Cotton decamped for Poco? Only a few will know that band, and now Cotton is dead and no one seems to care, just like no one seems to care about posting “Head Over Heels” on all the streaming services.

This was Timothy B.’s last hurrah. Enough already. He decamped for the Eagles, and now he’s known for “I Can’t Tell You Why,” but there’s so much more. Listen to the Poco compilation “The Forgotten Trail,” that’s on all the streaming services, the best of the Epic years, like with Free’s “Molten Gold: The Anthology” you’ll realize how good Poco actually was, both in the Furay days and thereafter. But having said that, I loved the first Souther, Hillman, Furay Band album. “Border Town”? EXCELLENT!

Oh, we did get Brewer & Shipley. I mean who cares. This was long after “One Toke Over the Line.” However, on that first album, the almost seven minute closer “Fifty States of Freedom” is great, check it out, that’s on Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/z6h3y74n

Now it may sound like we actually had a decent number of acts at Middlebury. Oh yeah, we also had “It’s A Beautiful Day,” long after “White Bird,” however I must say “Don & Dewey” from the second album is a killer. What the hell, I’ll post that too… Well, it turns out that “Don & Dewey” is not on Spotify, probably a Matthew Katz thing, but here it is on YouTube, and you really should give it a listen. I doubt most people know it, but it’s a tear, hang in there for thirty seconds until it starts to explode: https://tinyurl.com/mwjazakv (There is a live take of the song on Spotify, you don’t have to e-mail me about it, it’s nowhere near as good.)

So I was at Middlebury College for four years. I did not take a semester abroad, I could not sacrifice any ski time, I’m just that into it. And if you look at the above shows that’s a piss-poor track record when you compare it to what other colleges presented. I remember driving to Colgate to see Bonnie Raitt and Randy Newman on one bill!

Anyway, at the aforementioned Winter Carnival the last year I was in Vermont…yes, we’d get name talent for Winter Carnival and Spring Weekend if we were lucky, rumor had it that we were going to get a band from Boston. J. Geils? They’d put out “Give it to Me,” but the legend was built on the live album, “Full House.” And then the rumor was we were going to get James Montgomery, fronting one of the hottest bands in Boston. But like I said above, we got Duke and the Drivers. And almost nobody went, I know, because I was there. It was kinda like that moment in Spinal Tap with the miniature Stonehenge. It’s all about perspective. This was a loser show. Driving ‘cross country the following fall I saw Ry Cooder in Teton Village, at the base of Jackson Hole ski area, and Little Feat at the Troubadour in L.A… In the real world, there was a plethora of talent available, but in the wilds of Vermont…

Montgomery had an album on Capricorn, his career was burgeoning, but when I left the east coast I never heard of him again. To tell you the truth, I thought he’d given up, or was dead.

And then I saw him on Tom Rush’s Patreon channel.

Tom’s been hosting some of these legends recently. Like Tom Paxton, and Jim Kweskin. These guys are still around, they’ve got amazing stories. And they tell them on Tom’s channel, and I thought I was the only one watching, but unsolicited Jack Tempchin testified how great these videos were, and then on Sunday…

James Montgomery. And the man looks good! He’s not ragged and wasted, like so many of these guys. And I looked him up on Wikipedia and saw that he’d graduated from Boston University. This is so rare, if they started, they dropped out. But not James…

And he’s still doing it.

So they’re talking about James doing gigs with his Capricorn labelmates the Allman Brothers. And this guy is totally lucid, telling a good tale, and I’m into it, and then ten minutes into it, Tom talks about playing a song. They’re going to do “Statesboro Blues.”

James says he’s not sure he remembers all the lyrics, but he’ll give it a whack. And then Tom starts strumming his guitar, and then James comes in on his harp… JAMES COME IN ON HIS HARP!

Man, this is the sound that launched a million careers. The blues of yore. We heard it, locked into the groove, and were influenced by it. We played the blues, we listened to the blues, but the blues are nowhere in today’s modern music world. Oh, you can hear influences. But the pure element? That’s gone. But Tom and James are locked right into it.

And then James starts to sing and…

Man, this is good!

So I go back to Wikipedia, to find out more details, I mean where’s this guy been? Performing! But in the Boston area. He’s still doing it, like a bluesman of yore. And he’s got it.

