“Up with the sun, gone with the wind

She always said I was lazy”

Actually that’s what my mother told me again and again, even after I was out of the house. I had to go to therapy to be set straight, the shrink said I was working ALL THE TIME! It just wasn’t the kind of work my mother respected, of which there were two kinds, that which made a ton of money and that which you did with your hands. Her father came from Russia and worked in a tannery in Peabody, Mass. She’d belittle me to the point where I thought I should be one of those sign-twirlers, in front of a shop on Westwood and Olympic, or step up and work at McDonald’s. Funny how the mores have changed. Today parents say how great their kids are, to not only their friends but to the kids themselves. My parents never bragged on us, they just kept comparing us unfavorably to other kids in the neighborhood.

That could have been a reason I retreated into music. Music used to be a private world. When albums took hold in the late sixties the music set you free, and you went to the concert to have a peak experience hearing the songs you knew by heart. There were no selfies, no way to communicate with others via social media. You were all alone. And honestly, today’s world is so much better, you can find like-minded people, you don’t have to be lonely, but the business isn’t about making and releasing the same kind of music, deep cuts that touched your soul. They didn’t have to be hits, they didn’t have to cross over to Top Forty radio, but we all knew them. Especially as FM rock exploded in the early seventies.

Bob Seger was a journeyman. Detroit was its own scene, kind of like Austin and the Red Dirt circuit in Texas today. Lauded there, oftentimes unknown and not understood elsewhere. Iggy was on TV once in a televised concert in the late summer of 1970, but he was far from an icon. And the MC5 never broke through. And we knew Bob Seger had had regional hits, but they never got to our region.

The first Bob Seger album I bought is unavailable today, “Back in ’72.” It’s really great, it contains the original, studio version of “Turn the Page,” which is now considered a Metallica song. Then again, the original was released fifty years ago. But it had its moment, when it was released in 1976 as part of “‘Live’ Bullet.”

Used to be live albums could break you. Classic case being Peter Frampton, who was known, but unknown. Ditto with Seger. But “‘Live’ Bullet” made him a star, paving the way for the following “Night Moves,” and the subsequent “Hollywood Nights.” Seger was everywhere, to the point where you burned out on him, especially when he moved on to ballads, but once upon a time he was a fighter from outside Hollywood, paving his own way, doing it his own way.

So Bob had shifted from Capitol to Warner Brothers, which released “Back in ’72,” and then back to Capitol. Which was kind of like leaving the Rams to go back to the Jets. From the best to the worst. Then again, RCA was pretty bad too, and MCA was nothing to champion. Capitol had the Beatles, and the Band, and Grand Funk Railroad. But Warner Brothers had Neil Young, James Taylor and everybody else.

So Bob went back to Capitol and released the album “Beautiful Loser” in the spring of ’75, and the title track got airplay, you heard Bob Seger on FM radio, which was a novelty. Not that you heard him frequently, and everywhere, but if you were an FM fan, if you were glued to the rock station, you were aware of “Beautiful Loser.” Which was somehow smoother than what had come before, somehow a part of the rock canon at the time.

But most people didn’t know “Beautiful Loser” until it was paired with “Travelin’ Man” on “‘Live’ Bullet.” That was the album’s highlight. The first side of the two record set began with a cover of “Nutbush City Limits,” and then came “Travelin’ Man,” which was also on the “Beautiful Loser” album, along with the original “Katmandu,” But the studio version of “Travelin’ Man” was made to be listened to in your bedroom, quiet and meaningful, whereas the version on “‘Live’ Bullet” was faster, Seger was not worried about singing it right into the mic in the studio, it was just pure passion, from inside, it was purely him, unfiltered, honest, relatable, hard to resist, especially as it gained momentum, as the rest of the band kicked in and it rollicked down the highway. And “Travelin’ Man” goes on for four minutes and forty seconds, typical length for an album track back then, but instead of ending, it didn’t fade, it continued full bore and then there was a change, quietude returned, there’s an organ and Bob starts to sing…

“He wants to dream like a young man

With the wisdom of an old man

He wants his home and security

He wants to live like a sailor at sea”

All these years later Wikipedia tells us that Seger was inspired by a Leonard Cohen book, but we did not know that back then. We took it at face value. It spoke to us at a moment of transition. The boomers were in their twenties, it was a time of reckoning, how were you gonna make money, how were you gonna live, were you gonna go straight and sell out, or continue on the sixties path.