And just like pornography, you know it when you hear it, and I’m hearing it. I’m woken right up. James is positively wailing on that harp, like a pro, not an amateur, it’s everything it used to be, BUT IT’S NOW!

Now every boomer of my vintage knows “Statesboro Blues,” BECAUSE IT OPENED UP “AT FILLMORE EAST”!

You’ve got to know, it took another two years for the Allman Brothers to become ubiquitous, with “Ramblin’ Man” and “Brothers & Sisters.” But if you were in the know, if you were a fan of the music, if you believed, you were aware that Bill Graham hired the Allman Brothers to close Fillmore East. They simulcast it on the radio, no way could you get a ticket.

And a couple of months later, “Fillmore East” was released. I knew “Idlewild South” by heart, it was a dorm room staple. But “At Fillmore East”? It blew the roof off the joint.

And that’s how I learned “Statesboro Blues.” I’d heard of Blind Wille McTell, its composer, but I hadn’t heard his performance. And yes, Taj Mahal cut the song on his first album, Jesse Ed Davis and Ry Cooder accompanied him, but I didn’t buy that album and no one I knew did either. This was the old days, when you had to buy it to hear it, and you couldn’t buy everything. Now the third album, with the cover of “Take a Giant Step,” that I knew, people owned that. But when you dropped the needle on “At Fillmore East” at the end of the summer of ’71, wow, Duane’s slide immediately slid, the notes were jumping, the drums were pounding, Gregg ended up singing, WHAT WAS THAT??

“Wake up mama, turn your lamp down low”

But these were the lines that truly resonated:

“I woke up this morning, I had them Statesboro blues

I woke up this morning, I had them Statesboro blues”

And the deal was sealed a few lines later with…

“But if you can’t make it baby, your sister Lucille said she wanna go”

LUCILLE!

This is the sound that got people to travel to gigs. Before Springsteen. Sure, the Dead were on the road, but the Allmans were together, never sloppy, it was streamlined, it was a powerhouse, just to be in proximity was a peak experience of your life.

Now James Montgomery/Tom Rush’s take on “Statesboro Blues” is closer to Blind Willie McTell’s than the Allmans’, it’s rootsy, it’s got its own magic. And I was blown away and I told Tom to post the performance to YouTube. And here it is.

From Fontana to Montrose to Capitol to Geffen to Van Halen to Cabo to tequila and rum, we cover it all!

https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9ff4fb19-54d4-41ae-ae7a-8a6f8d3dafa8/episodes/eb06293c-ee42-46a7-bad4-a508ad418a34/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-sammy-hagar

https://www.stitcher.com/show/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast/episode/sammy-hagar-305038680

“The Big Goodbye: Chinatown and the Last Years of Hollywood”: https://tinyurl.com/39p9w4kz

This is a fabulous book.

I was not planning to read it. Read the reviews, reserved it at the library, but I’m anti-nonfiction, I find that fiction resonates more, and I’d just finished a couple of music biographies that made me feel like I was wasting my life, they were just that frustrating. But I figured I’d skim “The Big Goodbye,” get an idea, before it expired and went back.

But I instantly got hooked.

Most of these recreation of Hollywood books are not good. Peter Biskind’s “Easy Riders, Raging Bulls” is the definitive statement on seventies movies, and so far we haven’t needed more.

But “The Big Goodbye” provides more.

Should you read it if you haven’t seen “Chinatown”?

No. But even if you only saw “Chinatown” once, when it came out, you should. Because it will bring you right back, to the late sixties and early seventies.

Film. You’ve got no idea the respect it used to get. Sam Wasson talks about this. There were film societies. New courses in college. Film was seen as the American art form. You went back and watched W.C. Fields and the Marx Brothers, were a completist of the legends, from Greta Garbo to William Wyler and Jean Renoir. It was a badge of honor to see the foreign film, if you said you didn’t want to read subtitles you were ignored. Today, an old film is “Old School,” released in 2003. Movies don’t engender that desire for history, to know the past. Today movies are all about the gross, every weekend the totals are published. As if big money makes a good movie, or little money makes a bad movie.

And the people in this book have big desires. Sure, there’s a bottom line, you can’t make too many losers, you won’t work. But the films cost a couple of million to make, not nine figures. And marketing budgets were not stratospheric either. So art reigned.

Roman Polanski… I’m not going to address what happened in and around the jacuzzi at Jack Nicholson’s house with that thirteen year old girl, even though it’s addressed in this book, but what you ultimately realize is the reason “Chinatown” is so great is because of Roman. The supposed hero, the screenwriter Robert Towne? He gets credit for the idea, along with his girlfriend, who found books on old L.A. and more, and he had a cowriter who didn’t get credit who most people are unaware of, but in truth it was Polanski’s movie, he turned it into a movie. I hate to say it, but this book is the worst advertisement for the writer ever. I’ve always believed the writer is everything. But Polanski shaped “Chinatown.” He knew what it lacked and ultimately what it needed.

And his history is delineated here. At length. You might know a lot, but you won’t know it all. Read it and you’ll understand where he came from, and how he dealt with Sharon Tate’s murder, how he suspected his friends.

Robert Evans?

At this point, after the book and movie, he’s been frozen into the past like the not quite dead Clive Davis. Busy trumpeting his own horn, as if he deserved all the credit. But Evans does deserve a good amount of credit, and he was all about the art and enabling the creators, unlike Mr. Davis. He wanted you to let your freak flag fly, he wanted to enable your imagination, but he was there to tell you when you went out of bounds. After Evans? Paramount was run by Barry Diller, a TV guy. The movies have never recovered.

Evans was an enabler, in some cases in a bad way, like with coke. But he was akin to Mo Ostin, even though Mo kept an even lower profile and was not self-aggrandizing. Make the talent feel comfortable, like there’s someone on their side, they’ll be loyal, they’ll deliver their best work.

As for Towne… He grew up in L.A. So many are immigrants, but for those who were here before, their history informs them in a way those who are transplants can never fully fathom. Towne too slid into coke. But even worse, he had trouble completing scripts. And isn’t it funny that when Towne ultimately got to direct, his desire, the result was nowhere near as good as when he worked with first class collaborators, on “Shampoo” and “The Last Detail.” Towne was the ultimate script doctor, but he wanted more. And in movies, it’s a long struggle, you need someone to believe in you, to give you the money. You’ve got to earn your opportunity. Towne got there, but ultimately seemed to be overwhelmed and frozen.

And all of these guys were womanizers. Like the rock stars, but the rock stars were selling something different. That was part of their image, whereas these film guys were holier-than-thou, thought they deserved respect, but they oftentimes acted reprehensibly.

So you’ll learn how “Chinatown” gets made. And there were a lot of changes to the original script, A LOT! It took forever to come up with an ending. And Faye Dunaway lives up to her reputation as a diva, difficult to work with, but she ultimately delivers. And John Huston is drunk. And they fire the cinematographer and come up with someone new, just like they ultimately do with the score. Instinct as opposed to data, that’s how films used to be made. And Jack Nicholson? He shines throughout. He may not have treated Anjelica Huston well, but his image is burnished even more in this book, he was cool, he believed in himself and delivered, he was a star.

So…

Do I really think you’re gonna read this book?

Probably not. First because you probably don’t even read books, I mean who has time, right? And you’re up for lessons, but this is about what happened fifty years ago, how does that apply to you? But people never change, the problems remain the same, like the petty war between Frank Yablans and Robert Evans. Screw the movie, I want money and power!

And “The Big Goodbye” is not always the easiest read. Some of the sentences, the analysis, might flummox you at first, you might need to read them again, but ultimately what we’ve got here is a first class depiction of a golden era, the equal to “Easy Riders, Raging Bulls,” not a survey, but a deep dive into how movies are made.

But really, it’s the history, call it nostalgia if you’d like, of the way it used to be.

It’s not that I want to live in the past, tech delivered what the movies did not over the last twenty five years, but it was a golden era, like classic rock. Not every art form, not every business vertical continues to thrive at the same level. They have peaks, and then decline to a steady status. And the peak always happens with innovation, when you let the artists go free, worry less about the bottom line than the end product.

“Chinatown” is a great movie. And you’ll be stunned how many choices, what detail went into making it. It’s fascinating, and if you lived through it you’ll want to know.

“The Big Goodbye” calls to you, you want to get back to it, and when you read it you’re distracted, removed from the regular world, you’re in reverie, just like in the theatre watching a great movie.

This book is really something. It’s not the thing, but it’ll tell you about the thing. And until you know about the thing, how it came to be, you can’t create the thing yourself. And I know that’s what you want to do.

Have you signed up yet?