“A perfect lodger, a perfect guest”

You could no longer couch surf. Your buddies were married, they didn’t want you hanging out, and looked down upon you to boot.

And in truth, many boomers got left behind. Especially when the physical jobs dried up and you couldn’t support your family without a “career.” We didn’t need it all, but in many cases we needed more than we got. Life has become harder than it was in the seventies, rawer, more competitive, you can fall through the cracks easily, the suicide rate is out of control. Especially for boomers with too many health problems and not enough money.

Now back when Seger broke big, rock stars were still rock stars. With all the accoutrements…sex, dope and enough money to live like a king. Doors were open, you had more power than politicians, you were a god, and you went on the road both to experience the perks and reach the audience, getting love from the stage that no one who hasn’t been on the boards can fathom.

And maybe you got married early. But that first marriage went by the wayside when you went on the road.

And many delayed marriage until they’d been with so many women they knew a relationship was more than physical.

But you still went on the road. That was your job. And that’s one thing that’s come back, after the MTV era, after the Spotify breakthrough, there are Top Forty stars, but there are even more journeymen (and women), traveling this great country of ours delivering the music to the fans who need it to survive.

But one thing is for sure, you’re not living the life of an average citizen, you see you’re a travelin’ man. You see people, and you never see them again. Or your good friends are concert promoters, who you see once a year. You’re living in an alternative universe. Don’t confuse this with being on the other side of the music industry fence, being a business person, working at the label, musicians are a separate breed, outside of society, oftentimes a closed society, because the rest of the public doesn’t get it. You work at night, you sleep late. And the cycle is so rough, the tours so long, that you need drugs to cope, and sometimes you take too many and…

And decades later, you look back.

So you can go down the road less taken, but it only works if you never look back, if you throw away the safety net. And your endeavor may not pay off for decades, if at all. And what you end up with is different from your brethren, the people you grew up with, those in your community. You see your life is one of experiences. Those make up your life. It’s your own movie, no one else can really see it, but it’s a blockbuster.

“Sometimes at night, I see their faces

I feel the traces they’ve left on my soul

Those are the memories that make me a wealthy soul

Those are the memories that make me a wealthy soul”

https://spoti.fi/3raiKjZ

Tune in tomorrow, March 29th, to Volume 106, 7 PM East, 4 PM West.

Phone #: 844-6-VOLUME, 844-686-5863

Twitter: @lefsetz or @siriusxmvolume/#lefsetzlive

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I feel kinda weird writing during the Oscars. People are e-mailing me and I’ve got a bit of FOMO, but not enough to turn on the show. Tomorrow it will be history, and what I missed today won’t matter. Even worse, nothing seems to matter to everybody these days. Although that’s a great Bonnie Raitt song, from “Give It Up, her best album, until decades later “Luck of the Draw” came along to eclipse it. Even more amazing, “Nothing Seems to Matter” was written by Bonnie, a rare event. It’s the second song on the first side, which is the one with the “hits,” but I always played the second side more, for a long time, until the aforementioned “Luck of the Draw,” “Too Long at the Fair” was my favorite Bonnie Raitt song, albeit written by Joel Zoss. And the second side ends with Bonnie’s version of “Love Has No Pride,” before it became a standard when done by Linda Ronstadt, albeit years after it was released in ’73. But after “Too Long at the Fair” comes a rollicking version of Jackson Browne’s “Under the Falling Sky,” which is different from the original on Jackson’s debut, but nearly as memorable. And then comes the Sippie Wallace/Jack Viertel “You Got to Know How,” which I never loved, but then comes “You Told Me Baby,” also written by Raitt, just before the aforementioned closer, “Love Has No Pride.” And on a good system you can hear the tape hiss, when records were recorded analog and it was more important to get the emotion right than be perfect, mistakes were left in, because after all it’s a performance, if you try to get it exactly right you oftentimes excise the soul. And Bonnie was still relatively unknown, a college favorite, but if you don’t fall in love with her after hearing “Nothing Seems to Matter” and “You Told Me Baby,” you don’t want to let go. And after they gave up trying to steer Bonnie on to the hit parade, she wrote another killer, with her now ex-husband, “One Part Be My Lover,” which I loved, but today it’s the title cut of “Luck of the Draw” that resonates. I’ll make it very simple:

“These things we do to keep the flame burnin’

And write our fire in the sky”

That’s the L.A. story, hanging in there, waiting for your big break, which may never come. And Paul Brady wrote “Luck of the Draw,” I was just talking to Dann Huff about him, he’s one of the greats, and I don’t think I sold the Dann Huff podcast heavily enough, he’s so honest, you’ll not only learn so much, you’ll get a feel for the unpredictable roadmap of a musician.

But this is about books.

The most eagerly anticipated book of the year was “To Paradise,” by Hanya Yanagihara. You know if you have to read it. Not that I can recommend it. You see Yanagihara’s previous book, “A Little Life,” was a slow burner, as in it took a while for the public to adopt it. We’re so used to being driven by the hype, but it’s the stuff that doesn’t jump out of the box that truly ends up reaching and touching us. And it took at least a year for all the recommendations to reach me, because on the surface “A Little Life” is not appealing, but it’s an adventure you can’t get anywhere else. But you’ve got to be able to accept negativity and loss. Which reflects life. People tell me they want nothing negative, they want more shows like “Ted Lasso,” but that’s a fantasy, real life is grittier, that’s what truly resonates and lasts, like “A Little Life.” “To Paradise” is split into three sections, and the end of the first is fantastic, but then the scene changes. People like the second section, but I prefer the third, set in a climate-affected future. You read and you can feel what it might be like. But if you’re at all intrigued, start with “A Little Life.” And if you want to know more about Yanagihara, read the profile in “The New Yorker”: https://bit.ly/3IJG51C She’s not part of the New York literary scene, the book business. Which is a controlled cabal with its own judgments. Her day job is running “T Magazine” for “The New York Times,” and she reflects how they can’t fire her, because of her ethnicity, because she’s a woman. And this self-knowledge is sprinkled throughout, Yanagihara knows she’s not beautiful, most of us are not, but in a world where everybody is b.s.’ing 24/7 it’s refreshing to encounter honesty.

Anyway, one book you need to read is “American Dirt,” by Jeanine Cummins. I know, you couldn’t read it after the controversy, but that was years ago. Yes, after being anointed by Oprah, the politically correct police came down on the book because it’s about the Mexican experience and Cummins is not Mexican. But the book is so good! Doesn’t that trump everything? And no one is preventing someone of Mexican heritage from writing a book about this experience, it’s not like the doors are closed. I mean would I be bothered if a non-Jew wrote a great Holocaust book? Absolutely not, greatness trumps everything. And Cummins has Latina heritage, and despite the blowback it turns out you still can’t get “American Dirt” from the library, it took me months, I reserved it on a whim. And this book is UNPUTDOWNABLE! I can’t say I love the style of writing, but it doesn’t interfere with the plot, the experience. Actually, Don Winslow wrote about “La Bestia,” the train migrants ride atop, in his book “The Border,” and Winslow is a better, more gripping writer than Cummins, but Cummins’s book rings more true. At first you’re hooked by “American Dirt,” then you can put it down, but about thirty five percent along…you’ll stay up all night reading it, to finish it. I started at 5 PM and finished at 11 and was happy about the whole experience, I guarantee it’s better than the Oscars, fiction is always better than fact, it’s more truthful.