We haven’t had this spirit here since 2006, when Facebook opened up to the general public. Or maybe 2010, with the launch of Instagram. Or 2017, with the launch of TikTok. Only this time it’s different, we’re not excited about a new platform because of the possibilities, but because of the hatred of the old platform, Twitter. We’re seeking a refuge.

It’s all about community. In every vertical these days. That’s the hardest lift, the biggest climb. It doesn’t matter how good your idea is, it comes down to whether it spreads, whether you can build a fan/user base. It’s nearly impossible to do. People are overwhelmed, they want less clutter, not more. And in a world split into narrow niches, they might not be interested in your vertical.

But we couldn’t wait to sign up for Threads. I did. I’m eager. Because not only am I down on Elon Musk, I’m down on the experience. Twitter has become less fulfilling, I don’t need it as much, I’m not nearly as addicted as I used to be, it’s no longer the heartbeat of the world, it’s been taken over by bro culture, a tiny sliver of society that most of us decry.

Elon Musk might have been good at getting ahead of the public, with PayPal and Tesla, but he’s not good at actually living in the moment, with the rest of us. You see Musk’s input is limited. What I mean is he doesn’t have enough sources, he’s living in an echo chamber. He believes the hype. He believes the problem with Twitter is freedom. He’s become the hero of ignorant, alienated males, and that’s a bad look. Furthermore, you fail upon launch, not when you’re dealing with a mature platform. There was this insanity with check marks. You have to pay, or maybe you don’t have to pay. Some people can post endless screeds. It’s no longer a microblogging platform, it seems to be going backward to something like Blogger or LiveJournal. And we learned with Tumblr that you never alienate your core customers, whether it be users or advertisers, because it all depends upon community, you’ve got to keep the eyeballs, otherwise you’ve got nothing.

In other words, this is a maintenance mission as opposed to an innovative mission. You take what you’ve got and tweak it, you don’t trash it, throwing the essence overboard.

Steve Jobs believed in small teams. He thought they accomplished more than large teams. But he didn’t believe in eliminating the team. It’s one thing to be lean, it’s another to be strapped. And in a world run by Millennial and Gen-Z values you don’t want to abuse workers and not pay your bills. That’s anathema to them, they hate you on principle, you’ve got to assuage them first. You have to know who your customer is.

And then messing with the content… It’s bad enough we have to see ads, now we don’t even get to see the content we want to?

As for Zuckerberg… He’s no prince, but we haven’t heard anything about the metaverse in months. He seems to have pivoted, refocused, without trashing his past efforts. He’s just moved on, like a band that made a bad album and now wants to recover, like Garth Brooks after he morphed into Chris Gaines.

And Facebook may have reduced head count, but the company went on a hiring spree over the last few years. The company is lean (and can we call it Facebook instead of Meta now?), but it still has enough person power to create and distribute.

Musk had nothing he could protect. Hell, you can build a microblogging platform on open source software. The lift is not that heavy. Why did he think he was immune? There’s no secret code, no investment of so many dollars that no one can compete, all that Musk has is his audience, and people can abandon you on a dime. And you never really know what the public will do, but you can prepare for it.

Screw what the Supreme Court says, screw the Trumpists, most people don’t want falsehoods on Twitter. They don’t want conspiracy theories. They want a more pure site, they want SUPERVISION! Otherwise it’s a cesspool, with a shouting match laid on top. This is kind of like gun laws. The right and the Supreme Court might want open carry of battle weapons, but most people do not. And in order for Twitter to succeed, it must appeal to most people. Or at least the people who were using it. In this case, the informed, educated elite. You went to Twitter for news, hard news, who let the nincompoops in?

So we want to get out.

That’s what Threads offers.

This is why the Great Man strategy fails. Just because you’re good in one thing does not mean you’ll be good in another. Just because Musk can make and distribute electric cars does not mean he can run a successful app that interacts with the public at large. He’s got no clue. Like we constantly hear we want businessmen in government. Well, first and foremost, we want more women, not men, and we want those experienced, who know the ropes, who are not learning on the fly. In other words, would you want a great lawyer to be your heart surgeon? Or vice versa? Never has expertise been denigrated so.

Not that the experts are not manipulative. This is what turns us off most about Twitter, Musk’s manipulation, as if we can’t see it. Under the banner of freedom he’s limiting ours.