And the other book I want to recommend is “Mercy Street,” by Jennifer Haigh. Haigh is the opposite of Yanagihara, in that she went to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and too much of the output of the graduates of that school is mannered, overwritten, focused on words more than plot. That’s what passes for “literature” today. Where to me, it’s all about a great story, it trumps the writing, all the time. But having said that, I was stunned by some of the mistakes in the book, there were just too many, I had to go back to the beginning to see who the publisher was, turns out it’s Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins, a first rate operation, but “Mercy Street” definitely needed one more proofread. The cop is driving a Charger and then moments later he’s in a Tahoe. I expect these inconsistencies in rock biographies, but not in top level fiction. And I started reading “Mercy Street” and got immediately hooked, Haigh can write, the characters come alive, you’re taken immediately out of everyday life, you’re right there in the story, a great escape. And you think the book is about Claudia, but then it switches and there are other major characters and you think it’s becoming predictable, but ultimately it’s not, not that it’s completely satisfying. The ride is really good, the feelings engendered, it’s just that the story ultimately is not as innovative as you want it to be, but having said that I spent five hours finishing it last night, I wanted to know what happened, but also I was enjoying the ride.

Would I have enjoyed the Oscar ride?

Have you caught the negative blowback? It’s everywhere. You know you’ve got a problem when the press has declared you dead and you’re unaware of it. There’s the “Los Angeles Magazine” article everybody’s been e-mailing me, and that story in the WaPo saying the ceremony should be on Netflix, which I agree with, and have said previously. It’s just that the world moved and the Oscars did not, kind of like rock.

Then again, is Bonnie Raitt rock? She’s got a new album coming…the hype is beginning, it was in this week’s “Pollstar.”

But one thing is for sure, we’re looking for peak experiences. And when we have them we tell everybody about them. Which I’m doing now. Check ’em out.

Bonnie Raitt Spotify Playlist: https://spoti.fi/3Ln9sbE

“A Little Life”: https://amzn.to/3LhynO3

“To Paradise”: https://amzn.to/3LikW0e

“American Dirt”: https://amzn.to/3Nrp8wI

“Mercy Street”: https://amzn.to/3DeJXqe

“Are the Oscars Over?”: https://bit.ly/387WEb1

“The Oscars are niche entertainment now. Just let Netflix stream them.”: https://wapo.st/3tK1nIh

You’ll have a hard time finding another person who listens to the same new music as you. Of course you can go online, or go to a gig and find acolytes of the same act, but the odds of going to work, hanging with friends, and finding commonality in new musical tastes is extremely rare.

Playlists did not solve the new music discovery problem. We used to depend on radio to introduce us to new music, then we depended on MTV, now searching for new tunes you like is like looking for a needle in a haystack. How many new tunes can you listen to at one time anyway? And who are the creators of the playlists, which only work as background listening anyway. If you’re a dedicated music fan and you can listen to every song on a playlist…I don’t believe it. The only exception is Rap Caviar, which has lost some of its power and influence since Tuma Basa decamped for YouTube, what a mistake, but there is not another playlist that is acknowledged as great in the entire music ecosystem, and that’s just plain sad.

Repetition breeds acceptance. And in a world of unlimited choice there is little repetition so fewer tracks are embedded in one’s brain, new music becomes ever more disposable.

Sure, younger people listen to more new music, but they are just as confused as the older generations, or focused on very narrow tastes. The younger people are not better at fixing computers, and they are not multitaskers, no one can multitask, but people still talk about it.

Attention spans have not shortened. Evidenced every day by the extended amount of time, hours, that young people play video games and binge television. This is just an excuse developed by oldster creators who are angry no one is paying attention to their productions. There’s a run to greatness. And then there’s everything else. The middle has been hollowed out. Kids know what is great, and avoid everything else except for extremely niche product, that appeals to them personally, that they experience/wear as a badge of honor. It’s harder to separate yourself from others when we all have the same smartphone, but people still do try to differentiate themselves, ergo their unique interests.