Turns out we need a microblogging platform. Quick, you smell smoke, is there a fire? The TV station won’t tell you if there is a fire, nor will the radio station. They’re further behind the curve than ever. No, for that you need the wisdom of the crowd, real time information, which is what Twitter provided, but we don’t need to get it from Twitter. Assuming there are enough people contributing elsewhere.

And Twitter is not about catalog. It is not like Wikipedia, the inertia of the past locking in its power. To compete? You’d have to recreate all that history, it’s too much of an effort. But Tweets are essentially evanescent. It’s Groundhog Day, over and over and over again. You’re starting anew. What happened yesterday, even earlier this afternoon, might already be irrelevant. Almost nobody searches history on Twitter, and so much of it is just plain wrong. Twitter is where you go to see the story unfold, it’s not where you go to read deep analysis after the fact.

And Zuckerberg never invented anything successful in his life. He refined Facebook. He purchased Instagram and WhatsApp, was beaten to the punch by TikTok and is now competing, poorly, with Reels.

But users don’t have a problem with TikTok, they see no reason to move on. It’s those not on TikTok who complain. Just like those not on Twitter complained about the cancellation of political figures and misinformation. It was all theory, in a relative vacuum, mostly horsesh*t. This is how bands built careers in the old days, not only with their music but the hatred by the oldsters and out of touch, it made them cool! You need to be cool to survive.

So Zuckerberg just copied Twitter. There’s no protection of an idea. No reason he can’t. Which is one of the positives of art, you can try and replicate it, but most times you cannot. You need vision, you need expertise…

The Threads story will be in the news for weeks now, maybe even months. I’m betting on its success, but even if it doesn’t make it another platform will arise, that’s how much people are dissatisfied with Musk, maybe even hate him. All his faux pas are coming home to roost, and the limit to the number of tweets was just the cherry on top, the straw that broke the camel’s back, enough already.

Let’s be clear… The government is not in control of Twitter or Threads.

And if you run one of these outlets you must have a soft touch, because if you alienate the audience, you’re toast.

And this is interesting because recently users have been happy with their apps, they haven’t seen a need for replication. Which is why Walmart still has not toppled Amazon. Online one is enough.

Unless there’s enough blowback.

My problem with Amazon is the ads, you can’t find what you’re looking for, and some of its business policies. If someone else had the inventory and delivery, I’d switch. But it’s a very heavy lift. Meanwhile, Jassy is about contracting as opposed to growing. Is now the time? When Amazon is under the microscope? We hate the company for so many reasons, it’s anti-union, it disadvantages third party sellers, I could go on and on. It’s like the record business, the labels thought people had no choice, then Napster came along and it turned out that people did have an option. And it took years for the labels to even see that the internet option was better for the consumer than ten tracks on an overpriced CD. In internet-land, you’ve got to give the public what it wants.

This is the story of Zaslav. He too thinks he lives in a vacuum. Killing content for the tax write-off, taking the axe to TCM… The most forwarded story today is the one about the “GQ” story taken down: https://wapo.st/3pE26M0 Zaslav is a f*ucking out of touch idiot. Just like Musk. If Zaslav didn’t think his sh*t didn’t stink he’d have been on the internet, would know how it works. YOU NEVER RESPOND TO BAD PRESS! BECAUSE NO ONE IS GONNA SEE IT! What was a nonstory is now a story. How come I know that and this guy making triple digit millions doesn’t? Because he’s out of touch, hanging with his buddies in Sun Valley instead of home on TikTok, where he can truly learn what his customers want.

Ignore the public at your peril. Take people’s temperatures constantly. Don’t bend to any whim, but you want to make an informed decision.

So what we’ve got here now is an alienated press corps that is gonna have a field day reporting on Threads, adding to its user base and possible success. You may not care, but reporters do, they’re addicted to Twitter, which means you’re gonna have to hear about this Twitter/Threads battle ad infinitum.

At least we’ve got a game.

We need something like this in politics.

But no, we’re just supposed to believe in the aged Biden, we get no choice, no voice. But if they gave us one, someone younger who could stand up and debate and fight back, maybe people would get excited and rally around the candidate. Instead, we hate Trump and DeSantis and we’re given no ammunition, we’re supposed to shut up, we’re told the experts know better, when they’ve been wrong time and time again.

Like Elon Musk.

Turns out he wasn’t an expert in social media.

GOOD RIDDANCE!

Hopefully.