People would much rather talk about streaming television than music. Adults rarely talk about music at all. Honchos in the music business rarely talk about music at all. They all want to talk about streaming television and politics, the drivers of today’s culture.

Most people with something to lose avoid talking about politics, unless it’s their brand.

Truth is nonexistent in America today. Finito. Which cheapens the value of the hype the entertainment business has historically traded on. Either people are numbskulls who’ll accept everything you tell them, or they are educated with the power of analysis and are constantly checking what is proffered to them. Unfortunately, fewer are educated with the power of analysis than ever before, which is just how the rich and powerful like it.

Most people don’t listen to the songs at the end of the album. The album model was based on vinyl, two sides, with four prime positions, opening and closing track on each side, you knew the act would put their best stuff there. But now with just a string of songs the audience doesn’t know where to focus, so they start at the top and fall off somewhere along the way, if they even go that far.

Don’t confuse money with power. The media focuses on Netflix’s numbers constantly, talking about how many people are left to subscribe. It’s kinda like cell phones. Now everybody has one and the old leaders, are still the leaders. Verizon, with the historically best service, has had the largest market share for years, and maintains that position. Just because an industry runs out of new customers, that does not mean it has no future. Netflix has first mover advantage, makes the most product, and I don’t know what the upstart streaming services are thinking, it comes down to Netflix, Hulu, Disney+ and HBO Max. As for Apple, the company has so much money it stays in the game. As for Amazon…yes, it’s buying MGM, but so far the company has never truly focused on visual entertainment, they’ve treated it like everything else in the store, an endless cornucopia, caveat emptor. Furthermore, it’s essentially free with Prime. Brands are everything in a world where individuals have sold their souls for cash. Netflix has the best brand, people believe in it. And Disney and HBO Max have legacy power. Amazon? Video is the poor stepsister. And Hulu keeps losing product, how soon until it loses subscribers? As for streaming with advertising…there are always cheap people, but the real business is in people paying every month, and they’ll only pay a limited amount of money.

Buzz happens slower than ever before. And the media is not in control of it. The old movie advertising, all the tricks to get people excited about something? Gone. Now hits pop up organically, and spread via word of mouth. “The Tiger King,” “Squid Game”…even Netflix had no idea of their reach and power. And yes, streaming TV shows gain traction relatively quickly, but music takes forever to gain hold.

George Costanza rules. If you want to succeed in today’s world, just do the opposite of what everybody else is doing. Be credible, turn down sponsorships and endorsements. Go the other way, people will notice it and respect you for going down the road less taken in a world of me-too.

TikTok brings classic rock back from the dead. As well as overlooked recent tunes. No one is in control of the process, it’s spontaneous, but it’s powerful, more powerful than any other platform of exhibition.

Web3 is about removing the power from the tech gatekeepers. Will it go down that way? Questionable, but some of the biggest players in the sphere want it to go that way.

The value of crypto and NFTs are debated constantly in the media, but almost all the stories miss the point. For the younger generation, crypto and its offshoots, like NFTs, are the new music. It’s the late sixties all over again. The oldsters are completely out of the loop, they know nothing. This is exciting to the younger generation, there are many opportunities, and seemingly everybody is playing. You might not own any crypto, but twentysomethings do.

The future is unpredictable. Just when you think you know where things are going, the unexpected happens. Not so much the war in Ukraine, but the resolve of the Ukrainian people and the single-minded leadership of Zelensky. Everybody in America gets into politics to get rich. It’s better than entertainment. Get elected and you can trade on your donors forever. Zelensky is not about this. He’s Mr. Smith, but he certainly isn’t in Washington.

Don’t expect the story to be on Fox News. Stop waiting for it and its viewers to wake up to the truth, they don’t even see it! Fox News is a controlled ecosystem just like the news in Russia. That’s the truth, just like Trump is an autocrat. I mean step way back, this is a guy who thinks the rules don’t apply to him, yet people are so caught up in the red versus blue they can’t acknowledge this. Once you undermine the game, there is no game, remember this.

Everybody believes they are powerful, everybody believes they have a voice, and they exercise it online. Raise your head and it will be chopped off. This is the world we live in, if you think you’re better than everybody else you’re in for a rude awakening.

No one trusts the legal system anymore. They shake their fist and say they’re going to sue…but the last place you want to be is court, it’s time-consuming, expensive and you’ve got no idea of the result. Actually, the legal system is for the rich only. It only works if you’ve got money. And if you’ve got money, you can bury almost anybody. I’m talking civil, of course the hoi polloi get caught up in the criminal legal system. Hell, we need people to fill all those for profit jails!

Everybody wants a smaller government until they need it, then they want relief from the disaster they experienced.

The rise in gas prices is the greatest incentive to buy electric cars…if there were inventory the numbers would shoot into the stratosphere. This is the turning point, this is the inflection point, from now on it’s all electric. I don’t want to hear about government support, I don’t want to hear about precious metals for batteries, the public can sense and see the future. A car is their second biggest investment. And they don’t want to be at the whim of the oil companies. Yet why people keep having to drive ever bigger trucks… Once again, don’t expect people to be rational.

Nothing is foolproof. Spotify went down a couple of weeks back, and Apple did just last week. This is not a reason not to believe in services. Hell, you’ve been paying for cable for decades and think about how many times that went out! The truth is products are built better than ever before, they work right out of the box, and tech reliability keeps improving.

If you believe Social Security will collapse, you believe the U.S. government will collapse. Want to take those odds? I didn’t think so.

Everybody’s an expert, and almost nobody knows the score. With so much information available online, why does misinformation rule? People still live like it’s the pre-internet era. They’ll tell you what’s best when you can go online and easily suss out what’s best yourself, and it’s rarely what people tell you it is. People are attached to what they’ve owned and what they’ve experienced, they don’t want to admit they made a mistake, or even that they’re wrong. So if you have an important decision to make, call your friends last, go online first. I’d say the same thing about bloviating about politics, but…people don’t want to find out they’re wrong. And why can’t they even Google to find out the veracity, the trustworthiness of the site/people they are quoting? It’s mind-blowing.

People are either lying about being poor or lying about being rich. It’s cool to be poor and it’s cool to be rich. The poor are downtrodden and the rich are overlords. When the truth is most people talking like this are neither poor nor rich, just average. There are truly poor out there, too many, but they don’t brag about it.

You’re on your own. No one is looking out for you. If you don’t know this yet, you’ve been sheltered by your parents, or they are rich. America is a giant casino, which is rigged, and those who own it don’t want you to win, no matter what they say. Las Vegas doesn’t advertise its truth, that the whole city is built on losers. The odds are against you. So, if you want to win learn the game, the facts. Because if you get ripped-off or lose, the odds of someone coming to aid you…are close to nil.

The world runs on sex. Pure and simple. The richest people with the best pedigree will risk it all for sex. Then again, is sex what life is really all about? I mean if we weren’t focused on sex, there’d be no new generations. But if you can’t understand what is going on, look at the sexual element. And the monetary element too. People do their best to hide their truth but it’s evident, you’ve just got to look harder.

The world runs on information. That’s the beauty of the internet world. You can be sitting at home, without portfolio, but if you read and gather information you have the ability to play with the successful. It takes effort, but the information is at your fingertips, you’ve just got to read it.

People are impressed by the knowledgeable and articulate. If you think it’s all about how you look, fashion, you’ve immediately taken yourself out of the game, unless you’re so good-looking that you can trade on that alone, and that’s a matter of genetics, and almost no one wins that lottery.

Don’t do what everybody else does. The competition is too rough.

Don’t tell people they’re better than that. That just makes you look bad, that you think you’re better than them!

Don’t apologize unless you mean it. Apologies have become nearly worthless in our society. They’re get out of jail free cards. Stand your ground, and if you’re wrong admit it. Because character is everything, live long enough and you’ll find that out.